enthalpy

Apply for the job. Do not talk crap or get baited into badmouthing your current position during the interview process, that's a red flag for many potential employers and something that hiring managers will be attentive to regarding short tenure at a position.

Practice giving an answer about how the work was a good fit but the unpredictable schedule was not. You had moved for your partner and were happy to find quick employment, but you're looking for a position with a schedule that better matches your home life so you can make the most of your time (assuming that's true of this position, i.e. it has a stable schedule). You can absolutely say that you thought that this position would work great, but it turns out that you couldn't make the schedule work.

People change jobs for all sorts of reasons, especially if they involve relocating, just make sure that you navigate around potential concerns. One way to do this is to redirect questions about your current firm to describe your enthusiasm for the new position rather than focus on the fit/environment of the old. Don't dodge, per se, but the schedule deal should be sufficient to explain.

I think there's a lot of good advice in this thread. Here's what I would amplify and additionally recommend:

• Understand your financial situation completely and learn the cost of quitting. If you have savings, figure out with your partner how long you can reasonably go without a job. If you and your partner are at a point where you share finances, this is easier to do together. If you don't, figure out how you might be able to work this through and be explicit about financial expectations of one another if you quit. Money conflict with a partner is awful and terminal to many relationships. It's also a great thing to get into the habit of discussing to make future money talk easier.
• Short tenure at a job is not a big deal if it's not a great fit and you can talk about why/how you made your changes. Do not talk crap about your current boss in a job interview, be careful in talking about how your position was a bait and switch. Your tone on that type of item can get you immediately pulled from job contention. When you're interviewing, there's a lot you can say about how the job didn't fit compared to what you are looking to do in your career. You can carefully say that it didn't work out how you had expected or planned.
• 4 weeks is pretty short in the grand scheme of things, though it might not feel like it. Expect that you may be walked out the door the moment you quit. You should be able to negotiate a month start date, especially given the nature of your current position.
• Use NHS resources. Find a therapist who can help you build skills to help you keep ahead of this mentally. Consider a psychiatrist if you are referred to one. The process of making it through tough times is a skill, and it's hard, and mental health professionals are a great resource. Encourage your partner to do the same if they need to learn some tactics to keep supporting you and keeping on top of things for themselves. There is no failure in looking to gain mental health skills or support or medical help.

Wow, I read this as a reference to Skull and Crossbones, which was terrible but that we rented a whole lot. This one should definitely stay dead.

I think you should consider looking for an entry level IT support center job, preferably at a higher ed institution, preferably at an R1. Pick up a couple of certs that you can study for in your off time if they seem to show up in a lot of jobs that you see. Your experience as a teacher and as someone who has dealt with people in crisis will help come in handy and should help you see great customer sat numbers and move up quickly, which may mean moving out to another gig and then back into the university system if you like it. The service desk can (but is not always) a step into another area, and the market for service desk folks is exceptionally hot in a lot of larger cities right now and seeing a pay jump that it hasn't seen in 10 years or so according to the professional services firms that we've talked to.

It's also increasingly remote work, though you'll be paid more if you're willing to be on-prem. Higher ed benefits tend to be very good, especially if the org is attached to a university health system. You will be working for an organization that is presumably doing a lot of good, and you will be working for a stable organization if you land at either a land grant state school or a large private. Mid-tier private institutions are in a bit of a financial crisis now, as are state schools in the states that have recently defunded ed, but support experience at any higher ed school will help you get in the door at another.

I don't check this site much, but PM me with any questions and I will eventually see it. If you're willing to share your location, I may be able to point you to some local orgs to try.

edit: entry level where I'm at starts at about $48k/yr if you're an FTE, similar without benefits if you start with a firm. Contract to hire is not a bad idea for someone who has the patience/people experience that you have because that's the hardest part to learn and you'll pick up the technical stuff fast if you can follow processes.

Here’s a way to get a bunch of music-making resources for free right now.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/21195631/free-music-apps-plugins-sample-packs-fender-avid-moog-korg-roland-coronavirus

I don't understand why people are dicks. Regardless of the situation (and the past), Phil Fish had the opportunity to disagree in a respectful way. Instead, he told Beer to kill himself after being "masturbatory" in the whole "compare your life to mine" comment after railing against the exact same thing. That's 100% unacceptable. When you choose to be a public figure and choose to have a public persona, you have a responsibility to present yourself in a fashion that you know will be judged publicly in return. Regardless of whatever or whoever irks you, your reaction is how you're going to be judged, and Fish blew it. Good riddance.

@patrickklepek, your point was made with your bag comment alone. you're not phil fish and you're not beer. You can rest easy in that.

@wilyboy said:

Still need to run through this a second time if I get the time, but I thought that the wounded knee/boxer rebellion museum bits are pretty brilliant with knowledge of the ending.

