So how does one get on this "list"? I have absolutely no problem with any hajis showing up on my doorstep, I'll gladly let them meet 72 virgins...or whatever is waiting for them...

I used to work in the telecommunications field before I moved to IT (not a big change, but I digress) I started as a field worker, house to house doing the physical repair work. I was often warned "this caller is a real ass" by our dispatcher which I found it meant they managed to escalate the call to a real supervisor. Almost without exception when I showed up knocking on the door, they were always sweet & polite. The reason: I was a real body was standing there to help them, not read a script. After years of doing that, I briefly left the field looking elsewhere and when that idea fizzled I went back to telecommunications but decided to take my knowledge into the call center, thinking better hours, no bad weather and nearly the same pay. After training, I lasted about 3 weeks on the phone, forced to read from a script when I knew exactly what needed to be done to fix the issue, forced to use only IE, at times intentionally not telling a user the whole truth (we were not allowed to tell users that service would be interrupted for 6-8 hours overnight for upgrade work), working overnight didn't help either....drunks, bullies, and general asses calling. I had enough and had a connection to get into IT and took it.

Funny, my new Chip & PIN card came in the mail from one of my CC last week...still no word on the PIN yet, perhaps I need to contact them directly & no it is not my current bank...

In October 2012 I was on vacation visiting an old Army buddy. He is a firefighter/paramedic and happened to be on duty the night Chicago Fire premiered. As a former firefighter/EMT myself, he invited me to the station to watch with his shift. Within 2 minutes we were all howling and how ridiculously bad the show was written. One of the guys was online chatting with some of the other firefighter/paramedics who were watching at home. I think they hit almost every stereotype they could fit in that first episode. I still watch Chicago Fire when my schedule allows, and still shake my head at how badly the show is written. I actually watch for the plot lines that aren't wrapped around fire/EMS situations. True it's fluff but that's what I will expect from CSI:Cyber, terrible hacker/computer writing, maybe a believable personal plot that will all be fluff. My police friends have the same complaints about Chicago Police too, but that's another story...

Welcome to Europe! If you scream assault you will be laughed at. I am currently immigrating to the Netherlands, there are bike lanes all over the country, they are bike lanes not for anything else. My first time there, being a tourist I stopped on a bike lane to take a photo...the man who ran me over never apologized he just hit me and continued on...my Bride and in-laws politely informed me I was wrong and photos should be taken off the bike path. They also were snickering as I was picking myself up after being hit.

Call me a skeptic. Mother Nature will do what she damn well pleases with this planet and doesn't give a rip about us humans. 99.5% of all life on this planet has gone extinct and the other .5% will including us. A good old fashioned volcanic eruption like Mt. Tambora in 1815 will cause "climate change". That was called the year without a summer in 1816. I am not so vain as to think we can do anything to this planet that she will even notice, short of a full and total nuclear exchange. Even then I'm certain that a portion of the ocean life won't even notice that anything has happened and will continue to live, evolve & go extinct as Mother Nature sees fit. As time marches on we will see cooling cycles and warming cycles and a year to year comparison is irrelevant, or as relevant as comparing sports teams team stats year after year. Rules changes and personnel changes will alter the numbers significantly. For those of you still firmly on the "global warming" bandwagon then read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... either one will confirm your belief or refute your belief.

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.