60+ year old thread.

Hahahaha wow. Thanks for the laugh!!

Sharp - nothing gets by the 60+ crowd!

 

Well, the last two weeks have been interesting from a job perspective.

Over the last seven and a half years I've been developing Conversational AI installations for various companies using (primarily) Google products. Two weeks ago one of my Google contacts asked me for my personal email address, and a week ago yesterday I received an "Invitation to apply" for a job; said job has a title which is nearly a paragraph in and of itself. Given the company I've worked for over the last four years was absorbed into its parent corporation earlier this year, and given said parent company is Indian and treats us like a bunch of toddlers, my desire to continue working for them is, ummm, not terribly enthusiastic.

The invitation said I had four weeks to apply, so Tuesday and Wednesday I started cleaning up my resume with the thought of finishing it last weekend and submitting it sometime this week. Yeah, about that. My contact texted me on Wednesday evening at about 10:30 and asked why I hadn't applied yet, the HR recruiter was pushing to get me in the queue. I told him my resume was more or less complete, but far from polished and he told me to submit it anyway. Thursday around noon the HR recruiter reached out to me, asked me to complete a few online hiring assessments (which were supposed to take up to a week for review); she emailed me about 20 minutes later to set up the "Screening Interview". That happened yesterday.

Long story short, I apparently screened well; my main contact called me last night and said she called him immediately after my interview and told him she loved me for the new position. He went on to tell me she'd previously screened over thirty applicants and not one was progressed on for actual job interviews. So, now I need to start prepping for a series of between three and five interviews over the next month, and if the stars align, I'll be working for Google by mid-June (I'll be 68 by then). Funny comment; folks who work for Google call themselves "Googlers", but they have a rather sizeable population of folks over 60 (many thousands just here in the U.S.), and those of a certain age are referred to as "Grayglers".

 

Good morning... April Fool's Day... but seriously, good morning!

 

It was 12 years ago today I submitted my letter of retirement/resignation. I started the letter saying, this is not an April fools joke. I gave them 6 months notice to give the company time to find someone to take over my position. 6 months later I turned in my laptop, corporate credit cards and company id badge. Left the next day on a 8 day cruise.
The company begged me to come back. Offered me a huge $$$ 6 month contract to return as a consultant. Told them to F off and never looked back. One of the best decisions I ever made. I worked my whole life and liked my job. But the pressures and
Responsibilities were getting unmanageable. The first week my wife noticed a positive change in my mood and attitude which has carried through to today. Every day is Saturday. Happy Saturday all.

 

I took a job where they said “we work hard and we play hard.”

It became evident that I was to work hard and they were to play hard.

I handed in my resignation.

When it came time to resign, I was told that even though they received my letter of resignation, HR had not been notified appropriately so therefore I still owe them another 90 days.

I told them there’s evidence that they received my letter of resignation, they argued since I didn’t receive confirmation from HR I would be in violation of my contract and they could sue me for lost profits.

I remember walking out that door and having the director chase me into the parking lot telling me that he can give me a $100,000 raise on the spot and I told him there is literally no amount of money that would make me want to take his abusive bullshit.

The dude literally planted his fat ass behind my 4runner and tried to keep me from leaving.

 

18 weeks to go .........

 

cheers to everyday is Saturday

 

I really liked the KZ900 and made quite a few suspension mods. The bike was really easy to work on and to tune up. The DC area is not a motorcycle friendly area.

I hope the stars align for you.

Good morning. There really needs to be a Love button along with the Like button.

I have an eight week check up with the surgeons office today. The PT side of the practice is happy with my progress so I hope he is also happy. We have seven questions to ask about. Should be a productive visit, hope he releases me to drive. Probably not ready for a clutch but the Avalon is an auto transmission.

 

Morning 60+

 

Good morning, all. Glad to be... period. New hearing aids arrived yesterday, first replacement pair I've needed. So, they last about a year. I just buy the cheapo ones. They seem to work ok. I bought the same basic pair, so not anything new to learn. They work ok. Wish I didn't need them, but I do. First pair lasted a year, so probably these will too. We'll see... or hear. Wife's grateful she doesn't have to yell to get my attention. Getting old sux, but glad to be here complaining.

 

Good morning all.

 

Morning everyone furnace not working ,3 year old unit, calling my HVAC guy ​

 

Wish that would happen to my neighbors’ ficus tree, they planted that POS tree right next to my garage wall.

 

Beavers earn their nickname

That tree fell where designed- oddly that part of the Nooksack offshoot already had (beaver) a dam just downstream. Ecologically good - but what a swampy mess away from the main flow off the north fork of the river. Good fishing in the river on the other side of the swamp, limited ability to get over there.

 

Good Morning

Nice weather this morning , outside right now enjoying my coffee and watching white tail deer grazing in the field behind my house

Currently 68° High 82° and Severe weather threat starts at 5pm today

 

What a week!

 

Pretty trees but roots all over the place.Ya I wouldn't plant one of those in my yard.

 

Wife’s idea. Don’t blame me!!

 

Hope it goes well for you if that's what you want.

I received an E-mail yesterday from Amazon and they asked me to use a pilot program to publish my work as an audio book. I have no idea how many others have been offered the chance. In any case the AI is pretty rudimentary. They offer a list of voices, male/female, some American English, Great Britain English, and Australian English accents. Other than that it shows a pronunciation modifier, a pause, and a way to slow or speed up the voice.
One of my characters is named Bass, which I pronounce bass like the fish. Even after using the pronunciation widget the name was pronounced bass like the fish, and also bass like a bass guitar. The control for slowing or speeding up the voice was either not working or the difference was so slight that it wasn't really noticeable.
And the thing is... the inflection that a bot voice has in reading text is for the birds. I noticed right away that the bot tends to make things up-beat using a higher toned inflection at the end of sentences... where a human voice would show more gravity if they understood the text and have a lower tone.
I went ahead and did one book just to see what happens.
I would really love to have a way to audio tape the books. But I think the author would need to read them the way they are meant to be read, using his/her own inflections and some sense of theater... and then be able to adjust the voice using an accent/volume/tone/gender options.
I guess we'll see what develops.

 

@Travlr, I've found the Google voices have progressed immensely over the last few years; if you'd like, PM me a paragraph and I'll run it through a few of Google's latest voices and let me know what you think.