The PolyBlog

I have this meme that I saw a number of years ago. I forget the exact wording, but it is something like “I try to be a warm, caring, relaxed human being, comfortable in my surroundings and at peace with the world. Except for spiders, DEATH TO SPIDERS!”. What I really like about it, other than the spider deaths, is the idea that no matter how “at one” you are with the universe, some things are likely to piss you off. For me, it was a number of things today that didn’t exactly piss me off, but they affected me enough to respond aggressively when normally I wouldn’t.

This will take a bit of vague wording to protect certain identities, but someone had pushed to be part of something that’s going on at work. We didn’t have an option for it, I found an alternative for her with someone else who was kind of doing us a favour and helping her at the same time, all good. A “success”, or so I thought. It didn’t turn out the way she expected or thought at least it should. So, early today, she went back criticizing the group that helped her, they didn’t do this or that, it should have obviously been this way or that, yada yada yada. And on a good day, I like to think that I will try to see the other person’s situation, accept that I don’t know all that is going on, blah blah blah. Which I can do okay, right up until that person decides that their problem is now someone else’s problem and it’s an excuse to be a jackass.

That I’m not okay with. That’s the mark of a bully. And I am perfectly okay treating bullies like the f***ing wastes of skin that they are, and I sometimes have no off switch for that…I will go 0 to nuclear and may not stop until the person is radioactive dust. 99% of the time I can keep my temper in check, but the 1% where I might lose it? It is almost always dealing with someone who is wielding power badly because they feel like it. So, today I started to write a strong reply, could deal with it that way, and instead I decided to go evil. I don’t do it often, I find it offensive and manipulative, but I chose to send them a sh** sandwich.

If you don’t know what a sh** sandwich is, it basically is an extremely passive aggressive email or letter that gives the other person NO room to go anywhere in their response because you are being TOTALLY FRIENDLY in your tone while feeding them the sh** sandwich that they pretty much have no option but to swallow and say thank you. I had lots of smiley faces and well wishes for a great afternoon, and offers to help them out in any of the three options I could offer, all of which would require them to swallow some sh** to accept. They know what you’re really saying, but if they try to call you on it, they just end up looking like a turd. It is the complete opposite of transparency or even civil discourse. As expected, they chose the option that they absolutely didn’t want to agree to but was the one that would make them look the least ridiculous.

I haven’t used that technique in almost 12 years because I find it offensive. I don’t mean offensive in the sense of its use is offending to people, I mean that relying on it is an offense to integrity. It violates almost every principle I have in dealing with people except one — dealing with people who are bullies. Now, I know this person has issues. Or to quote a recent meme, they may even have the whole subscription. Doesn’t matter. Someone did them a favour, they didn’t quite understand how it worked, got ticked off with the result, and basically dumped it back to the person like a steaming pile of turd. I played patty cake with a disposable shovel, made it look pretty, and served it back to them. Problem solved. Moved on.

Later today, a close friend posted something that I find a really stupid meme for someone of any knowledge of business and economics about how evil Amazon supposedly is. Most of the people who comment on Amazon are full of sh**, and I don’t care. Certain people love the “buy local” mantra, and think it explains capitalism in some way, virtue checks in another, and because I know why they think that, it doesn’t bother me. Educating them won’t help. It’s the same with Walmart. Or Costco. Or any of the disrupting chains. Anyway, I decided to engage, and when they doubled down even further, I gave a rant with a lot more context than I would normally. I normally smile and ignore it, but I tend to speak my truths with friends, and stupid attempts to badly explain economics or business rankle me.

And finally, I got really annoyed tonight at three companies just doing business badly, and it has nothing really to do with COVID.

