I hope I didn't imply that all work-at-home situations were bad just that one needed to be aware of potential pitfalls.
Since that time, I have investigated another company in the same field...this one offered less money but with better working conditions (it seemed); and since then, other companies have been popping up with dramatically better working environments (2-3X the pay with longer turnaround times). I realized though that I needed an even more flexible arrangement and joined the wisebread team so that I could write in my downtime (which varies from day to day, week to week).
What a travesty of miscontrolled inbreeding. I understand that you've had him for a long time now and have obviously become attached. But why even bother with such a ridiculous little thing in the first place? Especially when there are so many other "better" breeds.. If not better, at least less pathetic.
People should have a little mercy and let these tragic experiments of moronic Dr. Moreaus go the way of the Dodo..
I have had about the complete opposite experience. The company I work for is laid-back and really very supportive. They tell me when I'm doing well and what I need to work on, but they are never rude about it. We have general ideas for how long assignments should take, but if it's not working out that way, they trust that I'm doing my best and let me be. This creates a situation in which I push myself harder, and they don't have to.
My upcoming vacation is a non-issue, and I'm allowed to take as long as I want, provided it's within reason (this time it's 2 weeks). They respect my time boundaries, and even if they IM me outside of working hours, they always make sure I'm OK with it and keep it short.
I'm sorry that you didn't have the same experience, and I encourage you to try again. It's not always like what you describe.
I live in Houston. Yeah, land of not just heat, but humidity. It's been pretty nasty here, but I've been doing pretty well without the AC.
It's so hot here that my AC unit, on full blast, can't keep the house cooler than 81 or 82 most days anyway, so I gave up on trying to make it work so hard. Now, I just bump the thermostat up to 82, so it only comes on for about an hour total every day. I could probably handle 83 or higher, but my boyfriend's limit is 82. Anyway, by setting it so high, we get basically the same effect for a LOT less money.
It's surprisingly comfortable. We have lots of overhead fans and I keep a tabletop fan on my desk in case I need it. I wear skirts and shorts pretty much every day, and I never sweat while I'm inside. I work at home, so I'm just sitting at the computer during the heat of the day anyway. Basically, I just don't move around a lot. Laundry, cooking, cleaning, Wii playing and other more active stuff just gets put off until the evening when it's naturally cooler.
The really strange thing is, I'm losing weight, despite being sedentary most of the day. I think it's because my body has to work harder to regulate temperature. Either way, things are working out and I think it's pretty cool (no pun intended). Other Houstonians, though, might think we're insane.
I have to stand up in defense of the chopstick rubbing folks - I picked up this habit in China. I might have my issues with China, but mouth splinters are never a problem there because no one gets mad at you for rubbing your kauizi together. And to be fair, doing so shouldn't be offensive to the restaurant, but rather, to the chopstick manufacturer.
My dad immediately pours soy sauce over any bowl of rice presented to him, causing a massive faux pas in any Asian dining establishment. :) Wish I could break him of the habit, but alas, it's set for life. Then again, I guess I kind of appreciate the lack of pretense with which he regards his food. It's there for his enjoyment, not anyone else's sense of tradition. Call him a slob of an American if you will (he's Canadian) but at least he's free from worry and stress over things like soy sauce.
Speaking as someone who has worked at 2 real Japanese restaurants (owned by actual Issei with real sushi chefs from Japan) in Ohio and northern KY, I would like to make a plea on behalf of all employees to the midwesterners who claim such intimate knowledge of Japanese food and etiquette:
1. The point of sushi is absolutely and completely not to pour twenty-five gallons of soy sauce all over the tray. Period. If you can't enjoy Japanese food without enough sauce to choke a saltwater fish, stay home and order pizza. Same goes for ginger. The food is the point, dammit!
2. Edamame does not need to a: be served warm and b: have soy sauce dumped all over it--those things are practically basted in salt already.
