General FML moments

[captaintrolley]

Although I am pleased that three pools are opening up on July 20, it sucks that they are all 25 meter, that we have to reserve a swim time slot in advance, and that lane swim duration is capped at 30 min. This is unfair, since public / recreation swim is capped at 60 minutes.  This really should be the other way around. Folks that are there solely for the purpose of exercise should be given a longer duration. A warm up takes 15-20 minutes. Obviously a swimmer did not set these guidelines.

[81-717]

2 hours ago, PCC Guy said:

At work, there was an ad playing on the TV with CP24 on for some kind of product that was touted as "killing disease causing bacteria". I realize now that they were trying to say it was bacteria that causes the disease, but because I'm a moron, I made a snarky comment to my co-worker about how "that doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about science to disprove it" because it sounded to me like they were saying the disease causes bacteria to exist.

I'm sure she must now think I failed grade 6 science.

I think they forgot to put in a hyphen

[T3G]

3 hours ago, 81-717 said:

I think they forgot to put in a hyphen

There was no hyphen because the announcer on the TV said it out loud. I'm just too snarky for my own good.

[Wayside Observer]

16 hours ago, PCC Guy said:

There was no hyphen because the announcer on the TV said it out loud. I'm just too snarky for my own good.

For what it's worth, everyone's on edge now.  The last four months has been long and brutal, and the overall mental health of the entire population has deteriorated.  People are being short with each other, myself included.

I got short with someone at work because this paid professional refuses to learn how to operate employer provided tools and equipment and then calls up the maintenance engineering department to be handheld through it whenever he gets stuck, which is frequent.  To further complicate things, he's working from home using the kludgey work from home setup where operations staff were issued middle of the road laptops which they use to remote access the user interfaces back on the real equipment back in the building which means I had to try and walk this guy through what he needed to do without being able to see what he was seeing.  Figuring out the problem was pretty easy even though he rambled on about how awful this all is and how he doesn't know where anything is in the control software and was being totally unhelpful.  Getting him to click one button, which was all that was needed to fix the problem, took a total of 40 minutes of excruciatingly painful walk through to locate it - right on the front screen so it's not even buried - and then click it, spread across two phone calls.

40 minutes.  Two phone calls.  Click one button right there on the front screen.  I was getting short by the end of it because this is flat out ridiculous.  And that prompted the guy to get angry at me because he felt mistreated because I had to dumb it down to that level to get him to where he needed to be.  This took place on Thursday and I was surprised I didn't hear about it from my manager on Friday but I'm preparing to defend myself against accusations that the technicians are being mean again tomorrow in case I hear about it then.

In the meantime, it's the weekend, I picked up some seafood for the annual seafood barbecue with one of my friends, and I went to go buy charcoal since I'm getting low.  Nobody has charcoal.  It's pretty much sold out everywhere from Fort Erie to Toronto to Barrie.  I checked all the big box store websites for inventory and nobody has any charcoal of any kind in stock as if it's become the new toilet paper.  Luckily I do have enough on hand to do the barbecue tonight so I don't have to crank up the oven and broil stuff, but after that I'm seriously low.  How the hell is Ontario out of godforsaken charcoal?  It can't be the border because even the stuff made in Quebec is all gone.

[Bus_Medic]

Wood from the abundant Locust trees found in Toronto might make a decent substitute. It’s about as heavy and dense a wood as you can get without buying branch cut offs from an apple orchard. 
 

[Wayside Observer]

7 hours ago, Bus_Medic said:

Wood from the abundant Locust trees found in Toronto might make a decent substitute. It’s about as heavy and dense a wood as you can get without buying branch cut offs from an apple orchard. 
 

I actually found a well stocked store located on my way down to the Niagara peninsula so I loaded up the back of my truck.  But yeah, that was the next plan, burn some hardwood down to coals which would be a very churrasco way of doing bbq which would be quite fun.  It’s actually on my list to do sometime.

[captaintrolley]

So the online and phone reservation for swim times was supposed to open today.  Spent 30 minutes on the phone with a 3-1-1 agent (25 of those minutes were on hold). Twice she came back to say that booking doesn't start until tomorrow, but the City website clearly stated JULY 13.  Anyhow, after the last 'hold' session I got disconnected.  My swim pal also phoned and was also disconnected after a very lengthy time on hold.  Not very impressed with 3-1-1.   Not looking forward to dealing with them again tomorrow.

