I may be crazy
Cipher
unemployment, almost makes the bills. However, all good things must come
to an end; the training gig doesn't look like it's turning into full
time anytime soon, as I've got my schedule until early July and none of
it is a full week's wages.
So, the hunt continues. The training job is easy and low stress and
affords me the ability to avoid asshole employers[1] for a while longer.
I must be nuts, because I'm actually looking at helldesk jobs just to
avoid the bullshit that comes with real server work, like unpaid
overtime, shithead bosses who refuse to get out of the way, and jackass
clients who pay for services and will not do what they have to do on
their end.
At least with being on the phone firewall I don't actually have to
pretend to give a shit.
Thoughts?
[1] Yes, they know who they are. My resume of late is littered with them.
--
The word "urgent" is the moral of the story "The boy who cried wolf". As
a general rule I don't believe it until a manager comes to me almost in
tears. I like to catch them in a cup and drink them later.
-- Matt Holiab, in the Monastery
Joe Zeff
> At least with being on the phone firewall I don't actually have to
> pretend to give a shit.
You may surprise yourself and find out that you like doing tech support; I
did. There's a certain satisfaction from knowing that a number of people
had a better day because they spoke to you.
--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info
What doesn't kill you makes a good story;
what does kill you makes you a legend.
Seebs
> You may surprise yourself and find out that you like doing tech support; I
> did. There's a certain satisfaction from knowing that a number of people
> had a better day because they spoke to you.
I did maybe 5-10 years total of it. I burned out on it, but then, I'm
autistic and don't enjoy talking to strangers, or indeed, talking to people
at all if I have to use voice to do it. On the other hand, I can say... With
sane management it's not nearly as awful as most descriptions would have it
sound. It's not the work that's awful, it's management. And that's true
everywhere.
-s
--
Copyright 2011, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet...@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
I am not speaking for my employer, although they do rent some of my opinions.
Maarten Wiltink
news:slrnisphfm.2i0...@guild.seebs.net...
>On 2011-05-13, Joe Zeff <the.guy.with....@lasfs.info> wrote:
>> You may surprise yourself and find out that you like doing tech
>> support; I did. There's a certain satisfaction from knowing that
>> a number of people had a better day because they spoke to you.
>
> I did maybe 5-10 years total of it. I burned out on it, but then, I'm
> autistic and don't enjoy talking to strangers, or indeed, talking to
> people at all if I have to use voice to do it. On the other hand, I
> can say... With sane management it's not nearly as awful as most
> descriptions would have it sound. It's not the work that's awful,
> it's management. And that's true everywhere.
I've found that talking to users can be worse than talking to
management. For one thing, most environments still have more users
than managers. For another, with managers it's generally possible to
simply wait, and the problem will suddenly be less pressing.
Users are entitled to have it solved, *now*, without intelligence on
their part and without the option of beating them over the head with
a railway sleeper. I was at a job interview yesterday and even talking
about it got me frustrated again. It's a miracle they asked me back,
really (in one hour and fifteen minutes. Wish me luck).
There are good ones. You never spend as much time talking to them as
to the other ones.
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
LP
>
> For one thing, most environments still have more users than managers.
As far as I can tell, managers are a subset of users. The only difference
I've been able to discern is that occasionally users will say "thankyou"
-Paul
--
http://paulseward.com
LP
> The wise LP enlightened me with:
>>
>> As far as I can tell, managers are a subset of users. The only difference
>> I've been able to discern is that occasionally users will say "thankyou"
>
> good lineage!
They may be appreciative, but that doesn't mean they don't have a high
concentration of stupid. I wouldn't want to risk accidentally selecting
for the wrong characteristic.
-Paul
--
http://paulseward.com
Lionel
> On Thu, 12 May 2011 20:14:41 -0400, Cipher wrote:
>
>> At least with being on the phone firewall I don't actually have to
>> pretend to give a shit.
>
> You may surprise yourself and find out that you like doing tech support;
> I did. There's a certain satisfaction from knowing that a number of
> people had a better day because they spoke to you.
If you're good at it, field-service work is even better than that, IMO. I
found it incredibly satisfying to walk out of a client's door after
rescuing them. If the money wasn't so crap, I'd cheerfully have spent my
entire career doing it.
--
W
. | , w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Zeff
> On 2011-05-13, Joe Zeff <the.guy.with....@lasfs.info> wrote:
>> You may surprise yourself and find out that you like doing tech
>> support; I did. There's a certain satisfaction from knowing that a
>> number of people had a better day because they spoke to you.
>
> I did maybe 5-10 years total of it. I burned out on it, but then, I'm
> autistic and don't enjoy talking to strangers, or indeed, talking to
> people at all if I have to use voice to do it.
Understood. That's why I wrote "may." Not everybody likes doing tech
support, but there are those of us who do. It's possible that the OP will
be one of them.
--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info
Sure we Brits know what summer is. It's those two days in August
between the thunderstorms and the sleet
David Cameron Staples
> On Fri, 13 May 2011 05:39:57 +0000, Joe Zeff wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 12 May 2011 20:14:41 -0400, Cipher wrote:
>>
>>> At least with being on the phone firewall I don't actually have to
>>> pretend to give a shit.
>>
>> You may surprise yourself and find out that you like doing tech
>> support; I did. There's a certain satisfaction from knowing that a
>> number of people had a better day because they spoke to you.
>
> If you're good at it, field-service work is even better than that, IMO.
> I found it incredibly satisfying to walk out of a client's door after
> rescuing them. If the money wasn't so crap, I'd cheerfully have spent my
> entire career doing it.
Walk-around tech support gave^Wgives me the heebie jeebies. Not only do I
have to invade someone else's space physically, they almost universally
stay and look over my shoulder as I have my hands in the innards of their
working life up to the elbows. And I find there are two types of problem:
the trivial, which helps my ticket count but tends to embarrass the user
and dissuade them from calling next time in case it's something stupid
they should (but can't) figure out themselves, and the non-trivial, which
usually requires hours of work, some amount of trial-and-error (with
concomitant failure under the eyes of a nervous user), possible
requirements to go away and get parts/data/assistance/dinner, which looks
like you're abandoning them.
There are two general type of user in these circumstances. Those who,
when you have succeeded, regard your work as skilled and specialist, who
are suitably awed at your knowledge and ability to solve the problem, and
are appropriately thankful. And the other 95% wonder why you didn't do
the successful fix the first time, why it took a whole day to get out
there for such a trivial operation, why it's not acceptable that they be
unable to work for a day or two, just because they insisted on having
admin rights and installing some cracked IRC/Music player from China and
for some reason their PC is now telling them to install
SuperVirusKiller2013, and is hammering the network, and they have no free
disk space, and people complain when they share USB drives with them.
They're the ones who make your ticket list explode, who can't be helped
when they say that you *can't* format and reinstall, all their data's on
that HDD, and insist on fixing the virus. They're the ones who complain
to the Head of Department that you personally are incompetent and
unhelpful for not installing their (cracked, unlicensed) software, or for
not preventing the latest 0-day infestation, or not having (extra RAM|
another HDD|a bigger monitor|a spare workstation) around to give them on
demand. Who say "oh, while you're here, there's one more thing I want you
to have a look at..."
I can do walk-around tech support. I have spent years doing it. I may
have ended up a little bitter from the experience.
Graham Reed
> If you're good at it, field-service work is even better than that, IMO. I
> found it incredibly satisfying to walk out of a client's door after
> rescuing them. If the money wasn't so crap, I'd cheerfully have spent my
> entire career doing it.
Hear hear. I do some amount of maintenance and repair for friends (not
for free, but more reasonable rates than I quote family).
It's amazing how happy someone can be for what, to me, is a simple
problem and I didn't really do much to fix it. Even for things I can't
fix (I was able to verify someone needed a new lamp ballast, the rest of
their electrics were still good), just telling them the exact bit they
need to get replaced can still make them amazingly happy. (I wasn't
really willing to take money for that, because it wasn't fixed when I
left. But he insisted, and I'll only resist money so much.)
