Stijn!!

[flipper35]

I have had more air in my Ramcharger but it was straight jumps, not like the stuff the Durango went through.

[GH85Carrera]

TGIF folks.

I learned to drive in a off road VW buggy my brother and I built. It was a 65 Bug that someone rolled. It was a runner, but every panel was smashed. We did not care since we took the body off and threw it away. We cut the floor pan down to six feet axle the axle and welded a steel tubing body together with sheet metal tacked to it. It was ugly but indestructible.

We welded two rims together and made dual rear tires. It was light enough that if we had a flat it would still drive just on the side wall strength alone. We normally ran with 18 to 20 PSI.

There was a dirt road west of town in a field where they were taking dirt for a road project somewhere else. We loved to get on the dirt road and show a new victim how it handled on the curves in dirt. Then the road just vanished and the ground dropped 8 feet. Passengers would just point and scream as we would fly off the road and into the air. The landing was rather rough but it was fun. To get out we had to drive back up that near vertical wall and wait for the tires to fall forward. We did it dozens of times.

It was a fun toy and I got my fill of off roading back then.

[RKDinOKC]

Freakin Good Morning Group!

Here I am. Another year older and I don't feel a bit different.

Was a bit concerned yesterday. When woke up felt like I had something in my good eye, felt itchy and watered a lot. Couldn't see worth nuthin most of the day. Since my left eye measured 20/100 just last week I would say my right eye had gone blurry to about 20/40 to 20/60. Called eye doc, he said it was probably just a little dry. Put lots of drops in it and thankfully it's back to normal this morning!

Plan to assemble and play with the new BBQ smoker roaster grill.

[RKDinOKC]

So...How does this sound.

Where I work they are changing the way they accrue vacation time. Probably because of the software used to keep track of it.

Anyway.

In the past your vacation was earned every so many days. Example, if you have seniority for 40 days vacation a year, every 6.5 days or 52 hours worked you earned 1 day or 8 hours vacation with a maxium vacation you can carry to the next year being 40 days. So if you only used a week or 5 days of vacation you carried 35 days to the next year. And if you only used a week the next year you would have accrued 70 days, but you can only carry over a maximum of 40 so you lose 30 days because you didn't use it. Conversely if you used all 40 days in a year, come January you would have 0 days and have to wait until you accrued more earning a day every 6.5 days until you could take it.

The change is as of January 1st you get your years worth of vacation, ie 40 days, and get until Dec 31st to use it. Then every January 1st it is reset to 40 days again. The idea being you can use your 40 days at any time during the whole year. Before, if you had used all 40 days the previous year, you couldn't take vacation until you accrued more that year. So if you wanted to take vacation the first week of January, you could only take it if you had vacation left from the year before.

To kick this whole thing off this year only if you have any vacation left at the end of the year they are going to pay you for it. Then as of January 1st you get your next years 40 days. Then next year, if you don't use it, you lose it.

As an employee that never uses all their vacation time I think this is great as it means I get a bonus paid on the vacation I didn't use this year. As a concerned employee of a company trying to make it through a market slump think this is pretty stupid waste of the companies money. Employees are already under the old system losing any vacation days they accrued the year before because you can't carry more than 40 days. And you get 40 days as of January, so why pay employees for vacation they didn't use?

Several years ago they changed the vacation you couldn't carry more than 40 days. Have been working there long enough that I was accruing vacation basically carrying any not used until I retired. When they went to the 40 days max they let employees like me just keep carrying whatever vacation I had accrued as my maximum. A couple of years ago to get everyone on the same system paid me for all my accrued vacation up to 40 days. It was $12,000!

Do you think they should be paying employees for vacation they are not using this year when It would basically be lost anyway?

or Are they doing this to keep too many employees from taking a bunch of vacation the last few months of the year?

[Porsche-poor]

Sounds like the mess here that screwed me out of 5 weeks vacation after 20 years of service. Capped at 4 now. Use it or loose it no payouts.

Morning all.

[Outback Porsche]

I get (190/260)/7.6 hours for ever hour worked in annual leave, 2/38 hours for every hour worked in Rostered Days Off leave, 91.2 hours a year for Long Service Leave, and 15 days a year for paid sick leave. All leave accrues and never expires. LSL has to be taken in a min. two week (76hrs) block, all other leave can be taken as it accrues by the hour as required, with agreement with management. Mostly I'll take a full day (7.6hrs), or sometimes a half day (4hrs).

If I leave, am sacked, or made redundant, all accrued leave except sick leave is paid out.

Oh yeah, then there's 9 paid public holidays a year.

Morning all

Nearly time for snoring over here.

