Author: admin

Lord congeniality

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It was Byron’s grand dog show début today.

We made it bright and early (!) to the Automnales and got setup. We met Frédérique, the breeder we got Byron from, and she was very happy to meet the boy.

She was supposed to show him for us, as we have no idea what we were doing, but Byron had other plans. He got a little bit nervous when he couldn’t see us and decided to splat and nope, so I had to be brave and show him.

In the end, the boy placed last, but with an “excellent” mention. The comments were generally positive, except that he’s possibly too tall and his babines a bit too floppy. His bones, ears, eyes, nose, teeth and gait are all good, but his knees are apparently still a bit wobbly.

I’m the end, he didn’t hump anyone and was super zen around all the other dogs. He didn’t seem fazed by all the noise and commotion, everyone loved him and heaped lots of praise on him and his behaviour. We always said we’d get him a miss congeniality ribbon, but Anna had the best idea when she declared him lord congeniality.

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[recipe] 5min Brownie in a mug

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45g unsalted butter
3 tbsp packed light brown sugar
3 tbsp whole milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
40g all-purpose flour
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
Pinch salt
1 tbsp dark chocolate chips (optional)
Vanilla ice cream, for serving

Place butter in a large, microwave-safe mug. Microwave on high until fully melted, about 1 minutr. Swirl to coat the mug with melted butter, then pour the butter into a small bowl.

Add brown sugar, milk, and vanilla extract, and whisk until smooth. Add all-purpose flour, cocoa powder, salt, and stir until combined. Fold in chocolate chips if desired.

Scrape the batter back into the mug. Microwave on high for 1 minute and 30 seconds. The brownie is ready when the center is slightly gooey and the edges bounce back when pressed. If not ready, microwave for 15 seconds more. Top with ice cream and enjoy!

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Cuddle bug

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The flip side of bed hog is cuddle bug. Several times a night, and every morning, the chonk will come on the bed and flomp on us – sometimes just to check in, most often he’ll stay for a while until we either push him off or he goes on his own. Morning cuddles are a bit different though. He knows we’re awake so he’ll come on the bed, flomp, and sigh contently. Big sighs. Then he’ll start snoring.

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This is the story of shockingly poor customer service, and general corporate shadiness

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On Oct 27, we bought Katy a new mobile phone from FNAC (Google pixel 7). The phone was listed as a destocking offer and was 50% off. We bought it, paid by credit card, got an order confirmation and waited for it to be dispatched. We got a notice from the Poste that the package was on its way and scheduled to be delivered on Nov 2.

On Nov 2, I check the Poste tracking website and see that the phone was delivered. I let Katy know, as she was out working, and when she comes back home, no phone. I check the Poste website again and see that it’s been delivered, but to the wrong address. I try and call FNAC but the Swiss service center is closed for the day and I have to wait until the following morning to call. A shit night is had by all.

The next morning, I call FNAC and get a nasty surprise. They “realized” that the phone price was a “technical error” on the website and arranged with the Poste to intercept the delivery. The phone support people can give me a refund, but I need to take it up with the reclamation department to “see” if anything else can be possible. The phone support can’t do anything but follow the script, and the reclamation people are only reachable by email. At every occasion, I inform them that I don’t want a refund, but instead want the phone at the price I purchased it.

Then I get an email saying they issued a refund.

According to Swiss e-commerce laws, once an offer has been made and accepted, once payment has been taken, then the transaction is valid and should be honored unless it’s a clearly recognizable error. Putting a phone on a destocking rebate when the newer model has just been released does NOT fall under this category.

However, FNAC, in their fuckery, have a clause in their general T&Cs that gives them carte blanche to freely cancel any order taken online. This cancellation gives you no recourse other than a reimbursement of the purchase price. I found this out while reading the T&Cs, which is something NO ONE does. So fuck you, come again.

What pisses me off the most is that they had a solid week to inform us that they’d cancelled the order, but didn’t. We had to find out the hard, stressful, painful way of calling customer service, thinking that the order had been misdelivered, when instead it had been re-routed to their main Swiss HQ. I did not need all the stress and aggro this caused.

So, in conclusion, FUCK YOU FNAC, I will actively never purchase anything from you again and ask everyone I know from doing the same.

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Musings on the dangers of “reply-all”

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Last week, the IT department switched our corporate Adobe Creative Cloud logins over to Active Directory (AD) Single Sign On (SSO). This is managed by an AD group, containing close to 4000 employees worldwide. During the switchover, one account seemed to develop a problem. The IT department opened a service ticket and in a move they’re probably regretting now, added the AD group email alias to the ticket. Every action on the ticket sends an email to 4000 people.

One person had the bright idea to reply-all asking to be removed from the email thread.

Then all hell broke loose.

People started replying-all with “me too” emails, asking to be removed from the list. (As a side note, being removed from the AD group will also immediately remove your access to the Adobe cloud, as you would no longer be in the authorized users list, so no one from IT is going to do this)

Then other people started replying-all, telling people to stop spamming the list with reply-all emails.

This would ebb and flow, until someone saw their mailbox full of spam and send an angry email about it (replying-all), which would kickstart the process all over again.

Then someone created a 2nd mail thread (consciously adding the AD group in CC) to complain about all the spam. This now meant that people were replying-all, complaining about 2 different mail threads and asking to be removed from the distribution list. Some people started commenting on the hilarity of all of this, again, generating more spam and adding more fuel to the fire. Others were writing about how to create automated filtering rules in Outlook.

Then things really got meta, when one person spammed the list with all of the emails that had been sent, as attachments. Remember, this is an email with several dozen attachments, going to 4000 people. I was openly weeping at the absurdity of all of this. It was beautiful.

That poor exchange server.

Now I am sad. It seems that saner minds have prevailed, and the emails have stopped. At last count, there were close to 100 emails send in this little saga. Zone AMS has just started working and AOA is going to sleep, so maybe there will be more fun tomorrow morning. We can only hope….

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