u/Pumpsnhose

I recently made the changeover from a straight 8 position to temporary admin duties that require an 8 hour day, plus 30 minute lunch. I tried figuring this out with my supervisor but it seems like they’re a bit confused about the process as well.

If I take 4 hours of leave on the front end of my scheduled shift (7-3:30pm), am I required to stay til 3:30? I know that I only get charged 8 hours for taking a full day, but how would I get out of staying for 4.5 hours on a half day? Supervisor doesn’t want to code my lunch break in the last 30 minutes as a workaround. FWIW, we use Cru-Art, in case it isn’t the universal time keeper for fed employees.

Edit: the short answer appears to be “there’s no way to skip a lunch break in the system.” The long answer is I have to sign in and manually input a lunch break and take leave on the back end, so I have 3.5 hours on the front and .5 on the back. I don’t know how that, optically, looks any better than tacking the lunch break onto the back end. Either that, or the people responding aren’t grasping the question.

After decades of wanting to give D&D a shot, I finally got a group of 4 players and an experienced DM together. Session zero was fun and I really enjoyed building my character at level 1. However, the DM and the other players seemed to have zero interest in building an adventure group with a common goal.

By level 8, the campaign had kind of unraveled and none of us really had any idea of the plot of the module. All 3 other players had at least some experience, with one having a subscription to Beyond and many if not all of the extra books and modules. The whole time I was playing, it felt like I was in a glorified character builder where the other guys were plotting to build a specific archetype and have their characters do very specific things; one guy would even throw crazy “can I do/make XYZ with my abilities” at the DM, who would agree, then the player would rub his hands together in excitement. They‘d offer suggestions on what skills/spells to select and be disappointed if I didn’t go with their ideal build for my character. Ultimately, I decided to remove myself from the campaign because it just wasn’t a fun adventuring experience.

TLDR: I thought playing with experienced players would improve my experience because they could explain some rules, but it turned into them bringing long-plotted character builds and plotting to mess with the DM, who went along with it.

I spent all day Friday walking around the expo hall but only had the day pass. I’m hoping someone can help me out by purchasing a game I regret not buying that I can meet you to pick up when you’re done with the Con. I live downtown and I’m happy to Venmo on the exchange. I’ve got game and booth details so it won’t be hard to track down if they haven’t sold out.

I performed my second open mic night tonight, with mostly the same material from my first time out. I could not be more grateful to the people I have met, who have all been encouraging. Someone even let me jump ahead of them in the sign up because I was new and they didn’t want me to perform for an empty room at the end of the event.

Two tough rooms, honestly. My first time was in front of 8 other open mic-ers, most of whom were LGBTQ. I was pretty nervous that my jokes wouldn’t land as a hetero dude, but I actually got some laughs. I recorded it, albeit with horrible acoustics, and I didn’t even have enough material to get lit up at the end.

The second time had a signup list of 20+ people and a crowd probably double that. One of the other guys there said it could be a tough room. I was able to make up a couple of bits on the fly for the front side of my “set.” I went with the same base material from my first time, and felt myself actually developing the jokes a bit differently than the first time. Again, I got some good laughs. I wish I had recorded the second time, because I actually made it to getting lit up and got one last joke in before time ran out.

Far from killing, but for a guy who has always had fears of speaking in front of people, even the couple of laughs I got were a lot of fun. It took me 13 years of saying “I’d like to try stand up” to finally get the courage to get on stage. I couldn’t see myself pursuing paid work, but I think it could be fun to pop into different rooms when I travel. Just another post, I guess, but I’m proud of myself and don’t really have anyone else to tell.

While I appreciate INDOT upgrading or improving our roadways, the way they’ve gone about closing on-ramps for I-70 Westbound on the east side of downtown is incredibly stupid.

The signage indicating Washington St on-ramp is closed is just a boarded up interstate sign with no additional info on detour routes. Now the on-ramps at Madison and Capitol are closed as well. Unless you live south of Bates Hendricks and can get on 65 at Raymond, there’s no viable access without trudging through the whole of downtown to West St. Whether it’s a big show at Old National or a game letting out of Gainbridge, getting out of downtown is a nightmare going westbound. It is even worse when people who don’t normally come downtown are trying to navigate the road closures and hold up traffic for the regular commuters. I filed a “concern” through the INDOT website but holy hell it is so frustrating.

A $50k raise across the board for all (13,000 fully staffed) controllers, and obviously a raise or elimination of the pay cap, plus a 35% pension contribution and 5% match for TSP for said $50k raise, could be paid for by $1 per passenger, per IFR flight segment flown. Per the FAA, we handle more than 3M passengers per day, which would total $1.095B dollars. My proposal would cost $910M, and factors in 3000 employees that don’t even exist yet. It’s not the money we deserve, but it’s a significant boost to what we have now and would make lower level facilities more competitive in their markets.

Airlines/GA: But what about cargo? They use the NAS too!

Glad you asked. $1 per ton of cargo. Another $22M injected into the system.

This would have to be earmarked specifically for air traffic controller salaries and not for other improvements to the system or to subsidize any other government programs. What is the argument against it?

edit: IFR flight plan to IFR flight segment flown