[RKDinOKC]

A friend of mine used to work at Apple Computer. At that time, some time during your 7th year of employment you had to take a 1 month sabbatical.

The sabbatical was 4 weeks paid vacation besides your current vacation and had to be taken contiguous. If you did not schedule and start your sabbatical by Thanksgiving of that year you were not only forced to take your sabbatical from Thanksgiving until Christmas you were not allowed on the Apple campus during that time. And if you did show up you would be escorted off the campus by security. They enforced this because employee badges that allowed you in the building were tracled and nobody was allowed on campus without a badge.

They said they did this to prevent job burnout. You did get to cash in any accrued vacation to use on the sabbatical.

I've visited Apple campuses in both Austin and Cupertino on a Sunday. About 10% of the employees were there messing around even though the offices were closed. My friend said people working all the time like that is why they had to have the sabbaticals.

[Porsche-poor]

argh! I hate this stupid company. Not only do they have to use my legal name for the email address I'm finding out that they attached my physical address to all things like 401k, the 125 acct and the insurance. I have a PO box for a reason and do not have a mail box out front of my house at all. In the case of the 401k and the 125 I'm pissed that they will not change it the employer has to. Its my money not the employers.

[RKDinOKC]

I assign the email addresses for our company. Usually make it their initial last name no separators. Some of the lazy programming idiots wanted to make it automatically make it from their names. Can't do that. We have brothers with same initail and last name working here. We also have father and sons with the same names. There are even a couple of completely unrelated employees that have the same initial last name. There is NEVER a fast hard rule that works every time for every one.

Being forced to use your physical address is the same thing. Lazy stupid employees following some company policy because people are too stupid to make decisions.

I have used just my initials for all ids everywhere. rkd@. I even got rkd@mac.com for my apple id that goes all the way back to rkd@apple.com. I am rkd@zipbang.com on my personal email server and have had that user id and email address since 1991. Same with my kimray.com work email. My brother changes his email address every year or so, but still keeps the old one because he thinks it will get him less spam. He still gets more spam than I do.

I saddly wasn't able to get rkd@yahoo or rkd@gmail dern it.

At some point I need to go thru and change all my passwords to the same password. Hate having a bunch of different ones. They keep changing the minimum requirements.

[flipper35]

When I started here it was first name @ and I said that aint gonna work when you are adding all the nurses instead of just management and are going to have a few hundred emails. There are a couple that are known my their nickname and not by their real name so I did aliases for them so the people would know who they were.

[Porsche-poor]

I'm so pissed over the mailing address I want to scream.

[flipper35]

Makes you wonder how they managed to make enough to "merge" the companies when they can't accomplish simple things.

I always see Dilbert cartoons when you talk about your work. Funny, the last place I worked was like living in a Dilbert cartoon even down to the looks of the PHB. Though he wasn't my boss thankfully.

[Porsche-poor]

Dilbert is light years ahead of these folks.

[flipper35]

Sooo sorry dude.

[Porsche-poor]

Oh well next year I'll just opt out of the 125 and keep my money.

[RKDinOKC]

Go up the ladder until you can get somebody with the authority to make it different that doesn't care enough about policy to make it happen but isn't so high they relinquish all decisions to policy.

[RKDinOKC]

I don't even know what 125 is.

I don't participate in the cafeteria medial plan because I am against it on principle. Putting money back to pay medical bills before taxing it just generates money for those that manage that money. Think instead we should be able to claim medical expenses on tax returns and not have all those extra people and expenses trying to manage a pre-tax medial account.

[RKDinOKC]

Talked to the dealer I got the Turbo from a few minutes ago. His mechanic is the one that put the wrong front rotors on. It's one of the reasons he decided to sell it instead of keeping it. His mechanic recommended new rotors and he got it back with a spongy brake pedal. Told me when I talked to him before that he planned to keep the turbo but needed a car his mechanic could work on. Told him today that after all the stuff I've run into maybe he should be replacing the mechanic instead of the car.

[Oh Haha]

eravoga reported as spam.



I got the Caddy repaired without issues today. It was the TPS. Of course, the throttle body was gunked up with a heavy black film so I cleaned that as well. The Northstar V8 is a pretty cool engine. He had replaced the cat with a test pipe at some point so it has a nice rumble to the exhaust note.

I am glad I don't have to deal with the corporate issues anymore.

[GH85Carrera]

Richard, the 125 is a great thing. It allows you to buy medical services with pre-tax money. You don't pay any income tax on the money you buy the services with. If the end of the year is coming up and you still have money left in the account, get some new glasses or squeeze in a new doctor appointment before the end of the year. Our company is too small to have a 125 plan and now that my wife is retired we lost that 125 plan. It was great while it lasted.