Q1 - Gift Cards: The National Retail Federation says that we spent $24.81 billion this past holiday season on Gift Cards, and that each one us spent more on gift card contributions last year than the year before (the average consumer, says the NRF, spent $116.51 in 2006 vs. $88.03 in 2005). Did you purchase a gift card for someone last year? If not, did you receive a gift card from someone as a holiday gift?
I gave a couple of gift cards this year because that is what they asked for and I did not get any in return.
Q2 - Email: When you open your email in-box for the first time each day, which messages do you read first? Do you read them in reverse chronological order or do you pick and choose which ones to read first based on a different priority?
Top down, except at work then I read my boss’s first.
Q3 - Weather: The current El Nino weather anomaly that can create atmospheric havoc around the world should continue into the spring, extending unseasonably warm temperatures in North American through March, the U.S. National Weather Service predicted yesterday. How has the weather impacted your life these last few months? If you live up north, are you receiving more or less snow; and if you in the down south, is it cooler or warmer than normal? Despite whether (no pun intended) you normally receive snow or not, are you happy, sad, or indifferent about your area's current weather?
It has been wired here, we broke the record fro the longest above average weather and we have had no measurable snow yet this season. If we do not have any snow until after January 26th we will break the record for the longest time without snow since records were kept.
Q4 - National Guard Service: For the first time since President George W. Bush mobilized the National Guard and Reserve (after 9/11), the Pentagon is abandoning its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can be required to serve on active duty. Until now, the Pentagon’s policy on the National Guard and Reserve was that members’ cumulative time on active duty could not exceed 24 months. That cumulative limit is now lifted; the remaining limit is on the length of any single mobilization, which may not exceed 24 consecutive months. In other words, a citizen-soldier could be mobilized for a 24-month stretch in Iraq or Afghanistan, then demobilized and allowed to return to civilian life, only to be mobilized a second time for as much as 24 additional months. In your opinion, is the Pentagon's change fair, and furthermore, do you think it's called for?
I think that our troops are getting a raw deal; they never expected to be serving for as long as they are now. Not only is a hardship on them but it is also a hardship on their family and employers. The pay that they receive in the military nowhere comes close to what they are earning in civilian life. Where I work we match the difference to what the military pays and their civilian pay, but other companies might not be doing that so the families have to get by on military pay which can be a lot less.
It also creates a hardship on their employer’s, they have to fill the employee’s position with temporary workers and some of the Guardsmen are critical to the companies and their positions will be nearly impossible to fill. The company by law has to give them their jobs back. For me I have an employee who at anytime might be activated and sent over seas, he has been with us for over fifteens years and know his job inside and out. For someone to learn to take over his job at the same skill level would take years to train.
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