My fiance is currently living in the Netherlands and they switched off of CEDST last weekend, and here in the US we just switched from EDST. I have few problems mentally calculating time differences as I had to do it constantly when I was assigned to Korea in the military in the medical field...watching the docs come in in the middle of the night for a mandatory conference call with the CDC (we used experimental STD drugs) or with Medical Command HQ (in San Antonio TX) was fun. They had no clue what time their meetings were, so we had to learn quickly as our command and South Korea did not observe DST. My fiance still has trouble with the time shift, so she will tell me "call me at X" knowing I can figure this out. I will be glad when her visa goes through so I don't have to timeshift for a chance to Skype with her and the 4 times a year I have to recalculate for a week or two our time difference.

Yeah how did that work out for the public Dr. Nancy Snyderman, the Doc in NYC who went bowling and the latest the nurse who decided to go for a bike ride? The common link is they were all health care workers;with their entitlement attitudes I will not call them professionals. I spent years in the healthcare field and decided to leave. When "consultations" with other doctors are planning golf outings or looking at Dr. X's new toy and the patient is not mentioned or the nursing staff are more concerned about where to go party this weekend rather than has Mr. Jones gotten the medication he needs on time to fight the infection he has, along with the selfish anti-team members more concerned with making sure they have carved out their "turf" to last until retirement and will happily garrote anyone who steps in their path. And I have IT team members ask me "Why didn't you stay in health care?" Am I bitter? a little bit. I believe now that had I stayed in military healthcare I would have been happier I might still be in the healthcare field.

1 or 2 phones? I worked as a manager for an apartment building as a favor for a friend a couple of years ago. I had one apartment that all 3 tenants are on public assistance of one form or another. I quit counting and tracking the phones at 6. As a rule I do not answer numbers I do not know, since I do not have a landline I get robocalls and other cold calls. They got angry that "I never answered my phone" I told them to give me one or two numbers and I will store them and answer you. "But I can't be bothered with grabbing the right phone." They moved out after their lease was up to my (and my friend's) relief.

If the Dept. of Labor really wanted to punish this company, hint: It's obvious they don't with a $3500 fine. DoL would immediately terminate any visas they currently possess and bar them from having for any visas for a period of time, say one year and force them to go through the entire process as if they were a new company requesting visas. Jailing the executives is a good idea but won't stop the next CEO, CHRO, or any other "CO" from doing the exact same thing, only making sure they don't make the same mistakes the former "CO's" made as they are sitting in the Federal country club with barbed wire fencing. Yes, a few decent foreign nationals on visas will have to go home, but perhaps it's a favor so they aren't the next victims, or more accurately do not participate in the exploitation of the next bunch they bring in.

You are correct. In my town ALL taxi companies are owned by one group. There are about a dozen cab companies, all different names all different numbers. They all go to the same switchboard in the same office. Oh, to make it look good there is a "taxi board" made up of representatives from all the different companies who "approve" new taxi companies coming into the community, and each company has a different post office box, but all the taxis are repaired in the same garage, and all the reps work in the same office. The local government knows it and doesn't care. It's also convenient when a driver acts badly and the company gets sued. It limits the damage to that little piece of the pie. A few companies have gone "bankrupt" over lawsuits, the drivers for that "company" just borrow a different cab until their cab has the name of another company on the side. I know all this because a friend worked for a private ambulance service owned by the same company (medicare/insurance money$$$) and a few acquaintances over the years who were cabbies.

At least in the US you are correct. There was a story recently about a guy working a night job as a pizza delivery guy to make some extra money. He had a wreck, the insurance company found out the accident happened while he was delivering pizzas and immediately cancelled his policy for using his personal auto for commercial purposes. So since he was cancelled any company he tried to get insurance with now puts him into the "high risk pool" for 3-5 years, effectively doubling his premiums.

"so long as they can be switched off or set aside as soon as the officer goes off duty and resumes being a private citizen." Sure thing. Is that like a sergeant I served with in the Army, if we got pissed off and wanted to take Sarge on we'd go behind the barracks, he take his hat & top off and say I'm just a guy come at me. Worked great for a while, until the first guy took Sarge down and left him laying back there. Next morning the guy that beat Sarge down was in the commander's office discussing court martial proceedings for "attacking" Sarge. The court martial never happened but this guy did end up performing extra duty and being restricted to barracks, workplace, chow hall, & church for a month. No one ever challenged Sarge again. Like it or not, if a police officer takes home his car (all do in my area unless they are probationary officers) you are a cop 24/7. The cars used say "24 Hour Car" but the officers got the union to remove it during the next contract talks.

