The Happy news thread - Freeze-Frame Radio

Jeremy Riggs · 2011 Super Bowl Champions!

RE: The Happy news thread

confuzzed · Permanent State of Confusion

And what is it you did exactly to deserve a bonus JR?

Jeremy Riggs · 2011 Super Bowl Champions!

Stay outta this Fuzzy! THAT'S IT! YOU LOSE YOUR SHARE!!!!

Mad Mema · Bad Biker Granny

Jeremy Riggs wrote:

Mad Mema wrote:

Not til next payday. But at least it is coming.

Uh, ahem. You seem to have um, overlooked my question.

How were we going to divide up the bonus again? Was it 35% for me and then the remaining 65% divided up equally among the rest of the forum?

Ignoring is not the same as overlooking!

Just kiddin... I could send you that 35% today... but it's not as much as you would think. You might be able to qualify as a "Dollar Menu-naire"!

confuzzed · Permanent State of Confusion

Hey, an extra $100 is still an extra $100.

Mad Mema · Bad Biker Granny

AH... see... now you have grossly over-estimated my actual payout.

confuzzed · Permanent State of Confusion

No, that is gross. After the taxes come out of it, there will be about $20 remaining.

Mad Mema · Bad Biker Granny

Like I said... 35% to JR is maybe a cheeseburger on the dollar menu!

Jeremy Riggs · 2011 Super Bowl Champions!

Oh come on now! I KNOW our bonus is more than $3.00!

Cough it up Mema. My share should at least be triple digits

Mad Mema · Bad Biker Granny

It is more than $3... but that would be about your cut! The jawdropping part of the happy news is I GET a bonus. The bonus amount definitely does not qualify as jawdropping.

NOT COMPLAINING... it's still extra money.

MzHartz · Permanent Vacation

Of course it's more than $3. It's probably around 5. You do have to pay sales tax on that burger, and possibly a junk food tax.

MzHartz · Permanent Vacation

Local boys free dolphins trapped by ice: N.L. mayor

16-year-old wades into frigid waters to help animal

Becky Rynor, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, February 19, 2009

Residents of Seal Cove, N.L., venture out on to the ice Feb. 19, 2009, to help rescue a pod of white-beaked dolphins trapped by ice. The dolphins were freed that afternoon.Norma Miller for Canwest News ServiceResidents of Seal Cove, N.L., venture out on to the ice Feb. 19, 2009, to help rescue a pod of white-beaked dolphins trapped by ice. The dolphins were freed that afternoon.

A group of local men braved dangerous broken ice and frigid waters in a fibreglass speedboat to rescue a pod of dolphins and help them back to open water, the mayor of Seal Cove, N.L., said Thursday.

"We didn't get any response from [the Department of Fisheries and Oceans]. It takes so long to get things done when you go through government departments," said Mayor Winston May. "So, some local guys decided to put out their small speedboat and put on their survival suits, and didn't they put a channel through the water to where the dolphins was at."

The dolphins had been stranded by a slab of ice since Sunday in White Bay off the coast of Seal Cove, a village of about 400 people. A chunk of ice was rapidly closing in around the mammals and threatening to suffocate them.

"You'd hear them crying, every night," said one of the men in the boat, Rodney Rice, 39. "I went down there last night and you could hear them trying to break up more ice. . . . They wouldn't have lasted another day."

Mr. May said it took the four men about three hours to break a channel in the ice with their boat, and one - Brandon Banks, 16 - got into the water and helped calm one of the dolphins weakened by the ordeal so they could tow it to open water.

"I had a floater suit on," said Mr. Banks, "And they would come up and rest their head on me and I would keep their head out of the water so they can breathe through their blowhole."

Mr. May said the men carved a channel by ramming the five-metre fibreglass-hulled boat up onto the ice, then jumping out and onto the ice to hack away at it. He said it took them three hours before they had a path from the main body of water to the pool of slush and water where the dolphins were trapped, a distance of about 250 metres, he said.

"One of the dolphins was really weak, and one of the young guys who had a survival suit on got into the water with it and stayed with it, and the dolphin just kind of wrapped his fins around him. . . . It was amazing."