@Nailbunny: @Nailbunny said:

The video game industry is not absolved of accepting responsibility. While the medium has diversified, you can't ignore the popularity of Cal of Duty and various other shooter games. The games industry shares equal responsibility in our culture of glorified guns and violence. We should not be afraid of some introspection as long its equally divided across our cultural influences.

I agree. The industry has made the decision, which I agree with, to sit at the table for this. Participating in these discussions and helping the issues be cast at the highest levels in a responsible, reasoned fashion is a way to legitimize the medium. Choosing not to act like the NRA is great, and if it turns out that the research to this date is borne out in the research done next, gaming will be quietly vindicated and continue to march into the mainstream. We have the supreme court ruling guaranteeing protection already. This is the next step.

@Tidel said:

@Stymie said:

I totally agree this statue was lame (but I wouldn't use the word "offensive"; you kind of have to be above things like this). However, I really, truly wish we could have these conversations without the constant tones of "the industry obviously only treats women like this."

How many men do any GB readers know with the super muscular, broad shoulder, 0% body fat, perfect-chizzled-chin look that virtually every male video game character has? Video games are suffering no shortage of manwhores.

The difference is, while the male form is often idealized, it is rarely objectified. It's an important distinction. When male characters are presented as solely a function of desire instead of active participants with agency, then you'd have a similar scenario. But that doesn't happen; and even if it did, it doesn't justify anything. The idea that 'men have it just as bad' doesn't excuse the fact that sexual objectification -- of anyone -- is problematic.

This statue represents the most base scenario of the objectification of women -- it's just a pair of clean, pert tits framed by the gory removal of all possible agency. It doesn't represent the entirety of women in games or gaming, but it exemplifies the persistent inequality in how gender and sex is represented, and to who, and why.

Just because you (or I) are not the 'idealized' man, that doesn't mean the idealized man is reductive of us or reflective of us; it represents a power fantasy. This statue also represents a power fantasy. That's the whole problem.

I think it's worth talking about. I think it's sad and telling that so many duders come out of the woodwork to 'be offended at your offense' and feel embattled.

No one should feel threatened by this discussion. Criticizing a tits-out statue is not defaming men, manliness or threatening any man's right to like tits. It's problematizing the persistent idea that women are frequently reduced to functions of the sexual gratification of men.

This is an excellent comment, and I'd like to add a couple of things that I think somewhat illustrate this point. First, as a man who has spent a lot of time in tropical locales in the last few years, I can state with some authority that this statue is not close to a representation of reality in terms of boobs in bikinis. This clear enhancement on the statue uncovers the odd fact that there is no reasonable male analogue that could be considered in comparison.

I would say that it is generally not reasonable to expect that there would be a version of this statue with a slightly covered penis with a portion of it showing. Or mostly-covered balls peeking out of the bottom of a speedo--in fact, that image seems patently ridiculous and I can't really think that it would ever be made or even considered. No real analogue of partially-covered man bits exists in regular form in art. Breasts uniquely skirt the line between completely uncovered, which in many places in the world is assessed to be too much for public display, and somewhat covered, which is this odd middle ground.

There are a lot of ways to try and escape talking about this, which aren't really valid. You can say things like "if it was a man, I wouldn't be offended" and "I don't know why this is a big deal" or "many women like looking at boobs as much as the next person" but all of those are missing the point in that they don't address the central issue that is felt by what looks like a fairly reasonable chunk of the population. Things like ethics and respect are not necessarily based on majority opinions. They're based on the understanding that respect and cooperation have intrinsic good.

Maybe this is because I've been watching a lot of Extra Credits lately, but a further concerning edge for me is the idea of what this does to the future of gaming escaping its current boundaries and becoming increasingly valid as a form of mass media/entertainment/possibly eventually art. As long as the community of gamers doesn't end up accepting a line of societal norms that approaches what exists in the real world, this won't happen. And things like this are steps that degrade the public perception of gaming in general, to everyone's detriment. As someone who loves games and wants everyone to understand and experience that joy, I think that this type of marketing that pigeonholes gamers to outside folks is seriously unfortunate.

@AiurFlux said:

@enthalpy said:

@AiurFlux said:

August 4th this happened, we hear about this on the 9th, and even then it still isn't listed on Blizzards main site page. Fucking disgusting. I know I should blame the hackers but when a company charges for a goddamn authenticator AND doesn't notify it's customers that an intrusion took place until 5 days later I really really have a problem with that company. I don't fucking care if they didn't know what was compromised the simple fact is that an intrusion took place and they should HAVE to notify their customers on the day that it takes place.

I'm getting sick of this shit. Now I have to monitor my finances, website accounts, and my email account all because they're fucking morons more interested in saving face rather than looking after their customer.

I'm going to say it now, there needs to be legislation in the United States, Canada, the EU, the UK, and everywhere else that states when a company experiences any digital intrusion of any kind they must inform their customers at once. Period. If they don't they should face harsh fines upwards of 100,000 dollars. No more of this waiting for 5 days bullshit. It isn't fucking right, and they're only doing it because they want to preserve their value on the NYSE.

