ArteEtMarte

Oh, Multiplan was horrible.

As a SCO Unix and MS Xenix developer, I remember having to write lots of nasty little programs in C to do stuff with it and its files, just to make it usable. It had a terrible trick of writing multiple documents to the same file.

My PTO is in addition to bank holidays, which I think is the equivalent to your federal holidays. A quick count shows that there are 10 bank holidays in the UK this year. Whichever way you slice it, American workers are getting screwed.

That survey makes a lot of sense to me, as a Brit. If I don't take my PTO my boss's boss gets nagged by HR, so they nag my boss, who nags me.

Our PTO year runs from 1 April, so the only (unwritten) rule about vacation is that we should try to spread it over the year. This is because we're only allowed to carry over 5 days to the next year, not taking PTO is frowned upon, and HR don't want everybody to be using up their PTO at the same time at the end of the year.

A few days ago we had a Zoom town-hall meeting where our CEO thanked everybody for taking time off.

Agree. It's unbelievable from a European perspective.

Here in the UK, I get 28 days PTO per year. I can carry forward up to 5 days into the next year. But once you've done that once, you're pretty much committed to taking at least 28 days off the next year, because it's not really acceptable (from a company perspective) to lose PTO. We're strongly encouraged to spread the time off over the year, and to use up our allowance. Anybody here that only took 10 days per year would be having a chat with HR about healthy work/life balance.

I genuinely struggle to understand how it's possible to have anything like an enjoyable existence with only 10 days off per year. I mean, that's all your PTO gone for only a single 2 week vacation. Not even a single spare day for a duvet day.

In the context of 'cheers' being a direct one-to-one replacement of 'goodbye'. (Or more precisely 'bye'.) If, in my local usage, there is any difference between 'bye' and 'cheers', it's that the latter has a bit more bonhomie about it.

In this context, I'm afraid, you are wrong. When I'm in the office, the last thing I say to everybody else as I leave is, 'Cheers.' I'm not thanking them for letting me into office; I'm saying, 'Goodbye.'

I'm perplexed as to why you're pushing this so hard. People who have experience of this are telling you something. But you, despite clearly not having the same experience, are telling them that they are wrong. Don't mean to be snarky, but why is this so important to you?

Next up, 'Do Midlanders really call each other mardy?'

Cheers is used as goodbye here in the East Midlands. If you were here, you'd hear plenty of Brits use it on a daily basis.

Here in the UK, that happened to me on a roundabout. Elderly driver in front pulled out and then, for no visible reason, slammed on the brakes. I ran into the back of her.

It was deemed to be be 100% my fault. Here, if you run into the back of the car in front, it is always your fault. No exceptions.

It makes sense: you should always leave enough room to stop, so I couldn't really complain. But, if everybody did that on that particular busy roundabout, it would result in gridlock.

Nearly happened to me on the Tokyo subway. Train from Narita to Tokyo, couldn't find a way to get out of the system in Shibuya.

I wonder if the indigenous peoples of the Americas told themselves the same thing? Or the aboriginal Australians? Or the people of pre-contact Easter Island? I think the fact that those places are now known by the names given to them by their Western European 'discoverers' is a clue to how things went for them.

I don't think it was Firewire that kept it as a niche product. It was that iTunes wasn't initially available on Windows machines, and Macs were still quite rare.

I had a G3 iMac (Graphite) at the time the iPod came out. So I got one. Actually, I got three: the first died after a day, the second was DOA, but the third kept chugging away for about 3 years until the battery died and it was only usable when plugged in.

It's funny to remember how unusual the iPod was. People on the tube in London, which isn't known for conversation amongst strangers, would ask me what it was. Tiny, about the size of a cassette case, with that that amazing white face and silver case. It was like something from the future.

The way I was told it: "Knowledge is knowing it's a one-way street. Wisdom is learning to look both ways anyway."

And Bob Holness, the first actor to play James Bond. But not, alas, the saxophonist on Baker Street.

My mum's Irish too, but can't stand Bailey's.

We call it a ladyboy.