I got the same thing out of working at a traditional hardware store:
you're helping people get something useful... or in the case of
toilet plungers necessary... done and it just feels good. It also
helped that the Boss knew that saving someone $100 today--by helping
them repair what they already have--means you'll get $500 from them in
the long run. Happy customers come back to the shop--and ask for the
person who helped them last time.
--
"If you have to ask what kind of meat it is, you're too sober."
-- Rincewind the Wizard
Seebs
> Lionel <imag...@gmail.com> writes:
>> If you're good at it, field-service work is even better than that, IMO. I
>> found it incredibly satisfying to walk out of a client's door after
>> rescuing them. If the money wasn't so crap, I'd cheerfully have spent my
>> entire career doing it.
> It's amazing how happy someone can be for what, to me, is a simple
> problem and I didn't really do much to fix it. Even for things I can't
> fix (I was able to verify someone needed a new lamp ballast, the rest of
> their electrics were still good), just telling them the exact bit they
> need to get replaced can still make them amazingly happy. (I wasn't
> really willing to take money for that, because it wasn't fixed when I
> left. But he insisted, and I'll only resist money so much.)
Some jobs back, I ended up doing three on-site visits for a customer.
Each time, they were deleriously happy.
Problems were:
1. They were connecting to the wrong port on the server.
2. They had, in fact, TWO completely separate ISDN installations, each
of which was connected from real machinery on one end to an empty closet
on the other end.
3. 150' of extra ethernet cable coiled up in the ceiling, which made
connections unreliable.
All very easy to fix, all fun. They didn't complain about the 3 hours
or so minimum billable time, because in each case it took me half an hour
to an hour to fix something they'd been on for a week.
SteveD
<the.guy.with....@lasfs.info> wrote:
>Not everybody likes doing tech support, but there are those of us who
>do. It's possible that the OP will be one of them.
Interestingly, I was discussing this the other day with a person who has
lived with clinical depression for much of their life, and we noted that
in some cases, doing phone support can actually help, as when it's done
well it's a constant stream of (largely) positive feedback packets, one
every couple of minutes.
(The majority of calls, in that scenario, ending with the reinforcement
that the tech is useful, wanted, skilled, and can produce results.)
Certainly not any kind of cure, but when the Black Dog looms, it seems it
can be a lot better to end a working day with a large tally of small
attaboys than walking out the door with no apparent gain whatsoever.
-SteveD
Shmuel Metz
at 08:14 PM, Cipher <nota...@hotmail.com> said:
>I must be nuts,
As with many other things, it depends and the Devil is in the details.
>because I'm actually looking at helldesk jobs just to
>avoid the bullshit that comes with real server work,
Whether or not you avoid it depends on your management and your users.
Supporting users able and willing to follow directions can be pleasant
if your management allows you to support them properly. Supporting
users who don't want to listen, or reporting to management that orders
you to withhold necessary data from the customer, can be
excruciatingly painful.
I can give two carefully chosen examples of working in a support[1]
capacity that were actually pleasant[2].
While working on the software for the RCA 3301[4], we got a call from
a customer that had automatically converted some programs from the RCA
301; the converted programs were bombing. Although I wasn't working on
the relevant parts of the 3301 software, I knew enough about them to
be of use. Their sales rep drives me to their site, and they address
the immediate problem by giving me a cup of coffee. I ask for listings
of the original code and the converted code, and see that they are
generating machine opcodes rather than macro invocations, and that
they generated code uses the calling conventions for the 301 rather
than[5] the calling conventions of the 3301. I give them my diagnosis,
they fix the translator, they try it out and bomb in another
component. I look at the dump, find an error in our software, fix it,
retry and everybody is happy. At no point do they respond to a
question with "why do you want to know" or in any other way try to
second guess me. Throughout the process they do exactly what I need
for them to do in order to resolve the problem expeditiously.
While supporting VM and SVS at a government site, a customer needed a
leased line for submitting jobs, and the software had trouble
communicating. At the time, modem configuration was handled by the
telecommunications provider, and we we allowed neither to specify the
plugging nor to inspect the plugging[3]. The vendor gave us a
worksheet to fill in and provided copies to the technicians at each
end, who talked neither to us nor to each other.
I pulled[8] the cover off the 408-A at our end, asked the user to do
the same at his end and asked him to give me the jumper settings. It
turned out that New Syn was not plugged the same on the two ends. I
asked him to plug it correctly to solve the immediate problem.
Following this, he placed a service call for the bad jumper, restoring
the incorrect placement for the benefit of the technician so that we
could preserve the semblance of compliance.
At no time did either my management or his complain that we were
breaking the rules. As in the first case, the user gave me the
information I requested and listened to what I told him without trying
to second guess me.
Oh, did I mention that neither of us was happy with the telecomm
vendor. What's the emoticon for blind insensate rage?
Now, I could give examples of the other type of helpdesk client, but I
feel confident that anybody in this froup can supply his own ghastly
examples. In triplicate. Dripping with blood.
[1] Not my primary responsibility, but I was available.
[2] Dealing with the user, not dealing with the vendor[3]
[3] Is it ever pleasant dealing with the vendor of analog lines?
[4] This can't possibly be UI any more.
[5] The 301 convention used a volation hardware-asigned storage
location called STP[6]; the 330 convention used a less volatile
hardware-asigned storage location called STPR[7]
[6] The P register was automatically stored there on every branch.
[7] The P register was stored there by the Repeat instruction. The
location was new with the 3301.
[8] Yes, I know that I wasn't allowed to do that. Your point?
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <http://patriot.net/~shmuel> ISO position
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
Joe Zeff
> At no point do they respond to a
> question with "why do you want to know"
There are two ways to ask that question. In the first, more common case,
the asker is implying that unless the question is answered in a
satisfactory[1] manner, the information won't be forthcoming. In the
second, it's more a case of simple curiosity, combined in some cases with
a desire to learn more about what's going on. Generally speaking, you can
tell which one it is by the tone of voice.
[1]to the asker, that is
--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info
A little bit of back-dated documentation goes a long way.
Joe Thompson
> Oh, did I mention that neither of us was happy with the telecomm
> vendor. What's the emoticon for blind insensate rage?
It requires a recent version of Unicode, one with the DETHKLOK character
range. -- Joe
--
Joe Thompson | Sysadmin - Scientificist
E-mail addresses in headers are valid. | http://www.orion-com.com/
"There is no way my emacs is ever getting a credit card!" -- Matthew Vernon
David Gersic
> What's the emoticon for blind insensate rage?
:-)
Maarten Wiltink
news:iqqf79$kci$1...@dont-email.me...
°o
U <- That's your medicines cooking there.
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
Graham Reed
> 3. 150' of extra ethernet cable coiled up in the ceiling, which made
> connections unreliable.
Oooh! I know this one!
We were pulling some of this new-fangled twisted-pair stuff to support
the Daystar stations we were putting in the modelshop at Big Blue.
Since we now had 6 intead of 1, we were granted our Very Own Ethernet
Hub, which needed but a single run from the Other Ethernet Hub. (Big
Blue was still token' the ring back then.)
So, of course, we didn't need a thicknet connection on our old Daystar
box anymore, right? So I get it working on twisted-pair and set about
pulling the co-ax.
'Cept it wasn't co-ax... the first clue was, there was no transceiver on
the Daystar box. It was the longest freaking AUI cable I'd ever seen,
had to be 75 feet[1]. Under the floor tiles in some random unrelated
section of the modelshop were 15 feet of AUI cable coiled up, the
missing transceiver, and then about 100 feet of thinnet coiled up... so
it could go 6 feet out of the floor to where the other thinnet machines
were hooked up.
Not surprisingly, the network got a lot more reliable with that out of
the way.
> All very easy to fix, all fun. They didn't complain about the 3 hours
> or so minimum billable time, because in each case it took me half an hour
> to an hour to fix something they'd been on for a week.
That's the other one. Half an hour of my time can be weeks of someone
else's, and when I'm done, it's working[2].
[1] "In spec" != "good idea"
[2] For values of "working" that may equal, "you can re-install your OS
now, it's working. Your files are on this DVD."
