I am IT staff and I’ve worked for government in the past.

No matter how easy you make the swap over, no matter how much money it offers to save, there’s gonna be somebody who has sign off level executive authority who will refuse to change anything, because it means changing something, and they won’t like it.

Making a company-wide transition from Microsoft to a free version that does exactly the same is not a simple change.

If you make the change, you’re going to see a huge upswing in the number of support calls. You’re going to see a huge upswing in the number of complaints. You’re going to see downturns in efficiency and productivity as people make the changes, not to mention the fact that administering libreoffice from an organizational standpoint is a completely different beast from administering office.

I’m not saying that it can’t be done, by any stretch of the imagination.

I’m saying that the human element is the largest factor in whether or not it would be done, and unless you are already the city administrator or a big to-do inside of the fish pond you find yourself in, you likely do not have the human capital needed to make the transition, regardless of every other benefit.

If you want to get this done, I would suggest preemptively installing libre office on every single computer in the entire organization and then slowly telling people to use it as the opportunity arises so that three to five years from now there will be enough people who have used it that the transition would not be a huge ordeal.

Short of that you need to have an executive mandate from on high come in and say, we are not using Microsoft Office anymore, we will use LibreOffice, here are your training hours, go.

Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to do something along the lines of stating upfront that “if anyone in the company does anything to offend you, please report it to the appropriate channels. You’ll have our full support. We’re here to get work done, not to make people feel bad”

You’re not likely going to say by accident something they haven’t heard before, or to offend them in a new and novel way, But establishing and occasionally reinforcing the fact that they don’t have to tolerate it, that putting up with abuse is not part of their job, and that they have the boss’s backing at the same level of the non-LGBTQ employees should they find themselves being abused or offended, would probably go a decent way in minimizing the risk of something actually bad happening.

They don’t jail you, they take every penny you’ve ever had or will have for the rest of your life.

It’s only fair, you becoming destitute for liking a post is far better than the risk that they didn’t get their $24.95 from you. /s

It’ll save you nearly $50 a month. So even if the customer service is exactly the same, you get to keep another $600 each year.

I switched to my local provider from Xfinity about three months ago, and my internet speeds are twice as fast for the same money.

The real measure of whether or not an idea is true, at least in personal view, is how well does it hold up to your internal concept of ideal self?

We do not possess a source of universal truth. Sure, there’s math and elaborate painstaking work done by scientists to identify what is true to the best of our knowing, but none of that is a “universal” truth.

After all, 1 + 1 = 2 only works when both of the 1s are the same things.

1 apple plus 1 orange does not equal 2 apples, you know?

Going back to the main point, if your version of your ideal self prefers for other people to be happy so that you can live in a world with as many happy people as possible, then ideally, leftist concepts and trans rights would be a truth for you.

What would matter to you about the lives and sexualities of other people is: are they happy?

If they are, great!

If they aren’t, treat them as they want to be treated in that situation.

I assume that that is something akin to your ideal version of you.

If it is not, I’m not properly equipped to identify for you what is truth.

But I will say this: if you think that trans people or gay people are deviants or messed in the head, what does it matter to you?

If the entire nation of bumfuckistan started having gay sex from 8.30 to 5, Monday through Friday, what does that matter to you?

How are you affected by the actions of other people that you never interact with, that you never encounter, and that you never see?

Even if it is the most degenerate, horrible thing that can ever happen, it’s between two consenting adults.

They’re not going to hold you down and make you watch. You won’t even ever know it’s happening.

So why would you even give the first fucking thought about it?

One up, one down, and one to polish!

I think it was Jesus that said, “It’s better to ban an entire nation from existing than it is to work out your own sexuality with fear and trembling”.

Its not stupid to be optimistic. Every good thing starts with optimism as far as I know

The problem with most companies is that they are not led by people with clear visions.

Companies that succeed typically start with a clear vision. However, once that vision is fulfilled, then it starts to become run by people who are simply trying to make money.

Chasing after money becomes the vision, and that is how you get to the way things are in America today.

Having a vision often times means having goals that you’re willing to lose money if it gets you closer to achieving them.

That being said, ratuer than voting for your paycheck, something that is much more straightforward and less prone to being taken advantage of would be having set wages based on years of experience and time with the company.

include an opportunity to earn extra during the year by going above and beyond while making it clear that this is not expected of the people at their current job role.

Going above and beyond would be determined by your boss on recommendation, and they would have a limited number of recommendations every year.

Another thing you could do would be to publish what everybody earns on a website that is internal to the company, and make the going above and beyond rewards part of your annual meeting or something so nobody would know if they’re going to get an above and beyond reward until then.

Then to actually make it a good thing, you would need to make it a rule to fire the people that do not meet their performance metrics, at least after a set number of times or like failing to fulfill a pip or something.

If I see a 40 plus year old man and a 16 year old girl going places together, I’m going to assume the girl is his daughter.

Pretty high Ick factor.

It’s amazing the lengths people will go to to avoid a difficult conversation.

Whether you like it or not, you are a part of the total equation and if you have issues with it, you should try to communicate your concerns with all relevant people.

Once you have communicated your concerns, It’s not your problem anymore.

People don’t have to listen, don’t have to do what you tell them to do, and they don’t have to take your concerns into consideration.

If they choose to do something stupid that’s on them.

The author is active on bluesky and she’s actually quite nice and everything you would expect her to be.

Regardless of the truth, I prefer Diane Duane’s explanation in the “So, You Want to Be a Wizard” novel, In that all of the steam in the subways are generated by a breed of fire worms. These worms, if left long enough, can grow to the size of a respectable and quite terrifying dragon.

When “hundredths fractions of security” fails to get a laugh, I know I’m in the wrong group of people.

Surely you understand how a stupid response to a silly statement like it is one of the sayings of all time can be appropriate in humorous situations, right?

I understand that you did not find it funny, but I hope that you can understand that it was my intention to be funny, and therefore a serious response is disproportionate.

I didn’t say it’s secure, I just said it’s security.

You can’t say that a solution is no security at all when it requires time and intelligence to bypass.

It is at least 0.01 security.

NASCAR might do those speeds fairly regularly for short bursts

My bad, I meant to say shift T and then shift S.

I wouldn’t necessarily trust that. I have used Xfinity for a long time and my IP address often went months without changing.