Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) : Discussion and Group Therapy Thread

[tggzzz]

Typical day example is today: I hit a total of 1396 calories consumed and I'm full. Not a lot! That was some shreddies + skimmed milk + sugar this morning with a black coffee (no sugar!). Lunch was a gunpowder chickpea jalfrezi ready meal from Tesco and a chocolate mouse. Had some bread and jam for tea (on nice seedy bread). Snacked on some mini pretzels and a banana and some raisins. Walked 5.3km (3.3 miles) back and forth to Tesco and the school.

Eat less than you burn, light exercise, regularly. That's all you need to do. Highly recommend it. Fixed a number of health problems I had as a side effect.

Walking to Tesco and buying one of their ready meals is probably a good technique - because there's a good chance you won't want to finish it. Works with Aldi too. Miaow.

Now sproglet's overactive terrier has been repatriated, walks were limited to vertically through the kitchen floor to the freezer.

My evening meal was courtesy of Morrisons' fish counter: hash browns with defrosted spoots sauteed for 90s until the sweet/salt liquid emerged. Not as nice as fresh spoots, but emotionally easier to prepare. Follow-up is pistachios and broccoli, with vodka and sparking water. And that is a typical mixture of haute cuisine and whatever's in the fridge

[bd139]

Typical day example is today: I hit a total of 1396 calories consumed and I'm full. Not a lot! That was some shreddies + skimmed milk + sugar this morning with a black coffee (no sugar!). Lunch was a gunpowder chickpea jalfrezi ready meal from Tesco and a chocolate mouse. Had some bread and jam for tea (on nice seedy bread). Snacked on some mini pretzels and a banana and some raisins. Walked 5.3km (3.3 miles) back and forth to Tesco and the school.

Eat less than you burn, light exercise, regularly. That's all you need to do. Highly recommend it. Fixed a number of health problems I had as a side effect.

Walking to Tesco and buying one of their ready meals is probably a good technique - because there's a good chance you won't want to finish it. Works with Aldi too. Miaow.

Now sproglet's overactive terrier has been repatriated, walks were limited to vertically through the kitchen floor to the freezer.

My evening meal was courtesy of Morrisons' fish counter: hash browns with defrosted spoots sauteed for 90s until the sweet/salt liquid emerged. Not as nice as fresh spoots, but emotionally easier to prepare. Follow-up is pistachios and broccoli, with vodka and sparking water. And that is a typical mixture of haute cuisine and whatever's in the fridge

I've learned that the ready meals are fine if you stay away from the ones with meat in them. If it's got meat in it, I'm not touching it. They are universally horrible. I'll only use Waitrose, Tesco and the local grocer now anyway. Find the other supermarkets are unreliable or sell garbage. Aldi/Lidl are the worst; some of the stuff in there isn't fit for human consumption.

Shellfish allergy here so won't be eating that! Sounds nice though.

[Zenith]

"Diversity Officer" was one I saw advertised just after the company I worked for went off on a diversity trip in the late 90s.

It was not open to external applicants, and only to internal applicants at or above a certain grade. It wasn't a job in its own right and it was not to impact their existing duties. It had no powers and they couldn't do things like take part in the recruitment process. It was just a title.

No, not just a title. Also a scapegoat to sacrifice to any hungry regulators or wandering herds of self appointed do-gooders.

25 years ago and more innocent times. My view was that the company had been progressive, though sensible, since at least the early 60s. They could just have reaffirmed the company's fundamental values, but no, it was high orders from HQ in California that something new and radical was called for. We all had to go on a two day diversity course.

I took the view that the course had described very well the tools a demogogue could use to create and exploit divisions in society.

The Diversity Officer role was a clear indication that senior management did not take this crap seriously, but felt obliged to pay lip service to it.

[25 CPS]

"Diversity Officer" was one I saw advertised just after the company I worked for went off on a diversity trip in the late 90s.

It was not open to external applicants, and only to internal applicants at or above a certain grade. It wasn't a job in its own right and it was not to impact their existing duties. It had no powers and they couldn't do things like take part in the recruitment process. It was just a title.

No, not just a title. Also a scapegoat to sacrifice to any hungry regulators or wandering herds of self appointed do-gooders.

25 years ago and more innocent times. My view was that the company had been progressive, though sensible, since at least the early 60s. They could just have reaffirmed the company's fundamental values, but no, it was high orders from HQ in California that something new and radical was called for. We all had to go on a two day diversity course.

