The Venting Thread

[poiuy]

Now experiencing daily trouble with what appears to be plantar fasciitis in my right foot.  I can still walk or ride a bicycle for hours, but when I stand up after sitting at my desk for a good while I find myself limping for a bit before the foot feels okay to go again.  I've tried different shoes.  What seems to help best is slipping out of my shoes as much as possible while at work.

I've also just begun wearing a mouth guard that I got from the dentist to try to keep me from grinding my teeth all night long.  Last night I slept fine with it.  I hope it helps with the jaw trouble.  They've been offering to make a mouth appliance for me for years.  I finally decided that the jaw trouble was serious enough to try it.

I think you are me. 

I have had the same foot trouble. It gave me trouble for several months and still flares up occasionally.  One suggestion I benefited from is to roll something like a tennis ball or golf ball or pingpong ball, heck even a dog toy, under your foot a few times a day. I found this soothing and helpful and pleasant to do.  If you can consult a physical therapist, that might be very helpful too. There is a technique called myofascial release massage that you may find efficacious.

I also had great TMJ pain, life is stressful and I was grinding my teeth day and night. The guard is annoying to wear, but it has cured the pain and staved off surgery for the foreseeable future.  I had to get a custom-made guard that was $$$ especially in comparison to the drugstore ones. I wore it every night for about a year and now I am down to 2 or 3 times a week.  That seems enough for maintenance. I am glad this device exists.

[Langue_doc]

For foot troubles upthread, I second the suggestions to see a podiatrist and then get physical therapy. A good therapist should be able to tailor exercises that would help with your foot problems.

My vents: (1) While sitting in the subway the other day, I noticed that my knees were sopping wet. It turned out that the water that was in the water bottle was now in my backpack, and had thoroughly soaked a 30-page pdf. I got paper towels from the restroom in the doctor's office, but had to remember not to place the backpack on my knees during the subway rides and also while in the waiting room. (2) I had a bill for the CPAP supplies which was surprising because the insurance has covered all related supplies for more than a decade. The insurance company advised me that they had paid the supplier and that the supplier should be contacting the insurance carrier and not me. I still had to argue with the supplier, tell them that I would be reporting them to the AG's office for fraud before I was connected with a supervisor. It turned out that they had the wrong insurance information. The supervisor, unlike the representative I talked to twice, was quite apologetic, but I had to spend a good half hour talking with the supplier twice, and the insurance provider in between. (3) My back and foot problems have been aggravated, but the physical therapists are fully booked, so the earliest appointment they have is on next Friday.

[ergative]

(2) I had a bill for the CPAP supplies which was surprising because the insurance has covered all related supplies for more than a decade. The insurance company advised me that they had paid the supplier and that the supplier should be contacting the insurance carrier and not me. I still had to argue with the supplier, tell them that I would be reporting them to the AG's office for fraud before I was connected with a supervisor. It turned out that they had the wrong insurance information. The supervisor, unlike the representative I talked to twice, was quite apologetic, but I had to spend a good half hour talking with the supplier twice, and the insurance provider in between.

Something like this happened to my mother. (Warning: very very fuzzy details follow) Something about the supplier of CPAP filters switching, but the old supplier was still billing her for replacement filters and her insurance would only pay for the new supplier's filters. She tried to cancel the old supplier subscription, but they wouldn't let her, so she just refused to pay. They sent her to collections. I expressed concern about her credit rating, and she said that she owned her house, didn't need any more credit cards than the ones she already had, and didn't expect to need to apply for any line of credit ever again in her lifetime, so she was done worrying about it.

[clean]

Early Saturday I sent an announcement that the grades were posted and that if anyone had a failing average on the 4 quizzes taken so far and a failing grade on the homework, that they should plan to come to my office so that we could discuss how to improve their grades before the complexity of the course increased and they found themselves far behind. 


Shortly after a student emails, "Hi professor Clean, can you explain why I got a 0 on the Online (TVM) Quiz ? "

I replied , "Please plan to come to my office on Monday between 2 and 330 or after class on Monday to discuss how you missed every question on that quiz, and why your scores on MindTap are below 60.
Dr. Clean"

EVERY QUESTION! 

This is Intermediate Finance, but the questions are right out of the first/core finance class that all of them have already had. 


Sometimes I wonder why I am still in this business, and how much longer I can make it. 

[Parasaurolophus]

Speaking of finance, the former finance critic and crypto-loon-in-chief won the leadership race and is now head of the Conservative Party (with 68% of the vote on the first ballot!).

So that sucks. Told you so, marshwiggle. I just hope you're right and that he's such a loon that everyone else country-wide decides he's unelectable. But I doubt it. Ugh.

[marshwiggle]

Speaking of finance, the former finance critic and crypto-loon-in-chief won the leadership race and is now head of the Conservative Party (with 68% of the vote on the first ballot!).

So that sucks. Told you so, marshwiggle. I just hope you're right and that he's such a loon that everyone else country-wide decides he's unelectable. But I doubt it. Ugh.

Best gift Trudeau got before the next election. It'll be interesting to see how PP and Mad Max try to compete for the same fringe.

