BMR Lite

[pumpkinpi]

You know what is going to annoy me more before it annoys me less? All the groups and people I know right now releasing BLM statements when I know they don't actually care.

Like, the Dutch astronomers association released a message. That's cool, does that mean your members are no longer going to argue every year that blackface is acceptable?

I'm very hopeful that this movement will finally bring about some change. (I'm just so sorry that so many lives have been lost over the years to get to this point.) So yeah, a lot of these places putting out statements won't change, at least not right away. But maybe five years from now they will, as the ones who really do care are leading the way.

edit: I'm sorry, I didn't intend to minimize your annoyance. It's pretty extreme what this group does, so yeah they probably will be resistant to any true change.

[lady_*nix]

Actual line from a job rejection email:

"I do value your generalist approach, however; in a small team, it's important to me that everyone can wear multiple hats."

My dude... do you understand what the word "generalist" means?

(There was in fact a valid reason for rejecting me, but that doesn't change how insulting that line is.)

[Rommie]

Yeah, to be fair, you probably didn't want to work for someone that condescending.

[lady_*nix]

I mean I'd rather not if I can help it, but IME it's rare for me to be working for people who aren't that condescending. Even when I was a guy the best I could hope for was usually a kind of benevolent paternalism.

Anyway it's not like I have much of a choice either way, since my situation has taken some turns for the worse, and I'm slowly running out of money. Hopefully tech jobs will be easier to get into again now that "DevOps" is old and "SRE" is new, but I'm not really optimistic. "Please pay my college dropout chronically and mentally ill trans girl ass to do computer stuff that I taught myself in my copious spare time" is always going to be a hard sell.

In the plus side, hey, maybe Starbucks will be more open to hiring me now that dining in isn't a thing and they give less fucks about social awkwardness!

(And if you believe that, I have a shield volcano on Mars to sell you.)

[Rommie]

Yeah, it's always tougher to take the high road about condescending people when you also need a job. Good luck.

[lady_*nix]

Thanks, Rommie. I'll be needing it.

[SciFiFisher]

Microsoft is offering free training to get certifications. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/0 ... 9-economy/

[lady_*nix]

@Fisher oh hey cool, thanks for that.

[SciFiFisher]

@Fisher oh hey cool, thanks for that.

[code monkey]

Actual line from a job rejection email:

"I do value your generalist approach, however; in a small team, it's important to me that everyone can wear multiple hats."

My dude... do you understand what the word "generalist" means?

(There was in fact a valid reason for rejecting me, but that doesn't change how insulting that line is.)

mazel tov! you've encountered an idiot! time to be thankful that you're not observant or else you might have to say the sheheh shianu.

[lady_*nix]

mazel tov! you've encountered an idiot! time to be thankful that you're not observant or else you might have to say the sheheh shianu.

If I were that observant, I'd be doing nothing but praying and sleeping these days.

[Rommie]

So, my husband and I lately have decided in volatile times, there is nothing better than spending a shit ton of money to buy a house. We were looking already in spring when the pandemic hit, then I realized I didn't really want to buy a house during lockdown, but we got back to looking earlier this summer. One bid so far, didn't work out, doing another bid right now so fingers crossed- we can't afford Cambridge but this is a decent distance that's bikable/ public transit friendly once pandemic is over.

But yikes guys, my biggest issue in this buying a house thing is how many people are just waaaaaay more into buying houses and what kind of house and various things about real estate than I am. I honestly don't care that much versus "thinking of growing the family, why are we paying this much in rent when we can apply it towards a mortgage" type practicalities. And it feels like everyone is always like "when you see the home you like, you'll know!" and I'm like really, how? "Like how you knew your husband was the one when you first met him!" is the answer.

