Zompist Bboard Again

Good luck, malloc!

Oh, and thank you for that background info, quinterbeck!

https://youtu.be/1o_pq_6VRIQ

Bluethia Review

(Standard disclaimer: I am just a cog in the machine of my workplace; nothing I say is representative of them in any official capacity and my views and judgments are my own.)

I want to continue to live and for that need money and health insurance, and I can’t keep coming to work feeling physical symptoms of rage, but I need all the help I can get. Does anyone here have any leads on possible employment in the Cleveland area and/or where reasonably I could pivot? If I could get out of this industry that’d be ideal but I’m lost with how to proceed.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Thu Mar 05, 2026 4:38 pm Does anyone here have any leads on possible employment in the Cleveland area and/or where reasonably I could pivot? If I could get out of this industry that’d be ideal but I’m lost with how to proceed.

What kinds of jobs are you looking for?

bradrn wrote: ↑Thu Mar 05, 2026 5:34 pmWhat kinds of jobs are you looking for?

Anything that has comparable pay/benefits/insurance and is a good fit for my skill set.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Thu Mar 05, 2026 5:44 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Thu Mar 05, 2026 5:34 pmWhat kinds of jobs are you looking for?

Anything that has comparable pay/benefits/insurance and is a good fit for my skill set.

Then what is your skill set, sorry?

bradrn wrote: ↑Thu Mar 05, 2026 5:46 pmThen what is your skill set, sorry?

My current job, I audit financial records looking for crime. If I can plausibly find a legal explanation, great. If not, then I report it to the government.

I have 9 years of experience, 5 and a half at a contractor firm and 3 and a half at the large regional/subnational financial institution I work at now; I used to have a CAMS¹ certification² and have a current TMIC³ (both from ACAMS⁴); and I have hands-on experience with correspondent banking and financial operators of many kinds, to include banks ranging from small institutions in a handful of states to multinational global powerhouses, fintechs, payment processors, and MSBs⁵.

I’ve kept up with my continuing education responsibilities over the years. I’ve been engaged in training employees, have had quality control/assurance experience, and been tapped to gauge and improve employee engagement. I provide assistance to my coworkers and teammates when needed. I have written and maintained templates and educational materials, I’ve improved workflow strategies, and in my current position I maintain a quick-reference library (admittedly informally), work on a pilot project that relates to improving the tools we deal with every day, and help my manager with the weekly case assignments. I have to use MS Office (particularly Word and Excel, also Teams if that counts too) heavily. I have to be able to accurately identify and analyze the activity/data. I necessarily have to write clearly and to the point (believe it or not).

Prior to this gig I was in a band that played out and made—admittedly little—money (I did get paid so I count it as professional experience; I had creative input, sometimes provided transportation, did web and social media management, and handled a lot of the production EDIT: physical pressings/orders and in respects the general aesthetic(s), not the audio production proper and publication of our music), volunteered for the A/V at one church and did web dev stuff (Wordpress, nothing fancy; I’d post the sermons and some announcements) for another, and tested prototype lawnmowers and related equipment as a temp (the site supervisor specifically complimented my feedback as particularly thorough and useful to the engineers).

1. Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist.
2. And it doesn’t seem to have done anything for me, tbh.
3. Transaction Monitoring Intermediate Certificate.
4. Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists.
5. Money service businesses.

Many years ago, my esophagus would periodically slam shut, leaving me unable to eat or drink for days at a time. Although my current problem isn't preventing me from swallowing, it does feel remarkably similar. Perhaps my earlier condition is returning.

malloc wrote: ↑Sat Mar 07, 2026 9:29 am Many years ago, my esophagus would periodically slam shut, leaving me unable to eat or drink for days at a time. Although my current problem isn't preventing me from swallowing, it does feel remarkably similar. Perhaps my earlier condition is returning.

How did you not die of dehydration? IV fluids?

That sounds awful. My sympathies.

malloc wrote: ↑Sat Mar 07, 2026 9:29 am Many years ago, my esophagus would periodically slam shut, leaving me unable to eat or drink for days at a time. Although my current problem isn't preventing me from swallowing, it does feel remarkably similar. Perhaps my earlier condition is returning.

That sounds no fun at all. Stomach pain doesn't sound too similar¹, but you should definitely make the medical appointments it seems you're already making.

¹ The body is really good at amplifying pain in places it associates with pain and other bad things, even if the actual stimulus isn't too bad. Sometimes this protects you from doing something stupid twice, sometimes it just causes misery.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Mar 07, 2026 10:27 amHow did you not die of dehydration? IV fluids?

Yes, there were several times when I had to spend the night in the ER until my esophagus relaxed enough to swallow.

If Elon Musk declared that SpaceX, Tesla, and X headquarters seceded from the US to form their own country, would they be the PayPal States?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoy6GL6SvKY

Pseudoglyphs Review

Aside from all the terrible news coming out of the US, there are rumors that China is about to invade Taiwan, presumably banking on the fact that the US is too preoccupied to defend it right now. We are dangerously close to WWIII, indeed closer than at any point since the previous world war. Looking at the issue more personally, an invasion of Taiwan would cost my job since a Taiwanese corporation owns the factory where I work.

malloc wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2026 9:07 pm ... there are rumors that China is about to invade Taiwan ...

last I checked, China has been on the verge of invading Taiwan ever since the two have been separate. I think that if they haven't started the invasion yet, they're likely still twiddling their thumbs.

... We are dangerously close to WWIII ...

while on this point I think I have to agree with you, I won't go into it so as to not feed into your negativity. someone seriously ought to book you a vacation to a Hawai'ian resort or something. there is, believe it or not, a bright side to everything. you just gotta to look at it.

Random sort of psychological or, if you will, philosophical question:

If there's a job that doesn't have any formal entrance requirements, and there's someone who's clearly not that good at that job, but they still insist on trying to work in it, and it seems like they have no intent to cheat anyone, they just very much overrate their own relevant skills - do they, then, technically count as a fraud?

/ˌnɐ.ˈɾɛn.dɚ.ˌduːd/ wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2026 10:24 pm someone seriously ought to book you a vacation to a Hawai'ian resort or something.

I would jokingly ask if I could go on the Hawai'ian vacation as well; I haven't been there in over three decades*.

*I was born in Hawai'i, but my family left when I was two, so I remember pretty much nothing of it.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2026 2:34 pm If there's a job that doesn't have any formal entrance requirements, and there's someone who's clearly not that good at that job, but they still insist on trying to work in it, and it seems like they have no intent to cheat anyone, they just very much overrate their own relevant skills - do they, then, technically count as a fraud?

"Fraud" has a legal sense, and also a more general sense of "impostor", as in "That guy says he can bend metal with his mind, but he's a fraud."

In the legal sense, you'd have to ask a lawyer, but I'd say it would require lying about checkable facts. E.g. if the dude is saying he went to Oxford and he didn't, or that he worked for Google and he didn't, those are lies and could be called fraud.

In the impostor sense, if he says he's a CPA but is actually a receptionist, you could say he's a fraud, though it sounds a little overblown if we're talking about office work. But if he says he's a CPA and he is a CPA, but does bad work, that's not fraud, just incompetence.

Exaggerating abilities is not, to my mind, fraud, because it's subjective and also near-universal— cf. the Dunning-Kruger effect.