3. American customers are invariably the messiest, sloppiest, most demanding pack of bums who walk into a Japanese restaurant and always compare unfavorably with the almost always soft-spoken, kind and undemanding Japanese customers. If you don't want the wait staff bitching about you in the kitchen, be polite, don't pour soy sauce all over the damn place (like the veritable lake of the stuff I mopped up after one particularly memorable evening), don't freak out if you find out that sushi and Japanese food taste differently from what the American palate has come to expect, and get over how elite, sexy and intelligent you are for being willing to eat OMG RAW FISH! There are sushi places in the most backwater tiny towns in Japan, and farmers eat that stuff. Eating it and drinking a fine delicate wine, then heading out to see the latest artsy film at the independent theater doesn't raise your IQ or your general worth as a person, and chances are your server with her 2.50 an hour paycheck and fake smile plastered on her face knows ten times more than you do about sushi and washoku in general, so get over yourself. Seriously. It's just food.
4. Forchrissakes don't rub your chopsticks together when you split them--that's really rude and the only people who do that are those who want to show off how incredibly knowledgeable they are about Japanese culture, while in fact they are simultaneously displaying an incredible lack of that very same knowledge. Look around you--do you see any of the Japanese customers doing that? No? Wonder why...
As consumers we often forget everything that goes into running a successful business. And that training doesn't pay for itself. Just consider what some lawyers charge per hour.
The basic infrastructure costs for maintaining even a small auto shop are nontrivial.
The joke about $140 for knowing what to do applies as well: Most auto mechanics have paid money for school, training, and/or certification...and/or bit the bullet through sub-living-wage apprenticeships. Compensation for their knowledge is entirely reasonable.
So, my point is, that a tweezing out of a rock is not "free" to the auto shop, even though it may not involve consumption of supplies, or much time.
Just about everybody here has A/C, even if they only use it in July and August. I don't have A/C because I'm tough and cheap. On the most brutally hot and humid days (and really, it's the humidity, not the heat, that beats you down), I just take my lawn chair and park myself in the frozen food aisle of the Superstore.
What I really appreciated about this particular "caught in the act" video is that even though the customer was "as livid as he can be" (as he said in the video), he was relatively calm and quite professional about confronting the service department with this ridiculous charge. No screaming or unnecessary accusations whatsoever, which is such a rarity these types of confrontations, and he still managed to make the dealership look like total morons. Kudos!
I learned my lesson about dealerships last year, when I paid $150 for diagnostics on my BMW, only to have them tell me I needed over $4000 worth of repairs. After I told them I was taking the car to another shop for a second opinion, they ceased to further discuss anything in detail, and refused to print up a copy of the diagnostics results for me. I got it fixed for half the cost of the dealership's estimate at an independent shop down the street. No dealerships ever again!
If you are like me, you want to give exceptional service but clients/employers need to distinguish between emergency and would-like-to-have situations.
Interestingly, I had a client once who wanted to work in a time frame that met my "natural biorhythms" (what a nice guy and quite unusual).
I think that as a freelance/contractor with multiple clients you can get a good idea of what is normal and acceptable. Of course, you have to play by their rules also but it makes sense to make sure that what they are requiring is reasonable, especially if the requirements change over time. I realized pretty quickly that the set-up wasn't going to work for me; upon later reflection, I realized what a poor working environment it was (the company most likely could have paid more per project as the mark-up, I learned at the end though after I made up my mind to quit, was 600+%).
Of course, there are tons of great work-at-home opportunities (freelance, consulting, contracting, etc.) but I wanted to point out that just because the contractors/employees are well-educated and work in a nice place (home) doesn't mean all is well with the working situation. I would hate for work-at-home to become heavily regulated because of what a few companies are doing / not doing (similar to the end of at-home, piece-rate sewing in the USA for example).
The reason sushi chefs are traditionally male is because women were thought to have "hotter energy" and would thus cause faster spoilage when handling raw fish.
Well, anyone who knows anything about anatomy knows that this is bullshit. If anything, men have higher temperatures in their extremities than women.
Tuna: sashimi these days? Sure. But in the past, not so much - tuna has only recently taken over as one of the most popular seafoods in the world. Spicy tuna rolls, not so much. I'm interested (and, frankly, repulsed) that you've tried hacked-from-a-still-gasping-fish sashimi. I'm curious about the flavor - was it markedly different from other sashimi you've tried?
As to using your fingers - sorry, but people do both. Afficianados tend to use their fingers when eating nigiri - I've seen it done in Toyko and Kanazawa. Corson is not the only person to make that claim.