[clean]

Not to throw cold water on your hopes for a better government, but sometimes people (Im one!) vote Against someone rather than For someone.... So IF plenty of people are fed up with the current one, they may vote against him/her and be stuck with the next idiot. 

[Langue_doc]

Pharmacy and bank branches keep closing, causing much inconvenience. Last Thursday, I picked up my prescription from the drugstore. Parking in this area is quite difficult, so I had to get there about half an hour before the start of street cleaning which would get me a parking spot, give me enough time to cross a couple of busy streets, get the prescription, and get back before having to move the car. Yesterday, at the doctor's office when asked to update the pharmacy name and address, I discovered that the drugstore was "temporarily closed". The pharmacy I used to go to earlier, although a few miles away, had a parking lot, but closed and is now a liquor store. My bank, which used to have a branch at this location, also closed earlier this year. This was the last of about three branches to close in our area, so now I have to go to another borough for banking because of the parking problems.

ETA: woke up to see a tornado alert on my phone.

[marshwiggle]

Not to throw cold water on your hopes for a better government, but sometimes people (Im one!) vote Against someone rather than For someone.... So IF plenty of people are fed up with the current one, they may vote against him/her and be stuck with the next idiot.

Voting against is pretty common. And probably what's virtually universal is voting for the lesser of 2 (or more) evils. I've certainly never had a perfect candidate to vote for in my entire adult life.

[AmLitHist]

From TPTB today:

Professional Development Day - Fall 2022 - Full-Time Staff and Faculty - Tuesday, October 4, 8:30am.- 4:30pm. All virtual sessions.  All full-time employees will be asked to* spend Professional Development Day at one of the main campus locations.

So, not only do I lose a day of teaching for what are historically useless meetings, but I have to come to campus to watch them on my computer?  Um....no.

*In local parlance, "asked to" is read, "REQUIRED, or else have a damned good excuse and burn a sick day if you don't do it." I'll burn the sick day, but my excuse is my own and won't be shared, because they won't like it.

[downer]

From TPTB today:

Professional Development Day - Fall 2022 - Full-Time Staff and Faculty - Tuesday, October 4, 8:30am.- 4:30pm. All virtual sessions.  All full-time employees will be asked to* spend Professional Development Day at one of the main campus locations.

So, not only do I lose a day of teaching for what are historically useless meetings, but I have to come to campus to watch them on my computer?  Um....no.

*In local parlance, "asked to" is read, "REQUIRED, or else have a damned good excuse and burn a sick day if you don't do it." I'll burn the sick day, but my excuse is my own and won't be shared, because they won't like it.

Are you meant to be in your office? How would they know where you are? Is security going around and taking names?

[clean]

Are you meant to be in your office? How would they know where you are? Is security going around and taking names?

They dont need security to do it!  We had our own 3 days of 'required (useless, time sucking) meetings' in the days before school started.  The administration may or may not have kept attendance, but by God, the Faculty did!!   Where are X? Y? and Z??? 
And take a sick day??
Bullshit!  DOCK THEIR PAY is the refrain from faculty!  we have tons of sick days. They mean nothing!  Hell, if you are REALLY sick, you can not even take them!  After you take a minimum number in a semester, they ship you to disability! 
Dock their Pay!  THEN see who misses stupid meetings!  And THEN when we start complaining about the STUPID meetings, we hang the admincritter that called it! 
IF you call a meeting, and require attendance, it better BY GOD be damned important! 

(Fortunately, this is the Venting Thread!)

[AmLitHist]

Deans (and their minions) take attendance for such events here. I missed a division midterm "pizza party" (what, are we in junior high?) noon meeting a couple of semesters ago, and I got a nasty email from the dean's secretary before 1:30 that day, asking if I had filled out my medical leave paperwork. (Uh, yeah, I sent it to you two weeks ahead of the meeting. Pull your head out of your backside and do your job, instead of hassling me.)

In other news, I went to a virtual meeting on sabbaticals yesterday; they've been reinstated after having been shut down for 8 years due to budget concerns. Having seen or heard nothing except that sabbaticals have returned (and that, only a short bullet point during August's service week), I waited til the end of the presentation and then asked what the schedule is for submission of proposals, reviews, and such. Final applications are due 10/3--two and a half weeks from now.  A heads-up would have been damned nice.  I'm going to put something together quickly and hope it gets approved because everyone else is similarly caught off-guard.  Still. . . it's going to be a cluster---.  Most of the questions yesterday were answered with, "I don't know," or, "I think they used to do it this way," largely because NONE of these admins running the show were in their current lofty positions the last time there were sabbaticals--and at least half of them weren't even working here back then.

There's a ton of institutional memory among the faculty, but virtually none among admin.

[mamselle]

Although it shouldn't be so rushed, I hope you can enjoy the sabbatical imagining that will go with the application.

Glad you have the opportunity at last.

M.

[apl68]

I don't envy the admins.  They're placing themselves in a no-win situation.  Eight years' worth of pent-up demand for sabbaticals is going to be dropped on them all at once because of this, and no matter which proposals they grant and how they make their decisions, all the disappointed applicants will come away furiously convinced that the admins' bungling did them out of what was rightfully theirs.  If they'd handled things better, at least some of the disappointment might go down easier.