I tried to find this once before but I'll give it one last try. I'm 99% sure it was on SOL. I read it about the time Service Society was posting but it may have been older. MC is leaving his corporate job. Quit, fired, retired? He's tired of being used, abused, and cheated. On exit he gives the boss, and possibly others, a kid's small pail full of sand and a toy hammer, signifying "Go pound sand". Ring any bells, anyone?
No.
You are thinking of "Ref. Code 21304" and there was no pail of sand or toy hammer in that. He simply announced that he was taking all of his vacation time and not coming back.
I know it wasn't Ref. Code 21304, in that one the MC is on medical leave then quits without returning, but corporate exit was a fairly common theme in his works - in Probes, for instance (on vacation, returns to a lockout - that he'd suspected may be coming - and very insensitive shutdown of his work site, a co-worker flips and starts shooting, while MC goes to collect lottery winnings). I can remember, a bit, the buckets of sand, I just can't bring to mind enough detail to hook out which story, but it was far enough back that it could have been an artie story.
I know it wasn't Ref. Code 21304, in that one the MC is on medical leave then quits without returning,
He returns from medical leave, his resignation takes place during a meeting where some grim no-tits MBA is dumping on a colleague - who retires on the spot - at which point the MC rips the MBA a new one and exits as well.
No matter, we are agreed that it is not that story, although it was even posted while Service Society was being posted (or just afterwards).
I seem to remember that Probes involved aliens who fixed the MC up physically.
Artie wrote so much but I don't think this one was from him.
Edit: and only one of his stories was ever posted here anyway.
Edit: and only one of his stories was ever posted here anyway.
Nah, there was at least User Centered Design and
Control Loop Stability, those were the stories I found here searching for non-stories (Microchip PIC and Control Loop Stability), in a couple of searches where I noticed the common website. A lot (I think most) of his stuff was here before he took it down (all at ASSTR, all-bar-one here).
However, I found the one I was half-remembering:
from his The Lump:
A meeting after lunch with some people from a product division our research group in Labs supports. They were grumbling that we hadn't been able to do the impossible quickly and cheaply enough. My boss reminded them we had given them a factor of 15 boost in performance over their nearest competitor. Yes, but it used some expensive parts. Yes, we were looking at cost reduction. If you want to do a full custom chip, we can drop the per-unit cost significantly, but with around $250k of NRE and a few months to produce and test it. One of their managers frowned and asked if I could do better. I told him I could have a kite for him Monday. Jerry, my boss's boss, was sipping coffee at the time. Coffee came out his nose, distracting the rest of the group. Guess he still had the kite Phil got him. My boss gave me a nasty look. I smiled.
I also reminded our colleagues that these estimates were just that, estimates, and they could probably improve them considerably if they got their purchasing people to arm-wrestle the chip house over NRE and schedules; that's what their people are really good at. We're good at research, and you folks are really good at production. We can optimize chip area and gate count; you guys work with us and the fab to optimize cost and time. That smoothed some feathers.
Afterwards on our way down the hall, Jerry came up and asked me quietly, "You weren't serious in there, were you?"
"Jerry, I like what I do -- that's what keeps me showing up." Besides, I was also contemplating little buckets of sand and small mallets, as in pound sand...
I decided to cut out a bit early Friday afternoon. I also decided to stop in at the mattress place. Maybe Rachel could shed some light on this crap.
...but I don't think it's the one the OP wants, as the MC is only thinking of the buckets; if a lumpy mattress and a body pillow ring any bells for the OP, it may be.
I don't think Artie ever had more than that one story here, if more of his stories were here then they were removed long (years) before the Great Purge of 2012.
His stories on Gina's site all survived that purge.
Lump was posted in June 2011, it has the "pound sand" element but I don't think the story was about leaving a job - even if retirement was mentioned.
Unfortunately, as a retiree on a fixed income, I'm not a Premium Subscriber and my "history" clears and resets every 24 hours.
My History goes back to summer 2014 and Service Society dates from 2011. Since I downloaded the story back when it completed, I must have had the Premier membership back then. This implies that the History function is from 2014.
My history goes back much farther than 2014.
The oldest entry with a date in my history is 2009-11-24, but there are 5 pages of results beyond that.
The oldest entry with a date in my history is 2009-11-24, but there are 5 pages of results beyond that.
Mine goes back to 2009-06-03 and that was before I had a premium membership.
@Sparky-1953: be sure to look at 'My Library, History', not the daily download history you get when you click on your username on the home page. I think you can see that without a premium membership.
my "history" clears and resets every 24 hours.
My brain also has that function, and it comes free!!!
I think I read a post that Premier history goes back a fixed number of entries, not a fixed time span.
I think I'm going to have to buy a month at some point just to re-read and save a number of favorites. Apeman, D A Porter, Celtic Cowboy, Colt 45, CM Six, LazLong, Warlord, and so many others.
My History contains 2120 stories.
"6633 The Blizzard Unca D 2008-12-07
j Most Amazing Story"
My earliest History story is number 6633 on page 67 of my History, dating back to 2008, December 7. (Pearl Harbor Day!)
While we are on the subject of My Library History -- is there a way to search it for a specific date or for text, such as a title or an author? Plodding through my history page by page is a pain, even if I can skip four or five pages at a time.
Appreciate any advice -- besides have patience and arrow away.
Appreciate any advice -- besides have patience and arrow away.
No way to search that I have found but you can adjust the page number in the URL. You will have to know what page you want so it's a bit useless but it makes finding the last page a little faster. If you enter a page number over the number of pages there are it just returns no results so you can skip to a lower number to find that last page.
Not really an answer, but:
If you adjust your account preferences to >10 stories per listing page, doesn't this reduce the number of pages to load?
I would expect (because of common code) that the 'selected page' button on the results page (in amongst the 'nearby pages' numbered buttons) has (or should have) an up-down spin arrow control which allows 1-stop access to an arbitrary page, and, since it will not spin up past the last page, simple determination of the number of pages. Click or click-hold the up or down arrow portion to set the displayed number to the desired value, then click away from the button e.g. on the page background just above it; this should take you to the page. I did report a bug on this about a month ago which affected a long list (the premier-only stories page with >100 pages), which Lazeez 'fixed' introducing another bug, also reported, which hasn't yet been fixed and completely hides these spin buttons, so they may not be shown properly at present.
Also, I'd suggest you request the search history as a feature; it's the sort of nice thing that improves the premier experience.
While we are on the subject of My Library History -- is there a way to search it for a specific date or for text, such as a title or an author?
Yes there is:
In the advanced search page, select whatever dates (or other criteria) you want, and in the 'Options' sections, click the 'Read:' menu and select 'Read Stories Only' and that would search through stories in your history.
Interesting, but would that filter by the date the story was posted/updated or the date that you read it?
Interesting, but would that filter by the date the story was posted/updated or the date that you read it?
Why not try it and find out?
Some of us already have.
:)
Why not try it and find out?
Because I have other things to do and Lazeez knows how he set it up.
Interesting, but would that filter by the date the story was posted/updated or the date that you read it?
Posted/Updated.
