Just saw this other article about the UK arresting two alleged spies for China. Wonder if the German and UK investigations were a joint op. And if we'll soon hear about other countries arrests of others for working with Chinese intelligence.
JCPhoenix
While I have work friends, and we do go out and drink, it's almost always within or adjacent to the context of a work event. Like maybe we're doing a co-workers happy hour. Or we had some work function that stretched into the evening, so we'll go out for dinner and drinks together afterwards. There's definitely been a few times where we were drinking for like 8hrs after a late lunch! But it's very rare for me to hang out with them outside of that. Like I can count on one hand the times I met up with co-workers on like a weekend just to head to a bar.
As far as topics, they're still friends, so we talk about all sorts of stuff. But there's definitely more of a focus on things happening at work and less about our private lives, especially spouses/SOs. My current "work best friend" will sometimes call me afterhours and we'll chat and vent about stress at work and stuff, and even some of our stresses at home/personal lives, but the latter tends to be more surface level. With my non-work friends, we'd certainly get deeper into those topics if desired.
It comes down to professionalism. That's really the "firewall" between my work friends and non-work friends. Yes my work friends and I can have fun, joke around, get a little loose when drinking, share deeper stuff about ourselves, but we never want to cross that line. Sometimes it's thin, and sometimes it's even a little blurry or dotted. But we all still strive to never (or very, very, very rarely) cross it.
NO MOM NOOOO
Yeah it was waaaaay earlier, which I found out too when I was writing my comment. But I did start working in the early/mid 2000s, when I was 16. Even in 2000s, it was still typical to go to the public library and grab tax forms. Or print them out from the IRS website.
I bought a few boxes of checks when I started working. I still have most of them.
In the first several years of working, I mailed in paper income tax returns. The govt would even send the blank forms out to everyone via postal mail. I think paper submissions were the norm, though electronic filing certainly existed.
I went from non-profit to quasi-governmental (which is still non-profit), to for-profit, and then back to (my original) non-profit. In like a span of 2yrs. In total, I've been in non-profit for like...18-19yrs now?
Like someone else said, there's no money in non-profit. I'm a one-man IT department for a company of like 15. Along with doing other vaguely-IT or outright non-IT stuff. I get paid $65k (I am in the LCOL US Midwest).
This job, compared to my brief 18mo experience in for-profit, is a lot more relaxing and chill. I wasn't overworked at my for-profit job, but I definitely got frustrated with the profit motive being the most important thing. Whereas in a non-profit, quality of service is more important. Sure, any business -- for-profit or non-profit -- needs revenue in order to grow, but revenue generation is not the same as a profit motive.
However...Do be aware that not everything is better in non-profit. Some of my past coworkers left our non-profit to go to for-profits...and it got way easier for them. I don't know if that's something specific to where I work where some people kill themselves for this job, or if all non-profits are this way. Perhaps that's just a job to job thing, regardless of non- or for-profit.
I think taking the time in the morning to enjoy myself. I WFH these days so it's a easier (yet sometimes harder) to do that, but when I was commuting, I'd wake up early enough to get ready of course, but also take sometime to have a cup of coffee and read some news and such. Maybe even have a breakfast sandwich or something. Because for many years, I did the whole wake up the last minute, get ready, and get out the door ASAP thing. I always felt like I was in a panic.
I can't say it led me to be more productive or whatever. But it just felt nicer. To not be so rushed. And that's worth something.
Mainly playing Rimworld, FF7 Rebirth, and a little bit of the Ace Attorney Apollo Justice Trilogy. Also finished the visual Coffee Talk last night.
Do you have a lot of devices that are using WiFi 7? I think I only have two devices, my iPhone and MBP, that use WiFi 6. Everything else is a mix of 5 or 4, and even a couple IoT devices that are still using 802.11G!
Ha, perhaps I'm a bad influence as well! I'm definitely like you most of the time. I'm usually the guy in my office who's like, "People, relax; nothing we're doing here is life or death!" I'm constantly telling my co-workers to just breathe and slow down a bit (read: a lot).
And I've definitely had a few (past) co-workers consider me the "lazy one" just because I'm not putting in 80hrs a week, crying in the office due to the stress, even though I still get my shit done. Don't get me wrong; I've put in my 12hr days or working overnight or during the weekend to fix something. I work in IT, so sometimes I need everyone offline to do my stuff. But those are very, very rare.
But I still try to do at least some work each day. So it was unusual for two straight days to basically do nothing! You're right though; sometimes it just happens and you have to ride it out. Definitely much more productive this week already!
Hell yeah, good job!
Within the last year, I've definitely had some replies to old threads of mine. And if it's a question, I'll respond. And I think I did comment on another's thread at least once, confirming and thanking them for the solution. All of these were tech support related. I feel like that's one of the few topical areas where that's acceptable.