What grinds your gears?

[Lightspeed]

RNZ guts Concert radio as it plans appeal to youth

Complete bullshit. Make a youth station if you want to make a youth station. RNZ Concert is an institution, not something to be swapped out when you want to try something new.

[Ab]

Wtf???

[Lightspeed]

It's been a quiet fear of mine for some time. Concert obviously never had widespread appeal. It's always been more of a cultural reservoir of sorts.

But RNZ has to justify its existence and it's hard to quantify "a cultural reservoir of sorts", especially when clicks and views are so easy to count.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

RNZ has to justify its existence

still not following you

Originally Posted by Ab

While tied to Winston Labour is basically a centre-right party.

oh that's right, no money for state radio but blank cheques for the racing and fishing industries

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Ab

still not following you

I misinterpreted your comment it seems.

[Ab]

I totally disagree with the claim that RNZ has to justify its existence. What's the fucking point of electing a Labour-led government with a Labour Prime Minister and a Labour Minister of Broadcasting.

Mediawatch understands the new youth platform would have a playlist spanning multiple musical genres with a heavy focus on New Zealand music. It would be active on social media.

oh fuck off

[Lightspeed]

National wasn't sympathetic to the station and Labour had to fire their first choice for Minister of Broadcasting, not before forcing Carol Hirschfeld to step down from RNZ.

So yeah, no one's had the station's back for some time now.

[Lightspeed]

So I'm not saying RNZ should justify its existence, I'm saying it has to.

[Lightspeed]

RNZ holds off on plans to restructure Concert

The RNZ board is copping some flak, but I dunno, maybe I should be impressed.

The outcome is that RNZ has an extra FM frequency, and Concert's long-term future has all but been assured.

So this GMG is now an OMG.

[Lightspeed]

Playing Radio Chicken

RNZ seems to have made an even better play. By threatening to cut Concert FM to start a new youth-oriented station, RNZ seems to have achieved something it never could have achieved during any ordinary budget round: receive funding for both.

[Ab]

That’s gold. Eric Crampton is one of the best most insightful commentators in the game.

[StN]

Oldness.

Leapt out of the Euro car today just in time for an appointment- conscious that I hadn’t driven it for a couple of weeks and the battery might be sad. Glanced back and saw that one side of the parking lights were on. Reached in, but the lights were switched off.

Bugger - the recent work at the garage must have pinched some 30 year old wiring loom and shorted something. No time to pull fuses so called the wife and suggested I may need a jumpstart in an hour.

Came back and lights still on - not the exit courtesy light circuit then. Turned the key and it leapt into life! Then I noticed the indicator arm was down and flashing.

Oh yeah - several years back I did the same thing - turn it off with the indicator on and it will leave park lights on that side. Should have remembered that, but you know, old.

[MadMax]

Yeaahhh when you hit 40 and the very minor old things start to appear more and more. Grey (bright shiny silver) nostril hairs is one thing but the same sticking out your ear is another.

[Ab]

my favourite thing in all the world is engaging shareable content from marketing professionals telling me how COVID-19 represents an opportunity to grow my business, would I like to know more

[MadMax]

^ yeah that takes the cake. covid19 being treated as an opportunity to send spam pisses me off.


Found a "Government Organization" sending out phishing emails so I tried to reach them. It seems their phones have been hacked as I either reach an Indian that doesn't make a lot of sense who hangs up on me or the calls get dropped. I tried ringing another number of theirs and the useless twit could not comprehend what I was saying.

Me: [in about 10 different iterations] "Your phones seem to be hacked and I have received a dodgy email from xyz".
Them: "Oh, so are you trying to send us an email?"

There's no helping the helpless I guess.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by Ab

Not sure. I should be covered by Australia's "default" aid in virtue of having bitten the pillow and taken Australian citizenship a while back.

NOPE

[Lightspeed]

WTF?

[Ab]

So here's the Kafkaesque clusterfuck in which we find ourselves.

Princess redundant February. OK severance payout.

Me redundant April. No payout, just final pay.

Princess puts in AU govt assistance application, she meets all the criteria, approved.