[GTAmissions1]

Yesterday, I was planning to take my original bus home which was late by 20 minutes. So I took the alternative which departed on-time without issues. Except, it kept stalling several different times before having to find a safe place to park. Supervisor had to come pick up the operator so he could get another bus (interesting it was traded off 3 hours earlier with a similar bus, same year but different model). Which did arrive a few minutes later, while the other passengers who didn't stay went their own way.

Though what blew me away the most was how one passenger really wanted to help fix the bus. Operator told her not to provide assistance on something she has no clue on or could cause further damage. Which on top, she was asking so many questions rather than letting the operator do their job.

I get the person really wanted to help, but surely this isn't the place or time to do such a thing. Bus mechanics are paid a premium for what they do along with the expertise and tools required to handle such functions. Not a very easy job when it requires a certain skillset to do it successfully. 

[T3G]

Work just dissolved one of the departments I was working alongside with and reassigned everyone from that department to others. Whereas previously, I would have good company while going about my job, I'm now going to effectively be working by myself. Super stoked about this.

[Wayside Observer]

On 7/15/2020 at 5:28 PM, PCC Guy said:

Work just dissolved one of the departments I was working alongside with and reassigned everyone from that department to others. Whereas previously, I would have good company while going about my job, I'm now going to effectively be working by myself. Super stoked about this.

That sucks.   That said, I’d rather be on my own than have bad coworkers.
 

The world of employment sucks.

The really sucky part is having to punch a clock day in, day out until retirement.  This is assuming it’ll even be possible to retire by the time anyone in our age ranges gets up there.

Our lovely out of touch work-from-home hasn’t-been-in-the-building-in-five-months shop co-ordinatior dropped this request on me on Monday to continue troubleshooting a fault that someone was working on two weeks ago but stopped when they rotated off the in-building shift to working from home.  I looked at the description and realized I had already done the same fault. Months ago. And determined the problem lay with stuff handled by one of the other maintenance shops and turned it over to them only for them to apparently drop it without fixing it.  As usual.
 

So, I did a quick search of the shift logs and sure enough, there’s all the information in my shift log from February 1.  From almost six months ago.  From before my vacation. From before the trolley museum Winterfest.  From before the pandemic.  Send the whole thing off to the co-ordinator and he spent and hour looking into it before agreeing that they looked at it briefly and then dropped it without fixing it. Then he assigned me to do the repair work that falls under their mandate because it’s become urgent post-pandemic with some lines of business now resuming activity.  So I do.  But there’s a follow up email this morning complaining that there’s some interoperability problems with some equipment. Well, the wrong technical standards were set up on one side which means it won’t work well with some things and I asked about it but was told that was how it should be even though I didn’t agree, so I flagged it. In that February 1 shift log.  So, I bet that’s headed this way sometime this afternoon.
 

If they’re going to force me to do two jobs, two paycheques and two pensions would be nice.  And speaking of pensions, this is what I get to look forward to until my pension date comes up.  Assuming my working life doesn’t outlast the pension plan or they pull some stunt and change it from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan or axe it completely between now and then.

[T3G]

21 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

That sucks.   That said, I’d rather be on my own than have bad coworkers.

I agree, but I did enjoy having my co-workers around. Aside from being good to chat with about non work stuff, their absence now means that I have to deal with much more crap than usual, such as phone calls. Those are always a crapshoot. You never know if it's going to be someone calling to ask when the store is open until, or if it's a customer that ordered 400 pieces of wood, and then acts shocked that we can't fulfill the order all at once and what are they supposed to tell their contractor. Well, why in God's name would you order a contractor before you have the entire order at hand?

21 hours ago, Wayside Observer said:

Our lovely out of touch work-from-home hasn’t-been-in-the-building-in-five-months shop co-ordinatior dropped this request on me on Monday to continue troubleshooting a fault that someone was working on two weeks ago but stopped when they rotated off the in-building shift to working from home.  I looked at the description and realized I had already done the same fault. Months ago. And determined the problem lay with stuff handled by one of the other maintenance shops and turned it over to them only for them to apparently drop it without fixing it.  As usual.

Wow!! That is staggering.

[Wayside Observer]

On July 23, 2020 at 7:28 AM, PCC Guy said:

I agree, but I did enjoy having my co-workers around. Aside from being good to chat with about non work stuff, their absence now means that I have to deal with much more crap than usual, such as phone calls. Those are always a crapshoot. You never know if it's going to be someone calling to ask when the store is open until, or if it's a customer that ordered 400 pieces of wood, and then acts shocked that we can't fulfill the order all at once and what are they supposed to tell their contractor. Well, why in God's name would you order a contractor before you have the entire order at hand?

