The Vent and Rant Thread

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Can't remember everything in the entire thread about this stuff... Is that man someone you call "Uncle" (in my family it's normal for kids to just call distantly related family members 'aunt' and 'uncle'), or is he your father's or mother's brother, so a 'real' uncle?

If so, and he's trying to sell a house from under your father/mother, which he uses to run a business and provide for his family, it's hard for me to understand that a brother would try to do something like that. In my eyes, that's genuinely evil (and greedy).

===

Fortunately, my mother has a detailed will (drawn up last year), and my father basically has only two things: a house, and a bank account, and in his will, it's stated that they should be split up between me and my sister, with partners (if any) not getting a share, even if married in... uh...

I don't know the English word. In Dutch, it's called "gemeenschap van goederen", which means that you own everything your partner owns (including riches, debt, and inheritances). So if I inherit half my father's house, half of that would be property of my wife, if not married with marriage conditions, and my father's will prevents that.

I don't care for anything that is in my father's house. Apart from the couch, which might fetch €1000 if sold, there's nothing there of any value to me. My sister can have anything she wants.

Not sure the word, but in the US, that would just mean it would be split equally between my brother and I. The spouses just don't get anything but if we put the money in a joint account, the spouses could use it.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Not sure the word, but in the US, that would just mean it would be split equally between my brother and I. The spouses just don't get anything but if we put the money in a joint account, the spouses could use it.

With spouses/partners, it's community property.

Hitch

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Can't remember everything in the entire thread about this stuff... Is that man someone you call "Uncle" (in my family it's normal for kids to just call distantly related family members 'aunt' and 'uncle'), or is he your father's or mother's brother, so a 'real' uncle?

If so, and he's trying to sell a house from under your father/mother, which they use to run a business and provide for the family, it's hard for me to understand that a brother would try to do something like that. In my eyes, that's genuinely evil (and greedy).

He is my father's brother.

What it boils down to is that he thinks his parents should have made sure he had better opportunities in life and they should have been rich. He finds my grandfather an oaf and my grandmother should have done more cultural things with him. Despite owning the house and business my family wasn't rich. My great grandfather bought the building 100 years ago, he and his family lived downstairs behind the store, so he must have rented out the upstairs. My grandparents lived upstairs but during most of my father's youth several rooms were rented out to two elderly sisters.

My uncle also thinks my grandparents favoured my father over him. It's probable; from a young age my father wanted to take over the store and be an electrician. He helped out in the store from a young age. My uncle always thought the store was beneath him. Occasionally he showed an interest; I can remember he wanted to be a partner in the store (after my father paid of all the debts) and he had the idea to sell maintenance contracts to the elderly and then if only do the most basic of things. Schemes, fraudulent schemes. Something both my father and grand father resisted.

My father is also a stupid oaf. Except whenever my uncle moved and needed my father's help with DIY things and the moving. Then he would be nice for a while, until all the work was done.

After my grandfather's will was read my father knew there would be a battle with my uncle about the house. We hadn't expected it to start before my grandmother's death. Because of that my father only did the bear minimum of upkeep to the house. Since the battle started four years ago even less has done. So hopefully next year we can finally replace the sewer and get the front of the house painted.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I don't know the English word. In Dutch, it's called "gemeenschap van goederen", which means that you own everything your partner owns (including riches, debt, and inheritances). So if I inherit half my father's house, half of that would be property of my wife, if not married with marriage conditions, and my father's will prevents that.

I wonder if that is legal/possible at all. As far as I know, 'gemeenschap van goederen' applies to all and there are no exceptions possible at all.

[Cinisajoy]

IIRC: In the US, the spouse is not entitled to any part of an inheritance unless the receiver chooses to share it. Only to what is jointly theirs. It has been too many years since I dealt with that.
It is complicated.

[Hitch]

Spoiler:

Note: before I leap into this one, I do wish to point out that I actually like this client. They've been perfectly good clients, they pay, and unlike many, I don't want to kill them in their sleep, or anything like that.