My assistance application gets processed end of April. Because we're a couple all finances are shared, which means Princess's February severance also gets associated with me. Because my application is new, that means the association between me and her February severance is new. That means it gets flagged as new income right now, which means I must still be making money, which means I get denied for assistance until at least end of July.

But wait, there's more.

Because I just got erroneously flagged as having new income, and we're a couple and all finances are shared, that means Princess gets flagged as having new income, and her assistance approval gets reversed.

So my "I have no income and no severance" application for the govt package that I am clearly entitled to not only got me nothing, it got Princess's already-approved application cancelled.

Whee!

[Know me.]

Time for you to get angry.

[Nothing]

You won't like him when he's angry.

[Cyberbob]

He has a detailed paper trail with time stamps and can cite sources.

He is; The Credible Hulk.

[Ab]

(posts moved because not really covid-specific)

Yeah, I'm doing angry all right. So far 2 online Centrelink support people and 4 phone operators have experienced it, and every time it gets escalated to a new person to respond "gee, that certainly looks like a mistake, but there's nothing I can do, here's the number you need to call to complain".

Edit update: silver lining: being laid off means more time to exercise, fighting this Catch 22 shit makes me really angry and energetic, and shoestring household budget means no money for food, I haven't been this fit and healthy in years

[Nich]

Broken family children's books GMG. They should come with a warning:
- "This book helps your child get used to the idea of having a bedroom at Mummy's house, and a bedroom at Daddy's house."
- "This book is about a single mother."
- "This book introduces your child to homos."
- "The child in this book is being raised by their extended family."

Hello! I'm right here! Being a Dad! Fuck You! Hardly any characters represent me in the majority of books!

[pxpx]

Did you just say
homos

[Ab]

It's a hard road finding the perfect kids' book collection lad. Bet it's worse now in this era of superwokeness.

For me there are three categories of reading aloud book.

1. Holy shit this kids' book is propaganda/activism/reallyfuckingracist, giving up on it right now, I don't care how many pages in we are.

2. Hmmm, the language is a bit rough but I can tweak the words on the fly as I read out loud or just omit this or that sentence entirely without destroying the text.

3. This book is fucking ace and if it's one I remember from my own childhood it's even more ace now.

[DrTiTus]

Dead cat under my hedge. Found it today from the stank. Will have to scrape it out with a spade and bury it tomorrow.

I don't even like cats.

[crocos]

Possibly get the SPCA in? They can check for a chip - give closure to the owner's family (assuming not feral)

[DrTiTus]

Its in the ground now mate, I think it is feral. It's been here since I moved in, and the SPCA doesn't want to be presented with a rotting corpse.

[crocos]

Fair.

[MadMax]

What, you didn't take a photo of it and post it up on Neighbourly that you're sorry to have found someone's dead cat?

[Ab]

I completely butchered a job interview by phone the other day.

The specifics aren't important, but it was one of those instances of a job description looking like it had been written by someone who knows me and looking like it had been written specifically with me in mind. I was so perfect for this job and the organisation so desperately needed a someone like me to do it that it was all I could think about.

I already had some of the key players in the org in my professional networks so I was networking like a mofo and already had half my foot in the door before even actually applying. One of the people about halfway up the org food chain expressed to me that there was a process involved and I couldn't look like I was taking shortcuts so I needed to go through the screening steps and apply like anyone else. So I did all that and it quickly became evident to me that the screening had been outsourced by the org to some personnel agency and the agency had delegated the screening to a very junior employee.

This junior employee--let's call this person the screener--contacted me by badly-spelled green-bubble text message and set up a time for a phone interview. So I was already off to the snobbery races. Then the screener was a no-show for the call. After sitting by my phone for 52 minutes I initiated the call myself (no answer) then texted the screener to suggest that we reschedule. Then the screener called me back a few minutes later with an amused "OH LOL I THOUGHT I HEARD MY PHONE BEEPING" introduction that had a noticeable absence of anything resembling an apology. Then the screener put me on hold for five minutes, then returned to the call and our interactions from there all had a feeling of talking to a first-year uni student doing the readings while sitting in the tutorial. The screener was obviously scanning my resume for the very first time while talking to me, and was giving me "clueless millennial intern" vibes like they were blasting at 120dB.

