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General discussionThe "bitch about life in general" thread(14227 posts)(14227 posts)
(14227 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 26, 2012
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HereForTheBeer: For any of you starting to deal with older parents, my hard-learned advice is to get involved in this stuff early. And use "tough love" because they may fight you every step of the way. Get those Powers of Attorney signed, and have your name added as a signatory on the bank accounts (so you can write rent and utility checks when he or she is debilitated) but do NOT get put on as a joint account holder. And don't co-sign anything. Go with them to the doctor appointments else you'll get the "everything's fine" spiel that we get from our dad. Check where they go online, and monitor the bank and credit card accounts to see where the money is going in case they got snookered into some recurring charge for shit they don't need. Run scanners on their PCs periodically to get rid of the trojan crap that might open the door for identity theft.
Thanks for this. I'm starting to find out that my parents can be a real pain to deal with and they're pretty bad about not budgeting. I better check into Power of Attorney (I'm not very knowledgeable about what I need to do there). I'm wondering if things could be worse than they're letting on.
Posted July 26, 2012
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HereForTheBeer: For any of you starting to deal with older parents, my hard-learned advice is to get involved in this stuff early. And use "tough love" because they may fight you every step of the way. Get those Powers of Attorney signed, and have your name added as a signatory on the bank accounts (so you can write rent and utility checks when he or she is debilitated) but do NOT get put on as a joint account holder. And don't co-sign anything. Go with them to the doctor appointments else you'll get the "everything's fine" spiel that we get from our dad. Check where they go online, and monitor the bank and credit card accounts to see where the money is going in case they got snookered into some recurring charge for shit they don't need. Run scanners on their PCs periodically to get rid of the trojan crap that might open the door for identity theft.
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KyleKatarn: Thanks for this. I'm starting to find out that my parents can be a real pain to deal with and they're pretty bad about not budgeting. I better check into Power of Attorney (I'm not very knowledgeable about what I need to do there). I'm wondering if things could be worse than they're letting on.
Mine just lie to me. I gave up. There is no helping the embarrassed who don't want help.
Posted July 26, 2012
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KyleKatarn: Thanks for this. I'm starting to find out that my parents can be a real pain to deal with and they're pretty bad about not budgeting. I better check into Power of Attorney (I'm not very knowledgeable about what I need to do there). I'm wondering if things could be worse than they're letting on.
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orcishgamer: Mine just lie to me. I gave up. There is no helping the embarrassed who don't want help.
Your lucky, Mine just do things without knowledge on the subject and when things go wrong they like to blame everyone else. Bad thing is, I'm that guy with computer knowledge in the family >.>
Posted July 26, 2012
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orcishgamer: Mine just lie to me. I gave up. There is no helping the embarrassed who don't want help.
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Nroug7: Your lucky, Mine just do things without knowledge on the subject and when things go wrong they like to blame everyone else. Bad thing is, I'm that guy with computer knowledge in the family >.>
What makes you think they don't do that AND lie to me?:)
Posted July 26, 2012
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macuahuitlgog: Your life must be awesome.
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dmetras: Ha ha, no... I wish that were the case. My Bipolar Disorder and Higher-functioning ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) have caused me grief time and time again...

I'll use this forum as an example. If you ever see me online at around 1:00 AM or so, (GMT -06:00) chances are I'm on a manic phase. And the autism? Sometimes it hampers my communication skills.

Combine the Internet's lack of vocal and facial cues with my tendency to need the very right words, and one medium-length post or reply can take between 10 and 30 minutes to work out. Not the typing, mind you. The actual figuring out what to say and how to say it.
Sorry to hear that. I just assumed your life must be awesome because you are sharing first world problems here. But I should of realized at the time, that not everyone desires to share their more serious problems. Sorry for that.
Posted July 26, 2012
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macuahuitlgog: Sorry to hear that. I just assumed your life must be awesome because you are sharing first world problems here. But I should of realized at the time, that not everyone desires to share their more serious problems. Sorry for that.
Nah, don't worry about it! :D

