The "what ever happen to ____" thread

[Goonie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martha RetiredBOP decided to leave.

[Leonidas]

Wow, I got a mention in the "whatever happened to old what's his name" thread!

Had to go back and see when I was last here to figure out what was going on, but here is the bullet version.

• Retired the middle of February after battling my former employer over an arcane issue. Resolved in my favor.
• Rolled lump sum (deferred retirement option) money over to a traditional IRA at Fidelity.
• Bought new golf clubs (always had second hand before now)
• Went on Spring Break with the family.
• Week long golf trip with 150+ former work associates in beautiful Bandera, Texas.
• Receive first pension check deposited in credit union. Wow, they really will send me money for absolutely nothing.
• Spent a week trying to decide what investments to make in the IRA. Realized that February's brief downward blip in the market was long since over and all the real buying opportunities were gone. Befuddled, I chose to do nothing and left it all in FDRXX.
• Oldest son broke his leg while teaching martial arts. Kicked something that should not have been kicked - it didn't give but his leg did. Repeated trips back to doctor/hospital for a week and half due to casts not fitting. Followed by a Easter Sunday morning trip to the ER because he got his cast wet while showering.
• Mid-April I realized that it had been forever since I signed on here. Decided I had too many other things that took precedence and decided to stay away a little longer. Not that this forum is a waste of time, but I can certainly spend a lot of time here.
• Receive second pension check - give thanks to God who led me into crappy civil service job.
• Became chauffeur, carrier of books and personal assistant of kid trying to walk around on crutches and cast/boot thingie.
• Tried to continue playing with new clubs in the middle of the rainiest season ever recorded in Texas. Got rained out several times and had close call with lightning one day. Clubs relegated to the garage.
• Kept looking at stock market trying to figure out a move. Still befuddled. Bond, bought to make sure I could pay tuition bills, matures and the money is added to cash I started stacking up at the end of last year. Money in IRA still stuck in FDRXX, where it was making almost what the pension was giving me on it so I'm not unhappy - just don't know what else to do with it at the time.
• Getting recovering kid registered for school. Start buying all the things he will need to attend college several hundred miles from home. He actually gets interested when I mention the word laptop.
• Nearly had a heart attack when I received a letter from the IRS asking for $100,000 from years ago. Still recovering when I received corrected letter saying it's only $50,000. Send copy of return and dispute their figures. Get new bill saying "sorry for the inconvenience" and asking for $495 in fines for not paying estimated taxes quarterly. Receive second notice asking for $100,000. Am now looking for new enrolled agent to take place of my old EA who retired. Successful applicant must equal his joy and ability in clubbing IRS people like baby seals.
• Become driver of the equipment bus for middle school band. There's a competition somewhere every week for a month.
• Realize with all the rain I haven't run or biked in two months - there is about ten pounds more of me than there was in May. And the occasional cigarette while drinking has become a little more often than that.
• "Volunteered" by wife to be the buyer for prizes at the Project Graduation party. Get the assignment one week before party, and even then the budget is a guesstimate. Budget changes five times in as many days - wind up buying stuff on my personal credit card while making thinly veiled threats to committee chair (I better get reimbursed for this!). Go on spending spree of $16,000 in about 8 hours. Best Buy manager hugs me on way out door.
• DJIA hits 14,000 - yeehaw, I'm rich - let's take an extravagant vacation! Go to Vegas, stay at the Venetian and have front row center seats at a different show every night. Eat at the Wynn buffet, eat at Delmonico's, take wife shopping at expensive stores - even let her buy something.
• Come home and look at stock market - still befuddled.
• Paint house. Have a throwing away fit in garage and then organize what's left over. Start power washing patios, driveway, walkway, sidewalk, curb. Wife agrees that I'm being just a little anal when I start power washing the street in front of the house.
• Start teaching youngest kid how to drive.
• Talk to broker about tax liability in taxable portfolio. Ask, what happens when/if the Democrats win in 2008? Learn that another client made major sales and paid huge tax bill - but feels better now. Consider this radical move but want to hold off and see what happens in the market. Something is happening, just not sure what it is going to look like.
• Look at market, see quivering in the knees of the big boys over the sub-prime, alt a and credit/liquidity issues. Wonder what to do.
• Stock market decided issue with nosedive off 90th floor. Oh, here's all the buying opportunities!
• Move about 8% of IRA money into great buys such as NE, GOOG, MSFT and HPQ.
• Take kid to college. Pay huge tuition bill. Dean and President tell me what a wonderful thing I'm doing. Everyone smiles when I ask directions to business office. Kid hugs me when we leave, acts excited to be at college and looking forward to it. I leave with heavy heart over leaving him behind, but am otherwise filled with hope and joy about his future and very positive attitude.
• Come home, look at stock market, search house for bandages to staunch the bleeding from the wounds I got catching all of those falling knives. Give thanks that I was being cautious and easing IRA money from money market to individual stocks.
• Realize bike is rusting away in garage and family of mice may be living in running shoes. Smoked like a chimney in Las Vegas and ten extra pounds are now fifteen. Spray WD-40 over bike, evict mice and swear off smoking yet again. Physical agony ensues, closely followed by friends and family keeping distance from grumpy ex-smoker who bitches about aching muscles and threatens to show them their still beating heart after he rips it from their chest.
• Study stock market and am horribly befuddled. Buying opportunities abound, some good stocks got the hell kicked out of them for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or is that all there is?
• DJIA down more than 300 points, one hour later it's positive on the day before sliding just barely below even. Am convinced that lunatics are in charge down at the asylum.
• Remember ER forum and wonder what you guys are saying about this recent bout of madness - dust off password and here I am.