--
As for the completion stuff, well, I'd be very surprised if you couldn't
get zsh to do whatever you want, including calling up and hiring a
mariachi band to sing the names of the possible completions....
-- Shalon Wood
Garrett Wollman
>We were pulling some of this new-fangled twisted-pair stuff to support
>the Daystar stations we were putting in the modelshop at Big Blue.
You might want to reconsider that substitution. Daystar is the name
of a Texas-based religious (i.e., evangelical Xtian) television
network.
People may complain about excessive rotting, but if you can't
recognize Fha by eye....
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Alan J Rosenthal
>On 2011-05-15, Shmuel Metz <spam...@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>> What's the emoticon for blind insensate rage?
>
>It requires a recent version of Unicode, one with the DETHKLOK character
>range.
The above is a joke, but unicode seriously, honestly, truly now has a
character which is dog shit. Really. 1F4A9.
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm
Note the "comments" field, and that "dirt" is a euphemism.
Niklas Karlsson
> People may complain about excessive rotting, but if you can't
> recognize Fha by eye....
Well, not anymore, you can't. It's gone all Beevoyr.
Niklas
--
I sat around during the design phase going "this is going to suck so
badly that we're going to have to hold onto desks to stop us from being
drawn into the vortex". -- Saundo in ASR
Steve VanDevender
> On 2011-05-16, Garrett Wollman <wol...@bimajority.org> wrote:
>> People may complain about excessive rotting, but if you can't
>> recognize Fha by eye....
>
> Well, not anymore, you can't. It's gone all Beevoyr.
"Leave it to Beevoyr"?
--
Steve VanDevender "I ride the big iron" http://hexadecimal.uoregon.edu/
ste...@hexadecimal.uoregon.edu PGP keyprint 4AD7AF61F0B9DE87 522902969C0A7EE8
Little things break, circuitry burns / Time flies while my little world turns
Every day comes, every day goes / 100 years and nobody shows -- Happy Rhodes
TimC
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
> Niklas Karlsson <ank...@yahoo.se> writes:
>
>> On 2011-05-16, Garrett Wollman <wol...@bimajority.org> wrote:
>>> People may complain about excessive rotting, but if you can't
>>> recognize Fha by eye....
>>
>> Well, not anymore, you can't. It's gone all Beevoyr.
>
> "Leave it to Beevoyr"?
I just got off the phone with them (failed power supply, took out the
PDU, took out other machines, which then took out more PDUs. Ah, yes,
redundant power supplies all hooked into the same phase).
I am constantly amused that when I call in business hours in
downpondia time, I get some poor bugger working in America on night
shift paid presumably at exhorbitant night shift rates. No, scratch
that, he's American - he's probably only paid 7cents and a can of dog
food per hour; but at least he's allowed a toilet break once per
shift. Why haven't they figured out yet that you can outsource this
kind of thing to an Indian call centre where you don't have to supply
the can of dog food?
(sure, I can understand why my call didn't terminate at someone in my
own timezone - toilet breaks and other workers rights are such a drag)
--
TimC
Cult: (n) a small, unpopular religion.
Religion: (n) a large, popular cult.
Alexander Schreiber
Wow, I wonder what kind of dog manages to dump a perfectly rectangular
pile of shit ...
HTH,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
Alan J Rosenthal
>Alan J Rosenthal <fl...@dgp.toronto.edu> wrote:
>> http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f4a9/index.htm
>> Note the "comments" field, and that "dirt" is a euphemism.
>
>Wow, I wonder what kind of dog manages to dump a perfectly rectangular
>pile of shit ...
Hm, the picture seems to be strangely missing on that page. It was there
once upon a time. Here are two pictures which work at the moment:
http://chryss.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/characters-1.png
(look up 1F4A9)
mrob...@att.net
> (look up 1F4A9)
I can't be the only person that wonders why there is an entire clip-art
library in a character set. Probably pushed by the storage
manufacturers; they'd love it if you needed an entire hard drive or
flash chip just for your font library.
Matt Roberds
Alan J Rosenthal
>Alan J Rosenthal <fl...@dgp.toronto.edu> wrote:
>> http://chryss.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/characters-1.png
>> (look up 1F4A9)
>
>I can't be the only person that wonders why there is an entire clip-art
>library in a character set.
I'll give you a hint as to my personal theory: web "forums" and
:-) :-( ;-) :-} B-) :-P :-.... oh boy, I'm getting bored just typing those.
Imagine if instead of commenting "U R GAY" on a bulletin board you were
instead able to say "U 8 \u1f4a9"? It's just an LMFAO a minute here.
Ron Parker
> I can't be the only person that wonders why there is an entire clip-art
> library in a character set.
Surely even you can't deny the intrinsic usefulness of having a standardized
codepoint for CHART WITH UPWARDS TREND AND YEN SIGN (U+1F4B9).
Why, no, there isn't one for any other currency symbol, or with a downwards
trend and a Yen sign. Why would there be?
David Skinner
>
> Thoughts?
Depends on the Helldesk job. I had a sysadmin working for me who, for
family reasons, had to move to the other end of the country. He was a
highly valued member of the team so we worked out a new position for him
as a helpdesk escalation guy. Second-line helpdesk, if you will. It was
that or lose him entirely. There was a pay cut involved due to his being
less able to tackle the really knotty stuff remotely, but that was to be
expected.
It's worked out great. He spends his days working out of his mother's
spare room in an idyllic part of Scotland. He structures his own time
around out-of-hours server work alongside the Helldesk escalation stuff
that's actually on his job description (which is mainly handled via
email, Skype from other members of IT, and the ticketing system - he
rarely has to actually man the hotline).
His location means that he's less encumbered by the annoying "drop what
you're doing and go and look at that" stuff, I get someone who is
genuinely happy to reboot shit at midnight on a Sunday, and the helpdesk
backlog has fallen to record low levels due to his level of technical
competence at remote support.
He comes back down here about four times a year so that he doesn't lose
touch with the everyday stuff. Too long away and he starts seeing things
through a pair of idealised eyes. He just needs to be brought back down
to earth from time to time.
But, overall, everyone's a winner.
David Skinner
says...
You've done this before, haven't you. I can tell.
Robert Uhl
>
> Depends on the Helldesk job. I had a sysadmin working for me who, for
> family reasons, had to move to the other end of the country. He was a
> highly valued member of the team so we worked out a new position for him
> as a helpdesk escalation guy. Second-line helpdesk, if you will. It was
> that or lose him entirely. There was a pay cut involved due to his being
> less able to tackle the really knotty stuff remotely, but that was to be
> expected.
>
> It's worked out great.
[snip tales of sending him back four times a year]
> But, overall, everyone's a winner.
Why, oh why can't more companies learn that there's a way to do WFH
right? Sounds like you guys figured it out.
IMHO, the right thing to do is take some of the savings (and they're not
insignificant--office space is not cheap, and people are willing to
trade compensation in order to WFH) and spend a small portion on things
like employee get-togethers a few times a year. It's still a net win.
--
Robert A. Uhl
Maarten Wiltink
news:874o4cj...@octopodial-chrome.com...
> David Skinner <drsk...@ntlworldERASETHIS.com> writes:
>> Depends on the Helldesk job. I had a sysadmin working for me who, for
>> family reasons, had to move to the other end of the country. ...
>>
>> It's worked out great.
>
> [snip tales of sending him back four times a year]
>
>> But, overall, everyone's a winner.
>
> Why, oh why can't more companies learn that there's a way to do WFH
> right? Sounds like you guys figured it out.
At one point in the previous round of job applicationeering, I was
rejected by a company that foresaw having to send me to fix some of those
legendary x-hundred-thousand-euro-per-hour emergencies approximately once
per year.
No, I do not have a driver's licence. Yes, I consider it trivial to
hire someone who does. Even in the dead of night. The cost should be
negligible in x-hundred-thousand-euro-per-hour circumstances. Once per
year.