So, Client X sends me a PDF, on September 4th, for a quote.

Lo...I'm surprised, when I view it, that it's an old-style PDF--you know, back when PDFs were effectively images, and not searchable. I'm more surprised when I look at its genesis (properties) and see that it's been made fairly recently--and I think, well...maybe they're doing this deliberately, to preclude theft. {shrug}.

I ask for a searchable, so that I can get the quote done. A few days later, another PDF shows up, and it's identical. Same damn thing. The name isn't even any different. Hoooookay.

Explanation #2, and request #2.

On the 15th, an .indd file (an InDesign File) shows up, improperly packaged, but, an indd file all the same.

I open it. And what to my wondering eyes should appear? The pages look like holy hell, and I'm wondering..."eh?" I zoom in, I stare, I squinch my little eyes...and I realize..."holy crap! These are IMAGES of pages, complete with running heads and page numbers, not TEXT."

I figure, well, this is what they have, and I issue a quote--to include scanning the PDF, OCR, double-human-proofing, one machine compare, and then, making the eBooks from the resulting Word file (that's created by AbbyyFineReader)...right?

Today, I get yet another file. This time, it's the .idml file. (For those of you--presumably, most--who have no clue what that is, the .idml file is like "compatibility mode" in Word--it's what you make, to give to someone from InDesign who has an older version of INDD than you do.) Now...I'm pretty sure, before I open it that naturally, it's not going to be one iota different, because...why the hell would it be? It's a compatibility thing, not some magic "real" book. The InDesigners tell the client's representative, poor b*tch, that "this is editable."

Spoiler:

The reason for this is, my quote "is more than we can afford." I'm 99.999% sure that they don't understand the WHY of the quote. I mean, they think that the .idml is editable, right?????

And, of course, is it? NO, IT IS NOT. It is the exact same damn thing that they've now sent me 3x, a book that's been made, mind-blowingly, by someone that didn't have access to the original layout files, and didn't want to spend the money for "real" digital files or the actual text, or whatever.

I finally made a video, showing how you can't search for text in the PDF. How the .idml is missing 115 links (the imaged pages), and how the so-called pages in the .indd are movable--you can make 'em whatever size you want, and lo...the text does NOT reflow. I explain that the pages are themselves, PDFs. (Yes, folks...115 PDF pages make up the layout pages of this InDesign file. One cropped page at a time.) I'm at wit's end, I really am. I don't know how to explain the problem, any more clearly and precisely than I already have.

Honestly...I can honestly say that I've never seen this before. I've seen people do things that boggled me; I've seen them take the audit trail PDF copy, from Abbyy, crop out some front pages, and use that to make a "new" print book with...but I've never seen anyone effectively rip the spine off a print book and slap the printed pages, in a LAYOUT PROGRAM. No wonder some of the damn pages are crooked!

I devoutly hope that somebody there finally GETS what I am saying. I even implored them to call my phone number--the InDesigner--so that I can understand how s/he thinks that this bloody thing is EDITABLE.

Spoiler:

Oh, and yes--I had to mock up a Word file today, to be a book "about Dogs," to explain, yet again, to a client, the problem of many-to-one (index entries to a single page or article/area/heading) in putting links in indices, for eBooks, when you take into consideration that at least 40% of all eReaders still do not have back buttons. I've explained it in print, 2x, and she still doesn't get the issue. She doesn't understand WHY there is a second link. I need a graphics program, where I can draw the flow, or...I dunno. I just don't know. For the love of heaven!

And it's only MONDAY.

Hitch

[CRussel]

Ah, Hitch. Welcome to my world! Yours is book production, mine is IT, but the (l)users? They're the same!

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

I wonder if that is legal/possible at all. As far as I know, 'gemeenschap van goederen' applies to all and there are no exceptions possible at all.