I guess if someone doesn't know what "availability and lead time" is and they're trying to avoid having their contractor source the materials and apply their markup on them, it could blow up in their face like that!  The avoidable stuff that you do an inward groan on when you get boxed into dealing with it.

Quote

Wow!! That is staggering.

I've often wondered how much better organizations would function if the office politics, the infighting, the BS that goes on in every large company was shut down at all levels.  How much better would it go if there was a strong mandate top to bottom for everyone to cut the crap and do their jobs.  Right now, I'm sitting outside at a picnic table in the shade with my laptop finishing off an email to our union about issues that have come up surrounding a couple of contract issues dating from the 2009 CBA.  Lack of institutional memory from back then is a problem.  Inertia is a problem as well.  And size matters.  From hearing from Bus Medic and others about the TTC and a couple of other friends who quit the police department, it sounds like we have the same problem here where in a large bargaining unit, the technical staff are a small sliver and they get obliterated every time.  We get thrown under the wheels for the greater good of the operations staff just like the other parts of ATU 113 do to benefit the operators, just like the other employees in the police department do to benefit the uniformed officers.  I'm hanging out watching the phone and the email and the internal messaging system until the end of my shift and I can go home and get started on the weekend.  After dealing with all this nonsense over the last week, reading a smarmy memo about how one of the executives has really been enjoying restaurant patios, his kayak, and the golf course, and he hopes we manage to find the time to take a little break during what's left of the summer from providing the essential services we do, this is about the fed up, Friday level of effort that I'm willing to put in right now.

[Bus_Medic]

Bingo. 
scratching another line into my cell wall...5110 to go.

[Wayside Observer]

On 7/24/2020 at 12:07 PM, Bus_Medic said:

Bingo. 
scratching another line into my cell wall...5110 to go.

I haven't converted mine to days.  It's enough getting the annual pension plan statements in the mail every summer.  Opening them up to see how the earliest possible retirement date, earliest unreduced pension date, and full date, and seeing how far off all of them are is a truly disheartening experience.

[MVTArider]

Have to shell out some serious coin for auto repairs today. It's been letting out some gas fumes which have been getting more noticeable in the past couple weeks. Fuel lines are starting to corrode. Rear shocks are getting done too as those are also starting to go. (Kinda surprised I haven't needed those done sooner considering the beating it takes on the horrible roads around me.) Can't complain too much as it's a 10 year old car now and overall it's not needed much in repairs up to this point. Just the usual oil changes, tires, brakes, etc. Thank God I got a rental for the 1200 mile trip I took through North Dakota a couple weeks ago. I don't think running at 80mph on the highways there with a developing leak in the fuel lines would've gone well.

 

[Bus_Medic]

15 minutes ago, MVTArider said:

Have to shell out some serious coin for auto repairs today. It's been letting out some gas fumes which have been getting more noticeable in the past couple weeks. Fuel lines are starting to corrode. Rear shocks are getting done too as those are also starting to go. (Kinda surprised I haven't needed those done sooner considering the beating it takes on the horrible roads around me.) Can't complain too much as it's a 10 year old car now and overall it's not needed much in repairs up to this point. Just the usual oil changes, tires, brakes, etc. Thank God I got a rental for the 1200 mile trip I took through North Dakota a couple weeks ago. I don't think running at 80mph on the highways there with a developing leak in the fuel lines would've gone well.

 

Annual underbody oil sprays are useful for more than cosmetics. I’ve got a 17 year old Honda Element that I’ve dailied year round since new. No issues with rot whatsoever, and Toronto uses as much salt as Chicago or New York.

fluid film is my goo of choice, it’s lanolin based, and doesn’t attack rubber bushings like some petroleum compounds do.

[Tom1122]

On Thursday I brought a USB drive with lots of important files for a hobby to my room with the intent to put it in my bag. I felt it fall out of my pocket in my room and I haven't been able to find it despite going thoroughly through my room.

[Wayside Observer]

3 hours ago, Bus_Medic said:

and doesn’t attack rubber bushings like some petroleum compounds do.

Indeed.  Some of the equipment at work has rubber parts that the lubricants for the metal parts can't be applied to because it'll rot them.  The service manuals show what parts need lubrication - but they also explicitly show what you absolutely have to make sure never comes into accidental contact with the lubricant when you do the work.  This came up about 10 years ago at a trolley museum in the US after someone mentioned packing some part of air brake equipment, can't remember if it was a cylinder or a brake valve now, with petroleum based grease after installing new rubber seals.  I don't know what became of that since the car got parked for other reasons since then.

