There is an old story about how a bunch of people at Reed College filled up one of the steam tunnels with pilfered lawn gnomes. Many students made the pilgrimage to the Hall of the Mountain King that year.
Currently, I am an hourly employee and I regularly work 12 hour days. I have the protection of state laws that say that working a 13th hour is *MY* option, and under no circumstances can I work more than 13 hours. I'm also earning 1.5 and 2x time for hours over 8 and 12 respectively. If I get a promotion into an engineering position, I'll become salaried and will be expected to work the same time, or longer, with no compensation over my base pay. Its no wonder that contractor positions are so popular because becomming an 'exempt' employee means you sign over your entire life to serve the company. It used to be that salaried workers came in at 9, had an hour for lunch, and left at 5. There's the government's 32 hours right there. There is no one in my company that does that. If I was salaried, I'd also be on call 24 hours a day if a problem arose with a system that I was responsible for. In terms of simple $/hour I would be better off staying in an hourly peon position. At least now I'm being compensated properly for selling my soul.
Not all of us suffer from the testosterone poisoning that seems to contribute to a love of twitch and shooter games. Give me quality role-playing with a long, involved storyline. Interplay, Black Isle Studios, and Bioware are the current leaders in the RPG field. I think that their far future release Neverwinter Nights will have a Linux version, but I still would like to see BG, the upcoming BGII, Planescape, and Icewind Dale on my Linux box! __
In Oregon we have no sales tax whatsoever, so if I decide to purchase things in Washington or California, I can fill out some forms, flash my drivers license, and recieve an exemption. Usually this is too much of a pain in the butt for small items, but for large purchases it makes a big difference. I've been considering buying a car over the internet, but if I end up having to pay some other state's sales tax I would probably not save any money. Since only OR and NH have no sales tax, I can immagine that our exemptions would be over looked.
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There is an old story about how a bunch of people at Reed College filled up one of the steam tunnels with pilfered lawn gnomes. Many students made the pilgrimage to the Hall of the Mountain King that year.
Currently, I am an hourly employee and I regularly work 12 hour days. I have the protection of state laws that say that working a 13th hour is *MY* option, and under no circumstances can I work more than 13 hours. I'm also earning 1.5 and 2x time for hours over 8 and 12 respectively. If I get a promotion into an engineering position, I'll become salaried and will be expected to work the same time, or longer, with no compensation over my base pay. Its no wonder that contractor positions are so popular because becomming an 'exempt' employee means you sign over your entire life to serve the company. It used to be that salaried workers came in at 9, had an hour for lunch, and left at 5. There's the government's 32 hours right there. There is no one in my company that does that.
If I was salaried, I'd also be on call 24 hours a day if a problem arose with a system that I was responsible for.
In terms of simple $/hour I would be better off staying in an hourly peon position. At least now I'm being compensated properly for selling my soul.
_
Not all of us suffer from the testosterone poisoning that seems to contribute to a love of twitch and shooter games. Give me quality role-playing with a long, involved storyline. Interplay, Black Isle Studios, and Bioware are the current leaders in the RPG field. I think that their far future release Neverwinter Nights will have a Linux version, but I still would like to see BG, the upcoming BGII, Planescape, and Icewind Dale on my Linux box! __
In Oregon we have no sales tax whatsoever, so if I decide to purchase things in Washington or California, I can fill out some forms, flash my drivers license, and recieve an exemption. Usually this is too much of a pain in the butt for small items, but for large purchases it makes a big difference. I've been considering buying a car over the internet, but if I end up having to pay some other state's sales tax I would probably not save any money. Since only OR and NH have no sales tax, I can immagine that our exemptions would be over looked.