You know, I think that the key to teaching effective money management isn't just to make good decisions but to explain them. My parents are great with money, but most of the decisions that they made were very opaque. We kids weren't really allowed in on any of the financial discussions - in fact, I was forbidden to inquire about my dad's annual salary until a couple of years ago.
Things like saving money to pay for a car in cash (and still, buying a used car), never spending more than you have, balancing your checkbook daily, and learning to live with less junk were all things that my parents excelled at, but they were never really explicitly explained to us. Perhaps I was a lost cause, but maybe it would have made a difference if we had crunched the numbers early on, as a family.
Good riddance to bad readers, that's what I always say.
Tina: Yikes! At least Franken-Heiney is a cute name. I can't think of anything to call Yong Yong, so I just keep telling him how handsome he is.
Will: I'm pretty sure that Yongy is convinced that everything I do is to harm him. Hopefully he'll get to the point where he simply won't remember these days at all. It's kind of embarrassing walking around with him, partly because he looks so dumb with the lampshade, and partly because people keep stopping me and saying, "Oh! Did he get hit by a car?"
Toothpaste does in fact work if you buy the right kind. If you use a plain white toothpaste, it is the same thing as a very mild rubbing compound. For anything worse than mild swirl marks on paint, it would take a whole lot of elbow grease, but it works very well for restoring faded or hazy guage covers, light covers... anything plastic that should be glossy.
You know, I'm on the other end of the country and I've heard of Bill Heard's reputation and it's not a good one at all. I'm very surprised that place is still in business.
I have to agree with the poster about where the rock was located. It also might've required some minor disassembly around the sunroof to get at the mechanism. Whatever it was, it was still a better deal than the shady dealership.
In this day and age with crackberries and video conferencing... the clients need to know their boundaries. I do not want calls or emails at 3 in the morning demanding that something needs to be done ASAP, because most of the time it's not time sensitive or crucial enough to be awoken at 3 in the morning!
I hope I didn't imply that all work-at-home situations were bad just that one needed to be aware of potential pitfalls.
Since that time, I have investigated another company in the same field...this one offered less money but with better working conditions (it seemed); and since then, other companies have been popping up with dramatically better working environments (2-3X the pay with longer turnaround times). I realized though that I needed an even more flexible arrangement and joined the wisebread team so that I could write in my downtime (which varies from day to day, week to week).
What a travesty of miscontrolled inbreeding. I understand that you've had him for a long time now and have obviously become attached. But why even bother with such a ridiculous little thing in the first place? Especially when there are so many other "better" breeds.. If not better, at least less pathetic.
People should have a little mercy and let these tragic experiments of moronic Dr. Moreaus go the way of the Dodo..
I have had about the complete opposite experience. The company I work for is laid-back and really very supportive. They tell me when I'm doing well and what I need to work on, but they are never rude about it. We have general ideas for how long assignments should take, but if it's not working out that way, they trust that I'm doing my best and let me be. This creates a situation in which I push myself harder, and they don't have to.
My upcoming vacation is a non-issue, and I'm allowed to take as long as I want, provided it's within reason (this time it's 2 weeks). They respect my time boundaries, and even if they IM me outside of working hours, they always make sure I'm OK with it and keep it short.
I'm sorry that you didn't have the same experience, and I encourage you to try again. It's not always like what you describe.
I actually mentioned Freecycle in the article.
I live in Houston. Yeah, land of not just heat, but humidity. It's been pretty nasty here, but I've been doing pretty well without the AC.
It's so hot here that my AC unit, on full blast, can't keep the house cooler than 81 or 82 most days anyway, so I gave up on trying to make it work so hard. Now, I just bump the thermostat up to 82, so it only comes on for about an hour total every day. I could probably handle 83 or higher, but my boyfriend's limit is 82. Anyway, by setting it so high, we get basically the same effect for a LOT less money.
It's surprisingly comfortable. We have lots of overhead fans and I keep a tabletop fan on my desk in case I need it. I wear skirts and shorts pretty much every day, and I never sweat while I'm inside. I work at home, so I'm just sitting at the computer during the heat of the day anyway. Basically, I just don't move around a lot. Laundry, cooking, cleaning, Wii playing and other more active stuff just gets put off until the evening when it's naturally cooler.
The really strange thing is, I'm losing weight, despite being sedentary most of the day. I think it's because my body has to work harder to regulate temperature. Either way, things are working out and I think it's pretty cool (no pun intended). Other Houstonians, though, might think we're insane.