First and foremost is a company that makes one of the plugins I use. They’ve had a problem that has plagued members / users for months, and despite the fact that we pay for support, paid members haven’t got any more support than free users. Which is nada. They have not figured out what the problem is. Nor how to fix it. Which was fine. Except 3 months ago, I FIGURED IT OUT, or at least figured out where the bug is. Kind of like a diagnostic for a car…it might be 20 different problems, but if you can narrow it down to the carburetor, you know there are limited ways to fix the limited ways it can be causing the problem. So I messaged them when it stopped working after an update this week. Nicely, but more or less, “WTF?”. I am way far away from ever using a sh** sandwich with them, but I opened the ticket, lowered previous ratings for their performance feedback, and got their attention quickly. Only to find out they have no solution. They haven’t for over six months. Even 3m after I found the bug. At first, I thought it was a different problem. So I repeated the steps I had done before, and voila, it solved it again. It’s a simple ordering problem. If you run plugin 1 and plugin 2, everything works. If you update plugin 2, it stops. If you disable plugin 1, rerun #2, reactivate plugin 1, it all works again. I told them that 3m ago, I’m 95% positive it is a simple file permission problem, but they don’t know how to fix it. Why am I paying for tech support when I have to resolve conflicts that are hurting hundreds if not thousands of users? (The big plugin has over 800K+ users!). I felt like a crankypants complaining, but come on, if *I* can solve it with my limited skills and knowledge, surely they could have done it months ago? And don’t call them Shirley!

Secondly, I was cleaning up an email folder I call “Financial – Pending” and generally it is stuff that I have ordered. When it arrives, I will sometimes but not always move the email confirmation to another folder for Financial – Done. A digital archive folder. But until I confirm I have them, I don’t move them. I don’t always do it right away though, so every few weeks, I go through and tidy up. This time through, I realized it has been a whole month since I followed up on a t-shirt order.

I’m a bit of a sucker for astronomy-related t-shirts, they just help me stay in touch with my hobby, and I ordered three back at the start of October as part of a sale that was on. One came in about 3 weeks. A cute little shirt I like that has a picture of an animated version of Pluto, and it says, “That’s OK Pluto. I’m not a planet either”. Two other ones didn’t arrive. I checked the tracking after 3 weeks and it was really weird. Supposedly one of the other 2 shirts was coming from the same place as the one I got from the US. I don’t know why it didn’t get bundled together, but what do I know? The other one was coming from somewhere in Europe and hadn’t been printed or shipped yet. It said on the website, it might take an extra 5 days or so, but if you haven’t received tracking info in 3 weeks, contact us. It was close to 4w so I reached out. They basically said, “Oops, sorry, COVID delivery delays”. It didn’t look like it was a COVID delay in the normal sense, one of them hadn’t even been printed out and the other came from a place in the US really fast — just by itself, no friend in tow.

It is now a month later, so I checked all the shipping again. Well, it SAYS they both have shipped. One supposedly even arrived in Canada a month ago. Then? Radio silence. The other is just confused. Soooo, I followed up again. They replied and said, “COVID delays”. I replied and said, “Umm, no, you said that a month ago. It is now 2m from when I ordered.” Their reply came back from the tier 2 people, or at least a T2 sounding position, to say, “Actually, looking at your tracking now, it appears your shirts have been lost in transit”. Really? Cuz I’m pretty sure I have one of them. Their solution was to file a claim. Which I did. For the two missing shirts, which they can reprint for me, probably. No rush, just want them eventually. And I got my claim receipt. They are reprinting all 3? WTF? I wrote back, they said, “Yeah, it’s with claims now, all good.” I give up on correcting them. Maybe I’ll get another shirt out of it.

Finally, tonight, something I ordered yesterday for a Xmas present sent me the receipt overnight. A smallish company in the US. The address I put in, the info I confirmed, is NOT what it says on the invoice. On the invoice, it lists my country as US, instead of Canada. Minor, but I just wanted to confirm it would come to Canada — the province info is there, we have a different postal code, it is very clearly NOT an American address. So I followed up with them to say, “Will it be okay?” and their response was the typical “Send them to the website T1 response”. Except that wasn’t my question. They told me how to go in and change my address, which was NOT what I wanted to do. It was RIGHT in the system where I needed to put in info, it was NOT right on their invoice. So I replied, gave them a low rating on their performance feedback indicator (some places that really matters), pointed out that was NOT my question, and instantly I got a much different response. She went in and edited the invoice address, it hadn’t shipped yet (supposedly) and it was all good, with a confirmation to me. Okay, I’ll count that one as done.

