Working Daze by John Zakour and Scott Roberts for November 25, 2024

I hated that at my work after the renovations. Every 15 minutes the lights went off when you didn’t move enough. And as I don’t really move a lot when I am typing on a computer, I had to start waving my arms every time. So I finally got them to install a light switch in my room. My coworkers didn’t have that problem as they worked in an open plan office and lots of people would pass the desks during the day, so the lights just stayed on.

Where I work it would take ten minutes for the computer to restart and load. Nothing would get done if they did that.

when the lights went out in a meeting for the slide show I would start to nod-off, my friend caught me onetime sleeping

Time to buy a UPS and a desk lamp.

Hackenschmidt nodded. “This is why Accountants of Fortune™ always carry a supply of candles with them.” His colleague, Yakamoto, agreed. “And not the scented kind…usually.”

Good old Ed, my hero

“Executive VP” (a.k.a. owner’s daughter) got this same idea, but instead of spending money to install sensor-controlled lights she just flipped off circuit breakers… she did not know what those circuit breakers controlled…

We had equipment that was supposed to run continuously, else materials would get ruined and also that equipment took hours to calibrate and get operating once they were turned on. She flipped the breakers for them after lunch one day… stopped production dead in its tracks… we all went home for a paid half day off because they wouldn’t be able to get the mess cleaned up and the machinery reset until the next day.

But officially it was engineering’s fault that our system was vulnerable to that… despite the locked circuit breaker panel (which she had gotten the key to)…

I’m ancient, that would drive me bananas.

in South Africa it’s called “load shedding”