Dinner with Epsilon is starting to become unpleasant. Motivating him to sit in his chair and eat before his food becomes ice cold and he is bored with the task of eating his risotto one grain of rice at a time is harder than I would have ever imagined. It usually ends in deadlines and warnings about watching his playtime disappear, and eventually threats about having to go to bed hungry. Not a pleasant sight. And then I read this about the sequester.
US transportation secretary Ray LaHood said sequestration “would force the FAA to undergo an immediate retrenchment of core functions.” He added that it “will be impossible to avoid significant employee furloughs” at the agency.Aaah, lets add to the list of threats and warnings longer lines at airport security and fewer flights. It makes me wonder if Obama feels like he dealing with his daughters in their worst toddler years.
“The furlough of a large number of air traffic controllers and technicians will require a reduction in air traffic to a level that can be safely managed by the remaining staff,” LaHood wrote.
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Emoticons. ... Sigh. I'm old school. I remember getting to college and keeping in touch with high school friends via talk. Anyone else? I learned about emoticons pretty early, and like them in their text version. I really appreciate people who come up with clever ones. My thesis adviser, a bald man with a mustache and a beard often signs e-mails (:-{)} Brilliant! A friend's evil grin is >=]. A nice variation on the theme.The animated emoticons strike me as .... unimaginative and restrictive.
And then I send the following bits of harmless mathematical expressions over skype to a colleague I keep a fairly formal relationship with.
(h)^2 = result
Nope... not hitting on you... just being stupid with the space bar.
Or how about
x=(\int (f) dy)
Right... I've completely lost it. Lets call it a day, shall we?
I saw schadenfreude, which was :(:
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember using talk! Wasn't there also an ntalk, sometimes?
ReplyDeleteAfter raising 2 toddlers it's amazing to see how many (important) adults act just like a 3-year-old who isn't getting their way! Luckily, I am now able to talk to those adults the way they need to be talked to: 'Now, do you think it's ok to talk to me like that? No? Ok, good. Now try it again with a different tone, or I'm not going to deliver ANY of your goods. Do you understand me?' Works every time! Co-workers are slack-jawed, first at my "audacity", then at how well it actually works.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've been learning that as well. I surprised myself when I instinctively lowered my voice when a colleague was yelling at me. It de-escalated the situation without anyone having to say anything explicit. (Unlike with Epsilon, I fortunately did not also instinctively use his chin to turn his face towards me. )
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