This is the kind of unthinkingness that makes me wonder if I would have
wanted to work for them. I certainly didn't want to work for the people
who would pay travelling allowances only to people with cars or public
transportation tickets (monthly pass preferred), and in retrospect this
does not surprise me.
> IMHO, the right thing to do is take some of the savings (and they're
> not insignificant--office space is not cheap, and people are willing
> to trade compensation in order to WFH) and spend a small portion on
> things like employee get-togethers a few times a year. It's still a
> net win.
I'm not sure a few times a year would be enough to convince me of the
reality of the company and colleagues. It may work for other people.
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
Joe Thompson
> IMHO, the right thing to do is take some of the savings (and they're not
> insignificant--office space is not cheap, and people are willing to
> trade compensation in order to WFH) and spend a small portion on things
> like employee get-togethers a few times a year. It's still a net win.
Often enough, employees spend a significant amount to commute, so a
small reduction in salary may even be a net gain for the employee.
When I was commuting by car to Reston, VA, I was spending $11 a day just
on gas, so every WFH day per week was worth nearly $600 a year directly
in gas I didn't need to buy -- and that was when gas was $3.00 a gallon
($0.79/liter, for the poor benighted foreigners among us). -- Joe
Bernard Peek
> David Skinner <drsk...@ntlworldERASETHIS.com> writes:
>>
>> Depends on the Helldesk job. I had a sysadmin working for me who, for
>> family reasons, had to move to the other end of the country. He was a
>> highly valued member of the team so we worked out a new position for him
>> as a helpdesk escalation guy. Second-line helpdesk, if you will. It was
>> that or lose him entirely. There was a pay cut involved due to his being
>> less able to tackle the really knotty stuff remotely, but that was to be
>> expected.
>>
>> It's worked out great.
>
> [snip tales of sending him back four times a year]
>
>> But, overall, everyone's a winner.
>
> Why, oh why can't more companies learn that there's a way to do WFH
> right? Sounds like you guys figured it out.
In one contract I managed a developer who was based in South Africa. He
had been working for us in the UK but had to go back. So his manager
just didn't bother telling HR he had changed address somewhat.
Unfortunately nobody told me this was a secret and I let the cat out of
the bag. After that HR tried putting pressure on my manager to end what
they considered to be an anomaly. We managed to fight them off until he
resolved it by quitting - to take a job about 500 yards from our UK
offices.
If anyone is looking for a Head of IT working from home I'm available at
very reasonable rates.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Seebs
> insignificant--office space is not cheap, and people are willing to
> trade compensation in order to WFH) and spend a small portion on things
> like employee get-togethers a few times a year. It's still a net win.
I sorta wish they wouldn't do this. But I'm an outlier. If I wanted to see
people face-to-face, I would probably be a very different person.
Reminds me of a delightful experience I had recently. Working on something
which involves badly written specifications such that we end up with me
registered as the SOLE point of contact with some people, and I do the various
paperwork, and reach the submission page... and they want a company officer.
I am not a company officer. We are not allowed to let someone else use my
account, and we are not allowed to create an additional account, because the
account you create MUST be the sole point of contact.
So I email to them to explain the concern, and get back a response to the
effect of:
When are you available to discuss this? [blah blah set up a time
for a call]
Yeah, uhm. Look, this may come as a shock, but I am in fact totally aware
of the existence of the phone, and your phone number is posted. Had I
wished to communicate by phone, I would have started by calling. Instead,
I emailed you.
I sent back something to the effect of "any time, but I'd like to keep it
to email, I'm not autistic and good with voice". So she sent back the
one-line email that, had it been sent two days earlier, would have resolved
things two days earlier. (Answer: Single point of contact? Oh, it just
SAYS that, just go ahead and register another contact.)
Peter H. Coffin
"Compensation", not so much. Part of what that "compensation" pays for
is my using my network mandwidth and my space for employer's benefit.
They're already getting the extra time I'm not spending commuting.
(Mostly because when I WAS commuting, it was working time anyway, on
the commuter coach with the the laptop open and Notes running.) Getting
me to work on a national holiday when I don't have other plans anyway,
that's what employers can get out of WFH.
--
We're the technical experts. We were hired so that management could
ignore our recommendations and tell us how to do our jobs.
-- Mike Andrews
Cipher
> On 2011-05-30, Robert Uhl<eadm...@NOSPAMgmail.com> wrote:
>> IMHO, the right thing to do is take some of the savings (and they're not
>> insignificant--office space is not cheap, and people are willing to
> Often enough, employees spend a significant amount to commute, so a
> small reduction in salary may even be a net gain for the employee.
I once worked a job fifty miles from home, commute required; I'd lay
down five hundred miles a week just going to and from the office, let
alone any of the on-site work. By IRS rules, that was $250 a week.
Total fucking waste of time, money and resources, that. I would have
been better off renting a place down there and coming home weekends,
were SWMBO to allow such.
--
The word "urgent" is the moral of the story "The boy who cried wolf". As
a general rule I don't believe it until a manager comes to me almost in
tears. I like to catch them in a cup and drink them later.
-- Matt Holiab, in the Monastery
Zebee Johnstone
In alt.sysadmin.recovery on Mon, 30 May 2011 08:40:03 -0600
Robert Uhl <eadm...@NOSPAMgmail.com> wrote:
>
> [snip tales of sending him back four times a year]
>
>> But, overall, everyone's a winner.
>
> Why, oh why can't more companies learn that there's a way to do WFH
> right? Sounds like you guys figured it out.
>
We have a bod who works from home which is about 400km from the rest
of us.
He drives down once a fortnight or so to attend team meetings.
Otherwise he's phone/email/IM.
Earlier this year I spent 3 weeks at Mum's place in Bunbury (around
3000km from here). The time difference meant I ended up doing much of
my stuff after most of the others had gone home, so I did the late
troubleticket shift.
I don't like working from home for really long periods, I go a bit
stircrazy and while it is OK if there's a lot of work, it's a lot less
fun if there isn't. But for a few weeks, no problem.
On the whole my employer is fine with it. As long as the work to
be done suits it, and you can work out how much face to face is
needed.
It's a bit of a management nightmare, we did have someone who abused
it badly and who was very savvy about playing the system. Poisoned it
for others for a while, but management have mostly recovered.
Zebee
TimC
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
> ($0.79/liter, for the poor benighted foreigners among us). -- Joe
For those foreigners amongst us, that's $0.79/litre.
^^
--
TimC Trying to solve hydrodnamics equations is [...] NOT RECOMMENDED WHILE
DRIVING. But at at least you can console yourself that no, you're probably NOT
missing a police car or a side-of-the-road wreck or whatever. You're just caught
in a stupidness laser. -- David DeLaney in alt.religion.kibology
Alan J Rosenthal
>Often enough, employees spend a significant amount to commute, so a
>small reduction in salary may even be a net gain for the employee.
>When I was commuting by car to Reston, VA, I was spending $11 a day just
>on gas,
I just bought my monthly passes for June for the Toronto transit system
and for the area commuter train. Total of $331.00 (THREE HUNDRED AND
THIRTY-ONE MILLION MICRODOLLARS). Plus I have a very-short drive to
and from the train station in my town.
Julian Macassey
<sat...@satyaonline.cjb.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 30 May 2011 21:16:48 +0000 (UTC), Joe Thompson wrote:
>> Bar bgure avpr guvat gung V xrrc ba gur qbja-ybj vf gur novyvgl gb tvir
>> va gb gur hetr gb anc va zvqnsgreabba. V qba'g qb vg n ybg, ohg V unir
>> orra xabja gb gnxr n 30-zvahgr oernx jvgu vafgehpgvbaf gb zl jvsr gb
>> jnxr zr hc vs zl pryy cubar evatf. Va nyy snvearff V qb zber jbex va
>> gur ubhe nsgre n 30-zvahgr anc (vs V arrq bar) guna V jbhyq unir va gur
>> fnzr 90 zvahgrf jvgubhg bar.
>
> Gurer ner znal (gbb znal) qnlf jura V xabj V'q or zber cebqhpgvir jvgu n 20
> zvahgr anc guna jvgubhg.
