As an employer, I shall note your comments. Anyone coming to me for an increase in holiday will get the 'ner-ner' treatment and be expected to supply beverages. Thank you.
Like rab, ibid, and others I'm an academic (actually now sort of a freelance academic/consultant, but that's another story). It's a job with many advantages, not least of which is a remarkable amount of control over how you spend your time. But -- and this is a big but -- success in academia is primarily judged by your ability to write journal articles and publish them in good places. Which means that when rab says "I'm supposed to be writing a journal article as we speak", he is echoing something that is true for us academics all the time: we are always supposed to be writing journal articles. So -- like Chalky -- we always tend to have the sense that we should be working, and it is sometimes hard to take holidays. There was a cartoon once which showed a professor sitting up in bed and saying to his spouse, "How can I sleep when I know that someone in some other time zone is writing an article right now?" [Ibid] I don't think I knew you were also in academia. What field?
I'd point out that I didn't get any time off over Christmas or New Year at all, and was indeed still at work at 11 pm on Christmas Eve - but I'm too spartan to complain!
A staff member of an academic institution. Namely, [sys|net]admin of Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh. Combine the occasional perks of the academic life with the drudgery of 8:30-5:00 hours and unpaid overtime. But at least I can evangelize Linux/*BSD to the Micro$oft-haters.
[rab] I'm afraid that, like Bob, I have this bookmarked as rabMC, but if you really must avoid the use of your name how about Mornington Crescent in Outer Mongolia? Or am I misremembering your location? (fx: ducks)
And one could also go up that poncey TeX route and insist that the official pronunciation is "mukf" or something... Sorry if that means nothing to most people
My first post from my new whizzy laptop. Hurrah. Should make maintenance of this site much more easier...
[BtD] Can't get to !York, and I'm on an .ac.uk domain so it's either a server problem, or it's bitten the dust (though if the latter, I reckon jim would've told us.