I wish someone in this thread would put the facts together instead of going off like a crazy person here. Blizzard responded in an extremely measured way here. They first went into lockdown, which is what you do. It sounds like they saw this in near real-time, which means that they have reasonable protections and effective monitoring in place. They then, after completing what was likely an insanely complicated assessment of the situation, explained this to their customers.

It is counterproductive to require any firm to immediately inform on a breach because that can indicate a current vulnerability. This is why software firms avoid announcing compromises for their software until they patch them.

Here is what happens in a typical security incident protocol:

• The system is locked off from the outside, accounts and sessions are killed, etc...
• An assessment of the means of entry is done and any security holes closed, while
• a copy of the compromised systems is made immediately to preserve the system in its current state. This includes write-blocked drive imaging, any external system log aggregation, etc...
• Forensics begin on a write-blocked copy of any images that were taken of servers and logs are reviewed
• An early assessment is made of the data that was available on the compromised machine(s) and combined with a network traffic assessment to assess what may have leaked
• Appropriate law enforcement is contacted, based on the initial compromise assessment
• If any regulated data is found, the appropriate regulatory agencies are contacted
• After continued assessment of the state of the entire environment, a more in depth assessment of the compromise is done and a communication plan is prepared
• Communication to affected parties happens

What's important here is that it sounds like the way in which the passwords were stored is extremely secure and is probably close to computationally infeasable to crack. Here is what can happen now:

Someone can, knowing your email address and secret question, request a password reset that will be sent to your email. That is all. From the information that Blizzard released, there is no way that people can log into your account with the information they have gained from this compromise without accessing your email account, which is another item that would have delayed the announcement.

Also, this was an impressively fast response from such a huge company.

Bullshit. It occurred 5 days ago. That's 5 days of having information at risk, including financial information given the real money auction house in Diablo 3. That's 5 days that some asshole could have free reign. That's 5 days to many. When my information is at risk, when my finances are at risk, I should be informed of it right then and there. Not a work week after the fact.

You're right in saying that divulging that information could inform other people of a vulnerability, but the simple act of hacking it has exposed that vulnerability. If you don't think that these people communicate with one another you're out of your mind. Typically it's not just one person doing it anymore but rather a group of people that each delegate part of the operation. Furthermore if they're REALLY concerned with security then maybe they should make a public notice and shut down their shit system for those 5 days until they sort it out instead of leaving it online and forcing people to find out about this through a media site like Giant-fucking-Bomb.

It's irresponsible. It's lazy. It's ignorant. And it needs to fucking change. These companies need to be held accountable and MAYBE just maybe the traditional way of doing things isn't enough anymore. How many hacks have occurred within the past year? It's unacceptable, especially in the game industry where everything is going digital and everything has extra costs tacked on.

And the response wasn't fast at all. Sony had a similar response and they got bashed for it, but because it's Blizzard people hold them up like Christ on the Cross and say "THEY'RE TEH BEST EVAR!". You sound like a PR guy when you say shit like that. The investigation might have been started fast but the whole informing the public thing, the people that give them money and put their trust in them, wasn't good.

I'm not trying to defend Blizzard per se--I'm trying to assess the breach in terms of its security implications for its users and also wanted to provide some information about how a typical incident response procedure works. I may have been too flippant with my first sentence or so, for which I apologize, and I've certainly changed my battle.net password to be on the safe side. But treating all compromises the same is not helpful to the gaming community who needs good information to assess their risk posture, nor is it particularly fair to the firms involved.

Given the timeline and types of data that they handle, I think that Blizzard informed pretty quickly. I also think that there is not a ton here that causes huge additional risk to users because, unlike many other large compromises, this compromise did not include any directly actionable data (CCNs, passwords, etc...).

Is this bad? Yes. The ability of people phish off of the email addresses is a concern, and the decision to handle secret questions in the way that they are just looks dumb. But unlike a number of the firms who have been recently compromised, the data was stored in a sensible way, i.e. hashed (hopefully salted) phone numbers and with a complex protection mechanism on the passwords.

I also think that it's best for this information to go through public sites. How do you want Blizzard to notify the community, assuming that their communication path (email) is the same as the one that the hackers now have access to? Because if this was an extremely well-planned hack, the attackers could have phished the "your account has been compromised" emails to land at the same time that Blizzard's did. And if they were even close to competent phish writers, a huge number of people would have lost their passwords to this phish.

I'm really not looking for this to be a contentious conversation--I understand your concern and anger regarding compromises, because a lot of companies are not doing what they need to do in order to keep their customers safe, and they do need to be held accountable. Like you, I hope that more facts come out of this breach and that there are clear steps taken to further tighten security around Blizzard.

Hope everyone has a pleasant weekend.