The Patio

[Buster]

We've been in a Global Warming pattern since the last Ice Age...

 

[PessOptimist]

Still haven't ordered the laptop.

Aleven, it ain't you, see all the posts. And I did start it.

I might change this to ambushed on the patio. The question part of it ought to go to the day job. Whatever.

Out of the blue, comes a demand to reinstate the military SBP during the open season. I did expain that there are not open seasons except under special circumstances. I also explained she signed the paper back in 96. I am told I just don't want to do it and <unnamed friend> says I can if I want to. Arrrrggggghhh!

So I try to explain how much she gets if I die while an active fed employee under FERS. And I find I am not actually sure. It is all spelled out on my employee web site but a new policy says we cannot log in to that from home and are discouraged to do "personal stuff" at work. Things are getting stranger all the time at work BTW.

OPM site is vague about it to say the least. Uses the word "may" a lot then never explains.

So, keep it simple. I have 10 years fed service. I have been married to the lovely woman more than 9 months. We have no children. I die sitting here on the patio. No accident, no foul play.

She receives a vaguely described lump sum (is it the same as if I had less than 10 years?) and an annuity equal to 50% of what I would get if I retired today? Does anyone know how this really works? She is over 55 so don't tell me that stuff. And, I don't care about FEHB or Tricare. I do care but do not clutter up the question with that stuff.

 

[James48843]

I don't know if your agency participates in "Employee Express", but if it does, you can log in and generate what is called your employee benefit statement. That outlines not only when you are eligible to retire, and what dollar amount to expect, but also contains what FERS survivor benefit your wife (and/or children, if so equipped) can expect in the unfortunate event you die on the job. And what your FEGLI will pay out if and when you die.

Check it out- find the link that says employee benefit statement.

Https://www.employeeexpress.gov


The survivors information is contained in section "m" of the employee benefit statement. Yes , under FERS, you have to have ten years if service in order for your spouse to get a survivor annuity.

 

[PessOptimist]

I don't know if your agency participates in "Employee Express", but if it does, you can log in and generate what is called your employee benefit statement. That outlines not only when you are eligible to retire, and what dollar amount to expect, but also contains what FERS survivor benefit your wife (and/or children, if so equipped) can expect in the unfortunate event you die on the job. And what your FEGLI will pay out IMF you die.

Check it out- find the link that says employ benefit statement.

Https://www.employeeexpress.gov

Yes, we have something called ESS. Can no longer log in outside a .gov domain for security reasons. I mentioned that in the post.

Your employeeeeexpress does not apply to me.

 

[nnuut]

Grilled Ribeyes last night on the Patio, drank a little Red Wine and listened to music, Spring is really springing around here I was so sick of WINTER, this is GREAT!

 

[PessOptimist]

Another work week gone. Another busy Saturday answering e-mails and questions about things. And taking care of things around the house.

Got all the questions about benefits to decedents answered. That is "dead" for now and I am still not dead.

Went to make toast yesterday morning and the sawdust bread co. bread was moldy through and through. Guess it was a week old. Who needs toast? There is a little gourmet pasta turkey salad in there. Awwwkk. Past the sell by date. Sell by and packed on date are the same. Must be OK? Is this a safe way to eat? Water and a cold hot dog did it for food.

Got up today, made coffee and remembered some things I forgot.

Replaced a few light bulbs. Need more. Hard to find incandescent bulbs now. No more CFLs for me, I dated them when installed and life is equal to or less than incandescent lamps. Plus what to do with these mercury laden hazards? Check EPA and local sites. Same advice, throw them in to the landfill, it's insignificant. If everyone in the USA throws one a week in to the landfill, what problems are we passing on to future generations? It ain't easy trying to be green!

Remembered that irrigation controller that disappeared. I purposefully bought the same brand and model so I can just plug in the new controller. Not so. The ribbon cable and moles connector are different. So I replace the box. What breaker is it connected to? Of course not marked. So I get out the voltmeter and try likely suspect breakers. Yeah, I could have taken the front off the breaker panel and followed the wires. Best not to, arc flash hazard and I might get scared about what I see in there. Good thing the spouse is away this weekend or I would get complaints about turning stuff off. Hope I remembered to reset all the clocks. Connected to the breaker for the smoke alarms. Bet that meets code. Removed the controller box from the wall and found it was mounted using toggle bolts through 1.5-2 inch hammer holes in the stucco. No surprise. That's craftsman level work around here. All done and the valves all work surprisingly.

Now it's time to grill something. If I was CSRS it might be steaks. Since I am FERS and not yet retired it will be the pack of hot dogs the sig other bought just before she left. Hmmm. Hot dogs, questions about survivor's benefits, away for the weekend... Stop being paranoid. They will be great along with that container of cole slaw she bought for me.

