this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Dave to c/newzealand
 

Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!

Anyone can make the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!

Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.

So, how’s it going?

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[–] d3Xt3r 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

So, yesterday was a first for me. I had an online interview scheduled at 8PM (yes, PM because the interviewer was based in the UK), so had my dinner, got all dressed up (ie, put on a business shirt on top of shorts), turned on all the lights in my room (a rare occurrence since I prefer dim or natural lighting), and dialled in. And waited. And waited. And no one turned up. The interviewer was a no-show. An hour later, I received an apology text from their HR and they asked if I was free to do the interview. At 9:30PM? After being stood up already? Uh...no. They rescheduled it for today evening instead. I mulled over it and figured this was a bad omen, a sign of things to come if I were to proceed further, so this morning I declined and withdrew my application.

On the positive side, I got a job offer from my old old workplace. On one hand, it feels nice to be sought out and knowing that my old company still thinks of me, and if I were to accept the offer, the job is almost guaranteed to be in the bag; on the other hand, it's my old old company and some of the reasons I left are still valid (like the cringy corporate culture). On one hand, it's a different role to what I did previously, this one is an actual engineering role where I get to design and play with new toys and not deal with BAU stuff; but on the other it's not the dream Linux job I've been after... guess I'll have to go with whatever pays the bills, again.

[–] Dave 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Congrats on the job offer!

If it's not going to be detrimental to your mental health, then you could take the job. If you don't like it, try to stick it out for a year then start looking for another job, but this time there's less pressure, and it's always easier to find a new job when you already have one. And easier to put up with a not-perfect job if you have an exit plan.

I've changed jobs every 1-2 years my whole life. Short stints aren't really frowned upon anymore.

[–] d3Xt3r 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks! And yeah, that's true I guess, no reason to stick around for too long. Still don't know how I'm going to get my dream future Linux job though... maybe I can convince my new boss to bring in some Linux stuff for me to play around with.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's cool you have a dream job, one reason I bounce around so much is I get bored too quickly so just try all sorts of different things.

I wonder if you get into a big IT company, if you would have an easier time getting secondments or other work experience in different places in the company to help you find and build towards that job you want.

[–] d3Xt3r 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I actually was in a big IT company, and you'd think that you'd be able to work in different teams and get different experiences, but sadly it's not that easy in reality. With big companies you typically have too much red tape to wade thru when changing teams, each team acts like their own isolated unit and they don't really work well together. Also, the higher up you are in your role, the harder it becomes to get secondment opportunities since they may be unable to find someone to take your place. Also, you're far more siloed in a big company, so say if you've been hired as a desktop engineer you won't get to work with server or networking stuff, whereas in a small companies you typically have broader job descriptions and responsibilities.

[–] Dave 3 points 1 year ago

Oh man, that sucks. I've had many amazing oppourtunities in my career and have seen others struggle for just one, and it's hard to identify why that is.

I definitely think job hopping has helped, though. It increases your chances of getting a good manager that can line up opportunities, helps you broaden your experience, and builds self-confidence and helps you push back on bullshit because you prove to yourself you can get another job and so don't have to put up with one you don't like for too long.

[–] Floofah@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Had a visit to The Warehouse to check out their new grocery section. It’s a "normal" Warehouse not an overly big one. They’ve changed the store layout to now sell fresh fruit and veggies, plus pantry items, cooking oil, flour, dried fruit, yeast etc. The veggies were nice quality and certainly at a lower price than the local supermarkets.

[–] d3Xt3r 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which Warehouse is this btw?

[–] Floofah@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Waipapa, Kerikeri

[–] Dave 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's cool. I recently tried out our one, it didn't have fresh fruit and veggies but it had bread and milk in addition to grocery shelves. I didn't notice a large price difference though, things seemed to cost about what I'd expect.

[–] liv 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's interesting, our one definitely has the cheapest milk in town apart from Reduced To Clear.

[–] Dave 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I didn't actually check the milk. I'm normally happy with anything but when I've had Cowgate in the past for some reason it just didn't taste right.