Guys, I had NO IDEA that I was going to marry my husband when we met, or that I was even romantically interested in him. I just saw he was pretty attractive and our date lasted 4 hours because we kept enjoying talking to one another, but it was a few months until I decided I wanted to kiss him. Turns out people are aghast if you tell them that. So anyway, the house we are looking to bid on, I'm like well hey. It's a nice big house with no obvious issues pursuant to home inspection, we can afford it, nice area, etc... but I'm not like "omg if we don't get this house I am going to be so upset!" or anything. If anything, people keep telling me the "you'll know" thing to the point where I'm nervous about what if that right house will show up in a week or two on the market? Which feeds into my nervousness about how this is a lot of money, and do I really want to buy a house? Though I'm pretty sure I am just overthinking it/ I hate moving so that'll be stressful no matter what, so we are going forward.

I have no idea if any of this makes sense. But yeah some reassurance that I am not crazy for being so pragmatic would be cool.

[pumpkinpi]

Based on our experience I agree on "if you see the right house you'll know it" but not in the sense of "omg if we don't get this house I am going to be so upset!"

We looked at like 50 houses. Put a bid on one early on that someone out bid us on. Put a bid on one midway that was accepted, but we rejected it after the inspection. Then we found this one. Late in the process. Obviously. I'm glad we didn't get the other two.

How did we know it was the one? Experience. We had seen so many and talked about what we liked and didn't, that eventually we pretty much knew within the first minute we went into a house whether it was right for us. (In fact, that's the way to think about it. Not "the one" but "right for us.") We also had a really good realtor who would suggest houses he thought we'd like.

When we found this one, it too wasn't perfect, but for what it did have we were willing to compromise some of our must haves. And if we ended up not getting it, we would have kept looking.

So based on that, my advice is to prepare to look at a lot of houses. Don't be in a hurry, unless you have some timeline you have to meet. It took us about 3 months.

And once you have a house, stop looking! That way if the perfect house comes on the market, you'll be completely ignorant. Which isn't painful in this case.

Oh, and except for my advice, ignore everyone else's.

[Rommie]

Yeah, I guess we are at that stage too, where we can tell if we like a house or not pretty quickly because we've visited maybe 20, and the last one we saw hits all those points of things we want. (We definitely know the area we like best for example!) The biggest joke is we basically need to walk through a house to see if my resident Dutchman can live in it, because most houses around New England that are older don't have sufficient clearance, sometimes in multiple spots! Last house we saw he could actually walk down to and around the basement without ducking once, which I think is a first.

But yeah I think I'm just not someone so dramatic about finding what I want. Like for my wedding dress I never had a "this dress is PERFECT AND I WILL SAY YES" feeling either, more just "I look good in this dress and it's in the right price point, so I think I will get it because it means I can stop looking at more dresses." I'm such a romantic.

[code monkey]

rommie, your approach seems perfectly sensible to me. the center of you life was/is not finding a guy, having a splashy wedding, finding a house and then settling down in it to be the happy homemaker. therefore no trekking around to find the perfect dress etc. you know what you want in a house - ceilings that are sufficiently high for floris. perhaps there are a few others or things that you definitely *don't* want. maybe the will be like finding your wedding dress - a number that are rejected because they're just wrong and then you'll hit the one that will work.

[SciFiFisher]

Oh, and except for my advice, ignore everyone else's.

[SciFiFisher]

I think PP hit it on the head. You start with a basic idea of what you want. It sounds like "close enough to bike to work" is one criterion. So that automatically means anything out of that ideal distance is automatically not the right place.

With Brite and I it was a similar approach. Overall I think we looked at about 30 houses over 2 years. It took that long because we were trying to buy at the bottom of the housing collapse and it was hard to get appraisers to price the houses at the prices the seller was willing to sell at. And I refused to get anything but a VA loan which meant the house HAD TO be move in ready. The VA Loan guidelines are pretty strict that the house can't be a "fixer upper". And I did not really want a fixer upper because I knew I did not have the time to invest in a project house.

By the time we toured the house we bought we pretty much knew it was "the right one" because we were exhausted from looking.

Honestly, it met most of our "must haves" and did not have any major "Oh, Hell No!" qualities.