Normally on all of those things I am more measured. Today I was more inclined to not hold back. I didn’t do it because I was tired or anything, or upset, or whatever. I did it because it felt appropriate today. Some of that is residual COVID dampenings, some of that is just age, some of it is just I get tired of being a doormat sometimes even if I think I’m trying to be nice. If the old Shiva inside shows through PolyWogg from time to time, I’m okay with that…one of my favorite phrases from my high school days came back to me today…The clean phrase was “take a flyer”; the NSFW version was to “take a flying f*** on a rolling doughnut”. Poetry it wasn’t.

Today I chose to be a cranky-pants. Maybe when I’m older I shall wear purple too.

What choices did you make today?

Many of my recent posts have been about trivia. Online trivia, email trivia, website trivia, blah blah blah. I’m doing it in part for work (part of the workplace charitable campaign) but I’m also doing it now through Facebook.

I spent most of the day handling logistical details around getting people registered for trivia tomorrow, I have 8 teams of 5 people playing, and since MS Teams doesn’t offer breakout rooms, I had to fudge the way breakout rooms work. I created 10 separate meetings at the same time, and the people basically just do them in the meeting. They’ll have to manually come “back” to the main meeting after a set amount of time. It has been a lot of work to get the first one up and running AND I have help for it (a moderator and a animator, plus translation assistance).

For the personal side, I ran a beta test last week with 8 people, and a full roll-out this week with 12. It’s free and it’s for family and friends, or friends of friends. We do it through Zoom as my wife has a paid account. Tonight we used breakout rooms, and it made it more social for everyone, except me. Last week, I was in a room with 8 people for an hour. This time, each time people started to have a discussion, it was in the break-out room while I twiddled my thumbs and watched them type in their answers. I’ll figure out some workflows as I go, little tweaks here and there to speed things up. I’ll also add some “bonus” questions for future weeks to add a bit of extra interaction. It was hard tonight to ensure there was a good mix of easy questions and harder questions, questions for kids and adults, etc. My favorite category for the night (Screen Couples) proved hard to mark, and I might have overestimated the weighting for it. One aspect of my automated deck didn’t work as well as I had hoped, so I’ll tweak that too. But overall it worked. I suspect in future that I may offer a separate kids’ game too, just to separate the questions out a bit.

Today I chose to OD on trivia and it all mostly worked. Fingers crossed for work tomorrow.

What choices did you make today?

I’m not sure if “choice” is the right term here. About ten days ago, my #12 tooth, upper right, next to my front two, started to twinge. I’ve had twinges before, usually a result of being too quick with my brushing in previous days or too many sugary drinks. It lasts a day or two, I adjust my oral hygiene and intake, and it goes back to normal. And I make a note to have the dentist check it the next time I’m in.

But when it comes to going to the dentist, my history is not good. Growing up, dental visits were not covered by my parent’s health plan, so I remember going once when I was about 9 or 10. I had one cavity, and the tooth was already loose. No muss, no fuss, off we went.

My next visit? I was about 24 or so. I had a bit of money and some benefits from work, so I went for a clean and inspect, all good. Then I didn’t have benefits for awhile, so probably age 28 was about the next visit. After that, I’ve gone a little more regularly, but it’s far less than the recommended frequency.

I brush, I do okay, no major problems, but I have a really bad gag reflex. Then about 15 years ago now, I went for a dental visit to a young dentist downtown. I liked the guy, he seemed good. It was a disaster. I ended up with some latex stuck in my mouth, felt like I was swallowing a balloon, and after I started heaving, he couldn’t remove some pick thing from my mouth with the latex until I calmed down. I feel, no word of a lie, that if I had eaten breakfast that morning, I would have had lots to throw up, and I could have choked to death. It was that bad. It freaked me the f*** out.

