Having a little surf through Sotonians, and not seeing a hidden post from Barry, or indeed any reference to him! Has he gone to Mar a largo with trump? Hereâs hoping.
3 Likes
âŚsays Treebeard, making a reference to Barry 
Hmmm⌠
5 Likes
Nice selective quoting, you have won your Forum Stage 2 awardâŚnot really as one doesnât exist and I ainât going to create one
3 Likes
Luckily, help is now at hand.
I have signed him up on a course
The amount of offers to get us stuff in our self isolation, sort of restores your faith in people.
Oh, of course, except for the brother in law who has said âiâm staying well away from youâ and he wasnât jokingâŚ
4 Likes
Sounds like a result all round
3 Likes
I am taking a deal of ironic satisfaction watching Wall Street & the great reset being undone by a bunch of Gamers on Reddit trading a bankrupt Games Retailer
BBC News - Gamestop: âFailingâ firm soars in value as amateurs buy stock
âCome The Revolutionâ brothers. Not sure old Citizen Smith foresaw it going down like this!
BBC News - GameStop: Is buying frenzy starting to lose steam?
That will be those day traders beginning to cash out
The share price is going to crash harder than bit coin
1 Like
I know it is âcapitalismâ but Hedge Funds have been a curse and anything that hurts them should be applauded.
They drew funds away from investment into speculation.
2 Likes
Submitting your HMRC tax return and finding out you owe well less than you thought 
Off to have a sherry or two. See you sometime late tomorrow 
2 Likes
First time ever on a Friday, watching the Desert Classic from the sofa instead of getting stressed out working there (or tour guiding)
Loving watching the Pros playing from the same places my ball usually ended up.
Seeing Sergio double bogey the 16th which I once actually birdied.
AhâŚ
So my latest software baby, the one Iâve been fretting over, is now live at our highest volume site. Without speaking about anything confidential, everything Iâve done for the last fifteen months has been the same thing.
- Find out whatâs slow
- Ask if it runs a lot
- If it does, make it faster
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get your clients saying things like ârecord breakingâ and their staff getting to go home two hours early because the thing ran so damn well *.
* That wonât last. Theyâll just put more through the line 
4 Likes
And cue the downsizing of staff as some smart Alec âimprovedâ the computer system
1 Like
They will just run more volume.
Theyâre like that. Thatâs how they became our highest volume site in the first place
That said, my work has put other people out of work in previous gigs. Not straight away like, but when a round of redundancies come, there is usually an alarming correlation between areas Iâve improved and head count loss.
I remember my grandad telling me to go into law. As with most things, I think he was right. Getting paid handsomely to argue sounds like a dream fucking job to me in retrospect.
Dickhead 17 year old me says âno, granddad - I donât want to be in a position where Iâm going to fuck with peopleâs livesâ
I realise as a middle aged adult that you do that no matter what job youâre in. Just by landing a job, youâve deprived someone else of that opportunity. Do a job well, and a lazy peer might get sacked. You will fuck lives up no matter what you do, although I accept that my particular field, which essentially involves the automation of human processes, is going to make people redundant.
Automation is not a problem in and of itself. If we were more automated, weâd have coped with COVID a lot better. The problem is that work is still seen as mandatory, when in this day and age, it really isnât.
The last 10 months have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that not everyone needs to work. I think we should recognise that, set up a national automation corporation to take it even further, and use the income to support a Universal Basic Income.
In the past it hasnât been as much of a go-er, because work was as much about keeping people distracted than it was about keeping people earning.
We live in something of a different age now. Anyone worried about people sitting idle fomenting revolution or whatnot might be pacified by seeing a country not go to work en masse, and not arrive at the stately houses with ze pitchforks 
4 Likes
You think youâre fucking up peopleâs lives with what you doâŚnothing compared with a school friend. He programmed the weapons system for the submarine Conqueror.
That really fucked up a few lives.
2 Likes
Yeah, and thereâs some things I wonât do.
I wonât work for government service contractors I wonât name names but you know the ones I mean. The ones that go billions over budget. I did a stint for one of them back in the day, and it just seemed like the whole operation was setup to exploit the inefficiency and bureaucracy of the public sector.
Got offered a plum job, just over the road and was seriously considered it. Programme Manager gig, so something of a step up at the time. As Iâm walking out I see one of the designers working on this website, offering 78.7% APR loans. This was pre-Wonga days so was shocking. I queried it, the bloke shrugged and said âyeah, people do go for themâ. I did not go to the firm.
Wonât work for a betting firm again. Donât get me wrong, the places are swimming in money and I probably had the most capable team around me that I have ever worked with, half of them easily more clued up than me. At one point, I had what should have been an obvious epiphany.
These guys literally make all their money from losers
Never sat right with me after that.
Finally, I knocked back contract work because the firm was handling the VW diesel lawsuit.
1 Like
Yep, youâre good at what you do which affords you with the luxury of choice. My schoolmate was good but had a wife who was addicted to QVC. His house was stacked with unopened QVC boxesâŚlooked like a warehouse.