Besides, most of the time I feel that the real problem is the ignorance and lack of compassion that people can show when it comes to BPD and ASD. T_T

Your 'awesome life' comment, on the other hand? I figured it was slightly sarcastic because my griping paled in comparison to everybody else's woes... XD
Posted July 26, 2012
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KyleKatarn: Thanks for this. I'm starting to find out that my parents can be a real pain to deal with and they're pretty bad about not budgeting. I better check into Power of Attorney (I'm not very knowledgeable about what I need to do there). I'm wondering if things could be worse than they're letting on.
AFTER we went to Legal Zoom last year to get both medical and financial PoA's for him, I did a little further searching and found that our state has both of those documents online for free. <head slap> I just now searched 'power of attorney wisconsin form' and the first hit took me to the state site. May as well start with a similar search for your state.

After that, we (Dad, my brother, and myself) went to his bank and signed the signatory cards that allow my brother and I full access to Dad's account without making us joint account holders (very important - you do not want to be an account holder with them unless your lawyer tells you to do so). You can possibly get away without signing the card so long as you have the PoA with you, but it just makes it easier to have it done beforehand. Obviously there's a trust aspect so you may or may not meet resistance there. We explained that we needed to be able to check his balance, deposits, etc., and pay his bills, in the event he was incapacitated for one reason or another, and that's what we've stuck to; it helped us get that point through to him since, at the time, he was recovering from another mild stroke.

Good luck.

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Nroug7: Your lucky, Mine just do things without knowledge on the subject and when things go wrong they like to blame everyone else. Bad thing is, I'm that guy with computer knowledge in the family >.>
I got his laptop last weekend and worked on it, umm, Saturday night I think it was. "It's running kinda slow." Well, no shit it is. How many friggin' weather widgets do you possibly need? And there was also this big clock wallpaper that was sucking up 25% CPU time. When I saw him next I asked, "Haven't I told you before that no matter which weather widgets you use, do NOT install WeatherBug? Take any other one you want, except that one. Ever." And I find WeatherBug on there every time I go to "speed it up" again. lol - parents.

Mom, on the other hand, is the safest PC user I've ever seen. In ten + years, I've never found any type of malware whatsoever on her machine. Her computer woes are along the lines of, "The printer says I need to change ink soon." Okay, Mom - call me when it starts to get dim. Got any cookies?

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dmetras: my griping paled in comparison to everybody else's woes... XD
It's the "Bitch about life in general" thread so, big or small, this is where you let it out.
Posted July 27, 2012
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dmetras: my griping paled in comparison to everybody else's woes... XD
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HereForTheBeer: It's the "Bitch about life in general" thread so, big or small, this is where you let it out.
Very much this.

I always figure someone else out there envies me no matter how bad things seem to get for me, and simultaneously someone else pities me, no matter how good things go, keeps things in perspective:) But I still feel I have the right to bitch when I need to.
Post edited July 27, 2012 by orcishgamer
Posted July 27, 2012
The one thing I hate the most about my job is that every now and then I'm expected to do the impossible. I don't like working with "other people's code" and I especially loathe it when "other people's code" is really really bad... sometimes "other people's code" seems to be "beyond repair"-bad. I guess in other fields of work if one reaches this state one has to build something new. In software engineering basically your manager tells you to "just deal with it" as there is never ever enough time to rewrite anything.

The problem is that rewrites don't generate short term value. They generate a lot of long term value as the costs of future changes decrease because of the more solid code base... Sadly this is nothing a manager would care for.
Post edited July 27, 2012 by itti
Posted July 28, 2012
Pride Parade is in my city this weekend, spurring these thoughts:

I've encountered people who defend LGBT people but ridicule other people who practise certain types of non-mainstream sexuality, so their stances on LGBT issues can ring kind of hollow. Such non-mainstream practices often haven't faced as much cultural and institutional discrimination as the LGBT community has, so objections to this ridicule get derided as first world problems (among other things).

I'm finding the "born this way" defence of homosexuality problematic. If it was a "choice", would it then be OK to treat gay people like crap? (I think I posted this here before.)