[–] liv 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sometimes they do Meadowfresh as well, and sometimes they have cheap butter. My household goes there just for milk lol.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Butter was $5 a block but countdown had them at the same price.

Grocer tells me Cowgate is $3 for 2L, compared to $3.70 for the countdown branded milk. The $2 a week we'd save is a drop in the bucket compared to our total spend, not really worth the special trip for us, even if I liked it. We'd have to drink a lot more milk.

[–] liv 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah butter is only good on special, they have had $4 specials in the past and you can freeze it. Bit of a treat food. I tend to go through a lot of milk and cheese though because it's still much cheaper than meat.

I guess it's all relative. $2p/w = $54 p/y. Whether that's an attractive savings depends.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not worth it if I don't like the milk 😆

I'd like to keep buying some groceries there though, even if it's only to try to help break the duopoly.

[–] liv 2 points 1 year ago

Hahaha I'm not telling you to buy it, more explaining why I do that. Sorry!

I really hope it does help break the duopoly, I really don't like it. Reduced To Clear are good but you can't really bank on getting any specific thing there.

[–] sortofblue 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Cowgate makes for a terrible coffee.

[–] Dave 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What makes it different? I think of milk as being basically a commodity, where one bottle is the same as another. What makes Cowgate different?

[–] sortofblue 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I honestly have no idea but I've tried three different bottles and each one was terrible - coffee and the rest of the milk both ended up down the drain. It's almost like they leave the bottles in the sun for a bit before delivering them.

[–] Dave 1 points 1 year ago

Well I'm glad I'm not the only one!

[–] Floofah@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Our’s had onions, garlic, which were both very low cost, especially the garlic, compared to the supermarkets, plus oranges, apples and kumaras. Can imagine they’ll have more local produce when it becomes available.

[–] Dave 1 points 1 year ago

Oh we get our produce from a weekend market anyway. I might have to start a spreadsheet if ours gets produce 😆

[–] Dave 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think I'm on day three of thumb-key, and still haven't broken 20wpm yet. I am getting more familliar though.

No idea how a question mark wasn't important enough to make the main layout but * is.

[–] AlgeriaWorblebot 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh neat, I'm using MessagEase but an open-source alternative, especially one that isn't abandoned, is well appealing.

How are the configuration options? Here's my current main layout- would I be able to recreate it easily?

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago

There are lots of keyboard layouts available, including some MessageEase ones. However, I haven't found a way to customise it, and none of the English layouts seem to have letters with macrons.

They say they take pull requests with keyboard layouts. Maybe we should contribute an en-nz language version that has vowels with macrons in addition to a standard english layout.

[–] sortofblue 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So with all the nostalgia for Web 1.0 lately I signed up for an account on eternal-september and now I'm trying to remember all the usenet groups I used to be obsessed with oh, about 25 years ago.

[–] Floofah@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I’m very experienced with usenet, still using it since around the early 1990’s. Nowadays, the old chat forum style has basically gone, and it is now essentially just binaries used for movies/tv/audio/magazines/xxx

Indexers list the contents, and providers give the access. I get downloads from Europe at 50-60 MBytes/sec. There are automation apps to auto download what you are after as soon as it is posted.

The old text forums are still there, but are mostly just full of spam.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I never got into usenet. Let us know when you remember the good ones 🙂

[–] sortofblue 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So far, the nz.general page is full of posts from a conspiracy nut banging on about who invented covid and other assorted bollocks, and the nz.arts has been taken over by one person posting their poetry.

This lemmy instance is definitely a much better place to hang out.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago

Ah, that's disappointing. I guess I'll stay here then 🙂

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

@d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz I saw that! We created a post at the same time!

I actually think yours was first by seconds 😆

[–] d3Xt3r 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh? Your post appeared before mine on my client (Sync) so I thought you beat me. :P

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago

Oh sorry, you're right, I did beat you! By about 20 seconds. I got mixed up because I edited the title to remove a typo, which happened after your post.

(I can still see posts after they are deleted - yes even when removed I still see all the spam 🥲)