The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
I didn’t have the patience to deal with this BS today. We’ve been trying to get a manuscript published for the last year. It’s been in review for the last 6 months. When the editors ask you for something, it’s hop! hop! to it!! When we ask them something, it’s hurry up and wait. I called the journal’s editorial support staff on it this morning. The same person sent the same answer in two different emails.
…and then bring him home soon after
I tried to bring Byron to the office today. He passed the behavioral assessment without issue, but then the fun began when he saw Katy leave (without him) and refused to go back to the dog-friendly office we have to use (in the equivalent of the siberian gulag of campus).
After several strops, I got him back to the office, but then he went into full guard dog mode, where every door opening or voice he could hear bug not see made him woof and growl. I was slobd in the fog office, but the people on the other side of the wall were starting to grumble, so I cut the test short and went bzvk home to finish my day.
We’ll try again soon.
My plan is to either never retire, or find a nice sturdy cardboard box underneath an overpass.
Have you tried barking at it?
Just got up to get a coffee and my “helper” took over my spot…
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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….
Everyone back in the office for the 1st time since the end of June :)
The Nestlé wine club organised a 3-day wine tasting trip in Verona, in the Soave and Valpolicella region. We left early by train on Friday morning and came back late on Sunday night. It was a 3-day wine, food and sightseeing fest.
On Friday, we had lunch at Locanda ai Capitelli and visited the Pieropan vineyard. The food was excellent, the wine was OK, though the vineyard is beautiful. We had dinner at our Hotel, le Muse, and that was excellent. I have discovered the joys of risotto made with Amarone and proper eggplant parmigiana.
Travel
Locanda ai Capitelli
Pieropan
Saturday, we visited Tenute Ugolini, where we spent a relaxing 5h visiting the vineyards (gorgeous!) and having a wine pairing meal on a shady terrace overlooking the vines. The wines were already a notch above what we tasted on the previous day but, IMHO, a bit overpriced. The final tasting was at Azienda Farina, and that was the crown jewel of the visit. Their wines were superb, and we’re paired with some of the best cheese and charcuterie I’ve had in recent memory. We got to sign our names to a cask – they do that with some visitors. That night, we had a buffet dinner at the hotel, paired with some of the wines we’d bought previously.
Tenute Ugolini
Farina
Buffet at Le Muse
Sunday was a guided visit in Verona, very pretty town, with lunch (homemade tagliatelle with truffles and mushrooms) and gelato. We had a bit of free time to explore, then headed for the train station. I managed to buy some of the cheese we’d eaten the day before, a sharp cheese matured in Amarone. We had an impromptu apero on the train with the meat, bread and cheese I’d bought because the dining car ran out of food, but that was still a really good time. At one point, we were chatting about absinthe and counterfeit money with the train controller.
Verona
Train
By happy circumstance, the train was stopping in Morges so I had an easy way home. Finally got home around midnight, where I was greeted by a very happy Byron and a very tired Katy, so we all went to bed.