The Water Cooler

8:39 AM

England is in the grip of winter snow. It's raining here, and I have a cold, so I'm at home.

9:07 AM

-4 freaking here

morning

2C here. Cold and raining. I don't want to go outside today.

Better not, It is bad

I cannot get to type or warm myself up even with 2 shirts.. hoodie and jacket on.

fudge

yep..it's pretty freaking cold.. car awas reading -3C on the way in to work this morning

First time in my life I seen temperature in muinus

always saw thiese scene in movies

It was better in tv

10 days to go for me

9:23 AM

@Nofel seriously? wow..I guess I just take weather like this as par for the course

yes in Pakistan u never get to see this cold,well aatleast where I live

but in u go to the north, there is a lake which is in area called heaven on earth

which freezes every year

Lake Saiful Muluk

Saiful Muluk (Urdu: جھیل سیف الملوک‎‎) is a mountainous lake located at the northern end of the Kaghan Valley, near the town of Naran. It is in the north east of Mansehra District in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan and feeds water to Kunhar river. At an elevation of 3,224 m (10,578 feet) above sea level, it is well above the tree line, and is one of the highest lakes in Pakistan. == Location == Saiful Muluk is located in the Mansehra district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, about eight kilometers north of Naran, in the northern part of Kaghan valley. Malika Parbat, the highest peak in the valley...

Wish I had warm breaky today

and I am fasting as well, so wanna hold cup of warm coffee in my hand

@Nofel yeah..I'm actually contemplating making myself a cup just so I have something warm to hold!

9:53 AM

How was the weekend

@Nofel yeah not bad.. got some more xmas shopping done and got around to replacing my phone (I'd slightly smashed the screen on the old one)

@Snow must be sipping away hot choclate in front of cozy heater at home

@motosubatsu did u buy iPhone or still pro MS

@Nofel Picked up an MS Lumia 950 XL... basically the same as my old phone but slightly bigger and with beefier specs. Interestingly I ended up with a Dual-Sim version which are pretty rare, not that I have any need for the second sim!

@motosubatsu Wish I had known. I have my old 950XL upstairs doing nothing. I did sell it on eBay, but the buyer complained (mostly about the OS, I think), so I have it say here still.

@Snow dang..wish I'd known that!

10:06 AM

I also have a 635 in my desk at work. I forget what the number is, it's one of the smaller ones.

@Snow by most accounts the lower end Lumia's were actually pretty good but I've never used one - I've gone 920 -> 950 -> 950XL, how was the 635?

is there any stack to ask a question about embassy or Consulate

related to laws and how to register

or possibly:

Expatriates is probably where I'd start

@motosubatsu I only used the smaller one for a bit of testing. Far too small for me when I was used to the 1520.

I miss the iris recognition on the 950XL, but the Face Id on the iPhone X is just as quick and more flexible (since Face Id is an authentication method).

10:22 AM

@Snow I've got Iris recognition set up (as I did on my regular 950) but tbh I'don't use it much unless I'm in full lazy mode, I'm just so quick at typing my PIN

How much did you pay for the XL?

@Snow £180 with an additional wireless charging pad.. tbh it was on the high side vs what they are going for on eBay but buying phones on eBay can be a crapshoot and I was getting tired of having a phone with a wrecked screen so filed it under JFDI

@motosubatsu thnx

Ah. Mine had a really small crack in the corner, but not the kind that was going to expand. I don't think I have anything else to sell you though. Unless you want a drone with a broken battery.

@Snow lol.. thanks but I'm all good for broken gadget-y toys :)

11:11 AM

still freezing

donno how air con works for heating

is more colder or hotter

on air con

most office "aircon" systems will provide heating as well

our does but right now it is on 20

and nothing

11:28 AM

I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination but I seem to recall that some systems won't work very well/at all if it's extremely cold outside as the external aspects of the system ice up.

12:08 PM

almost 4 hurs to go

I need some new hacks to make instant coffee more good

12:26 PM

pretty futile effort IMO.. instant coffee pretty fundamentally sucks

what to do then

in office

while option is only instant

either drink it and cope or..erm.. don't drink it and go without

wthout it is not a opt

back in pakistan

then it's door number one

we use to put spoon of coffee in up

like 2 tsp of coffee, 1 tsp of sugar and a bit of water so it can stir

stir in until it is brown

then take a tsp of coffee to put it in a cup, followed by hot milk, stiry it and it was yummy

ever tired it?