>
A gernman study showed that an aftrnoon nap improved
productivity.
In the US, an afternoon nap is a firing offence.
What did I just say about productivity?
I enjoyed my nap today.
--
"I worship the ground that Paul Ryan walks on," - Dick Cheney, 25 May 2011
Lawns 'R' Us
Well, if we're going to go down that path...
$37/week gets me train travel from home to ork, plus an extension to
include the CBD and a few other areas I visit on a reasonably regular
basis. (Home to ork on its own would be $31/week; the extra $6/week is
well worth it, considering the extensions would be more than that.) I
don't own a car; instead, I cycle to the shops (about 10 minutes to
the closest major shopping centre, half that to one with a couple of
stupormarkets, a bakery, and a greengrocer.) The other option is
$48/week for trains, busses, and ferries, but I need the latter two so
rarely, it's not worth the extra cost.
If I *do* need a car[1], there's a few car sharing groups in the city
(although not particularly close to me; the nearest vehicle is "sixty
minutes' walking time" according to the webshite. I catch the train
and walk.)
[1] such as when I needed to get a fair amount of furniture. It's
amazing just how much flat pack furniture can fit in the back of a
Yaris.
Maarten Wiltink
news:130679812...@hexane.ssi.swin.edu.au...
> On 2011-05-30, Joe Thompson (aka Bruce)
> was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
>> in gas I didn't need to buy -- and that was when gas was $3.00 a gallon
>> ($0.79/liter, for the poor benighted foreigners among us). -- Joe
>
> For those foreigners amongst us, that's $0.79/litre.
> ^^
I still won't get it until you call it EUR 0.55/l. Which is almost
exactly one third of the price I see advertised here.
It's too much to hope that you now pay nine dollars a gallon, right?
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
Joe Thompson
> It's too much to hope that you now pay nine dollars a gallon, right?
The most I have ever personally seen was something between $4 and $5 a
gallon after Hurricane Katrina. Since then there have been spikes, but
none as high. Here in the DC metro area there is a pretty hard ceiling
around $4.00/gal -- you will see the price shoot up quickly to $3.999
and then hold there for a long time, after which it will drop back. (We
are just now coming down from such a spike -- I think last time I filled
up it was $3.699/gal, down from $3.849/gal the time before.
The big difference is the post-Katrina spike was associated with a bona-
fide production impact, where the others have just been speculators
freaking out over the Middle East.
There was some scaremongering earlier this spring (as there is
periodically), about how there would be $5.00/gal gas by Memorial Day
(yesterday), and how this was (as it always is) the sitting President's
fault. This time around I didn't hear anybody screaming to open the
Strategic Petroleum Reserves though. -- Joe
Seebs
> In the US, an afternoon nap is a firing offence.
That's... dumb. Also not always my experience. I sometimes announce intent
to nap a bit until I'm smart again.
... There's a reason I mostly ignore head hunters.
Joe Zeff
> and how this was (as it always is) the sitting President's fault.
I belong to a site that tracks gas prices[1] and posts articles about gas,
oil and other energy concerns. Not only do all the people commenting on
the articles blame the President, not one of them will admit to having
voted for him.
[1]There's a search function on my site that will take you there. Just
add your zip code[2] and find out the best prices near you.
[2]I know the site carries data for .ca, so if that's where you live, it
should work.
--
Joe Zeff -- The Guy With The Sideburns:
http://www.zeff.us http://www.lasfs.info
Tish and typos happen.
Brian Kantor
If I could do "freeway speeds" on the freeway it'd be about 2/3 that.
- Brian
Brian Kantor
>
>It's too much to hope that you now pay nine dollars a gallon, right?
>
No, about half that. Which is a dollar a gallon more than it was
a year ago.
- Brian
Erwan David
> Data point: it costs me a gallon a day to commute with the current car.
> If I could do "freeway speeds" on the freeway it'd be about 2/3 that.
Its seems to me very much. With a gallon I drive almost 50 miles...
--
Le travail n'est pas une bonne chose. Si ça l'était,
les riches l'auraient accaparé
Brian Kantor
Yes. Six months ago, after saving up for 8 years, I decided to buy a
high-performance sports car before I got too old to drive one safely.
I'm paying for it in gas mileage, cost of tires, insurance, etc.
In a few years when I retire and can no longer afford it, I hope I'll
look back on the adventure with some degree of pleasure and satisfaction.
In the near future, I may cut the cost by working from home some days
per week.
I don't know what I'll be driving in 5 years, nor whether I'll still be
commuting, as I may have retired by then.
- Brian
Garrett Wollman
Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> wrote:
>br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor) disait le 05/31/11 que :
>
>> Data point: it costs me a gallon a day to commute with the current car.
>> If I could do "freeway speeds" on the freeway it'd be about 2/3 that.
>
>Its seems to me very much. With a gallon I drive almost 50 miles...
Apples to apples? (That's U.S. gallon, not Imperial, and gasoline,
not diesel. Oh, and four wheels, not two.)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Erwan David
> In article <m2pqmyp...@rail.eu.org>,
> Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> wrote:
>>br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor) disait le 05/31/11 que :
>>
>>> Data point: it costs me a gallon a day to commute with the current car.
>>> If I could do "freeway speeds" on the freeway it'd be about 2/3 that.
>>
>>Its seems to me very much. With a gallon I drive almost 50 miles...
>
> Apples to apples? (That's U.S. gallon, not Imperial, and gasoline,
> not diesel. Oh, and four wheels, not two.)
>
for me that's 5,5 l of diesel per 100 km...
And it would be around 4,5 if I were alone on the road...
Peter Corlett
> Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> wrote:
[...]
>> Its seems to me very much. With a gallon I drive almost 50 miles...
> Apples to apples? (That's U.S. gallon, not Imperial, and gasoline, not
> diesel. Oh, and four wheels, not two.)
And the mile. Because after I've had a gallon, miles seem to be about 5km
long...
Garrett Wollman
Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> wrote:
>wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) disait le 05/31/11 que :
>
>> In article <m2pqmyp...@rail.eu.org>,
>> Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> wrote:
>>>Its seems to me very much. With a gallon I drive almost 50 miles...
>> Apples to apples? (That's U.S. gallon, not Imperial, and gasoline,
>> not diesel. Oh, and four wheels, not two.)
>for me that's 5,5 l of diesel per 100 km...
>And it would be around 4,5 if I were alone on the road...
5.5 l/100 km = 43 mi/gal, but diesel fuel is more energy-dense than
gasoline so can't be directly compared on a volumetric basis. (Where
I live it's also about 15% more expensive, which didn't use to be the
case.) On a constant-dollar basis (9.72 mi/USD) that would be the
equivalent of 38 mi/gal of gas.[1]
-GAWollman
[1] That's using my best recollection of the today's prices at the
station I pass by on the way to work every day, $4.399/gal for diesel
and $3.899/gal for RUNL.
Erwan David
> In article <m28vtm3...@draisine.depot.rail.eu.org>,
> Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> wrote:
>>wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) disait le 05/31/11 que :
>>
>>> In article <m2pqmyp...@rail.eu.org>,
>>> Erwan David <er...@rail.eu.org> wrote:
>
>>>>Its seems to me very much. With a gallon I drive almost 50 miles...
>
>>> Apples to apples? (That's U.S. gallon, not Imperial, and gasoline,
>>> not diesel. Oh, and four wheels, not two.)
>
>>for me that's 5,5 l of diesel per 100 km...
>>And it would be around 4,5 if I were alone on the road...
>
> 5.5 l/100 km = 43 mi/gal, but diesel fuel is more energy-dense than
> gasoline so can't be directly compared on a volumetric basis. (Where
> I live it's also about 15% more expensive, which didn't use to be the
> case.) On a constant-dollar basis (9.72 mi/USD) that would be the
> equivalent of 38 mi/gal of gas.[1]
>
> -GAWollman
>
> [1] That's using my best recollection of the today's prices at the
> station I pass by on the way to work every day, $4.399/gal for diesel
> and $3.899/gal for RUNL.
here 1,30 €/l for diesel, 1,50 €/l for E95. Inversed price for me...