But yeah, materials compatibility (Whaddaya mean electrolytic corrosion?  Those new steel windshield frames we attached directly to the aluminum all rotted!) is a thing.

11 minutes ago, Tom1122 said:

On Thursday I brought a USB drive with lots of important files for a hobby to my room with the intent to put it in my bag. I felt it fall out of my pocket in my room and I haven't been able to find it despite going thoroughly through my room.

In the absence of the USB drive, maybe it's time to use pkzip to compress your files and span the archive over multiple floppy disks?

[MVTArider]

6 hours ago, Bus_Medic said:

Annual underbody oil sprays are useful for more than cosmetics. I’ve got a 17 year old Honda Element that I’ve dailied year round since new. No issues with rot whatsoever, and Toronto uses as much salt as Chicago or New York.

fluid film is my goo of choice, it’s lanolin based, and doesn’t attack rubber bushings like some petroleum compounds do.

I've honestly never heard of doing an underbody spray in oil before. I'll have to look into that though. My Grandfather was a stickler for getting any vehicle he bought new undercoated. On the last one, a van, he had it done with high grade pickup bed liner. He told me the mechanics were pissed when he brought it in somewhere a couple years later to get a hitch installed. Blew through a few drill bits trying to get through the coating.

[Wayside Observer]

3 hours ago, MVTArider said:

I've honestly never heard of doing an underbody spray in oil before. I'll have to look into that though. My Grandfather was a stickler for getting any vehicle he bought new undercoated. On the last one, a van, he had it done with high grade pickup bed liner. He told me the mechanics were pissed when he brought it in somewhere a couple years later to get a hitch installed. Blew through a few drill bits trying to get through the coating.

You might have without realizing it.  If you've ever seen or heard of places like Ziebart, Rust Check, etc., that's the service aka rustproofing that they sell.

[Bus_Medic]

12 hours ago, MVTArider said:

I've honestly never heard of doing an underbody spray in oil before. I'll have to look into that though. My Grandfather was a stickler for getting any vehicle he bought new undercoated. On the last one, a van, he had it done with high grade pickup bed liner. He told me the mechanics were pissed when he brought it in somewhere a couple years later to get a hitch installed. Blew through a few drill bits trying to get through the coating.

Stay away from that rubberized ziebart stuff. It traps water between the coating and metal, actually accelerating corrosion. Same goes for that truck bed liner idea. Stick to an annual rust check regimen or the like, and you’ll be good.

 

 

[captaintrolley]

Stayed up till midnight to book a couple swim spots for Aug 12. Turns out someone must have booked the same spots at the same time as me because mine didn't go through. Gonna try again at midnight to try and get a couple spots for Aug 13. This is a very frustrating procedure. And people without a computer have to wait until 0700 to call 3-1-1, by which time all the spots are full.

[J. S. Bach]

On 7/28/2020 at 3:50 PM, Tom1122 said:

On Thursday I brought a USB drive with lots of important files for a hobby to my room with the intent to put it in my bag. I felt it fall out of my pocket in my room and I haven't been able to find it despite going thoroughly through my room.

Did you check your bag?

[Tom1122]

1 hour ago, J. S. Bach said:

Did you check your bag?

Yes

[GTAmissions1]

Somehow, I was relying on the bus tracker and the bus GPS was frozen at x location. When it was at the terminus.

What was even worse, I got on and the operator said "oh no, this is x route. Not the one you are looking for." Which a relief operator took over and changed it to the correct route once leaving the terminus. Ended up having to take a different bus and walk 1 kilometre in the dark. Interesting enough, it was a senior operator who has done the route before and somehow didn't notice the mistake. Arguing with the operator wouldn't do any better because some don't want to admit they are wrong.

Regular fares are resuming on Saturday for my local transit system. Though trying to deal with it on an hourly schedule is really not helping. On a cost benefit analysis, it is probably easier for me to buy a monthly pass than scrounge for cash fare and asking for transfer. 

6 hours ago, captaintrolley said:

Stayed up till midnight to book a couple swim spots for Aug 12. Turns out someone must have booked the same spots at the same time as me because mine didn't go through. Gonna try again at midnight to try and get a couple spots for Aug 13. This is a very frustrating procedure. And people without a computer have to wait until 0700 to call 3-1-1, by which time all the spots are full.

I don't know what people would do without computers. Especially I remember calling customer service for a transit agency and if you called during the day, it would be a pretty long time on hold (some cases, it would be 45 minutes to an hour). If they did bookings in-person, I think it would be a lot worse with people lining up in the early morning.