12:34 PM

@Nofel nope.. but then I cheat as I've got a Tassimo machine at home and I just use that

Fudge, -4 again when I leave.

@motosubatsu I bought Nescafe dolce gusto

didn't liked it

@Nofel yeah I'm expecting about the same for my trip home

ur in car, me on walk

to station

then walk again from to home

and u got A6

heated seats

lukcy lad

@Nofel don't think I've tried that one.. I'd imagine though that the biggest differences come from which pods you use - I buy the Costa ones for my Tassimo machines and it's pretty close to the "real thing"

Nice

12:37 PM

@Nofel yeah not going to lie the heated seats are pretty awesome in this weather, on the flipside you don't have to worry about ice on the roads when you are on the train :)

oh that. I was about to slip in front of my ofc twice

I got plantar fasciitis so wear selected shoes

omg, my colleagues r typing so hard, it is so annoying

both of them

ugh.. loud typers are annoying, not alot you can do other than headphones though really

12:54 PM

funny that don;t type like that unless they r chatting

and yes it is annoying as hell

@Nofel I've experienced similar before.. worked with a guy once who utterly hammered the keyboard (so loud you could here it outside of his office even with the door closed!) - but only when he was writing proposal e-mails, everything else he typed normally

and me I am so tired of using my index figures to type that my hand hurts

And so it begins.... You have forgotten something.

@motosubatsu I am not sensitive to typing. I grew up in the era of typewriters, so.... even the loudest typist is beneath my notice.

My bro is a hell of a type writter but I think ppl shld consider stroking it light

@TheSnarkKnight yeah I can see how that would work.. I missed out on that so to me it's quite jarring

1:09 PM

@TheSnarkKnight howdy, how is america doing with the news of Iseral

@motosubatsu trivia for the day. The QWERTY keyboard was designed so as to avoid key jams. If you struck two adjacent keys, there was a good chance that they could end up stuck together, and you'd have to unstick them.

@Nofel which news? Recognizing Jerusalem, or other?

Jerusalem

which other, that Trump drink 16 cans of diet coke per day (I was wth)

@Nofel mixed, as always. The people who hate Trump, hate the decision, people who love Trump, love it, and the rest of us are just mildly interested without emotion

@TheSnarkKnight yep.. had that little factoid stored away

best to stay neutral

1:19 PM

@Nofel Not my circus, not my monkeys

I forgot to mention I passed my mock test after first attempt of completing the throey test 100%

@TheSnarkKnight good one

@motosubatsu I'm amazed at all the complaints about kinetic keyboards, but it must be a thing, as there are so many complaints. I don't get it, but it must be a thing.

@Nofel Gratz! See, we told you.

Oh, after all the crap I've been going through, they (not work) gave me a psych eval to determine my stress levels. I rated as "normal". Even my therapist says "How the hell did THAT happen". Sadly, it seems I am sane.

@TheSnarkKnight tell me those tactics as well.

I slept on couch today and my stress levels r freaky insane.

@TheSnarkKnight people don't do well with changes to keyboards... see DVORAK, the objective numbers say that it's "better" than QWERTY but QWERTY already had the inertia behind it

@motosubatsu it's also why railroad tracks are the exact width of the wheel base og a Roman Chariot. A standard gets applied, and is maintained.

1:26 PM

if we're thinking of the same thing in terms of Kinetic keyboards I can sort of see why they haven't gained much traction - current keyboards are over the "good enough" threshold so people aren't inclined to change

@Nofel I believed I reverted to classical German stoicism. When something goes wrong, I don't think about anything other than the goal, which is to stop what I can, and deal with what I cannot.

@motosubatsu another bit of trivia. The current keyboards make noise because when they were first introduced, they did not. Traditional typists were going mad at the lack of sound when they typed.

@TheSnarkKnight that I didn't know.. doesn't surprise me though

wow @TheSnarkKnight

Lilienthal

What, pray tell, is a kinetic keyboard? I'd kind of imagine they're all kinetic...

