End of year review, I got the highest rating of anybody across the entire Business Technology sector of the firm I work in. One other person got the same rating. My manager wrote that I am regarded as a star performer.
Pretty pleased. :)
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End of year review, I got the highest rating of anybody across the entire Business Technology sector of the firm I work in. One other person got the same rating. My manager wrote that I am regarded as a star performer.
Pretty pleased. :)
What is it that do, Buk?
Sex :downcast:
Data Governance for the country's leading general insurer.
Am looking for work elsewhere though. The EU-wide regulation on insurance I've been working on complying with (Solvency II) has been postponed by 2 or 3 years, so projects have been cancelled and budgets slashed. My little team's work on Data Governance now has much less focus and urgency than it did before the postponement. Leaves us floundering a bit.
Nice to see you pop in Bitter. Nice pendant :)
Posting from my Vita. This must be what it feels like to use a smartphone
I'm feeling happy....and fortunate....that ringing in the 2013 New Year isn't riding on the wings of debt. Oh, I have a home mortgage, but it's less than average local rent payments, and it's my only debt. There's a liberating value to that; no school loans, no car loans, no credit card loans.
I hope to make 2013 the year I have no future liabilities, the year I protect myself from medical bankruptcy....by buying comprehensive healthcare under PA Fair Care, or under new interstate health exchanges.
It would make me quite happy to have comprehensive healthcare coverage that won't cause me to file for medical bankruptcy, before I'm old (or sick) enough to need public assistance, or disability. It would make me feel especially "happy" if I didn't have to rely upon my kids to take care of me in my dotage, or at the end stages of life....when they'd likely be new husbands and fathers.
The Whitehouse's official response to the petition to build a death star.
They have a sense of humour. :up:
So you make a booking for a ticket. It's non-refundable, but you should be ok with that, you've done it many times before. Then, when the confirmation comes, after payment you see the horrible mistake; the outbound trip is on februari 1st. And you already have a ticket on that route for that date. But both tickets are non-refundable.
So you call the call center, from Amsterdam to Istanbul. The place where your pc is has lousy reception, so you get nothing done. You call again, explain the situation to a callcenter worker who doesn't even understand what your problem is. He's not even able to understand your questions. What you realise is, that this man is not going to be helpful untill you re-trace your first ticket in your PC. According to your agenda you bought it on the 1st of november, but no matter how hard you look and where you look, you can't find a ticket issued on the first of november. After almost an hour and a half you find an e-mail dated october 31st, which contained the much sought after ticket. You call again, explain the situation again, this time with both ticketnumbers. Then the callcenter worker suggests, to cancel both tickets and give you a refund. But you don't want that, because ticket number one was a real good deal and you really want to keep it. You just want the second one changed, but since change is not possible (for some reason not understandeable at this time), you get your money back from mr Alper. I love mr Alper.
I have been ill, and while I'm almost completely well again, I don't want to work a night shift because it would probably screw me right back, but had some problems finding a last minute replacement.. but I found someone, and it only took minor breaking of labour laws :)
The snow & ice is making the landscape look rather beautiful. :heart:
Lor. Allo mate.
You still Norfolk way? Big snow out that way ...
Howdy. I'm about 1 mile from the coast line on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. The snow hasn't been falling as much as say Norwich (18 miles away) but its very cold @ -7. Heck, I couldn't even open my boot this morning which was rather frustrating and the antifreeze in my windscreen washer tank had frozen.
I seriously don't understand how a nation can still be caught out by it, everyone knows it happens around now yet they panic and all hell breaks out. My Facebook lit up with people saying 'Don't go out!' when we've not even had an inch of snow.
reminds me something I saw the other day:
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instanc...x/33423499.jpg
I was always amused by how afraid Brits were of snow. Half an inch and the roads would be empty. Somewhat less amusingly, half an inch, and the planes stop flying because Heathrow has something like 3 snow-clearing machines for the entire airport. And yet everyone knows that it snows every year!
Yep, and it's not just the traffic which can't handle snow, it's the train network too which grinds to a halt.
:p
Hah, we beat you hands down; our trains stop running if snow is forecast. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Timbuk2
They don't stop running, they change to a less busy schedule. Which is the smart thing to do: the biggest problem when it snows is expecting that life won't slow down (okay, i may be biased here because i was in a car crash because the driver went too fast in snow). We have the busiest rails in the world, on an extremely tight schedule. When it snows, things will be slower. If the schedule is still full, it will go to shit, as witnessed in previous years. I definately prefer the adapted schedule they use during cold and snow, by far.
I fail to see why an inch or two of snow should slow anything down...
Err, think that over. Drive 120 km/h on a snowy highway and tell me if that's a good idea. Hint: we crashed doing about 40. You just have a lot less traction, it's not safe to use roads as if it's summer.
As for trains, they gather snow and ice which falls off and jams junctions etc., not too much you can do about it. Plus the braking's less good as well.
Ditto. I grew up where heavy snowfall was a regular nuisance, but the city didn't shut down except for genuine blizzards. Then I spent nearly 7 years in Baltimore, where they cancelled school and work at the merest hint of a snow forecast. Fortunately I'm back in a city that generally deals with snowfall appropriately.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
My understanding was that the Dutch regularly get snow - why the big deal for you guys? Unless you're talking about blizzards, of course...
Well, problem is that the tracks are the busiest in the world, the roads are probably pretty high in the list too, so small delays have a snowball ( :p ) effect. Which is why the trains run on a less busy schedule, now. Seems to work to me, not too many delays that I encountered. Oh and one or two years ago half the cities ran out of salt, that was a little problem.And you don't drive slower when the roads are slippy? :bulb:We have snow two, thee times a year I think.
People seem to manage it in New York just fine...It's unheard of to get train delays just because of an inch of snow. Even if there's half a foot, there's a full expectation that all trains will be working, albeit somewhat slower than usual. For buses, a few inches of snow are no worse than rain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
sorry, but comparing driving in snow to driving in rain is mind-bogglingly stupid.
OG, that's an absurd comparison, a decent city would have salted and that would never happen.
Somewhat slower (which is a delay so you're already contradicting yourself there :p ) leads, on busy tracks and tight schedules, to delays. Besides, your trains seemed to run shitty even in summer when I was there :p The complaint is that there are now four instead of six services per hour, and stuff like that. I mean, if the schedules are not as tight and can accommodate somewhat slower trains, you're fine. Because it's infrequent, we just use a special schedule when it's freezing, with slightly fewer trains. Keep in minds our trains don't go every few hours like Amtrak trains, one station has more than 900 trains per day. So yeah, somewhat slower does cause delays there, obviously.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Same with the roads, they are so busy that a couple of extra accidents (which will happen in snow, especially since most people aren't used to it here) cause a lot of problems.
Outside the hours that it's actually snowing hard (when they obviously have to drive slow, and junctions get jammed), the delays here are generally only up to about half an hour, which isn't bad.
Also: I remember that storm, and that was ice, not snow.Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
Not really trying to defend Loki's statement though. Snow is worse than rain, at least because it can turn into/cover ice.