I took the view that the course had described very well the tools a demogogue could use to create and exploit divisions in society.

The Diversity Officer role was a clear indication that senior management did not take this crap seriously, but felt obliged to pay lip service to it.

There was internal publicity at work about an EDI initiative several months ago, EDI of course standing for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. I ended up joking around with one of my friends at work about how with what actual experience has been, that EDI really stands for Exclusion, Division, and Infighting.

One example fairly recently was the duelling email signature requirements. One came down from near the top telling everyone to add their gender pronouns to their email signatures. The other was a departmental email signature generator that was designed for you to enter your information and it would make you a signature to copy and paste into the email system using a departmentally designed template to give results in a rigidly cookie cutter format...which did not include space for the gender pronouns being pushed for by corporate. I haven't changed my email signature and nobody's said anything but I'm almost tempted to put "non-binary because that's digital and I'm an analogue kind of guy" and see what happens. Or put a link to the I'm A Man song by the Spencer Davis Group.

I just try to get through each day eight hours at a time without getting in too much trouble.

[bd139]

Don't get me started on the whole diversity thing. Recently our organisation decided to set up a slack bot that caught "hey guys" and gave us a paragraph about using other things for diversity reasons. For a while I did consider raising a ticket asking that it was more inclusive and should clearly block "hey girls", "hey ladies" and that sort of thing. I eventually figured it would be better if I just left an organisation that was directing budget in that direction and getting custom branded slack emojis done rather than fixing the process problems and defects identified by their reliability guy and burning their customers so badly that we ended up in the trade press about how shit we are several times thus compromising his position and reputation...

Honestly if a company is doing that diversity shit, they have resources in the wrong place or a bad culture they are hiding or are so vapid as a company that they are slithering slime shouting me too! me too!

Note that at no point is a mandatory diversity perspective valid. Employment should be based purely on merit and quite frankly I don't care what colour or how you identify yourself, as long as you can actually do the job. In fact mandatory diversity is actually harmful to society because it gives unfair educational advantages to some people over others. Equality is important, diversity is not.

[mansaxel]

Yes, this saga I’m having has made me decide to seriously lose some weight and once I get the leg and ankle sorted, I’m going to do more walking and burn some of my lard off.

Wise move. Electronics hobbies don't usually by themselves create physical fitness.

One exception being perhaps certification for mast work which requires certain standards of physical fitness, and another being our equivalent of SAS recruiting for the comms operator position (yes, open recruitment, since it is a government job subject to normal rules) with a grueling physical fitness and previous experience threshold...

[tggzzz]

No, not just a title. Also a scapegoat to sacrifice to any hungry regulators or wandering herds of self appointed do-gooders.

25 years ago and more innocent times. My view was that the company had been progressive, though sensible, since at least the early 60s. They could just have reaffirmed the company's fundamental values, but no, it was high orders from HQ in California that something new and radical was called for. We all had to go on a two day diversity course.

I took the view that the course had described very well the tools a demogogue could use to create and exploit divisions in society.

The Diversity Officer role was a clear indication that senior management did not take this crap seriously, but felt obliged to pay lip service to it.

There was internal publicity at work about an EDI initiative several months ago, EDI of course standing for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. I ended up joking around with one of my friends at work about how with what actual experience has been, that EDI really stands for Exclusion, Division, and Infighting.

One example fairly recently was the duelling email signature requirements. One came down from near the top telling everyone to add their gender pronouns to their email signatures.

Dilbert is good on the subject (this forum's storage has not been abused by these images )
https://dilbert.com/strip/2022-09-07
https://dilbert.com/strip/2022-07-25

and

https://dilbert.com/strip/2022-09-19
https://dilbert.com/strip/2022-09-20

The other was a departmental email signature generator that was designed for you to enter your information and it would make you a signature to copy and paste into the email system using a departmentally designed template to give results in a rigidly cookie cutter format...which did not include space for the gender pronouns being pushed for by corporate.

I saw one remarkably incompetent marketing VP state diktats about what words, fonts. and colours should be used in email signatures. Not unreasonable so far. Then she wrote a snot-o-gram to my boss indicating that his wasn't in the approved format. He then dissected the HTML in her signature and found that her signature had the wrong font and colour. He enjoyed responding to her email.

