Posts by SnakesInTheTower

31

Has anyone 'sync'ed your TV with your PC and dropped cable?

by AK - Jeff in

there are tons of tv/movie programming - not to mention other more educational tools - on the web that could quickly replace the poor habit of channel surfing and potato-couching for family entertainment.. just wondering if anyone has done this?

how difficult to do?

has it worked out?.

SnakesInTheTower

I have AT&T for my landline...too paranoid to let AT&T switch me over to their VoIP phone service. I have AT&T Uverse instead of cable for my HD tv service and internet. Which is ironic since I am a contractor for the cable company. Why would I want that trouble in my personal life along with my work life?

I have a HD TV... but it is an older 32" tube not flat screen. Damn thing weighs 135 pounds. Almost as much as I weigh. Had to roll it into the house end over end.

I love the DVR..I can record up to 4 digital feeds (or 2 HD feeds) at the same time...25 hours of HD or 100 hours of regular digital on the DVR. I have channels I can customize for weather, sports, etc. right down to my zip code. I can set my DVR from anywhere I have access to the internet if I forget to set it at home. I dont have premium movie channels and dont use pay per view. I watch just enough on the non over the air channels to make it worth keeping. I almost never go to the movies and rarely rent them.

If you have good coverage, you can drop cable/telco internet and get a USB data modem through your cell company and plug it into your laptop or desktop for internet service.

For international long distance, I have a virtual calling card called MobileCaller.com. Call a local 800# and you can call most countries fairly cheap. I keep $10 or so loaded just in case..and it automatically reloads if I drop below that. Havent used it in a couple of years now, but the balance is still there.

Snakes ()

32

7 Year Old Finds Condom In "Happy Meal"

by minimus in

jw
friends

buried within the french fries was a condom at a swiss mcdonald's..

SnakesInTheTower

witness007:

Somewhere a guy is opening a new box of Condoms only to find........a toy car!!!!! DAMN SO FRUSTRATING

OMGFSM...I almost spewed tea on my screen...best line in awhile.

Snakes ()

71

A Man Flirted With Me ...

by snowbird in

... at the laundromat on sunday.. it was strange and exhilirating at the same time!.

i must get out more!.

tee hee hee.. sylvia.

SnakesInTheTower

ATJ:

Don't make me come over there dude.....

Jackie said about the same just now on IM.....she is always threatening to set me up with complete strangers at the bakery... I figure I better do it or she will....

I posted a new thread to quit hijacking snowbird's.....

Must be something about laundromats I put it in the private section...

Snakes ()

71

A Man Flirted With Me ...

by snowbird in

... at the laundromat on sunday.. it was strange and exhilirating at the same time!.

i must get out more!.

tee hee hee.. sylvia.

SnakesInTheTower

lol... it was sarcasm.. I only posted here 'cause Snowbird mentioned flirting in a laundromat.. I'll go start my own thread..lol

Snakes ()

71

A Man Flirted With Me ...

by snowbird in

... at the laundromat on sunday.. it was strange and exhilirating at the same time!.

i must get out more!.

tee hee hee.. sylvia.

SnakesInTheTower

I was at the laundromat yesterday... ran into someone I usually see at her workplace...

..she gave me her cell and home numbers...

...even was ok for a lunch/dinner date... date? huh...

...a bit unexpected....

..wonder what I should do about that?

Snakes ()

10

Need help learning how to be better organized in an office and how to handle office politics

by Elsewhere in

jw
friends

i'm starting to take on more and more responsibilities at work, which i'm happy about, however i keep finding myself bumping into problems where it is obvious i *should* have handled something one way as opposed to another... or i should have interacted with another group one way instead of another.. does anyone know of any "self help" books that i could read to learn about such things?.

to give some context, i work in one of those massive multinational corporations that most people have never heard of.

because of the scale of the business it tends to be a very formalized environment.

SnakesInTheTower

I suck at office politics.

I sucked at congregation politics.

Best I stay out of management.

One tip: When writing emails, let it sit for an hour, re-read, edit, sit another half hour...then hit send...I lost a good job because of the "tone" of an email....(in reality I didnt play well with others even though I was outstanding in my job and saved the company tons of money on billing issues.)

Snakes ()

34

$6,600 Expenses For a One-Day Assembly At a Fully-Paid-Up Hall? WTF!

by Room 215 in

the wife just got back from a one-day special circuit meeting (or whatever they call it) at the regional assembly hall.

it's got a capacity of about 1,200, fully paid for, staffed by volunteers and in use for less than eight hours.

then the guy making the announcement tells the crowd that the one-day expenses for the gig was about $6,600 (?!!!)...

