The totally off-topic thread

[blackcat20]

We haven't paid our people a salary increase for at least a year. We do other things like an odd day off or other benefits that they seem to prefer. But wages generally have been stagnant. Anyone getting a pay increase should be happy.

I'm lucky enough to get two rises a year; a CPI increase and a promotional increase.

Our book goes irrevocably to the printers in 2 days. :shock: Talk about stress and drama; that emoticon is me at around 7am any given morning, lately. Still finding typos. Its scary when you discover an entire missing word on the 7th proof.

The Grammar thread on AFF has nothing - nothing - on our editor!! I've never debated so much about the placement of a comma. En dash vs Em dash vs just plain old dash (bleh!); I would normally say life's too short etc, but this is going to be a high quality job. Hardcover RRP $100; softcover $50.

More checking tomorrow, especially the index.

The really hard part will be not to look at the proofs for the three months until the printed thing arrives from Hong Kong (lest you see a typo, because it can't be corrected). The book is being launched by our Governor in December . My 5th book, and second to be launched by a Gov .

I found a typo (a mis-numbered figure) in my PhD thesis when it was already with the binder. Rang them but it was too late....

 

[RooFlyer]

And the topic of this book?

Heritage houses of the central Tas east coast - pioneers who built them, architecture etc. If you want to know the difference between an over-burnt header and a hipped dormer, it will be your go-to reference.

Lest mods start furrowing their brow about possible commercial promotion, it is being published by a not-for-profit organisation, and I will get precisely $0 for my 1,000+ hours contribution of research and writing, over 5 years.

(How's that for a lack of pay rise?)

 

[GarrettM]

And the topic of this book?

And the previous ones?

 

[RooFlyer]

And the previous ones?

Blush . One on some historic houses of Hobart; history of the Sorell area, Tas; several family history books.

I'd like to say it keeps me out of mischief, but unfortunately that hasn't been the case .

 

[love_the_life]

I found a typo (a mis-numbered figure) in my PhD thesis when it was already with the binder. Rang them but it was too late....

Don't you just hate that! When I was doing some course work for a masters I would get an easy back with a couple of circles around typos. My aim was to present a piece with absolutely no errors and I thought I did in once, until I checked after I got the essay back and saw that I had spelled my first name wrongly in the header. :shock:

 

[love_the_life]

Blush . One on some historic houses of Hobart; history of the Sorell area, Tas; several family history books.

I'd like to say it keeps me out of mischief, but unfortunately that hasn't been the case .

As a person with a great interest in family history and early Australiana, they sound great. Ny mother has some great memories of her life in the 1920s and also as a young bride during the war. I must write them down lest they be lost.

 

[TheRealTMA]

We haven't paid our people a salary increase for at least a year. We do other things like an odd day off or other benefits that they seem to prefer. But wages generally have been stagnant. Anyone getting a pay increase should be happy.

Did you make an increase in profit last year?

 

[JohnM]

Don't you just hate that! When I was doing some course work for a masters I would get an easy back with a couple of circles around typos. My aim was to present a piece with absolutely no errors and I did in once, until I checked after I got it back and saw that I had spelled my first name wrongly in the header. :shock:

I edited a Wiley-published journal for several years. It never ceased to amaze me how the contracted professional proofreaders in Hong Kong would pick up every typo, formula glitch, Latin name mistake, missing references - you name it, after typesetting and before sending the proofs to authors and me for checking. Not only would they pick up actual mistakes, but they would query many things that to them may have seemed a little odd or unusual - to prompt the authors and editor to double-check that's what they wanted.

Just amazingly high standards - and English was not their first language.

I don't know how they sat there all day reading technical stuff and not missing a thing. I often thought I'd like to go and see just how they operated.

As for Rooflyer's em/en/ordinary (minus sign)-dash frustration, MS Word seems quite erratic in the way it handles them, IME.

 

[Pushka]

Don't you just hate that! When I was doing some course work for a masters I would get an easy back with a couple of circles around typos. My aim was to present a piece with absolutely no errors and I did in once, until I checked after I got it back and saw that I had spelled my first name wrongly in the header. :shock:

Good lord. How could you do that? Y instead of I? Three F's?

 

[JohnM]

Good lord. How could you do that? Y instead of I? Three F's?

Also knowing what it is, maybe she spelled it in full - and is not accustomed to doing so?

 

[JohnK]

If you don't feel like you are being adequately remunerated for the job that you do then the option is to find a job that will, and resign.

Good luck trying to get a job. It was difficult enough getting a job in 2007-2008. Almost impossible now thanks to 457 visas. I'm still not sure how they were able to convince government there was a shortage of workers. There never was a shortage of skilled Australian workers. Management just wanted to drag salaries down while increasing their own salaries as their own empire was growing.

It's been a good run. A few more years and that just about does it.

 

[love_the_life]

Good lord. How could you do that? Y instead of I? Three F's?

Also knowing what it is, maybe she spelled it in full - and is not accustomed to doing so?

Three Ns! As the font was very small in the header I missed it.

 

[BacchusMarsh]

Good luck trying to get a job. It was difficult enough getting a job in 2007-2008. Almost impossible now thanks to 457 visas.

It's not all about luck and visas. Sometimes one's pay is about staying current and having viable outside options.

RPG and AS400 are on their last legs. I didn't retrain. I did but hated it and stayed with RPG. Very limited jobs

 

[Solid]

And the topic of this book?

Did you make an increase in profit last year?

What if they did but the previous four years were losses?

I don't know whether they did or didn't but an increase in profit on its own doesn't mean there should be pay rises.

 

[Pushka]

Three Ns! As the font was very small in the header I missed it.

I get that. Sometimes it's difficult to distinguish mm and nn if the font is packed tight together or a difficult font to read.

 

[Steady]

Good luck trying to get a job. It was difficult enough getting a job in 2007-2008. Almost impossible now thanks to 457 visas. I'm still not sure how they were able to convince government there was a shortage of workers. There never was a shortage of skilled Australian workers. Management just wanted to drag salaries down while increasing their own salaries as their own empire was growing.

It's been a good run. A few more years and that just about does it.

How many 457 workers are there in your workplace JohnK

 

[serfty]

For those into these things .. "City in the Sky" is being repeated on ABC currently on the Oz east coast (just started).

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/city-in-the-sky/

 

[JohnM]

Three Ns! As the font was very small in the header I missed it.

And it was never underlined in red by any spellchecker?

 

[anat0l]

And it was never underlined in red by any spellchecker?

Depends on how long ago the thesis was submitted. It may have been at a time when the "spellcheck on the fly" with squiggly red lines didn't exist. Let alone was it written using an application (yes, we called them applications, not apps) that didn't have auto-spellcheck.

 

[whatmeworry]

Good luck trying to get a job. It was difficult enough getting a job in 2007-2008. Almost impossible now thanks to 457 visas. I'm still not sure how they were able to convince government there was a shortage of workers. There never was a shortage of skilled Australian workers. Management just wanted to drag salaries down while increasing their own salaries as their own empire was growing.

It's been a good run. A few more years and that just about does it.

457 Visas are at about 100k people. Other temporary visa classes such as student and working holiday visas are at around 400k and ~100k plus other temporary classes. Then you add skilled visa holders at around 200k per year which are at records levels and Australia's refugee intake which IIRC is about 30k.

Many temporary visas eventually convert to PR and then Citizenship.

With many private manufacturers now giving up on Australia and moving operations operations overseas, we are slowly becoming like the USA where it is was easier to survive on one wage but now hard to survive on 2 jobs in the family if not more.