I think Spectrum was at one time voted the most disliked company in the United States. Or maybe that was Comcast. Same barn though.
I worked telephone for a (dutch) cable companie once. It was the worst job I ever had. And I have a penchant for crappy jobs.
Having to be chipper and cheerful and emphatic to clients who are rightfully angry at not getting what they pay for, or worse, not quite rightfully angry but just dumb as a bag of hammers saps the spirit something fierce.
They compounded that with some truly draconic and big brother like computer-assisted management and that job was the worst thing ever. I rather earn my keep being some dudes punching bag.
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Some countries have compulsory military service.
I think we’d get more civility from compulsory retail and/or customer service employment for 2-3yrs.
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When I came out of the RAF in 1999, I found myself in ‘Civvie Street’ newly married and in need of a job. I was pretty tech savvy back then and somehow beat something close to 70 other applicants for a Tech Support job for a small software company that provided an accounting/procurement package for the Baking industry. It was a family run business, and the people there were great, but the job was so depressing. Every time the phone would ring you were dealing with an upset, angry person who was basically afraid of losing their job because the software had allowed them to Royally screw up the data. My job was to calm them down and hack in to the database to set things right using SQL.
It became soul destroying very quickly. I stuck it out 3 years before persuading my wife to take me to the US and what ended up being a much better career path.
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When you’re the only game in town, and you know it as well as your customers do, there’s no need to be nice, efficient, reliable, cost-effective, or deliver on promised services (see also: my comment in the multicrew thread about why I can’t fly RIO). I could rant about this for hours, but it’s still early, and I don’t need my blood pressure so high this early in the morning.
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Internet is back up. Apparently the top of the telephone pole about 100 yards from my house was fried.
I think the first thing I’ll do is set DCS World to offline mode. That will always be a puzzle to me.
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Nice. 
I’m planning on getting out tomorrow before the heat of the day gets going.
Your stripes must be coming along nicely now with all the good weather. 
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That’s the kind of commute I’d love to have!
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Yesterday I had an opportunity to do quite a cool site visit to the top of The Pacifica, which is a residential high rise tower under construction and which on completion will be the tallest residential building in NZ.
They are using “jump form” for the first time in NZ, which is basically a steel structure sitting on top of the already built floors that spans 4 floors in height and that gets jacked up as the building is built inside it - really cool stuff. They’ve built 27 of 56 floors so far.
I was well impressed - they are on time, no delays, the site doesn’t have any clutter/construction waste around whatsoever, you could just about eat off the floor. Probably the best run construction site I’ve ever seen.
There’s this ribbon design that wraps around the building - it’ll look quite cool when done:
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It’s not that extreme, but I am indeed easily identifiable as a cyclist just by the stripes. My hands are the most obvious. They’re really white compared to my arms xD
It’s a really nice commute. Especially the longer route on the western side of the Rhine.
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…actually, as viewed from the Northern Hemisphere it will be the deepest residential building in NZ…just say’n 
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Spend my day out hiking with the company I work for. Beautiful weather but of course the light was way too harsh for serious photography so I used the hike for some location scouting and I plan on returning for an early morning hike, hopefully when there’s mist and fog covering the woodland.
Hiking trail Galgenvenn in the border region of Germany and The Netherlands.
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Hey man, from your other pics i gather you operate somewhere downstream of the big Ruhrgebiet cities, right? If so, we live right close, and we should get together at the next airshow in our area, along with the other local mudspikers.
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One of those nights where you start the day in the daylight, fly all through the night, and get to come back home in the daylight again. I fell into bed in zombie mode mid-day today.
CLT - LUK - CAK - LUK - TEB - LUK - CLT
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… The things we do for love…
Your Ortho tiles look a bit bland…
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Sure, I am located near Duisburg in the western Ruhr-Area and Lower Rhine region