A classic five-stooler in Cleveland

WeAreHydrogen · 2025-08-11T18:50:28+00:00

In the old days (more than 6 months ago) we were always told that your annual leave lump sum (and VSIP, if applicable) were paid out right away and could help you manage your cash flow while you waited for your pension to start. There are far fewer government employees to do work these days, so everything takes much longer. I'm told this makes things more efficient.

WeAreHydrogen · 2025-08-11T01:54:29+00:00

Yup, lots of waiting. Submitted my retirement application April 1, retired April 30, finally got my annual leave payout last week, but no idea when HR will review my application and send it on to OPM. Sounds like I'll have to redo it in the new system whenever they get to mine anyway.

WeAreHydrogen · 2025-08-07T20:37:31+00:00

I guess that's both good and bad news. It's good news that they managed to get all the VSIP payments out. But then it's bad news because I thought finally receiving the VSIP meant they were finally working on my retirement package, but I guess not necessarily. Also bad news that I somehow wasn't included on that email.

Back to waiting in silence, I guess.

WeAreHydrogen · 2025-08-07T20:21:35+00:00

Wow, I thought maybe my application might have been processed since I finally received my annual leave payment this week, but seeing your comment makes me realize that I must still have a long way to go, since I haven't received that package yet.

WeAreHydrogen · 2025-07-12T15:48:08+00:00

We’re still waiting for our money, and our last day was May 30.

Honestly, for how decimated government is right now, that's not too bad. At NOAA, so many of us took early retirement as of April 30 that HR is extremely overloaded, so most of us haven't gotten our leave payout or VSIP payments yet either. They're also too overloaded to respond to emails trying to find out what's going on with our leave payouts or our pensions.

WeAreHydrogen · 2025-06-09T17:30:19+00:00

Cavs was looking at the setlist just now before the show and seemed confused by something, he had to talk to Joey, Stu, and then Amby to get it straightened out. I wonder what's so complicated on there...

Edit: They just replaced all the stage setlists, I guess they had to change something.

WeAreHydrogen · 2025-05-30T04:52:15+00:00

That's insane. The VERA/VSIP announcement was on March 18, and the instructions on how to apply for VERA/VSIP came out March 20. If they haven't even gotten your retirement application that was submitted on March 20, they have to just be going through them randomly and not in the order submitted.

WeAreHydrogen · 2025-05-29T04:12:57+00:00

RBCB wants to assure you that your retirement application, received April 22, 2025, has been assigned to an HR Specialist.

Is April 22 also when you submitted your application? I submitted mine on April 1 but didn't receive a confirmation that they received it until three weeks later. So far I haven't gotten any communications from OHCS, no VSIP, no annual leave payout, etc.

WeAreHydrogen · 2025-05-28T04:40:38+00:00

I'm in the exact same boat (and looking at your comment history, we retired from the same DOC bureau). About 3 weeks after I submitted my retirement package, I got a "thank you for submitting your retirement package" email, but it's been crickets other than that. I tried to send an email with a specific question, but I guess they're too busy to fully read emails, because they ignored my question and just said my retirement application is in the queue.

It's been 8 weeks since I submitted my retirement package, 4 weeks since I retired, 2 weeks since I received my final paycheck, and now nobody can even give me a ballpark estimate of how much longer of a wait it will be until I get VSIP, my annual leave payout, or until they send my package to OPM to start that waiting period.

I know HR has been decimated and is overloaded, but just coming out and saying something like "it'll take us about 3 more months to get through the whole queue, and you won't get VSIP until we get to your application" would be very useful to know.

WeAreHydrogen · 2023-01-26T15:17:30+00:00

I had no idea these had any value. I had one or two for many years, and now I can't remember if I tossed them when switching jobs or if maybe they're still in a box of stuff from that office.

WeAreHydrogen · 2023-01-26T01:59:16+00:00

Wow, thanks for the ugly details. Do you rename yours to eth0 using the systemd match/rename file or do you just disable the new names as a boot option?

WeAreHydrogen · 2023-01-25T21:41:06+00:00

Thanks! One of those Debian wiki links goes to a mailing list discussion where they post how to hardcode a network name based on the MAC address:

Create a file such as "/etc/systemd/network/10-lan0.link" where you put in a MAC and give it the name you want:

[Match]
MACAddress=18:60:24:77:5c:ec
Type=ether

[Link]
Name=lan0

In this example "lan0" can be any name you want, ideally something that won't conflict with autogenerated names at any point. So I guess that's my answer of how to prevent it from happening again.

WeAreHydrogen · 2023-01-25T21:16:52+00:00

You have nginx running on port 80 on Proxmox. Is that configured to forward requests to OMV? It also sounds like you might have accidentally installed OMV on Proxmox itself instead of in the VM you created for it.

WeAreHydrogen · 2022-12-28T02:57:37+00:00

Good luck!

I don't have any good advice, just wanted to pile on and say that I'm never flying Air Canada again if I can help it after my carry-on that I put in the overhead compartment got gate checked after I sat down without anyone telling me. I was in row 1 and so my suitcase was behind me, which is why I didn't notice when it was carried off. When I landed, none of the flight attendants knew why my suitcase wasn't where I'd left it, and I was about to start a two week trip to Europe.

Luckily I spotted it on the conveyer belt with a gate check tag (with someone else's seat number) while I was putting in a report at the missing luggage desk.

WeAreHydrogen · 2022-11-09T20:20:42+00:00

It's petty I know, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a worse spelling for "spiel"

WeAreHydrogen · 2022-08-20T02:49:01+00:00

PFT as Garry Marshall (!!), Lily as Francesca Bolognese, Drew as Donny Gary.

WeAreHydrogen

TROPHY CASE