Give it away to someone who can use it. Check for your local Freecycle group at http://freecycle.org
I have to stand up in defense of the chopstick rubbing folks - I picked up this habit in China. I might have my issues with China, but mouth splinters are never a problem there because no one gets mad at you for rubbing your kauizi together. And to be fair, doing so shouldn't be offensive to the restaurant, but rather, to the chopstick manufacturer.
My dad immediately pours soy sauce over any bowl of rice presented to him, causing a massive faux pas in any Asian dining establishment. :) Wish I could break him of the habit, but alas, it's set for life. Then again, I guess I kind of appreciate the lack of pretense with which he regards his food. It's there for his enjoyment, not anyone else's sense of tradition. Call him a slob of an American if you will (he's Canadian) but at least he's free from worry and stress over things like soy sauce.
Are you going to profile this guy in your serious article? I think that would be so much fun. =)
I think there are some places where you can actually recycle old tires.
Speaking as someone who has worked at 2 real Japanese restaurants (owned by actual Issei with real sushi chefs from Japan) in Ohio and northern KY, I would like to make a plea on behalf of all employees to the midwesterners who claim such intimate knowledge of Japanese food and etiquette:
1. The point of sushi is absolutely and completely not to pour twenty-five gallons of soy sauce all over the tray. Period. If you can't enjoy Japanese food without enough sauce to choke a saltwater fish, stay home and order pizza. Same goes for ginger. The food is the point, dammit!
2. Edamame does not need to a: be served warm and b: have soy sauce dumped all over it--those things are practically basted in salt already.
3. American customers are invariably the messiest, sloppiest, most demanding pack of bums who walk into a Japanese restaurant and always compare unfavorably with the almost always soft-spoken, kind and undemanding Japanese customers. If you don't want the wait staff bitching about you in the kitchen, be polite, don't pour soy sauce all over the damn place (like the veritable lake of the stuff I mopped up after one particularly memorable evening), don't freak out if you find out that sushi and Japanese food taste differently from what the American palate has come to expect, and get over how elite, sexy and intelligent you are for being willing to eat OMG RAW FISH! There are sushi places in the most backwater tiny towns in Japan, and farmers eat that stuff. Eating it and drinking a fine delicate wine, then heading out to see the latest artsy film at the independent theater doesn't raise your IQ or your general worth as a person, and chances are your server with her 2.50 an hour paycheck and fake smile plastered on her face knows ten times more than you do about sushi and washoku in general, so get over yourself. Seriously. It's just food.
4. Forchrissakes don't rub your chopsticks together when you split them--that's really rude and the only people who do that are those who want to show off how incredibly knowledgeable they are about Japanese culture, while in fact they are simultaneously displaying an incredible lack of that very same knowledge. Look around you--do you seeany of the Japanese customers doing that? No? Wonder why...
As consumers we often forget everything that goes into running a successful business. And that training doesn't pay for itself. Just consider what some lawyers charge per hour.
obstacle course!
$143 doesn't go to just removing to pebble, it also goes to some or all of the following:
- insurance
- benefits
- rent or mortgage
- utilities
- waste disposal
- accounting and tax services
- shop maintenance
The basic infrastructure costs for maintaining even a small auto shop are nontrivial.
The joke about $140 for knowing what to do applies as well: Most auto mechanics have paid money for school, training, and/or certification...and/or bit the bullet through sub-living-wage apprenticeships. Compensation for their knowledge is entirely reasonable.
So, my point is, that a tweezing out of a rock is not "free" to the auto shop, even though it may not involve consumption of supplies, or much time.
Just about everybody here has A/C, even if they only use it in July and August. I don't have A/C because I'm tough and cheap. On the most brutally hot and humid days (and really, it's the humidity, not the heat, that beats you down), I just take my lawn chair and park myself in the frozen food aisle of the Superstore.
Also, if you're near a BJ's, the standard tire disposal fee (even if you don't buy a new tire) is only a buck.
What I really appreciated about this particular "caught in the act" video is that even though the customer was "as livid as he can be" (as he said in the video), he was relatively calm and quite professional about confronting the service department with this ridiculous charge. No screaming or unnecessary accusations whatsoever, which is such a rarity these types of confrontations, and he still managed to make the dealership look like total morons. Kudos!
