mike carey

It varies in different countries. 'Paid time off' is often used for various workplace entitlements like the ones KeepItReal listed that are available at short notice, but not including annual leave. In Australia there are statutory requirements for four weeks of annual leave for permanent employees and any PTO is in addition to this (some types of PTO are required by statute, some are not). I have always interpreted 'vacation' as being what we would call going on holidays, that is time away from home not just away from work.

I balance the cash rewards against the value of points, and it's not simple to do that. I make my own decisions, some are rational some are not. I have heaps of points in several programs, and these things affect what I do. I'll earn points from all sorts of things and I'll chase them!

On Wednesday afternoon, England (the original cricket superpower [except that Australia won the earliest test matches, but I digress]) played Ireland in Melbourne. It rained, the match was delayed but Ireland batted through their innings and England most of theirs. Then it rained again and the match was abandoned. Ireland had had the better of the English, and England was behind where they needed to be in the run chase. The calculations, and how it happened matter not, the records will hold that Ireland had beaten England! The men in green on the field and their countrymen and women in the stadium, and their supporters could rejoice, and they did. A famous victory!

Those comments that creep up on you:

Oliver, this is terrible news. My heartfelt condolences to you and everyone he was closest to. He was such a good friend to you but also a friend to all of us and an institution in the forum. I'm so happy that he was able to undertake his recent trip to the UK, and to continue to be able to enjoy life to the fullest, still planning his 'dinners and fun' with his chosen companions. His passing will cast a pall over next April's meeting but by then I hope we will have had time to grieve and to then make the gathering a celebration of his life. Vale. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

Although probably largely unnoticed in North (or indeed South) America (except the Caribbean) what is arguably the biggest global sporting event of the year [Edited to add 'so far', as the FIFA one is a little bigger - hat tip to @KeepItReal] is under way in Australia. It started a week ago with a final round of qualification matches for four teams to join the eight teams that had qualified automatically for the main tournament. This weekend saw the opening games and among the fixtures, the draw had pitched local rivals against each other, including Australia and New Zealand (we wuz thrashed) and South Africa and Zimbabwe, but there was one monumental clash that had a knife-edge finish. Tickets for the game went on sale about six months ago and the 100K seat stadium, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, sold out in five minutes. This was for the third of the games between local rivals, India and Pakistan. (As it turned out, only 90K spectators turned up.) A cricket journalist was on a 6am flight to Melbourne and as the plane taxied to the gate the captain did the usual welcome to Melbourne and thank you for choosing us announcement and finished by saying, 'Enjoy the cricket' upon which the passengers erupted into competing chants of 'Bhaarat jeetaga' (India will win) and 'Pakistan zindabad' (sort of equivalent to Viva Pakistan). Allegiances in the crowd appeared to be about even (few neutral spectators) and even on TV the atmosphere was electric. Each team at times appeared to have thrown the game away, but half-way through the Indian innings their run chase was insurmountable. But it wasn't. India was within reach of a still difficult victory with a few balls to go and Pakistan made some, what could be called rookie mistakes, but that's unfair, pressure forces errors, and India needed one run from the final ball of the innings. And score it they did.

My savings and transaction accounts are paying 3.2% now, haven't looked at term deposits. (I realise that I'm talking about Australia not the US.)

My recollection of this didn't include the first P you quote but did include one your version omits. Before 'Poor'.

I seem to remember that the Man of the Day position in a market is something that providers pay the site for. A provider here may be better placed to confirm my recollection or disabuse me of it.

Couldn't agree more!

It also has what could be seen as one slight difficulty in that it would be vanishingly difficult to qualify for membership. 150 million kilometres is a long way (that's 93m miles to some of you).

Everywhere is in the middle of nowhere to some extent. Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna) once remarked that Australia is soooo central, why you can hop on a plane and in just 24 hours be somewhere interesting (NYC is 20 hours away). Arguably, if you subscribe to the NYC hype (not completely unwarranted) it is in the middle of nowhere because the rest of the world is a void by comparison. I'm often content to enjoy the place that I'm in for itself, not for what it's in the middle of. Charleston is on my list, that it is in South Carolina doesn't change that.

It was actually about a hotel in space.

That's quite the burn!

You mount a persuasive case!

Ducks don't 'cheap', they quack.

@7829V I hit 'like' but that's not sufficient. It's a dilemma, do you pay, or offer to pay for a friend? It can appear condescending, but we all have different expense thresholds. Are you insulting a friend by offering to pay? Are they happy with accepting what they can pay for from their own resources and resent you offering to pay for what they cannot or choose not to pay for? I think what you did, saying you have a second ticket that you can't otherwise use, and asking your friend if he wants to accompany you is a good approach, but not one you can use too often. If you keep having 'spare' tickets that could appear odd. I have offered an escort an airline lounge pass I couldn't use but he didn't take me up on the offer. I don't know why, in fact I don't even know if he has access himself so it had no value to him, but I haven't pressed the issue.

'It makes sense' in that it's an understandable consequence of Covid, given that at first fomites such as cash were seen as being vectors of the virus, and that because of that later disproven hypothesis the use of cash declined or was replaced completely by contactless forms of payment. Some places just didn't go back to accepting cash. Still, it's somewhat surprising that every outlet in the terminal went that way.

Not just one. The province is Newfoundland and Labrador.

I thought someone else might have commented that the island of Newfoundland is reversed (east to west).

I had a shampoo bottle do that in my bag and that was bad enough! I can't imagine what lube would be like, especially silicone.

Looks like $1.00 to me.

Dates work too. My mother would always cut through the skin of the apple (think of it as around the equator). Apparently it allows the flesh to expand or contract more easily as the fruit heats and cools. (Ed: Dates instead of the prunes, that is.)

Rob, thanks, I wasn't suggesting anything, merely noting something that had happened to me that appeared to be similar to what others were experiencing. I fully expect that it was something in my own computer that had corrected as cache was updated. What prompted it? Who knows, something in material we accessed via a posting here, a random glitch, a browser issue? It's nothing more than a curiosity now.

Well, if it works for him, why not? It's easy for us to be cynical, but if someone advertised on RM doesn't suit one of us it's not their fault.