One thing that we did not consider but you might want to consider is parking. We have plenty of parking for us. But, when invite people over we discovered the parking options for our guests are not great. Not a deal breaker but if you are type who invites a few people over you should consider if the street is going to accomodate guest parking. Other than that PP's advise is great except for the last part. You should definitely listen to me.

[lady_*nix]

Figures that the one single time I don't bag the laundry detergent separately, it leaks all over the inside of my pack At least it didn't get onto most of the other stuff, and the pack needed a cleaning anyway, but UGH.

[Rommie]

Flight back yesterday was the worst clusterfuck I've had in years. First, personnel issues on the NL side mean the airport can be super backed up and you should arrive up to 4 hours for your flight (nope, not just a US problem). Then we are on the plane, heading out to the runway on time... and gotta go back to the gate bc the auto-collision system isn't working. Tech comes to fix, we head out again and it still doesn't work, so they end up going to another plane to get that one and swap it in. So ok, we are off, "only" 3 hours late... land in Boston, and there's another plane at our gate. We don't get off for another hour, 10:30pm local time by then, and I had to wait another 1.5 hours to get my bag (I really regret checking it, but wanted to take my PhD diploma by hand).

The one saving grace in all this is thanks to the flight departing from the EU we get 600 Euro each for our trouble (800 Euro each if we go for the non-refundable option). So I guess we have paid for another trip to see the relatives at some point in the future if we time it right...

[SciFiFisher]

Flight back yesterday was the worst clusterfuck I've had in years. First, personnel issues on the NL side mean the airport can be super backed up and you should arrive up to 4 hours for your flight (nope, not just a US problem). Then we are on the plane, heading out to the runway on time... and gotta go back to the gate bc the auto-collision system isn't working. Tech comes to fix, we head out again and it still doesn't work, so they end up going to another plane to get that one and swap it in. So ok, we are off, "only" 3 hours late... land in Boston, and there's another plane at our gate. We don't get off for another hour, 10:30pm local time by then, and I had to wait another 1.5 hours to get my bag (I really regret checking it, but wanted to take my PhD diploma by hand).

The one saving grace in all this is thanks to the flight departing from the EU we get 600 Euro each for our trouble (800 Euro each if we go for the non-refundable option). So I guess we have paid for another trip to see the relatives at some point in the future if we time it right...

The compensation does take some of the sting out of it.

[Rommie]

OMFG, job app due tomorrow, and it's on the early side in terms of most job apps aren't due until like November. At first I thought they wanted a letter of recommendation when I submitted my app, and told my references as much. Last week however going through their job app I was confused because there was no place to enter letter writer info, then read the job ad again and it only said "provide the names of three references," so from those context clues decided oh I made a mistake, they're just going to want letters after a first round and it's enough to put their names/ contact info in my CV, and told my letter writers as much.

This morning I wake up at 7am and one of my letter writers says he thinks the letters are actually due tomorrow as well, because he got an automatic email at 2am from someone else he's writing a letter for. I was legit confused because there's nothing on the form saying such... so made a dummy application and submitted it. And, yes! Turns out after you click submit it says "congratulations, there's one more task!"... and asks you to provide the names for your references, whose letters should also be arranged to arrive by Oct 1. So now I get to put all the letter writers on the defense (ok, the two who hadn't written it yet)... and yeah looks like one has a high chance of not making the deadline. Which I feel bad about as they're doing me a favor, but in my defense THIS IS A REALLY STUPID FORM.

I know it's probably ok if a letters arrives a few days late. But goddamn it nothing quite like a mistake where you inconvenience others and totally didn't have to.

[pumpkinpi]

That is a really stupid form!

[geonuc]

But goddamn it nothing quite like a mistake where you inconvenience others and totally didn't have to.

Agreed. I hate that.

[SciFiFisher]

I am sure the programmer told everyone it was very intuitive.

[Rommie]

Cherry on the cake: of course I had a typo in one of my reference's emails when I finally did enter them, and there is no way to edit it myself! And of course only an HR person can edit it, so nothing got done about it this weekend.

I definitely mentally checked out from this one on Friday for my sanity.