Brian Kantor
>[1] That's using my best recollection of the today's prices at the
>station I pass by on the way to work every day, $4.399/gal for diesel
>and $3.899/gal for RUNL.
"regular unleaded" (87 octane) gasoline sells for just under $4 per US
gallon in San Diego. In southern California, all common motor fuels are
10% alcohol (E10); 91 octane (R+M/2, "premium") was selling for $4.20
last week when I tanked up. 91 is the closest I can get to my car's
recommended 92 octane without going to a racing fuels vendor or to an
airport (both where 100 octane may be found, at quite a higher price).
In general, 87-89-91 octane grades of E10 in San Diego are about $.10
increment per grade.
- Brian
Brian Kantor
>10% alcohol (E10)
I've been corrected; that is "up to 10%", currently around 6% alcohol.
- Brian
John Clear
Brian Kantor <br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu> wrote:
>
>[...] 91 is the closest I can get to my car's
>recommended 92 octane without going to a racing fuels vendor or to an
>airport (both where 100 octane may be found, at quite a higher price).
A guy I know[1] put some avgas in his BMW M5. He didn't know that
the 'LL' in 100LL stands for 'low lead'. Even though 100LL has at
most 2 grams of tetra-ethyl lead per US gallon[2], it is still
enough to destroy catalytic converters, oxygen sensors and other
essential bits of the engine. He ended up with a multi-thousand
dollar repair bill.
John
[1] FOAF, but I've met him enough times to know he's dumb enough to do it
[2] Yes, the spec is grams per gallon. That's what happens when you
absorb too much lead.
--
John Clear - j...@panix.com http://www.clear-prop.org/
Peter H. Coffin
>>Its seems to me very much. With a gallon I drive almost 50 miles...
>
> Yes. Six months ago, after saving up for 8 years, I decided to buy a
> high-performance sports car before I got too old to drive one safely.
> I'm paying for it in gas mileage, cost of tires, insurance, etc.
The epitome of Recovery.
Sooo...... Whatja get?
--
Nay, God Himself will not save men against their wills. -Locke
David Scheidt
:On 31 May 2011 14:53:19 -0700, Brian Kantor
:<br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu> wrote:
::
:: "regular unleaded" (87 octane) gasoline sells for just under $4 per US
:: gallon in San Diego. In southern California, all common motor fuels are
:: 10% alcohol (E10); 91 octane (R+M/2, "premium") was selling for $4.20
:: last week when I tanked up. 91 is the closest I can get to my car's
:: recommended 92 octane without going to a racing fuels vendor or to an
:: airport (both where 100 octane may be found, at quite a higher price).
:The "Instruction Manual Series IIA and IIB" gives the timings to use for 90
:and 85 octane fuel in the 8:1 compression engines, and for 83 and 75 octane
:fuel in the 7:1 compression engines (Dunno if that's MON, RON, or average).
:I advance the ignition quite a bit when running on 105 octane fuel...
RON.
--
sig 70
mrob...@att.net
> Brian Kantor <br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu> wrote:
>> In southern California, all common motor fuels are 10% alcohol (E10)
>
> I've been corrected; that is "up to 10%", currently around 6% alcohol.
Does any state weights-and-measures department actually test this? I
mean, it's not like there's a financial incentive to sell "E10" that's
really E20, or anything.
Matt Roberds
mrob...@att.net
> On 2011-05-31, Maarten Wiltink <maa...@kittensandcats.net> wrote:
>> It's too much to hope that you now pay nine dollars a gallon, right?
gasbuddy.com and look at the national averages, or pick your favorite
state/province or metropolitan area. These are all user-reported prices
[0] that age out after a couple of days, and are almost always for the
cheapest grade of unleaded gasoline (petrol, Benzin); diesel fuel is
almost irrelevant for private passenger cars in the US.
It is also instructive to look at the graphs and check the "show crude
oil price" box. When you do that, the Y axes are scaled such that the
crude oil price and retail price are in the same range on the chart.
This is either an amazing sleight-of-hand or a good way to figure out
when you're getting ripped off.
> The most I have ever personally seen was something between $4 and $5
> a gallon after Hurricane Katrina.
I think I paid about $3.90 or $3.95 per gallon in Tulsa, right after
Katrina. That was for the cheapest grade; the higest grade would have
been about $0.20 more. Tulsa's gas prices are usually fairly low,
partly because Oklahoma doesn't have any money, and partly because there
are two refineries in town.
Before the run-up in prices from about mid 2007 to late 2008, the graphs
on that site around the time of Katrina were interesting. The retail
price, which had been running "below" the price of crude by about two
graph divisions IIRC, suddenly spiked "above" the price of crude by
about four to six graph divisions. The 2007/2008 run-up has now damped
out that spike, at least the way their scaling works.
> Here in the DC metro area there is a pretty hard ceiling around
> $4.00/gal -- you will see the price shoot up quickly to $3.999 and
> then hold there for a long time, after which it will drop back.
When gas is on the way up, and it goes above $4/gal in the higher-cost
areas (usually Hawaii first, then California, followed by maybe New
York), the wire services run lots of photos of gas station signs in
those areas, to accompany their "OMG GAS IS $4" stories.
Before the 2007/2008 run-up, the oil companies understood pretty well
how demand responded at prices up to about $3 a gallon. I kind of
think that part of the run-up was a trial to see what *would* happen
when gas got near $4 a gallon.
Someone I know has claimed for a long time that in the Kansas City area,
the stations' practice was to put prices up by (say) 6 or 7 cents, hold
that for a few days, and then drop them back by 1 or 2 cents. I
didn't really believe it until I saw it plotted out, and sure enough,
it looks a bit like a sawtooth wave. Not all metro areas change like
this, though.
In a very slight defense of Big Oil, there is *no other product* whose
current price is advertised 24 hours per day on big lighted signs in
every city, town, village, and suburb in the country. People who never
even *buy* gasoline still know what it costs. If supermarkets did that
with bread or eggs, people would complain a lot about those, too.
> There was some scaremongering earlier this spring (as there is
> periodically), about how there would be $5.00/gal gas by Memorial Day
> (yesterday), and how this was (as it always is) the sitting
> President's fault.
One chart I would like that site to do is to have the X axis run from
January to December, plot one trace for each year, and scale the axes
so that it is easy to compare the seasonal variations. To a zeroth
approximation, the price goes up in April, stays up over the summer,
and falls off in September or so; people drive more in the summer.
Matt Roberds
[0] They are also a certified Web 2.0 site now - they sell the data that
was collected for free by their users.
Garrett Wollman
>Brian Kantor <br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu> wrote:
>> I've been corrected; that is "up to 10%", currently around 6% alcohol.
>
>Does any state weights-and-measures department actually test this?
Yes. An acquaintance of mine is a w/m inspector in Santa Barbara
County, and I'm reasonably sure that he does that (at least to the
point of sending a sample to the lab for analysis). He also does
octane testing and checks the specific gravity (to make sure there's
not too much water in the tank).
-GAWollman
Brian Kantor
>mean, it's not like there's a financial incentive to sell "E10" that's
>really E20, or anything.
I read that the state Air Pollution Control folks do test it, and there
is a substantial fine for not complying. Dunno if that's ever happened.
- Brian
Brian Kantor
I've always driven second-line sports cars; this time I sold the
9 year old 350Z (for a pittance) and bought a 5 year old Porsche.
I'm still learning its habits. I hope to take it to the track in
a few months and see what it and I can do.
- Brian
Maarten Wiltink
> [...] diesel fuel is
> almost irrelevant for private passenger cars in the US.
I have a strong suspicion that it's equally almost irrelevant for
private passenger cars in the Netherlands. That there are nevertheless
hordes of people sluicing it into their cars is mainly a consequence
of it not being their car; it's the company car and you almost can't
be taken seriously if you have a job without one, it seems.
And it's also the company's gas bill. That really ticks me off. I want
a banana allowance, dammit.