@Lilienthal in a nutshell it's a keyboard that converts the kinetic energy from the keystrokes into electrical power to run and features it has etc

I've seen ones that claim to be able to track the keystrokes well enough to be able to identify the typer as well

1:42 PM

I got a questions for u all techy

So I am doing what will be asked of me to do in next job

in there I am having very hard time applying something

shld I move on and come back

or should I do that no matter how long it takes then move forward

speaking of keybaords bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42309371

I always knew HP laptops were creppy

hmmm...depends, if you are truly getting nowhere you've got a small task you can switch to for 15-20 mins then that can sometimes help reset the brain a bit but I'd be wary of over-using it

once, I was chatting and it started typing itself

@Nofel unlikely to be related.. and to be honest I'm struggling to work up any outrage over the HP "keylogger" - it's not like it was actually enabled by default so HP aren't covertly gathering info on their users. In reality it's nothing more than another security vulnerability, it's just one that's easy for mainstream news to sensationalise

@motosubatsu When I got my first laptop 10 yrs back. It was Pavillion and I was typing, somewhere and showhow it started to ause the other person

I lost friends like that thrice

@motosubatsu I am g;ad I didnt go with A6

as a quarrel broke down between us and I saw me going back

and I can easily pay for this car and off I go

2:10 PM

@Nofel yeah this is the problem with mixing finances and friends/family. It can get messy very easily.

@motosubatsu nt that but having a partner who has nationality and u don't is pain in a**

so I thought to end my finances

move back

otherwise I ve stuck again for a longer time.

@TheSnarkKnight mr mrs told me while aruging u need to be at work on weeknds too

@Nofel and you can tell the Mrs that she can take care of the bills while you are in the hospital for stress.

@motosubatsu yeah, that's an "oops", like a developer's backdoor that is overlooked and not erased.

@NotThatGuy Wilkommen

@TheSnarkKnight Hi

Does saying "I'm currently living in {country}, but I'm keen to settle down somewhere else" in a cover letter make it sound like I hate my country?
I would mention a specific place instead, but the company has a few offices and I'm not sure where the position I want is based.

2:25 PM

@NotThatGuy you say "I am open to international relocation"

"I am currently living in Germany, but I am open to relocation, including outside of Germany, for the right position"

@NotThatGuy the correct wording might be a long the lines of "I'm currently living in {country}, but I'm willing to relocate"

or something like that

@Nofel I wish I had thought of that ;)

@TheSnarkKnight your my sensei

I suppose that might be best. I would've preferred something that shows a bit stronger preference to wanting to move and expresses my desire to not just stay somewhere else for a few years before moving again, but rather settle down there.

than might be "I'm currently living in {country}, but I'm willing to relocate for my career progression and I am keen to grow and expand my career"

I am not english person

2:36 PM

@NotThatGuy I get that, but there is "corporate speak" that you have to adhere to. First you want to let it be known that you are willing to relocate. Once you're negotiating, you say that you want to stay in country X

Is it worth me asking the person who I gave reference of in new job application

if she recieved call or not?

@Nofel What do you hope to achieve by asking?

@NotThatGuy good point, just curiosity to ask if they called or not.

@motosubatsu sorry I missed ur answer earlier right before the HP thing.

just saw it

3:03 PM

Jumping back and forth between whether or not I should apply to a job I'm not particularly qualified for. My best argument for it is "why not?", which seems like a good argument.

@Snow dogs have owners. cats have staff.

morning

morning E

@NotThatGuy one might get laid if they r not good enugh

like I am scared sh&%tless

of my new role

Meh, I'm mostly worried about the interview stage. It's not particularly far out of my field of expertise, I'll just have a hard time answering questions about it given how little I know about it.

I got through it

got the job

but stuggling to coupe up with learning curve

Q: What to write in resume if its service continuation from X company to y Company

Can anyone turn this into English?

0

What to mention in professional experience if you were hired by x company for two years and later you were transferred to y company payroll. you have y company offer letter but both company are in agreement that it is your service continuation and y company will consider your past experience with...

human-resources

3:17 PM

All I edited was some capitalization and the "please reply" at the end.

another all day job completed in ten minutes.... :D

enderland

@TheSnarkKnight I rewrote it some, the "you" stuff was making it hard to read but it's basically "went from contractor to FTE at same company, how to list on resume to avoid looking like job hopper" I think

@enderland thanks, I couldn't understand a word of that.

Q: How to handle losing job due to lawsuit against old company during interview?

3:38 PM

I think this one:

3

I may be facing the situation that I may be unemployed due to a lawsuit being filed against my current employer. The lawsuit will involve a whole lot of legal issues, from treatment of employees to tax evasion. I am therefore currently searching for a new position, and the matter of why I leav...

applications germany

is going to need protecting.. can't do it yet though as it's too new

David K

3:53 PM

@motosubatsu So far only one of the answers would have been prevented by Protection, and it's not one of the three downvoted anwers

Masked Man

@JoeStrazzere It means I have not (yet) completely retired, I will stick around for a bit in chat and may log in once in a while to improve my existing answers.

