a very merry Christmas

despite 3 inches of new snow, we had some family over before I went off to work, double time and a half.  this is the celebration of Christ's birthday, and we had a great day for it.  hope you did, too.

what is a BiteCon worth?

I don't believe in the pseudo-cryptic "currency alternative" called Bitcoins.  or around these parts, BiteCons.  no backing and no insurance, no fleets of auditors certifying there is actually any billions of dollars of anything behind them.

here's two interesting questions for all and sundry: you can get BiteCons either by passing over real money, or by mining. mining involves doing a metric-load of mathematics to catch a cache that releases every 10 minutes.

(1) what are these calculations really worth,

(2) and to whom, for what?

inquiring NSA searchers, do you want to know? suppose they are hydrocodes?  a cross-reference table of "if part A, then part B is the crack" for every piece of encryption in commerce?

is this just a miracle of multiplication that some person/team of unknown origin put out a paper on, or is there some Iran or Wackostan behind the game with alterior motives.

all unknown.

this could be a mere Ponzi scheme, and on day X, whoever is behind this takes all the "real" money that bought BiteCons and run for the islands and some hammocks and rum.

finally how many Flooz buys a BiteCon?

and how many folks really believe they get something for nothing?

winter's coming

ugh.

$1300 in fuel oil, and two trips by the furnace guy, and we still have an intermittent someplace in the furnace startup sequence.  something is failing, but we have to either wait it out, or start schlepping in parts... $200 here, $800 there.  neither the serviceman or I are parts slingers, so I check the stat when I get up and when I get home.

Cheryl's car has started to sputter, so it's time for Techron in both our tanks.  I sloshed some in my sister's car last time I was in the hometown.

we have leaves 2 to 6 inches thick in the back yard, and we hope to beat rain Saturday morning and get them taken care of.

laid in my winter kerosene for the Ham Cave, so that can stay warm.  I have redone the cable entry so there is a PVC wiring box and that ought to cut down wind infiltration.  get my internal common ground bar hooked up this weekend, and should be tweaked up enough to see if my antenna does anything useful besides receiving.

got two weeks to get all the pictures hung in DeBasement, and we should be about ready in case this is our year for Thanksgiving company.  I have to work 6am-2pm, so there won't be anything really special cooked, unless we get into the ham.  our Thanksgiving will be on the Saturday otherwise.  emergency backup plan is probably pizza.

still adjusting to a new Win8 laptop in the Ham Cave, and it periodically does stupid things like jump out of this edit to Lord knows where.  I suspect I won't ever adjust, Cheryl has the same issues with her Win7 laptop.

and that's going to have to be in, from here, for now...

got a new contract, so I'm moving up

... well, sorta.  the contract we rejected is basically the one our union accepted, so the money in savings can be spent on what we should have done while we were waiting for a contract.

so the fuel oil guys will come Friday or Monday for our winter fill.  the Ham Cave computer is going out of support on the last big piece, Windows XP, so it was laptop time (price-sensitive purchase, of course.)

have fed the neighborhood ghouls their yearly allotment of free candy.

the cats just killed a red cactus.

and other than that, there is nothing of significance going on around here.  things we have to catch up on, but that's happening in little bits.

the more intense wait

vote is in... 54% NO, 46 % yes, and the tentative contract is rejected.

CTL workers in the old 14-state Qwest area, who were former Qwest/US West contracted, are now in the 96 day cooling-off period, working through October 3rd at this point.

this is a time of checking medicine cabinets and getting things ordered that you can.  I'm in pretty good shape for everything except the asthma stuff, which I messaged my doctor about.  get it refilled while I've still got time.

there are cracks in the clouds... the company could impose the new contract, which is acceptable for some of us.  there could be quick renegotiations to patch the worse hits and a revote, in which case we would continue the old contract day by day, as we have for 12 months.

or CTL could impose some rancid piece of crap like "two bucks a month and all the abuse we can dish out," in which case we'd just walk out.  they could lock us out.

I think the district 7 website will get close to melting down over the week.  there will be busy signals at the locals' progress numbers.

in the meantime, however, we just get 'er dun.  our last CEO in Qwest was quite fond of the Bell System painting series "Spirit of Service," and that's how we do our jobs.  that won't change.

there are a lot of anti-union consultants giving companies the same old bash-em, smash-em, be glad you're not in Bangladesh mimeo sheets on how to kick worker butt.  CTL gets those services.

the only way to protect ourselves as workers is to be Union Strong, all day long.

and if I have to put my 6 red shirts in the back of the closet and reach for the snake shirts, I can do that.

Another long wait

the vote is in on the CenturyLink contract, but not counted.  that doesn't happen until deadline passes for locals to report their totals, at 1700 mdt.

I may have been the only one in the building to have voted for it, so the second shoe could drop pretty quickly.

if ratified, families on the CTL plan take a drubbing.  singles, a trim, not a haircut.  there are givebacks in the health care, which are allegedly to be made up by annual bonuses about equal to the loss.  however, the bonuses are taxed at income rate, so it's still a loss.  field tech categories actually get guaranteed minimum percentages of the work, which should be a win for the outside crews.

but negotiations went nowhere, and finally, the lawyers on both sides tossed out silliness to get an agreement for voting.  I am of course not providing much for detail, because it's not my place.  we did much worse than ATT did in their contract.

and so, with projects always ready to start and training and stuff, I wait.  yes, that stuff stays inside.  I am on overtime lists for the weekend, too, and so my 3-day weekend is not being planned and used efficiently.

that's life in the big city.

so if it's ratified, I have savings I can pile into some bills.

if not ratified, the company has the right I'm told to implement any old damn thing they want.  they could pat the tentative agreement and say "take it."  they could say "well, two bucks a day and all the abuse you can eat."

the union national office has the ability to say "shove that, we're out."  they also have the ability to restart negotiations, say they'll work under the imposition and allow it to be binding, or whatever.  they went into negotiations 14 months ago with a strike vote under their arms.

this could also be a stepping stone.  negotiators have been going to every local they can schedule saying there are a lot of little bitty COs within our 14 state territory that have the ability to come into our contract, which is better than anything they're working under as former United/Sprint/Embarq offices.  that would substantially increase bargaining power in 3 years.

lot of nervous-sounding low talk in the hallways Thursday.

Am I the only one who caught the big steal?

Heading into the Labor Day weekend, Verizon announced it was buying the 45% of their wireless phone system from Vodafone they didn't own.  The Brits sneaked in through buying Airtouch from PacBell and Qwest in the early 2000s, because they couldn't afford to upgrade the system to 2G.

Ever since, Vodafone has been glomming 7 billion dollars from the partnership by, basically, just sitting and whistling.  That's double what Verizon averages to upgrade the network each year.

Well, the big steal became apparent Monday.  See, Verizon is issuing half of $130 billion in stock, and borrowing the rest.  The stock, of course, goes to Vodafone.  So does the cash.  Highway robbery in the extreme.

The best part: Vodafone has announced of the $130 billion, the second largest M&A in history, they are slipping $86 billion to their shareholders.  Cash-starved European wireless and cable operator, and they are piecing off the stock market with 2/3 of the take.

Bastards tripled and soaked in oil.

I would like to see the SEC bar the transaction as excessive profit, not earned.  Not even close.  You have to go to the "too big to fail" banks that almost took down the economy to find a bigger ripoff.

And the bastards are STILL not out of the vault because of all that stock!

Geez, I thought the banksters were crooks.