There was supposed to be a Dyke and Trans March yesterday as an alternative to Pride Parade, since they think Pride Parade is starting to sell out to corporate sponsorships. I was a bit curious about checking it out, but couldn't anyway. It took two hours for me to get home from work because my office is on the other side of the city and the bus service is crap.

Also this.
Posted July 28, 2012
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itti: The one thing I hate the most about my job is that every now and then I'm expected to do the impossible. I don't like working with "other people's code" and I especially loathe it when "other people's code" is really really bad... sometimes "other people's code" seems to be "beyond repair"-bad. I guess in other fields of work if one reaches this state one has to build something new. In software engineering basically your manager tells you to "just deal with it" as there is never ever enough time to rewrite anything.

The problem is that rewrites don't generate short term value. They generate a lot of long term value as the costs of future changes decrease because of the more solid code base... Sadly this is nothing a manager would care for.
While what you say is true and sadly far too common, it's not universal, those managers that grew out of coding and have the balls to stick up for you will hear you out and sometimes make a stink to let you fix something. They may not do it every time and you might have to document the shit out of your estimated ongoing costs vs. the cost of development, testing, and training.

I have an open source project that was pretty fucked when I got it. The previous developer, while good, mostly stuck to "putting lipstick on the pig" which was fine, but all the core issues could never go away, just get prettied up and not touched directly.

I've taken a more long term approach, but it has cost a lot (the development is funded by both my employer and some public funding). I have to be careful what I choose to fix, not because I lack funding (sometimes grant funding could pay for a lot more than I can do) but because of time and the fact that I've found testing needs to be 75% of development time, yes, that's right, this software is so complex and so test poor I need 3 days in testing for every 4 I spend on development.

So I hear ya, but it's not like that everywhere, if you have the will to move on, and ask the right questions, you may find a place that's a little better for ya in that regard.
Post edited July 28, 2012 by orcishgamer
Posted July 28, 2012
My parents were recently moving from one place to another, they had some of my old stuff there, and asked me "You want us to throw those cardboard game boxes to garbage?"

I didn't want them to have to travel with my old shit, so I told them without any second thoughts - yup, just throw them away.

A day later, I was strucked like by a lightning - I KEPT MY FALLOUT TACTICS CDS IN DOUBLE CD CASE (the game was relased that way) INSIDE THE BOX, ALONGSIDE WITH MANUAL!

but it was already too late. My Fallout Tactics is gone forever.. I guess I will rebuy it here when it goes on sale, or something :P

It looked like this:
http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/5076/fallouttac.jpg

RIP [*]
Post edited July 28, 2012 by keeveek
Posted July 28, 2012
FML.

I hate not knowing what I believe in when you're Mom is so zealous catholic.
Posted July 29, 2012
So - Where to start?

Ok, I'm 18, Live with my alcoholic mother who won't admit it, I live in a town with absolutely no jobs spare whatsoever, unless you are well connected in the area (I Just happen to be antisocial.) and I quit high school in Year 11 because the teachers wanted me to write assignments that agreed with their opinions, yet didn't match the facts. So I probably didn't make the brightest of decisions there but I did make the ones I felt were necessary to ensure my time wasn't wasted.

As of now, I currently take on most of the responsibilities that are required in aiding my family as the current family head is often drunk and using Facebook to communicate to 2000+ Friends she doesn't even know. To top matters off, When things become messy or a situation that is undesirable in the house emerges, I Instantly find myself within everyone's cross-hairs, whether I was responsible for the situation or not.

Furthering my Education and starting a career are both things that I consider essential, but I have time for neither as I am devoured by stress.

That was rather brief, But I'd rather not go into details.
Posted July 29, 2012
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MrWilli: FML.

I hate not knowing what I believe in when you're Mom is so zealous catholic.
My religious parents have exactly 1 religious child, and 4 atheists. She'll get over it.
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This is my favourite topic
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General discussionThe "bitch about life in general" thread(14227 posts)(14227 posts)
(14227 posts)