@ChrisE Here's the thing ... SE offers reputation points in return for contributions here, and I currently see those reputation points as worthless. So there is no reason for me to keep my part of the "deal" any longer. It is kinda explained on my profile text ... although I don't recommend you go there because I have potholed a handful of tvtropes links there. ;)

@RoryAlsop @DarkCygnus Thanks for your good wishes.

@DavidK it's more of a gut feeling at this point

Joe Strazzere

4:13 PM

@MaskedMan Thanks. And by "retired" you mean "leaving The Workplace"? Or retiring from actual work? If the former, the loss will be ours.

Masked Man

@JoeStrazzere As of now, I am retiring from this site. While I would love to retire from the "real" workplace, I cannot actually achieve that in at least a couple more years. :(

It is indeed nice of you to say that, but I honestly don't think I am anybody special. The world will go on without me, or as they say in my mother tongue, "the sun will rise even if the rooster doesn't crow".

Q: How to handle losing job due to lawsuit against old company during interview?

4:38 PM

@MaskedMan we will miss your perspective on things.

Oh.... BTW, anyone want to flag the rude answer in this one?

4

I may be facing the situation that I may be unemployed due to a lawsuit being filed against my current employer. The lawsuit will involve a whole lot of legal issues, from treatment of employees to tax evasion. I am therefore currently searching for a new position, and the matter of why I leav...

applications germany

couldn't get the answer itself in the link

@MaskedMan Hello!!

but you'll know it

I cast a delete on it

@MaskedMan Cool saying. I enjoyed your answers.

Since we are waxing philosophical, I believe it was in fact Socrates who said "I drank WHAT!!!???"

Joe Strazzere

4:55 PM

@MaskedMan Yup, the world will go on. But the site will miss your contributions. I wish you well.

where is @MaskedMan going

5:10 PM

West, to Valinor

enderland

5:20 PM

@MaskedMan www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retir‌ement/

5:32 PM

@Nofel To the place where no shadows fall...where we are both cats.

(yes, I'm mixing a tv show and movie. :))

5:49 PM

Well cars have shadow

Sometimes it freaks them themselves

extra points if anyone knows the show and movie references I made.

Babylon 5?

@MaskedMan wanna cash his rep for bitcoin

It make sense

Or he leaves

6:08 PM

@ChrisE points

Yes, B5. And the movie?

6:23 PM

@ChrisE you have forgotten something ;)

The avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

best quote from the whole series

@Nofel if you could cash rep for bitcoin, Jon Skeet would own the whole place.

@ChrisE

"They are a dying race, we should let them pass"
"The Narn, or the Centauri?"
"yes"

I'll see you in another life when we are both cats

Or the way Kosh said it. "yeeees"

portrayed in one episode by the late Rance Howard.

And this is the movie...

►

7:17 PM

Hello....I just answered a question and may have violated the be nice policy....could I get your opinion @ChrisE and @TheSnarkKnight ??

if so I will delete my answer

https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/103942/how-to-address-decline-in-productivity-right-before-vacation/103945#103945

Looks fine with me. Calling someone "buttercup" isn't really rude imho. suck it up buttercup is a common phrase. Heck, I've said that to my children.

A: How can I deal with troublesome Professional Engineer?

@MisterPositive Honestly, I've posted worse.....

193

Key points: He has always been a dependable employee So, you started with a good man, now what happened. but since being overlooked for a promotion to principal engineer. Your company screwed him.... (which would have been a large pay increase) AND you hit him in the paycheck L...

@MisterPositive "be nice" doesn't mean "Walk on eggshells"

ok....it was close for me, but it was what came to my mind on this one.

not close at all

You didn't make it personal.

Neither of you asked "what's wrong with you?"

@ChrisE Thanks. I think it works for an question where the OP IMHO probably knows what they need to do.

7:22 PM

Yep, cold reality is not off topic @MisterPositive

For me, "Be Nice" has to do with making things personal. Bluntness is sometimes needed. There's a way to be blunt without being a jerk. To me, that's what Be Nice basically is. Don't be a jerk.

or more specifically, don't be a jerk to someone.

Thanks for the "check" guys

DarkCygnus

8:41 PM

Damn I got tons of workload :):

Just passing to say Hello

Are you also freezing in your countries/states ?