[REWahoo]

OK...but whaddya DO all day?

[Brat]

Leonidas, I missed you!! Thanks for comming back.

[maddythebeagle]

Hey Leonidas....enjoyed your posts in the past, welcome back....you must have read the memo on the importance of bulleting in your TPS reports...

[CCdaCE]

Yes, Leonidas and cube_rat are the only posters that seemed to have reduced posting, in my mind. Leonidas totally dropped off the face of the earth, but obviously that has been explained.

Cube... prolly just got busy with w*rk.

-CC

[wildcat]

Hey Leo, thanks for checking in. Ya gotta bring back the old school Emilio Estevez avatar.

[Leonidas]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brat Leonidas, I missed you!! Thanks for comming back.

Thanks Brat - I still owe you for your help with the FLSA stuff. Which worked out great by the way. I never figured out what my ROR was, but I know that when they adjusted my time balances by reinstating and then unfreezing the values of my old accumulated time that I got a huge increase.

wildcat - Thanks for reminding me what my avatar was. Emilio will require a little surgery to get him to fit under the size limits on the new board - but he shall return. Here's a good Emilio quote:

Quote:

"What's the level of compromise for making that kind of money? How far do I have to sell my soul? What's the price of that? And I don't know if I want to make those kind of compromises any more. I think I'm a different person. I think I've matured to a great extent. I think that I want different things now."

Maddy - Bulleted lists - I had to dig back in some dim memories for where/when I picked that gadget up.

You're close to being right about the TSP report thing. When I was a lot younger and only slightly more disrespectful of authority, some of my peers and I used to play games with reports and correspondence just to have fun with the powers that be. Like when they first made us follow an outline for report writing and I wrote four paragraphs describing the scene of a convenience store where someone had driven away without paying for their gas. It included information on the composition of the parking lot, the temperature and relative humidity, and the approximate lumens cast by the overhead lighting.

Anyway, when I was a young detective one day, my partner and I were skimming through some internal publication written by one of our PhDs. We noticed the use of a bulleted list and were commenting on it.

Quote:

Why do you suppose they put this in here? I don't know. Maybe to make it stand out?

One of the older guys, who had a degree in English, looked at it and said

Quote:

No, because he was too lazy or stupid to write a good paragraph. Or, even a well formed sentence apparently.

We fell in love with bulleted lists. My partner even wrote a complete arrest report that was nothing but a three page bulleted list. He got away with that for a long time until he decided to start using multiple exclamation marks after certain items on his lists. We're talking twenty or thirty exclamation marks after some items.

• Detectives Brown and Leonidas approached the Defendant while he was standing near the scene of this incident and noticed that he had blood spattered on his trousers and shirt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Quote:

Me: That looks stupid, why the hell did you do that? Partner: I think it looks cool, and it makes the really important stuff stand out. Me: Isn't that the idea of using a list in the first place?

He gradually worked himself up to the point where it was ridiculous just to see how far he could go before he got caught. Eventually he got called on the carpet by The Man because somebody in the DA's office complained that his reports contained more bullets and exclamation marks than actual words:

• The Defendant was arrested at that time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!

• The Defendant was subsequently transported to the City Jail !!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A few months later we discovered that we could use text characters to make scene diagrams. They must have been keeping an eye on us by then, because it only lasted a short time before we were told that reports with four pages of diagrams and only three paragraphs of text were just not going to be accepted.

We had to switch our MO then because they were watching the reports like a hawk. We discovered that anytime someone called the internal Rumor Control Hotline, with a rumor they had never heard of before, that the Planning and Research Division would be tasked to conduct an investigation and write a report. Some of these took months to complete. So we would call every few weeks with some new and bizarre rumor that we claimed to have heard and then wait for the report to come out.

We would pick the most ridiculous thing we could think of, and aim it toward a particular group within the agency. Just to rile them up

Quote:

Is there any truth to the rumor that the Helicopter Division is going to replace the entire fleet with hang gliders to save on fuel?

Every week the P&R people put out a report that summarized the latest issues to the rumor hot line - and all the divisions poured through them to see if something affected them. Then, at the monthly open employee forum the Chief would have to address a small group of extremely unhappy employees.

Quote:

What's all this stuff about Helicopters switching to hang gliders? I got to tell you Chief I think that's a load of crap. I'm pilot, not a damn kite rider!

We got away with that for two years. Our downfall was when we asked about the "rumor" that all the marked police cars were going to be painted pink in an effort to keep suspects from being combative. Our punishment was being assigned as reps to the employee relations meetings, where we had front row seats so the Chief could keep an eye on us.

[Dreamer]

I am so glad that you are posting again. I have had several good laughs reading your posts. Keep them coming!

[riskadverse]

Leonidas, please keep posting !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, your bullets and explanation of their source are way funnier than the "its funny joke Thursday" stuff.

[Darryl]

Well, I'm in tears here. Ready to read more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Brat]

I am delighted to know that my residue of errata helped. Just last week an attorney called and I pulled out of a corner of my pea-sized brain an obscure application of employment law... God, it feels nice to know that Alzheimer's hasn't set in.