I don't know if it's possible now, but 25 years ago or so, it certainly was, or it wouldn't be in the will. It's probably a good time to talk to my father to see if I can get him to do a revision, now that it's still possible for him to do so.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well, the nadir cometh.

Today, on the KDP forums, a new-to-it publisher asked: "what's a paperback?"

I'm like...really? Is it really possible to believe that a human who INTENDS to be a published author, doesn't know what a frakking paperback is????

Does the poster know what a book is?
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Oh, GREAT. I already have the pestilences, you guys have read about our pestilential clients. All I need now to make my week complete is the guy on the pale horse.

If you can sic the guy on the pale horse on your problem children, it might well make your week complete.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

IIRC: In the US, the spouse is not entitled to any part of an inheritance unless the receiver chooses to share it. Only to what is jointly theirs. It has been too many years since I dealt with that.
It is complicated.

Quite complicated.

I ran across a case a while back where a couple got divorced. The divorce settlement as drawn up gave her the apartment they shared.

When it came up in court, the landlord got involved. He had rented the apartment to the husband before the couple had even met and later married. He said "It's not the divorce court's property to award. It's mine, I get to choose who I'll award a lease to, and I'm not renting to her."

I didn't hear what eventually happened, but rolled my eyes in wonder that it should have gotten to court at all. Whoever drew up the proposed settlement awarding property to the wife that the husband didn't own left a lot to be desired.
______
Dennis

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Ah, Hitch. Welcome to my world! Yours is book production, mine is IT, but the (l)users? They're the same!

I know. Charlie, are you sending your clients over here?

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Does the poster know what a book is?

I know, right? I do NOT GET IT. How can you even want to be an author, if you haven't read any bloody books? What's next? "What's a book?"

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

If you can sic the guy on the pale horse on your problem children, it might well make your week complete.
______
Dennis

Oh, you tease, you....


Hitch

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I know. Charlie, are you sending your clients over here?
Hitch

Nope. Mine aren't literate enough to actually read, much less write. Besides, 90% of my 'fix' is to just reboot their [explitive] computer. The other 10% involves removing the CRAP they've installed. (Which is, BTW, NOT ALLOWED on their corporate laptop, thank you. )

[wodin]

Originally Posted by CRussel

... The other 10% involves removing the CRAP they've installed. (Which is, BTW, NOT ALLOWED on their corporate laptop, thank you. )

Oh, that's easy in my shop, just re-image; no more crap.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Nope. Mine aren't literate enough to actually read, much less write. Besides, 90% of my 'fix' is to just reboot their [explitive] computer. The other 10% involves removing the CRAP they've installed. (Which is, BTW, NOT ALLOWED on their corporate laptop, thank you. )

In my last go around as a corporate IT guy, desktops all got a standard image with approved software. Users all got a power user profile that let them run software but not install stuff. If they needed something not in the standard image, their manager could send a request, and someone like me could log onto their machine with a domain admin account and install it for them.

Fine for desktops, but company laptops were another matter. There was serious discussion about a setup that would run a mandatory A/V scan every time one got hooked up to the corporate net. We'd had one too many problems with stuff picked up outside and infecting the local net.

I once burned the midnight oil helping to re-mediate an infection that had gotten onto the corporate network. It got in via a security hole that had been patched months previously, but we hadn't been enforcing critical updates, and the machine that was the vector hadn't been patched. The policy of not enforcing critical patches when they were issued got changed.

We later got acquired and merged, and got the budget for a company wide upgrade. Everyone got WinXP and the then current version of Office. I was all in favor. My world included Win98SE, WinNT workstation, Win2K, and WinXP, and I was delighted to get everyone on XP. (I was especially delighted to get the Win98SE box upgraded. The user needed access to my *nix boxes, but 98SE didn't support the authentication required by Samba to connect. And guess which machine had been the vector for the infection mentioned above?)

I'm patient to a fault, which was a virtue in user support, especially with less than bright remote users. The folks in the office I could just go visit and talk to face-to-face.
______
Dennis