PO

 

[userque]

Another work week gone. Another busy Saturday answering e-mails and questions about things. And taking care of things around the house.

Got all the questions about benefits to decedents answered. That is "dead" for now and I am still not dead.

Went to make toast yesterday morning and the sawdust bread co. bread was moldy through and through. Guess it was a week old. Who needs toast? There is a little gourmet pasta turkey salad in there. Awwwkk. Past the sell by date. Sell by and packed on date are the same. Must be OK? Is this a safe way to eat? Water and a cold hot dog did it for food.

Got up today, made coffee and remembered some things I forgot.

Replaced a few light bulbs. Need more. Hard to find incandescent bulbs now. No more CFLs for me, I dated them when installed and life is equal to or less than incandescent lamps. Plus what to do with these mercury laden hazards? Check EPA and local sites. Same advice, throw them in to the landfill, it's insignificant. If everyone in the USA throws one a week in to the landfill, what problems are we passing on to future generations? It ain't easy trying to be green!

Remembered that irrigation controller that disappeared. I purposefully bought the same brand and model so I can just plug in the new controller. Not so. The ribbon cable and moles connector are different. So I replace the box. What breaker is it connected to? Of course not marked. So I get out the voltmeter and try likely suspect breakers. Yeah, I could have taken the front off the breaker panel and followed the wires. Best not to, arc flash hazard and I might get scared about what I see in there. Good thing the spouse is away this weekend or I would get complaints about turning stuff off. Hope I remembered to reset all the clocks. Connected to the breaker for the smoke alarms. Bet that meets code. Removed the controller box from the wall and found it was mounted using toggle bolts through 1.5-2 inch hammer holes in the stucco. No surprise. That's craftsman level work around here. All done and the valves all work surprisingly.

Now it's time to grill something. If I was CSRS it might be steaks. Since I am FERS and not yet retired it will be the pack of hot dogs the sig other bought just before she left. Hmmm. Hot dogs, questions about survivor's benefits, away for the weekend... Stop being paranoid. They will be great along with that container of cole slaw she bought for me.

PO

LMAO...well said!...but by "moles connector"...I assume you mean molex connector?

 

[nnuut]

Man if it's cold hotdogs before you retire, don't! Pay off the house and the cars, then it's much better!

 

[PessOptimist]

LMAO...well said!...but by "moles connector"...I assume you mean molex connector?

Yeah but the x is near the s and the keyboard is not as smart as it should be.

 

[PessOptimist]

Man if it's cold hotdogs before you retire, don't! Pay off the house and the cars, then it's much better!

I coulda heated it up but was in a hurry. House and cars paid off for years. Current ride celebrates it's 14th birthday in July. May have to replace it before I retire as I may just take off and travel for a few months.

I should go green and buy coal powered zero emission vehicle. Problem is I may want to go more then 30 miles per day and not want to beg for an AC oulet and wait eight hours. Plus I hate paying 200% of the cost for an equivelent evil dino powered vehicle.

Whatever, thanks for your concern. Hope the steaks were good.

PO

 

[nnuut]

I coulda heated it up but was in a hurry. House and cars paid off for years. Current ride celebrates it's 14th birthday in July. May have to replace it before I retire as I may just take off and travel for a few months.

I should go green and buy coal powered zero emission vehicle. Problem is I may want to go more then 30 miles per day and not want to beg for an AC oulet and wait eight hours. Plus I hate paying 200% of the cost for an equivelent evil dino powered vehicle.

Whatever, thanks for your concern. Hope the steaks were good.

PO

I never thought about that, I think Yer right!

 

[PessOptimist]

Re: The Patio - and widows 8

WooHoo fellow Feds. Another week gone. 733 work days left! That is not counting use/lose leave. Also doesn't count the "voluntary" extra day each week.

Finally ordered that new laptop last weekend and it is here. Posting on it right now. What a useless piece of...I mean what a steep learning curve moving to win8 involves. Fortunately there are lots of places on the internet you can find answers about how to actually use the computer with this fine new OS. This thing was obviously designed for the user who lives in someone's basement and pays no bills. Tile land offers lots of places to go and spend money downloading stuff. The desk top conveniently installed icons for movies, amazon and the MS store. I somehow managed to make the admin account log in an ancient Hotmail account I never use. I had to search a bit to tell it no thank you I would rather save things to the local hard drive and not someone's cloud. I managed to create a local admin account. I connected to my isp's email account. All these things were "not recommended" by the setup. Go to microsoft, we will take care of it all, just make sure someone pays the ISP bill and for your twinkies.