Perhaps someone older than me remembers this, for all who believe their guy is "innocent" In the 1977s a bill was crafted in such a way that if a lawmaker voted against it, the Congress still got their far above average "cost of living" raise for "serving" in Congress, meanwhile told the masses back home "I voted against that huge raise..." of course the bill was "defeated" soundly and Congress got their raise. http://library.cqpress.com/cqa... As an aside, look at your own guy/gal, there's a good chance they were serving then, that was about 37 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

I worked for 11 years as a line technician for a mid size cable company, during that time the field teams were trained in sales but never mentioned after training. I left that company and after a couple of years decided to go into customer service for Charter. their metrics are the same 20% of your call is attempting to upsell. Nowhere in the manual does it explain how to upsell to a user is screaming "You cut off my f*ck!ng Monday Night Football" or "I want my f*ck!ng porn g0dd@mn!t" After a few weeks and carrying a bottle of antacid tablets in my bag and several 80% scores on my metrics (conveniently the minimum passing is 85%) I decided to leave and go back into the IT field. Oh another jewel that most customers don't know....every call is recorded and probably half are reviewed every day, but you will never get your hands on that recording, intellectual property of Charter.

If Israel disarmed unilaterally, every country you mentioned would turn like a pack of dogs and attack. None of those countries gives two figs about the US. They know they their dictator du jour will still get his money from the US while the US ambassador is saying "Don't go kill the Israelis they are nice disarmed folks." The UN would pass 7 resolutions condemning each country for attacking Israel but do absolutely nothing else. Iran would pump even more arms and cash into the Islamist groups as they crawled over the borders, plus would provide air support of a sort since the IDF air force would no longer kick them out of the sky. Once every Israeli was dead, then they would turn on each other to decide who would win the land grab. At that point the entire Middle East would tell the EU, UN & US to sod off and proceed with whatever brand of religion they decide to inflict on the world through warfare and terrorism. By the way if you think I am full of the usual /. noise go find a refugee from that area and LISTEN to them. I have listened to several Christians who have fled from Gaza & Israel plus Palastine, they will tell you nearly word for word what I just wrote.

On the flip side, how many hours were wasted the could have been put to better use? Studying Maths or computers or foreign languages or Music or Science or Drama, or even spent at football or wrestling practice? How many trebuchets were not built because the teen-agers were busy playing games? How many young men were not Eagle Scouts? How many snow forts or tree houses were left empty, or even not built in the first place? Well I was introduced to D&D on a service weekend for Order of the Arrow (www.oa-bsa.org) a scoutmaster was our DM and the guy who help me roll up my dwarf was an Eagle Scout. A few years later I was also awarded my Eagle Scout. We all were leaders in their troops, schools, churches, & communities. Your stereotype of pasty-faced boys who never ventured outside is flat wrong...in 1979

I work for a monitoring team. We are 24/7 and I can guarantee you from experience this is a terrible idea. The first time the servers drop out of the monitoring suppression and suddenly a half dozen alarms are going off because your automated server program decided to drag down a series of other servers, or kill the switches at the office I get to call you at 4AM you are going to wonder why you didn't just catch a nap and go back in. Anytime we get an e-mail from a "Senior Sever Manager" stating that "a change will be made this weekend at 2AM but will not affect system uptime," we note in in our shift logs because as sure as we are sitting there Murphy will creep up and jump on that managers back and chew until someone can beat him off. Usually to minimize the damage to our team, we will politely e-mail that manager and ask exactly what systems and what times will this happen as a warning that we really do not want to have to go through the late night procedures to alert someone. Most managers who have experience will actually send us a separate e-mail saying "server XYZ123 will be down from 1AM to 3AM, if we get it up sooner we will call to verify it is up on your end." We monitor 10 different companies of all sizes from a single server room to worldwide systems, and Murphy is a board member for every one and always gets a vote.

Not sure (or care) what "large city" you live in where no one gets a ticket. I live in the largest city in my state which is in the top 30 populous cities in the nation. Our police force has several officers in modified sports cars whose only job is to write tickets, almost exclusively on the interstate system. These guys are so infamous that the local paper did a Sunday feature on the top ticket writer, after he pulled over a local DJ for speeding and the DJ told everyone the officer acted like an arrogant jerk while writing the ticket. The police officer filed suit against the DJ and it was never heard in court. The officer bragged about the number of tickets he wrote in a year which was well above 1000. He also admitted he let his "brothers in blue" get a pass as they were driving 20+ MPH over the limit on the same interstates, according to the speed gun the reporter rented for the story. The fines start at $50 plus court costs so do the math. So that tinted out Dodge Charger or IROC Camaro might be one of our officers about to turn on all the hidden lights.

Don't know where "your country" is, but in the US I used to manage an apartment building. Lease stated if you change the lock the management gets a key. No key = breach of lease and grounds for eviction, specifically stated in lease. Also except for emergencies management must provide minimum 48 hours notice to enter apartment. No 48 hours = no entry, specifically stated in lease as well. It cuts both ways in my state. We changed locks as a matter of course after a move out.

A professional American football team used to hold a "golf day" at a country club, mostly for fans to watch. Consistently the kickers would win the longest drive competition each year, but were among the worst players as far as scoring. The reason they won the longest drive was the same reason they were kickers, repeating the same motion over and over with accuracy. That said it proves the your point, as the quarterbacks do the same thing more or less only they do it with their arms.