The Most Wonderful Time, The Least Wonderful Year
13We usually aren’t in the business of pushing Mediocritee over here because well…you can just go over there. However, we feel like these are the exception to the rule and the Meh crowd needed to see these.
Here’s to 2020 being one heck of a year. Order yours just in time for the holidays and new year.
https://mediocritee.com/go/mehstandleastwonderfultime
Drop something positive that’s happened this year. I’ll get it started:
I paid off my car. Wasn’t a whole lot left, but it felt great!
Feel free to drop some cute pet photos too, we always need those. 
- 12 comments, 26 replies
- Comment
I’ve stayed pretty health this year. That’s not too bad I guess.
@Targaryen Yeah I’m liking this “stay away from me in public” thing.
I didn’t get Covid-19 (knocks on wood).
@Enigma Same. I’ll take that as a victory any day.
My year has mostly been boring. Nothing horrible or amazing. I guess my best positive is that I found a way to sell some of the duplicate Bicycle playing cards I collect.
@yakkoTDI That’s pretty interesting, definitely a positive spin.
@riskybryzness Especially when you realise how much money you can get for some decks. My best so far is a two deck set that I paid $20 for the extra pair and sold for $100.
@yakkoTDI Are you serious? I had no idea that was even a thing. Are they misprints or vintage or something?
Yeah, I paid off my car, too. Just allowed the payments to autopay until there were no more and, surprise, received the title in the mail a couple months ago. Yay! Time to get a new one.
@PocketBrain It’s a good feeling!
@PocketBrain best advice ever from an aunt of mine was keep auto paying car payment into auto account. That way you are used to going without the money and when you buy your next car you will either have the money to not need a loan or will have a much smaller loan.
@CaptAmehrican @PocketBrain My mom did that for a vacation or mad money account. She had a automatic transfer each paycheck. I do a similar thing for general savings that I need to bump up so I can retire someday!
@CaptAmehrican @PocketBrain That’s a great idea…might start doing that actually.
@PocketBrain ooh what are you going to get for the next car?
Something positive.
@AuntMean67 I’ll take it!
@AuntMean67 @riskybryzness
ISWYDT
My organization made a serious commitment to working from home (which most of my department has been mostly doing since the end of March). They issued laptops–which are functional enough, even though they can’t handle GIS or CADD–and effectively rolled out VPN, RDP, Office365, OneDrive (5TB each
), Teams. Frankly, I’ve been relatively impressed with our IT folks–and I want to be impressed with our IT folks. We’re even increasingly digitizing via OnBase (they say digitalizing, but, alas, that’s years down the road; and they won’t even talk to me about APIs and integrations) and adopting Adobe Sign.
Sure, I have to go in far more than I’d like (and than I believe I actually need to), but I recognize and appreciate that that’s all FWP and I’m privileged to have a white collar job that doesn’t require me to be in routinely.
I’ve brought up each of those tech pieces in the past and literally been laughed at, as a rule; at the very least my queries prompted plenty of eyerolls. I’ve also got too many stories about what’s wrong with our IT department, especially in connection with my team (btw, we also have a new CIO and I’m liking how she’s doing things so far). There’s no way around the fact that all of this good shit either happened specifically because of COVID or was dramatically pushed up (I’d say by multiple years) because of it. Telecommuting in particular wasn’t even something they entertained.
The better news is that it’s here to stay. It’d be difficult for them to actually support their old bad excuses now. We fucking know it can be done, it works and arguably enhances productivity even as it’s better for the environment and worker satisfaction. They’re even looking at continuing telecommuting (within limits) after this all passes, partly because our facilities are overcrowded and there’s inadequate parking.
That’s a huge pile of win for me.
@joelmw Agreed. Working from home, I managed to retire* but still keep the paycheck and benefits. Woohoo!
*i.e., keep doing the things I like about work but skip most of the other crap
@macromeh I need me some of that doing only the things I like. Nice work making that happen.
@joelmw Yeah, seniority and being near actual full retirement has some perks.
@joelmw Still friends with some coworkers at past jobs and the SCRAMBLE they had to do to just survive as a department was astonishing.
It’s one thing I really appreciate here is when we started, we didn’t need a whole lot? Feel like I can brag on us as a company from that aspect. Just the keyboard here, mouse there–maybe an extra monitor if needed.
I hope to see more companies providing this as an option moving forward and sticking with it. It might take some of the stress out as well, I’d be interested to see some studies with mental health and WFH. Plus it’s 2020, there shouldn’t be an excuse to not move forward with tech and flexibility.
Also, I’ve been able to spend more time with my wife. We like each other and do the whole casually hanging out, talking about all kinds of shit, just being together and snuggling and all that–we do that stuff pretty goddamned well. I definitely prefer her to any other human; and, sure, I’m happy to mostly avoid most humans.
@joelmw Same.
@joelmw @macromeh
wait… you’ve been spending more time with @joelmw’s wife too?.. how does he feel about that?
@chienfou @macromeh Kinda depends. At the very least, I understand the desire.
@joelmw
found you a shirt…
@joelmw I haven’t minded working from home either, get to spend time with my boyfriend and my sweet cat.
We got Cora last summer so that doesn’t count. But she got really sick and this is the year we got her on the right medications and she’s doing great. And my daughter comes home from college to visit her. Bonus!
@sammydog01 She is so cute. I hope she continues to stay on that upwards path.
I lived long enough to qualify for Medicare. Of course, I can’t draw full SSI for another 10 months, and will probably keep working past then for the 8% bump, but what the hell, it was ‘free’.
I got laid off a month ago. But fuck it, that was the worst hospital ever. Proverbial blessing in disguise.
On the super bright side: Biden won and the orange nightmare is almost over.
I refinanced my mortgage to 2.5% !!! I am oddly proud of this adulthood accomplishment
@CaptAmehrican Saving $310/mo after re-fi!
@CaptAmehrican @compunaut
You win at adulting.
@CaptAmehrican Heck yeah, that’s really great!
@CaptAmehrican Good for you! I need to do that. And get cash out to make some home improvements.
I got covid my son got covid my parents got covid. We all survived. But then they started saying immunity only lasts 90 days. None of us hoarded TP 🧻 and none of us ran out of TP 🧻.