I learned my lesson about dealerships last year, when I paid $150 for diagnostics on my BMW, only to have them tell me I needed over $4000 worth of repairs. After I told them I was taking the car to another shop for a second opinion, they ceased to further discuss anything in detail, and refused to print up a copy of the diagnostics results for me. I got it fixed for half the cost of the dealership's estimate at an independent shop down the street. No dealerships ever again!
If you are like me, you want to give exceptional service but clients/employers need to distinguish between emergency and would-like-to-have situations.
Interestingly, I had a client once who wanted to work in a time frame that met my "natural biorhythms" (what a nice guy and quite unusual).
I think that as a freelance/contractor with multiple clients you can get a good idea of what is normal and acceptable. Of course, you have to play by their rules also but it makes sense to make sure that what they are requiring is reasonable, especially if the requirements change over time. I realized pretty quickly that the set-up wasn't going to work for me; upon later reflection, I realized what a poor working environment it was (the company most likely could have paid more per project as the mark-up, I learned at the end though after I made up my mind to quit, was 600+%).
Of course, there are tons of great work-at-home opportunities (freelance, consulting, contracting, etc.) but I wanted to point out that just because the contractors/employees are well-educated and work in a nice place (home) doesn't mean all is well with the working situation. I would hate for work-at-home to become heavily regulated because of what a few companies are doing / not doing (similar to the end of at-home, piece-rate sewing in the USA for example).
The reason sushi chefs are traditionally male is because women were thought to have "hotter energy" and would thus cause faster spoilage when handling raw fish.
Well, anyone who knows anything about anatomy knows that this is bullshit. If anything, men have higher temperatures in their extremities than women.
Tuna: sashimi these days? Sure. But in the past, not so much - tuna has only recently taken over as one of the most popular seafoods in the world. Spicy tuna rolls, not so much. I'm interested (and, frankly, repulsed) that you've tried hacked-from-a-still-gasping-fish sashimi. I'm curious about the flavor - was it markedly different from other sashimi you've tried?
As to using your fingers - sorry, but people do both. Afficianados tend to use their fingers when eating nigiri - I've seen it done in Toyko and Kanazawa. Corson is not the only person to make that claim.
You know, I think that the key to teaching effective money management isn't just to make good decisions but to explain them. My parents are great with money, but most of the decisions that they made were very opaque. We kids weren't really allowed in on any of the financial discussions - in fact, I was forbidden to inquire about my dad's annual salary until a couple of years ago.
Things like saving money to pay for a car in cash (and still, buying a used car), never spending more than you have, balancing your checkbook daily, and learning to live with less junk were all things that my parents excelled at, but they were never really explicitly explained to us. Perhaps I was a lost cause, but maybe it would have made a difference if we had crunched the numbers early on, as a family.
Good riddance to bad readers, that's what I always say.
Tina: Yikes! At least Franken-Heiney is a cute name. I can't think of anything to call Yong Yong, so I just keep telling him how handsome he is.
Will: I'm pretty sure that Yongy is convinced that everything I do is to harm him. Hopefully he'll get to the point where he simply won't remember these days at all. It's kind of embarrassing walking around with him, partly because he looks so dumb with the lampshade, and partly because people keep stopping me and saying, "Oh! Did he get hit by a car?"
Toothpaste does in fact work if you buy the right kind. If you use a plain white toothpaste, it is the same thing as a very mild rubbing compound. For anything worse than mild swirl marks on paint, it would take a whole lot of elbow grease, but it works very well for restoring faded or hazy guage covers, light covers... anything plastic that should be glossy.
You know, I'm on the other end of the country and I've heard of Bill Heard's reputation and it's not a good one at all. I'm very surprised that place is still in business.
I have to agree with the poster about where the rock was located. It also might've required some minor disassembly around the sunroof to get at the mechanism. Whatever it was, it was still a better deal than the shady dealership.
An interesting read, didn't know about those finer sushi eating details!
In this day and age with crackberries and video conferencing... the clients need to know their boundaries. I do not want calls or emails at 3 in the morning demanding that something needs to be done ASAP, because most of the time it's not time sensitive or crucial enough to be awoken at 3 in the morning!