Guess it was the right thread!

I keep thinking of the children's book The Tough Winter (a sequel to Rabbit Hill, just mentioned here today). Though I guess the Little House book The Long Winter would be a better known example of the theme.

Little known fact: Laura Ingalls Wilder originally wanted the title to be The Hard Winter, which is how the winter of 1880/81 was known to the survivors, but the publisher thought that sounded too downbeat.

Man, I'm lame. I had entirely forgotten that Robert Lawson wrote Rabbit Hill and The Tough Winter, much less the Ben and Me books (and related semi-sequels like I Discover Columbus and Captain Kidd's Cat). Not to mention illustrating Ferdinand.

He was one of my favorite writers when I was in third grade.

So you were working for the Tino I assume, Theresa? Sorry to hear that, and job-ma is flowing your way.

Weasels in bastard sauce!

I LOVE this phrase.

I am sorry, Theresa! If you had put in for FMLA already, though, I think it may be illegal for them to lay you off now.

I thought that too, but then I realized they offered me a different position with the company at a significant reduced salary (although I think legally it would qualify as comparable) so they have a loop hole. No one expects me to take it, but I think that is why it was offered. Bastards.

When I got laid off after putting in an FMLA request I filed a complaint with the Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. They were unable to make a charge stick because the firm did not have a history of letting people go because they had put in for leave. Even without that history DOL attempted to negotiate a settlement but no dice.

I still had the option of a filing a law suit on my own but opted not to. This was in part because the firm I was challenging had taken their sweet time and the statute of limitations was just about spent -- which my DOL investigator assumed was deliberate. This was also in part because my compensation was not so much that I was going to find someone to represent me on contingency.

Of course, I was up against a law firm. My investigator seems to think there c/would have been a financial settlement otherwise.

Call the DOL and see what they say. Filing a complaint with them costs you nothing. Check with them, but AFAIK you can find an attorney and sue independently of this at any point.

How to permanently delete your Facebook account.

It's from April, so it may (already) be out of date.

much less the Ben and Me books (and related semi-sequels like I Discover Columbus and Captain Kidd's Cat)

Mr. Revere and I is a better book, to me. But it has horses, and I was a pre-teen.

The upside of Facebook for me is the people from the past that it's put me in touch with, including a long-lost friend from high school, a college roommate, and a number of family members that I only get to see a handful of times a year if I'm lucky.

Facebook's Huge Maze of Privacy Options Mapped Out

The New York Times does the heavy lifting of actually plotting out Facebook's headache-inducing privacy options, helping some of us to navigate 50 settings with 170 options, and the rest of us to shake our heads in disbelief.

It's more than just a snarky scaling of how complex and overwrought Facebook's privacy options have become—though the full-size graphic does point out that the actual policy is longer than the U.S. Constitution at this point. The Times' chart does help you navigate from Facebook's front page down to privacy settings you might not expect to find in certain places. Take particular note of how your friends' ability to share your information is separate from your own personal privacy settings, and Facebook's ability to customize ads based on your information is actually in a whole separate sub-category of privacy settings.

Actual NYT piece: Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options

Theresa, you have my sincerest commiserations.

But I do like that people from my past can find me

I'm discovering that I don't. If I decide I want to get in touch with someone from my past, I'd rather do it myself.