And from that moment I fucking destroyed my chances with the perfect job. I couldn't get my dumb offended ego over the fact that I was getting asked questions by someone unqualified to process my answers. The screener was unprepared and obviously had a script to walk through and some of my answers just didn't fit the script. Like, "what are your salary expectations?" - "I don't have any. I literally don't care." Because the job and the requirements were so perfect I would have done it all for free so long as my family stayed fed and housed. But that wasn't a helpful answer.

Now, with a week's distance, I'm detached enough to say to myself "hey you're a literate articulate guy and you're good with words, there's no way you didn't make yourself understood" and I've realised that I achieved exactly what I was trying to do, which was to make the screener feel ignorant. I used words the screener didn't know to show my expertise in a field the screener didn't understand and every response I made must have been subtitled "that is a fucking stupid question and it hurts me to have to answer it".

So of course I never made it to the second round of actual interviews at the org.

Dumb dumb DUMB. OK so the lesson here, kids, is remember to treat every interaction as a negotiation in which success is a win-win outcome. If you can't make the other person come away feeling like they won, you can't really win.


TLDR? Ab does an interview for a dream job, he makes a junior employee feel inferior, that person omits him from the shortlist, introspection ensues.

[Lightspeed]

Sorry bro.

The prospect of job interviews keeps me from applying for jobs. Such an awful roll of the dice, so many arbitrary situations you have to be prepared for. The whole dynamic is bullshit.

[Know me.]

Originally Posted by Ab

Dumb dumb DUMB. OK so the lesson here, kids, is remember to treat every interaction as a negotiation in which success is a win-win outcome. If you can't make the other person come away feeling like they won, you can't really win.


TLDR? Ab does an interview for a dream job, he makes a junior employee feel inferior, that person omits him from the shortlist, introspection ensues.

Tough spot.

When the interviewer comes away from the interview with the "win" what will they be thinking?

[Ab]

I guess in this instance "winning" is making the out-of-his/her-depth millennial with no knowledge of the industry or the skills required feel like he/she was valued and important and totally deserving of a participation badge. I should have prefaced more answers with "That's a really great question," rather than with 5 seconds of silence while I tried to mentally scope out an answer that would make sense to someone with no experience in the field.

[MadMax]

Job interview 101: never refer back to your CV even if you think they haven’t even read it. You shouldn’t have allowed the fact that they hadn’t to bring up any distraction.

Hopefully you can ask for an explanation under the guise of asking for feedback for your own improvement.

[Ab]

You're right, of course. le sigh. I was just totally thrown by both the personal unprofessionalism and inexperience of the screener, and the organisational inappropriateness of having a person with no experience in the relevant fields be a screener of someone who was. We literally didn't even share the same language. I didn't handle it well.

At social/business network events in the near future I'm going to have A players coming up to me and say "what do you mean you didn't even get shortlisted?" and it's going to be embarrassing.

Oh well. On to the next interviews.

[Know me.]

Originally Posted by Ab

I guess in this instance "winning" is making the out-of-his/her-depth millennial with no knowledge of the industry or the skills required feel like he/she was valued and important and totally deserving of a participation badge. I should have prefaced more answers with "That's a really great question," rather than with 5 seconds of silence while I tried to mentally scope out an answer that would make sense to someone with no experience in the field.

How about them thinking that they have found the perfect candidate? Isn't that the win-win? Get them coming away thinking that they'd really like to work with you and you're qualified. Empathize with their situation and find some common ground.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by Know me.

How about them thinking that they have found the perfect candidate? Isn't that the win-win? Get them coming away thinking that they'd really like to work with you and you're qualified. Empathize with their situation and find some common ground.

yes. that is entirely correct. I totally failed to do that.

[Know me.]

Good luck for the next one.

[blynk]

t. I used words the screener didn't know to show my expertise in a field the screener didn't understand

Which is interesting, because half the time job recruiters that do first round interviews don't actually know anything about the industry and its about the way you interact and respond.