Stop Already With The Galleries

Added the last two photo meme galleries, Phototime Tuesday and Lensday Wednesday. I had only been doing the Lensday Wednesday for a short time, so I only had 17 pictures to choose from. I narrowed it down to 7 I really liked, but I hated to have a gallery with an odd number of photos in it, so I added back 3 of the honorable mentions to fill it out. If you can guess which ones were the 3 fill-ins correctly, you will win a prize. Maybe an 8 x 10 framed photo of your choosing or something else equally fabulous.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Can You Hear Me Now?Last Sunday we went to the Mediterranean by enjoying the Greek Festival in Augusta. This Sunday we went back in time. We went and enjoyed an afternoon at the North Augusta Living History Park for something called Colonial Times. Lots of folks in period dress doing period things, with even a small battle between Colonists & Indians against the British. Now with blank musket fire to scare small children and pets. The best part was a family act as a traveling troupe performing magic and juggling and music. I only took a handful of pictures, but this is my favorite, apparently shopping in the 1780’s was an awful lot like 2005. A man with a list in a store comparing goods against his list while conferring with his wife…

I must apologize if your domain contains any of the following words because I just banned you from viewing this web site: meridia, xenical, carisoprodol, viagra, ambien, levitra, adipex, phentermine or hydrocodone.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 335

More Peektures

I culled from 101 Theme Thursday (now called Thursday Challenge) photo submissions from the couple years I was an active participant and picked 20 favorites. They are now in yet another gallery. Still to come, my best of PhotoFriday & Phototime Tuesday entries in their own galleries as well. I’m not sure about Lensday Wednesday, because I was just starting to do it when gave up the photo memes cold-turkey I only have 17 entries total. Maybe I can get the top 5 or 10 in a gallery.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 335

Another Opening of Another Gallery

Added a Washington DC gallery today. It is pictures from Donna and my 3-day trip to the nation’s capital back in March of this year.

I’m going to start working on making galleries for the all the photo memes I used to do before burning out. These will take longer and I’m not going to post every one. Theme Thursday and Photo Friday I did nearly every week for a little over two years, that means over a 100 photos and I know not all of them were winners. I’m thinking maybe what I consider the best 25 or 30 will be all I include from those two. Phototime Tuesday ran for about a year and a half and I had just started doing Lensday Wednesday, so those pools and consequentially the galleries will be smaller.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 335

Some Bad News & Some Great News

That was how it was presented to us in an all employee meeting yesterday.

First the bad news, our company will not be giving a General Wage Increase (hourly) or a Merit Increase (salary) for all of 2006. Second the great news, they will now offer a profit sharing plan. And to kick it off we will be included in the company wide 2005 profit sharing. On November 15th an amount of approximately 4.78% of your base salary will be deposited in an account setup for you you use at retirement.

The great news was only great if you were not already living from paycheck to paycheck and really counted on that 3% raise for this year. Fortunately this probably is only a small percentage of employees.

For Donna and I it is doubly great as we will both get a nice little sum in our accounts. This will be in addition to our current 401k where we are tucking aside 15% pre-tax for our retirement. Our 401k is invested in a plan that adjusts automatically as we move towards retirement, slightly higher risk funds now that will slowly change to more conservative funds the closer we get to the “golden years.” This profit sharing stuff is kind of found money and I think we will plop it down in the most aggressive fund we can find. If it tanks, pffft, who cares, we already have Social Security, the meager retirement fund the company already has and that 401k to fall back on (God willing and the creek don’t rise.)

We have been after a 401k match for years and the whole we are a “cost center” and we must stay competitive thing had worn thin a long time ago. Every quarterly communication meeting, every yearly state of the company meeting and every bi-annual corporate opinion survey the first question asked was always, “When are we going to get a 401k match?” The first answer to the question, “What is the one thing that you would change about ASCO is?” “401k match.” More than a few folks have left the company and in their exit interview when asked why, the answer was, that’s right, the new place offers a matching 401k.

A couple of things aligned to make this happen. One of which was the company had a really good year (thanks to all of you who bought our valves.) Another was we saved a bunch on money on medical insurance by switching to BCBS of Alabama. The no pay raises for a year thing certainly helped a bunch. So big thanks to company management for pulling this off, we finally get a 401k match, even if it is variable from year to year (historically it has been around 5% for the last 5 years) and it is called Profit Sharing. When you stop and think about it, they did go the extra mile for the people too, a 401k match would have been cheaper on them because not every one participates in the voluntary savings program. With the profit sharing everybody gets a slice of the pie, even if they don’t want it.