Then later she (note pronoun) was in charge of the display at Telecom Barcelona. They had booth babes that were body painted in the corporate colours. They saved money by not giving them T-shirts. I considered resigning, but family life made that untenable

I haven't changed my email signature and nobody's said anything but I'm almost tempted to put "non-binary because that's digital and I'm an analogue kind of guy" and see what happens.

I've tended to work at places where idiotic rules would be pushed to the limit. In that case it might have been complaining that the allowable set of terms was too small and must be expanded to include my chosen term (and therefore me). "Analogue" would be a suitable term

[mansaxel]

I saw one remarkably incompetent marketing VP state diktats about what words, fonts. and colours should be used in email signatures.

When such shit shows up here, I quote chapter and verse of RFC 1849:

Code: Select all

   ... If a poster or posting agent does append
   a signature to an article, the signature SHOULD be preceded with a
   delimiter line containing (only) two hyphens (ASCII 45) followed by
   one blank (ASCII 32).  Posting agents SHOULD limit the length of
   signatures, since verbose excess bordering on abuse is common if no
   restraint is imposed; 4 lines is a common limit.

(Spencer, RFC 1849, 4.3.2. Body Conventions)

The text being part of an actual (albeit retired) RFC usually makes people accept my .signatures; especially so their lack of stupid HTML formatting and image attachments.

[Specmaster]

Went to the tissue viability unit yesterday and after 2 hours of questioning, being physically checked, all the usual things plus others like checking my circulation and then cleaning, checking my ankle wound and dressing, two things were announced. First was despite carrying extra weight, which is being addressed, I was overall a very fit man, the second was that choice of dressings used by my practise nurse was inappropriate for for the type of wound I have, which more than likely has been made because of it. They were using honey dressings and the hydraulic action of the honey as I move about had made it worse, made it bigger by putting pressure on the sorrounding skin and lifted it, and the adhesive used is not good for my skin. I emerged from there fully bandaged with silver patches next my skin from foot to knee. Three more appointments have been made with unit, starting next Tuesday, and then Thursday and the following Tuesday.

Although right leg is fine, they have ordered a compression device for the lower leg and will the same for the other leg once the Celulitice has gone. Made an appointment with practise nurse to replace the bandaging and silver dressings for this Saturday, and the unit even gave the dressings and bandages because didn’t trust the practise nurse to have the correct ones in stock.

So overall, impressed by the unit, and their approach to the problem, still painful at times, which they say is because there is large areas of skin which are yet to detach themselves, but we are making progress I feel.

Eating less is already paying off, lost a further 2lbs already this week.

[bd139]

Good to hear it's going in the right direction. And it doesn't surprise me about them using the wrong dressings - been there done that one

[tggzzz]

Good to hear it's going in the right direction. And it doesn't surprise me about them using the wrong dressings - been there done that one

Seconded.

Wound care is a fairly specialised subject; ISTR seeing a couple of TV programmes about it.

It doesn't surprise me that the practice nurse wasn't sufficiently experienced and didn't have the right dressings. Even if she realised what the correct dressings would have been, I guess it would have been difficult for her to leave the wound undressed.

[Robert]

I did a "change your own dressing" once and the end of my finger came of with it That was caused by the inapproriate use of a local anaesthetic with adrenaline on an extremity.

[Specmaster]

I did a "change your own dressing" once and the end of my finger came of with it That was caused by the inapproriate use of a local anaesthetic with adrenaline on an extremity.

OMG, that sounds totally horrific so now you’re not quite ready to be a Dave Allan impressionist yet, a bit more to go yet . Seriously I expect that was really shocking and you fear for the worst, my reaction would have been something like this I expect.

[mnementh]

fingum.jpg

mnem
meh.

[Peter_O]

Holy Sh..!?
How did you manage that one?
Looks like a mandolin slicer.

And who did stich it so neatly?

[Specmaster]

fingum.jpg

mnem
meh.

How the fuck did you do that?

[mnementh]

*Cue Flashiebackie music*

* Slicing a bagel for my son's breakfast (Once Upon a Time in the Wild, Wild West of Texas) *

"What the...?" *Spots blood dripping on floor* "Oh, fu-u-u-ck..."

*Puts fingertip back roughly where it belongs & wraps with paper towel, then drops bagel back in the baggie & folds it under the stack of bagels with the other hand* (Hey... fresh cinnamon raisin bagels from local bakery )

"Honey, stop what you're doing & load the kids up into the car; I need you to drive me to the emergency room."