I foolishly started the process of setting up my shiny new computer last night. Setup told me it got all the windows updates. Setup lied. I finally figured out how to force it to get updates and after about an hour went to bed. It was about 2300 by then. This morning it had gone to sleep and was waiting for a reboot. I did so and went to work. This evening I forced another update and it took 55 minutes to download and install them. Maybe it will be faster in the future. I still haven't tried to install any software on this thing.

A common comment at work where we are upgrading to win7 is that every time we get a new OS our normal tasks take twice as long. True. As someone who has been around .gov since z-dos days, we can do more now but the "legacy" tasks take much longer, especially getting them to work with the shiny new stuff.

Happy weekend all. Any questions or comments about this transition are welcome.

PO

 

[nnuut]

Re: The Patio - and widows 8

I went through the same thing when I bought my new Win 8 computer but worked it out. Free upgrade to Win 8.1 helped a bit.

 

[PessOptimist]

Re: The Patio - and windows 8

I went through the same thing when I bought my new Win 8 computer but worked it out. Free upgrade to Win 8.1 helped a bit.

Getting there. A few things still going on. I think it is pissed at me for deleting the hotmail/msn/Skype login account and refusing to use several cloud services. I turned the tap function off for the touch pad and now I am not zooming or going places I don't want to. I never got along with these things much anyway. I got it to boot the desktop without a password. When I installed visio that I bought it unpinned all the office icons from the task bar. Other computers on the home network come and go seemingly at random when I go to network places.

I bought it with win8.1 but it was not until I downloaded all the updates. This did change the behavior some. I am using an IR mouse but it doesn't work well with the glass patio table. I cannot find even one of the dozens of mouse pads I have acquired over the years. :suspicious:

Only took three days to get to this point. Now on to installing legacy software I like to use. And I now have an OS that Microsoft will support until-say 2015?

Beautiful day on the patio here.

PO

 

[nnuut]

Re: The Patio - and windows 8

It was hell, I couldn't even find the shut down/restart button!!

 

[PessOptimist]

Yeah it still takes me to places where there is no task bar. Upper right now gives me close/minimize buttons and bottom left sometimes a start button where if I right click I get a shutdown option. I think we are supposed to leave it on and logged in to MS world so it can improve our basement experience.

I grilled turkeyburgers tonight. I really do need a rib eye or some babybacks.

PO

 

[nnuut]

Shut down go to the right hand corner and click on settings.
To get to Control panel do the same and click control panel.
To get off of that stupid banner page just press the escape button. That shows your Desktop if you have one if not start adding shortcuts to it you're on it.

 

[PessOptimist]

My patio, my sanctuary? Not so today. About 1/2 hour before the end of my +10 day of my normal 4x10+10 schedule, the wife called to say a person was in our back yard at the window and she yelled at him to go away and was going to call the police. He jumped over the wall (obviously in good shape as it is five feet high where he went over) and left. She called the police and they asked if he tried to break in. She said she didn't know and they told her it was trespassing and someone would come by some time to take a report. She told me she now knew he had pulled off a sun screen and was prying at a window with a screw driver. I told her to make sure the doors were locked and call the police back and state he was trying to break in. I told her I would head home as soon as possible.

LE did respond this time and investigate. I wrapped up and headed home. Maybe I should have left right away but there were issues at work, wife appeared to be in no immediate danger, it's 40 minutes to get there anyway and why violate rules about Journeyman being on site etc.

What was I gonna do if I got there anyway? (gotta rationalize this in my mind)

When I got home, investigating officer had come and gone, screwdriver was from a cabinet on the patio, lot's of other evidence someone had been looking around for stuff. Officer dusted screwdriver for prints. Inconclusive results. Appease the homeowner.

Investigating officer stated we had the best security we could for the doors we have. Sliding glass doors like many of you have but with deadbolts that mean you can't just break off the plastic handle and open the lock with a screwdriver. They also make it noisier but not impossible to pry the doors out of the frame.

FWIW this kid did not seem to be worried about making noise. He was out of sight of passers by due to our LA east privacy walls. I love life here in stinking desert valley of the sun.


No doubt the all LE agencies in the entire valley are concentrating on this heinous crime. OK, I am being facetious and know the realities of the situation. Investigating officer did say there were young citizens in the area who were inclined to look for opportunities on the way home from school. Do you think the architectural committee of the neighborhood association will approve standard two strand barbed wire on 45 degree angle or maybe a roll of concertina wire on top of the walls?

OK, facetiousness again. Just really pissed off that my patio ain't the sanctuary I hoped it could be.

All is good. Happy patioing and investing and life in general.

PO

 

[burrocrat]

perhaps the young man needs more lead in his diet.

View attachment 28568

 

[Birchtree]

The problem is the thug may return at a later date - suggest you take the wife to the firing range. Next time allow him to enter the house and you can be sure with appropriate measures he won't return. Only his dear mother might miss him.