Tebrgwrf,
Maarten Wiltink
John Burnham
> A few years ago the UK introduced what was effectively a way of buying
> bicycles out of pre-tax salary (in reality it's a bit more byzantine
> than that, but that's the rough idea).
Except there's usually a limit on the price of the bike which made various
of my friends look at it and go "Well, I could buy 50% of the bike I'd
want" and you can't chip in any extra cash yourself, there's often
restrictions on where you can buy the bike and actually, you're not buying
the bike. At the end of a period of time, your employer can just go "Well,
that bike is now ours and we're keeping it." In practice, the employer is
allowed to sell you the bike for a "reasonable price" but they can't tell
you this "reasonable price" because that would make the scheme a
hire-purchase-alike and a whole bunch of different legislation kicks in.
Like many such schemes, it seems like a good idea and can be if
implemented by someone sensible. However......
J
Peter Corlett
[...]
> A few years ago the UK introduced what was effectively a way of buying
> bicycles out of pre-tax salary (in reality it's a bit more byzantine than
> primarily for getting to work, thus (went the blurb) reducing crowding on
> public transport and roads.
I looked at it when I was still working for somebody else instead of myself,
and the deal was worthless. It's a lease scheme, so I don't get to keep the
bike when I change jobs, and the minimum contribution was twice what I'd
paid for my bike even accounting for it being bought out of tax-paid income
and the lease scheme being pre-tax income.
> So where's my tax break for working from home?
If you have a separate area for working from home, you probably can claim a
refund. Whether it's worth the hassle of doing a tax return to get it is
debatable.
Dave Hughes
> Does any state weights-and-measures department actually test this? I
> mean, it's not like there's a financial incentive to sell "E10" that's
> really E20, or anything.
There was something published recently in Sydney.au about a private
operator getting pinged for selling the same fuel as 3 different tings -
91 unleaded, E10 and maybe E20[1]. That implies some kind of testing here
in the state of NSW. As far as .us goes, I've no idea.
[1] I can't remember the third, but do remember there were more than 2
fuels in question. Normally you've got a choice of E10, 91, 95 and 98
in Sydney servos, but the private ones tend to have some more esoteric
mixes of ETOH.
--
Dave Hughes - da...@hired-goons.net
"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack
of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses"
- Elwood Blues
Peter H. Coffin
> Brian Kantor <br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu> wrote:
>> Brian Kantor <br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>> In southern California, all common motor fuels are 10% alcohol (E10)
>>
>> I've been corrected; that is "up to 10%", currently around 6% alcohol.
>
> Does any state weights-and-measures department actually test this? I
> mean, it's not like there's a financial incentive to sell "E10" that's
> really E20, or anything.
Not particularly, these days. I've been told (by someone that works at a
commercial distillery) that it's only subsidies and air quality
requirements at this point that's keeping alcohol in automobile fuel.
Neutral spirits for human consumption is a much more appealing market.
And worth something around $1/l FOB the distillery.
--
CANNIBAL, n.
A gastronome of the old school who preserves the simple tastes and
adheres to the natural diet of the pre-pork period.
David Scheidt
:In article <is4fjc$4k1$1...@dont-email.me>, <mrob...@att.net> wrote:
:>Brian Kantor <br...@karoshi.ucsd.edu> wrote:
:>> I've been corrected; that is "up to 10%", currently around 6% alcohol.
:>
:>Does any state weights-and-measures department actually test this?
:Yes. An acquaintance of mine is a w/m inspector in Santa Barbara
:County, and I'm reasonably sure that he does that (at least to the
:point of sending a sample to the lab for analysis). He also does
:octane testing and checks the specific gravity (to make sure there's
:not too much water in the tank).
You test the specific gravity because it's a reasonable proxy for the
energy content of the fuel and a reasonable proxy for Reid vapor
pressure (which is a measure of how many low-molecular weight
aromatics are in it, which are restricted because they're a large part
of smog). Gasoline, even gasoline with 10% alcohol, and water are
immiscible. If water gets into the tank, the gasoline very quickly
floats on it. the pump in the tank is several inches off the bottom,
so it stays there until the station gets someone to pump it out, or it
reaches the pump and they start selling water. There's a very brief
period of time during refilling of the tank that there's enough mixing
to get it off the bottom, but it doesn't last very long. Water gets
into the tank for a couple reasons, one being the fill cover is left
off, and it rains, but the most common is condenstation. When you
pump gas out of a tank, you have to let air in to replace the volume.
That air tends to have water in it, which condenses. IN the US,
underground tanks are required, as part of the Clean Water Act, to
have monitors for this stuff. So the station knows how much water (to
the hundreth of an inch ) is in the tank, how much gasoline, and what
the temperature is. Nicer systems have a shut off that won't let you
pump if the water is high.
--
sig 104
Robert Uhl
>
> But WFH involves additional costs to you too. More water for coffee
> input/output, more electricity to keep the necessary hardware running,
> more wear and tear on office chair and desk, possibly more heating
> depending on your climate - all hidden inside your day-to-day bills
> unless you explicitly measure them.
I really, _really_ don't mind. I already run my entire home network; my
water cost is 'free' anyway (read: included in my HOA bill); and a good
office chair and desk cost less than a year's worth of gas.
I'll gladly take that trade in return for not spending 3+ hours a day on
the road; in return for not risking my life and limb on icy and rainy
roads; in return for getting to sleep until 0755; in return for getting
to eat real, homemade food daily; in return for getting to bake bread in
the morning.
Oh Lord I miss working from home.
> 0: I use rainwater for as much as possible, e.g. cleaning the windows
> and watering the garden. No greywater system yet but it's a TODO when
> the plumbing needs changing one of these years.
If I ever have a house I definitely want to set up a greywater system.
Supposedly, it's illegal to catch rainwater here--I don't know how true
that is, or how that makes sense anyway (if I catch it, then pour it on
my lawn, how does that affect runoff any differently than if it falls on
the lawn anyway?).
--
Robert A. Uhl
Robert Uhl
> Robert Uhl wrote:
>
>> Why, oh why can't more companies learn that there's a way to do WFH
>> right? Sounds like you guys figured it out.
>
> Because of visibility. True-blooded PHBs tend to get nervous when
> people doing stuff they'll never understand are out of sight.
If they can't tell if we're productive when WFH, then they can't tell if
we're productive when we're working in an office. I know you're not
saying otherwise; I just thought it's useful to note explicitly.
And, of course, never mind that 'pondering a deep problem' and goofing
off can often look very similar.
--
Robert A. Uhl
Joe Thompson
> If I ever have a house I definitely want to set up a greywater system.
> Supposedly, it's illegal to catch rainwater here--I don't know how true
> that is, or how that makes sense anyway (if I catch it, then pour it on
> my lawn, how does that affect runoff any differently than if it falls on
> the lawn anyway?).
Wasn't there a kerfuffle out there over HOAs and rain barrels some years
ago? I vaguely recall it making Fark.
I suspect it's just the collision of old-style Western water-rights laws
with modern conservation principles, and it'll all get worked out in a
decade or so. -- Joe
--
Joe Thompson | Sysadmin - Scientificist
E-mail addresses in headers are valid. | http://www.orion-com.com/
"There is no way my emacs is ever getting a credit card!" -- Matthew Vernon
David Scheidt
:If I ever have a house I definitely want to set up a greywater system.
:Supposedly, it's illegal to catch rainwater here--I don't know how true
:that is, or how that makes sense anyway (if I catch it, then pour it on
:my lawn, how does that affect runoff any differently than if it falls on
:the lawn anyway?).
It's not your water. You don't have any right to it. You want it,
buy it, just like the people it belongs to did.
As for how it makes sense, even if all the water you collected ended
up where it would have otherwise, which it won't because slowly
released water, as for sensible irrigation, isn't likely to be runoff,
water rights are often time-based. Someone may own the rights to
water at planting time, but not the rest of the year. If you've
illegally detained their water, releasing it after their allocation
period is over, you've kept them from being able to use it.
--
sig 118
Seebs
> off can often look very similar.
This kind of thing is what led to me writing something called "the hacker
FAQ" many years ago. Which eventually led to a writing career.