"Whaaaa....?"

And please hurry; the feeling is starting to return to my hand."

By the time we get to the ER, that entire hand is just a ball of fire; they get me processed pretty quickly and the ER doc is looking it over. She lifts the loose bit off, and of course the pain increases tenfold and my hand starts to shake & twitch.

"I'm going to need you to keep it still so I can inject it with lidocaine..." she warns, but it is literally all I can do not to snatch my hand away and sit on it... smack it against the wall, anything. The pain isn't quite as bad as the time I got blowed up and 3rd degree burns all down my other arm, but it is much more concentrated.

"I don't think I can..."

"Well, I need to numb the finger before I can stitch the bit back on."

*Cringe* "Doc... is there any medical reason not to apply the lidocaine directly to the raw meat right there? It is sterile, right...?"

"It's sterile... Umm... no, I guess there isn't."

"It won't affect the likelihood of the fingertip healing properly?"

"Not at all. But it's supposed to be injected."

"I get that... but just humor me, and drip a few drops from the needle on that raw meat and see if it helps me get a handle on the pain."

*drip... drip-drip*

I can feel the pain wash away, decreased what felt like easily 50dB as the droplets spread across the exposed flesh. In just a few seconds I'm able to hold the whole hand exactly where she wants it, perfectly still. She is able to get the needle right where it needs to be to deaden the primary nerve in the finger, and less than 5 minutes later I'm looking down at the scene above.

"Pain management." I say with a smile.

mnem
Yes, I toasted and ate that bagel when I got home. For some reason, my son didn't want it.

[Robert]

Just a scratch that. Apart from the left index finger tip that dropped off, I've also managed to amputate the end of my right little finger, through the bone, and crush the 3rd finger bursting it like a ripe banana. And to make iti nteresting it was in the middle of the Jordanian desert 200 miles from a major hospital. A chain of faults and events led to launching a 8 foot section of 5" diameter pneumatic antenna mast 50 foot in the air complete with antennas. I know it went up 50 foot because there was that much coaxial cable. It was like Wile E. Coyote tying himself to an anvil with a coiled rope and watch the rope uncoil when he tips the anvil off a cliff... I saw the coax uncoil, go tight and start piling up and knew it was going to hurt. I dould not run away because I was up a ladder. I said "ouch,, secured the mast (which had landed upright) with the coax, picked up my finger and came down the ladder. While this was a civil project (Thrust SSC) we were staying at a Jordainian airforce base. They sent an ambulance and at their medical center they tutted a bit called up a medevac chopper set up a drip and then poured iodine over both my hands (left hand had some cuts where an antenna hit it). Apparently I went a bit white at that point.
Arriving at a quasi-military hospital in a Puma and then having a air-force general turn up and say you are a guest of the King gets you to the front of the A&E queue.
Some surgery and an overnight stay it was only left to get back. We had a deal with a posh hotel in Amman so I was taken there to await collection. After the third time the manager offered me a free room I realised that they probably didn't want a bandaged Englishman in dusty bloodstained overalls sitting in their lobby...

Robert.

[tggzzz]

... After the third time the manager offered me a free room I realised that they probably didn't want a bandaged Englishman in dusty bloodstained overalls sitting in their lobby...

I tell my daughter it is OK to make new mistakes.

[mnementh]

I've been shot, stabbed, on fire, blowed up and in so many rollover MVAs I literally can't count them all. This was just something that happened after I grew the fuck up.

mnem
grand-mummaw said more than once that she saw death sitting in the rocker on the porch and watching for me...

[Specmaster]

With all of those things happening to you and surviving them you defo should be buying a lottery ticket, you should win the jackpot.

[Peter_O]

*Cue Flashiebackie music*

...

Quite a lively impression. We're in the picture now. Holy shit!

[mnementh]

Ehhh... sometimes it's the "small" stories that are best, because they're relatable.

mnem
*currently sitting on several tickets for the Mega Millions lottery, cuz why not? It's over 800M right now*

[Peter_O]

snip

*currently sitting on several tickets for the Mega Millions lottery, cuz why not? It's over 800M right now*

Remaining fingers crossed.

[AVGresponding]

@Specmaster didn't you work at Crabtree for a while?