SnakesInTheTower

The assembly hall in St. Louis is not used 52 weekends a year. I know that from mid Nov to 2nd week of January it is not used for much. Over the summer, from mid-May to Sept 1 it is also not usually used except for a pioneer school and the Korean district assembly.

Other assembly halls, such as West Palm Beach Florida, are used almost every week except for 3-4 weeks to do major maintenance..otherwise it is is used for circuit assemblies, special assembly days, AND district conventions.

To the expenses...most has been covered. In Society owned facilities, the previous years expenses are totaled, an inflation percentage is factored in. That total is divided by the number of publishers in all of the congregations using the facility. That is where the "rent" for using the assembly hall comes from. And those expenses are not just for utilities...a lot of money goes into the upkeep of those facilities... I have seen the receipts myself for St. Louis..and that is an old facility. So those amounts are usually fairly reasonable for a commercial facility..and without the setup and take down hassle of using an outside facility. The problem of course is the "business meeting" where the other "resolutions" for donations are made. That last bit is what bugs me...the forced donations to the Society... the rank and file don't get a vote..and the elders better not buck the decisions of the assembly overseer and the CO/DO.

I presume that the publisher count is all publishers not just baptized. So even if it is $5-6 per publisher, do you think the 5 year olds or the 90 year old pensioners are donating their portion?

I just don't like the way the whole thing is presented. And of course the accounts are read before all the funds are brought in...if they waited until the last minute and announced a deficit (albeit smaller) they wouldn't get so many donations.

Snakes ()

2

Nowhere to Hide

by cameo-d in

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48rdvbr8y-q&nr=1.

.

SnakesInTheTower

oh for goodness sake... if we would have had GPS back in 2000 when I was a Census taker, it would have made my job so much easier.

Right now the Census Bureau is doing Address location and verification in preparation for the 2010 Census. On the clip someone mentioned someone without an address "up in the mountains"... how else are census people going to find them to count.

As I was listening, the host said "if they want to save money, they could have brought the survey when they were doing the GPS"...this shows how uneducated and uninformed she is. By law, the diennial (10 year) census must be done on April 1. Now not every house is hit on April 1, but the survey forms ask questions based on what was true ON April 1. So no, they couldn't have brought the survey this trip. The Census does other surveys all the time that are not the offical constitutional count...

Besides, if the government wants to find you, they don't need a damn Census temp to locate you. They already know everything they want about you.

Sometimes conspiracy theory goes too far.

Snakes ()

34

My JW Life... (LONG)

by silent in

jw
friends

i never, ever thought i would ever be posting on a board such as this but here i am.

i've been reading the boards for several months and despite my initial conscience twinges, i couldn't help but follow a logical thought process on many issues that were causing me grief.

over this past week, due to the things i've read on here, i've had a massive cloud lift from me and i'm starting to feel joy and love in my heart that i've *never* felt before.

SnakesInTheTower

marked for reading later...... oh...WELCOME SILENT...

Snakes ()

4

PTs.......How da pick em' Boss?

by yknot in

so i am sitting here preparing for tomorrow's meeting.....and i have a question?.

who and how are the pts decided upon?.

do you boys just draw numbers out of a hat?

SnakesInTheTower

I presume PT stands for Public Talk not Public Toilet....which is really what it is.

Anyway..there are many many ways that PT's are chosen. It is usually cooincidence if the PT theme and the WT theme match, unless a brother is really, really behind on scheduling. Scheduling usually is done six months out...some go as far as a year out and leave a few holes to rearrange for CO visits, assemblies, etc, where the dates are not known.

As to how it is scheduled...Society does not determine PT schedule other than Special Talk (which then goes into the PT rotation....and are often recycled CO talks from previous years).

Although some BOE's do sit down quarterly and talk about needs, it is usually left up to the PO (aka COBOE) to schedule or the seperate talk coordinator if the PO has delegated that responsibility. If an elder is the Talk Coordinator, he does what he wants. If an MS is the coordinator, the PO will often give direction on what talks to get.

In reality, what subject you get for a talk is determined by which congos you can switch with and what talks those brothers have. You may want a certain talk, but if the only brother to give it is boring as hell, you have to avoid choosing a talk that he has. Usually someone in the circuit has published a list of all the elders and MS and the talk outlines they have. If you live in an area like I did, I had access to about 5 circuits and 100 congregations within a 2 hour radius.

I kept a list of brothers the congo really enjoyed and the ones they did not. If I could avoid the latter I did. If a brother who gave bad talks was also the PO and/or talk coordinator, it was harder to avoid getting them... but I could almost always manipulate the schedule to not be forced into that situation... the talks were boring enough why get a bad speaker on top of it? and that was when talks were 45 minutes instead of 30. If I was forced into scheduling a bad/boring speaker, I tried to schedule myself out that Sunday (I know..bad.......self preservation....LOL).

Snakes ()