-s
--
Copyright 2011, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet...@seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
I am not speaking for my employer, although they do rent some of my opinions.
Shmuel Metz
at 08:21 PM, wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) said:
>Apples to apples? (That's U.S. gallon, not Imperial, and gasoline,
>not diesel. Oh, and four wheels, not two.)
A Prius[1] is 4-wheel, .VA is in the US and the Prius doesn't use
diesel fuel. I'm sure that other examples exist.
[1] I keep parsing it as a slightly longer word.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <http://patriot.net/~shmuel> ISO position
Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+bspfh to contact me.
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
Shmuel Metz
at 04:31 PM, Seebs <usenet...@seebs.net> said:
>On 2011-05-31, Julian Macassey <jul...@tele.com> wrote:
>> In the US, an afternoon nap is a firing offence.
>That's... dumb. Also not always my experience. I sometimes announce
>intent to nap a bit until I'm smart again.
I've been ordered to take at nap. As I recall, the DR site kept
blankets on hand for just that purpose.
mikea
> In <slrniu8oef.11c...@guild.seebs.net>, on 05/31/2011
> at 04:31 PM, Seebs <usenet...@seebs.net> said:
>
>>On 2011-05-31, Julian Macassey <jul...@tele.com> wrote:
>>> In the US, an afternoon nap is a firing offence.
>
>>That's... dumb. Also not always my experience. I sometimes announce
>>intent to nap a bit until I'm smart again.
>
> I've been ordered to take at nap. As I recall, the DR site kept
> blankets on hand for just that purpose.
"By the numbers ... Prepare to sleep! One! Two! Sleep!"
--
Unsubscribing from a mailing list you subscribed to is a basic IQ
test for Internet users.
-- Author unknown, seen on the PCR-1000 list
Seebs
> I've been ordered to take at nap.
Come to think of it, while I'm not sure our employee handbook mentions
naps specifically, I am quite sure it orders regular breaks.
Somewhere back in the dawn of time, someone wanted people to ACTUALLY
get stuff done instead of looking busy.
(Me, I take breaks some days and not others. The nature of the beast
is that some days I have 14 productive hours with a brief interlude
to chew when someone brings me food, and other days my primary contribution
to our embedded Linux product is an innovative system for using lava
blocks to create multi-level illumination in Minecraft.)
Ben A L Jemmett
> On Wed, 01 Jun 2011 09:38:08 +0000, Roger Burton West wrote:
> > A few years ago the UK introduced what was effectively a way of
> > buying bicycles out of pre-tax salary (in reality it's a bit more
> > byzantine than that, but that's the rough idea).
>
> "reasonable price" but they can't tell you this "reasonable price"
> because that would make the scheme a hire-purchase-alike and a whole
> bunch of different legislation kicks in.
Hmm, that's interesting; my brother was looking at this scheme through
his employer a few months ago, and they did provide the
purchase-price-after-three-years -- or representative calculations of
same, I believe. It was all tied up in so much confusion that it took
a fair bit of looking at to figure out, though, especially when they
suddenly announced "we've just completely reworked the entire scheme
because HMRC disagreed with how we were calculating things". Good
sign, that.
In the end, after a bit of back-and-forth ("we give you a Halfords
voucher to the value of the bike you want" "but Halfords can't sell me
the bike I want" "shame, that") he got the bike he wanted from the
local shop he wanted to support and all was well. I suppose the red
tape keeps /somebody/ busy whilst those trying to make use of the
scheme are wasting company time figuring it all out...
--
Regards,
Ben A L Jemmett.
http://flatpack.microwavepizza.co.uk/
Dave Hughes
> Sounds like fun. The closest I've gotten to that is autocrossing the
> miata and working timing and scoring at SCCA track events. After watching
> many hours of racing from T&S, I'm not sure I'd ever want to be out on the
> track at speed.
Find the right event. "Supersprints" in .au are multi competitor events
but with staggered starts and limited numbers. In general there isn't much
passing because you're spread out, and anyone who has made up a 10-30s gap
on a shortish track is someone you should just let through anyway. I keep
meaning to get to them, but life keeps getting in the way.
--
Dave Hughes - da...@hired-goons.net
"I have an asteroid named after me. Isaac
Asimov's got one too. It's smaller and more
eccentric. " - Arthur C. Clarke
Brian Kantor
>> Sounds like fun. The closest I've gotten to that is autocrossing the
>> miata and working timing and scoring at SCCA track events. After watching
>> many hours of racing from T&S, I'm not sure I'd ever want to be out on the
>> track at speed.
Miatas are fun!
I'm interested in solo timed events, but not competitive car-on-car track
racing. Tracks with walls scare me, and the closest raceway is over a
hundred miles away, so it's the local autocross in the stadium parking
lot so far. That way, likely the only thing I'll bruise seriously is
some traffic cones and my own ego. The car is too nice to risk seriously
wrinkling it.
The local sport car clubs hold a performance driving school periodically,
which seems a good way to learn better habits and my own limits in a
safe-ish way. I don't mind getting it filthy on a skid pad if I'm learning.
- Brian
Dave Hughes
> The local sport car clubs hold a performance driving school
> periodically, which seems a good way to learn better habits and my own
> limits in a safe-ish way. I don't mind getting it filthy on a skid pad
> if I'm learning.
If you get even halfway serious about it, consider buying a cheap set of
wheels and tyres from ebay, or another club member. The fronts get a
serious workout with autocross/motorkhana, and it's nice to thrash the
cheapies while having good tyres to drive home on. It also makes you
appreciate why you spend good money on good tyres, rather than the
cheapest things that'll fit.
Carrying tyres in the Miata might be a touch tricky, but you'd probably
get a front pair in the boot.
--
Dave Hughes - da...@hired-goons.net
Against boredom, the Gods themselves struggle in vain.
- Nietzche
Brian Kantor
>Carrying tyres in the Miata might be a touch tricky, but you'd probably
>get a front pair in the boot.
A friend who autocrosses his Miata carries his "track" wheels in a small
trailer that he hauls to the event; he's also got his other gear (jack,
wrenches, spare parts) in it too. I dunno if I'll get that serious, and
besides, the Porsche isn't designed to tow things - no provision for a
trailer hitch. I can get a 'racing' jack and tools into the frunk, but
I don't think I'd be able to put a spare set of wheels on the roof rack.
Maybe two in the rear cargo hatch. I'll have to give it a try. Thanks!
- Brian
Peter H. Coffin
> On Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:01:59 -0400, Jim wrote:
>>> Sounds like fun. The closest I've gotten to that is autocrossing the
>>> miata and working timing and scoring at SCCA track events. After watching
>>> many hours of racing from T&S, I'm not sure I'd ever want to be out on the
>>> track at speed.
>
> Miatas are fun!
>
> I'm interested in solo timed events, but not competitive car-on-car track
> racing. Tracks with walls scare me, and the closest raceway is over a
> hundred miles away,
If you get there in an hour, you win.
--
25. No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any
sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one
small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.
--Peter Anspach's list of things to do as an Evil Overlord
Peter H. Coffin
Nah, you put the Porsche in the trailer as well as the tires and tools.
And attach the trailer to the 12-year-old F150.
And people wonder why racing is an expensive hobby....
Brian Kantor
>And attach the trailer to the 12-year-old F150.
Which I haven't bought yet, even though I need one for all the work
I have to do on my house. I'd really rather be out driving instead
of doing plumbing.
Procrastination takes its toll.
- Brian
Joe Thompson
> On Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:01:59 -0400, Jim wrote:
>>> Sounds like fun. The closest I've gotten to that is autocrossing the
>>> miata and working timing and scoring at SCCA track events. After watching
>>> many hours of racing from T&S, I'm not sure I'd ever want to be out on the
>>> track at speed.
>
> Miatas are fun!
Do they still have a tendency to blow across entire lanes in a light
breeze?
I kid, but not by that much. When I lived in Charlottesville I learned
to give Miatas a wide berth and pass quickly on I-64, because there
*would* be a crosswind and it *would* push that car around. -- Joe