I used to go for cleanings to a dentist downtown, but she kept hiring new hygienists, underpaying them, they move on when they have experience, and she hires another new recruit. Great for her business model, and lots of people do it I know, but it was hell on my gums. I felt like they were jabbing me every couple of seconds. I could last about 30-45 minutes, but any longer than that, and I would start to climb the walls. I couldn’t move away, but the rest of my body would start twitching like I was a junkie jonesing for a fix.

There had been one hygienist there, and she left to go work somewhere in Barrhaven area. I wish I knew her last name, but I didn’t. I tried finding her, without seeming too stalkerish. She was about 35, her name was Vicky, she had red hair and used to work downtown. I called a couple of clinics one time not too long after she left trying to find her, I would have followed her to any practice. She was awesome. I relaxed and she never JABBED ME WITH A PITCHFORK IN THE MOUTH! But after about 2 calls, I realized no matter how I worded it, I sounded like a stalker. Not a good feeling.

Anyway, I eventually tried a dentist out in Kanata that I had heard good things about, she advertised quite heavily on the radio and someone I knew had used her so I gave it a go. I managed a couple of cleanings with her, but eventually it became clear that over time, I’m getting worse, not better. I just can’t stand the experience. When the dentist decided I needed some fillings, she referred me to a dentist near me that does sedation dentistry.

Before I digressed with my oral history, I was basically saying that I’ve had small twinges before and I make a note of them until the next time. But since I need sedation, I can’t just pop over anytime for a dentist appointment. It takes more work, I need someone to bring me home, pretty much wipes out the day, etc. So I intentionally forget and don’t bother scheduling something until I think it’s “time” again. My goal was to go sometime this year, but I hadn’t made it there yet, and with Covid, I figured late 2021 was a better bet.

Then I got a twinge that didn’t go away. In fact, it got a lot more acute for pain. And even my bottom tooth started hurting for some reason. As it escalated, I called the dental office for perhaps some emergency care, but sedation is hard to arrange for “emergencies”. Emergency is easy; with sedation is hard. But in the meantime, they gave me an antibiotic and the pain went away in about 36 hours. Almost completely gone. On the pain scale of 1-10, I had been hitting 6s and 7s and then 7s and 8s at the peak; then it went down to about 4s; and on the weekend, that went down to 1.

They had a cancellation and were able to take me in today, so I jumped at the appointment. It was just a check-up to see what was going on. Two x-rays, a bit of tapping on the teeth.

And the result.

The best news is that about 18 months ago I was having some problem with my back molars that made me wonder if my other 2 wisdom teeth were making an appearance…whatever it was, it wasn’t those. No sign of them, so I’ll probably never see them.

The lesser but equally good news is that after being referred to him last time where he did 4 cavities at once, I have no cavities now. Yay.

The less good but fully expected news is that whatever is going on with my tooth was not “cavity” related but instead was something root-ish. Or as he put it, my tooth is too close to my root. I’ve tried talking to it about social distancing but it’s not listening. Anyway, the long and short of it is that I do indeed need a root canal.

The bad news is that in order to do the root canal, and to do a cleaning at the same time (hey, I’m already there!), they need me to be in the room for 90 minutes (30m root, 60m cleaning). And it has to be the same room. Which means their first opening is…dun dun dun…December 17. Blech. If my pain returns before then, I’m supposed to call. But my antibiotics will run out Wednesday so I’ll have to cross my fingers it doesn’t get infected again. Sigh.

Andrea has already arranged for someone to drive her over to pick me up afterwards so she doesn’t have to take a cab. I’ll take one there, not much choice, as I can’t drive that day.

Today I chose to go to the dentist, and to make plans for a visit with sedation in December. Not exactly the way I wanted to tick the box this year for the dentist, but I’ll tick the box anyway. At least it seemed relatively safe as nobody was around.

What choices did you make today?