sabbaticals

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Tue May 24, 2005 7:58 pm

Speaking of sabbaticals, two more years 'til I get one. Wooo.

George · Post by **George** » Tue May 24, 2005 8:02 pm

I just started playing Baldur's Gate again, so I really can't say anything.

Of course, this time is a much different experience because my computer actually meets the minimum requirements. And, if you give it three times the recommended pathfinding nodes, your characters get lost/stuck slightly less often.

"Who need ye dead?"

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Wed May 25, 2005 1:34 am

hrmmm, I'm sure there's a reason George's topical post got orphaned in this new topic, thus making it not topical anymore... A very good sabbatical related reason even. However, I have no clue what it is. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Post by **Jonathan** » Wed May 25, 2005 5:22 am

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I can't work the bboard. Sue me.

Anyway, I was going to say sabbatical after 3 years (?) sounds mighty nice to me! How long is it for? Ours are for eight weeks, plus you can take vacation time if you want.

bob · Post by **bob** » Wed May 25, 2005 5:40 am

The problem with pathfinding nodes in Q3A is that they can't be more than 512 units apart. I think this includes vertical distance as well. But increasing pathnode frequency adversely impacts performance. So the answer is to put them slightly less than the max distance apart, all 8 units above the ground, and manually tweak areas where there's a greater than usual elevation change that characters should still be able to ascend.

Now, I think that the best examples of pathfinding truly can be found in John Romero's excellent game Daikatana. Right, Superfly?

Superfly Johnson wrote:There's a wall here. Maybe if I keep running into it, eventually it will disappear. Then I can start my sabbatical.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Wed May 25, 2005 6:59 am

It's only for 4 weeks, but I'll get mine more than twice as often as you... Also, I don't have to work here as long to enjoy the benefit. As I understand Intel's benefits strategy, they want you to keep working there forever, so most things have a vesting period.

George · Post by **George** » Wed May 25, 2005 1:22 pm

My post was more related to NWN than sabaticals. However, a good reason to take a sabatical would be to play all of the BG games (including Icewind Dale 1+2 and Planescape) straight through, stopping only to eat and/or sleep.

bob · Post by **bob** » Fri May 27, 2005 2:11 pm

Isn't the point of a sabbatical so you can go do something like work at Disneyland so you can get an appreciation of how your product is used there, or go into academia for a while to learn more stuff about the current tech? Instead of playing Baldur's Gate.

Ok, Dictionary.com says it's just "a leave usually taken every seventh year". It comes from the root word Sabbath, which is supposed to be the resting day of the week. So I guess as long as you do it only every seven years, it's entirely acceptable to take that time to play Baldur's Gate. But you know what sucks about Baldur's Gate? There are no Nali!

Post by **Jonathan** » Fri May 27, 2005 4:45 pm

Yeah, sometimes you hear "sabbatical" being used to refer taking off a year or so to go work on something. As a recurring work benefit, though, the every-seven-years thing is pretty standard.

George · Post by **George** » Fri May 27, 2005 5:12 pm

Since we're all in hardware and/or software-related professions, playing BG could be interpreted as educational. We're seeing how software is used to... um... well I'm sure there's some interpretation that would work.

And as far as I know, I don't get sabaticals. Although, in just over seventeen years, I'll have five weeks of vacation, plus I can carry one over from a previous year. If I take the vacation at the end of the year and the beginning of the next, I could get a whopping eleven weeks off. That's the longest I can ever be off without retiring, being severely ill, or losing my job.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Fri May 27, 2005 5:34 pm

I can do about 10.5 weeks if you count 4 weeks of sabbatical, 6 weeks of accrued vacation and the additional 2.5 days I'd earn while on vacation/sabbatical... I'd be able to do that every three years and still have a week of vacation per year other than that. Now, if I were to overlap some holidays like 2-days for Christmas, and another 2 for New Years...

VLSmooth · Post by **VLSmooth** » Fri May 27, 2005 8:17 pm

I've been too lazy to look into sabbaticals here (not even sure it's mentioned), but I did check my leave hours out of curiousity.

As of this week, I have 226 hours of vacation accrued or ~5.6 weeks. I've been here slightly less than 2 years (June16th marks completion of 2 years).

Unfortunately, I only have 8 hours of holiday accrued since they automatically turn it into cash once a year

Considering I have 14 days of paid holiday a year, which can be banked, I could take 11 weeks of vacation every 3 years if I so wished.

Actually, that's not entirely correct. After 5 years we get an additional week of vacation per year, so that's 14 weeks/3 years for a rainy day (season?)

Now if only I was a vacation person >_>

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Fri May 27, 2005 10:30 pm

Do you have a max vacation time you can accrue? We have a max of 6 weeks, which is why I include the 1 week/yr in addition which would otherwise just disappear.

VLSmooth · Post by **VLSmooth** » Sat May 28, 2005 1:42 am

Nope, vacation never caps nor expires.

Post by **Jonathan** » Sat May 28, 2005 2:05 am

Head teachers at Amber's school also accrue vacation quickly. I understand they can't use it all because their jobs don't afford an opportunity to take a long break.

bob · Post by **bob** » Sat May 28, 2005 8:48 am

This whole talk makes me very happy to be in my "line of work". Self employment does afford a very flexible schedule. In the past few days, I've scheduled one five day trip to attend a wedding in a few weeks and hang out at home, and a ten day trip to Colorado with my parents later in the summer.

One downside is that I plan to take my laptop with me and do some kind of work during both trips. Another downside is that all of you are very likely earning more money than I am.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Sat May 28, 2005 9:41 pm

you win some, and you lose some too...

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Sun May 29, 2005 4:02 am

What does self employment entail?

bob · Post by **bob** » Mon May 30, 2005 2:47 am

Jason wrote:What does self employment entail?

Various work for various people. Some application programming, web development, multimedia programming, the occasional bagpiping job, and today I started tutoring someone in game programming.