He said two of the dolphins made for the open water, while the third, weaker one "they had to give some help," Mr. May said. "They put a harness around it and gradually took it out to the main body of water. . . . And local boys done it."

Mr. May said they were at the point where something had to be done to save the dolphins.

"The mammals were getting so weak, if somebody didn't do something in the next 12 to 48 hours, they would have died."

Mr. May acknowledges what the men did was "pretty dangerous. It was pretty scary . . . but I guess they felt that somebody had to help."

Lydia Banks is the mother of 16-year-old Brandon, the youth who went into the water in a survival suit to help the weakest of the pod.

"I'm proud of him. It was good what he done," she said. "Before, everybody was saying somebody's got to get out there and help them. So they took action."

She said her son told her the dolphins "had cuts on them everywhere where they were beating themselves up on the ice."

The dolphins were initially frightened by the boat and the men, but after a few minutes, "the mammals were so friendly once they got to know the boat. The two just followed the boat right out to open water," May said.

"It's a beautiful ending. It's been an emotional last few days," he said. "The one was really weak, but even he swimmed away. Once they get out to open water, they'll get food and we'll just pray and hope that nature will look after them."

Seal Cove is about 600 kilometres northwest of St. John's.

confuzzed · Permanent State of Confusion

As dangerous as it was, that has to be an experience they will never forget.

MzHartz · Permanent Vacation

Effects shop fulfills amputee's mermaid dream
by Matt Hickey

Good: double amputee gets prosthetic legs so she can walk. Better: double amputee gets realistic-looking mermaid tail so she can swim. Awesome: it's developed and built by Weta, the special-effects company that did all the work for the "Lord of the Rings" movies, as well as "King Kong" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" series.

Nadya Vessey's legs were amputated below the knee when she was a child due to illness. At one point, reports Stuff, a child asked her what happened to her legs and she told him she was a mermaid. The idea stuck with her, so she wrote to Weta Workshop in Wellington, New Zealand, two years ago asking for a mermaid tail. To her surprise, they said they'd do it.

Now she has a fully functional mermaid tail with an attached suit, making her look practically just like a real mermaid (if, you know, mermaids were real).

She can swim well and says the prosthesis feels quite comfortable. We're not sure if anything like this could go into mass production for amputees, but we wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now there are mermaids swimming about in your local pool.

Nadya Vessey's prosthetic tail is mostly constructed from wetsuit fabric and plastic molds, and covered in a digitally printed sock.
(Credit: stuff.co.nz)

MzHartz · Permanent Vacation

Miami banker lavishes $60M on his employees

By SARAH LARIMER, Associated Press Writer Sarah Larimer, Associated Press Writer Wed Feb 25, 5:42 pm ET

MIAMI At a time when bankers are being pilloried on Capitol Hill as heartless and greedy, Leonard Abess Jr. stands apart.

After selling his bank for a fortune last fall, he quietly handed out $60 million in bonuses from his own pocket and not just to top executives. In all, 471 employees and retirees, including tellers, clerks and secretaries, were rewarded, receiving an average of about $127,000 each.

"I think everybody was surprised. But knowing Leonard, the type of person he is, I can believe him giving it away," said retiree William Perry, who spent 43 years at City National Bank of Florida, rising from janitor to vice president. Perry, 78, got $50,000, which he is using to help his son pay for law school.

For his generosity and humility, Abess was singled out for praise by President Barack Obama in his congressional address Tuesday. Abess attended as Obama's guest.

"He's a brilliant banker, which I think is obvious because of how well the bank has done all these years. And, obviously, a very generous man," said Ginger Nunn, a managing senior vice president. "He can not only set an example for other bankers but for any businessperson."

Abess, 60, did not return several calls for comment Wednesday. He never wanted to make a big deal out of his largesse; he didn't even show up at the bank when the envelopes were distributed in November. It wasn't until he mentioned the bonuses in a recent interview with The Miami Herald that they became publicly known.

Abess' father founded the bank in 1946 and he began his career in the print shop, working his way up the corporate ladder. His family sold the bank in the early 1980s to an investment group, which in turn sold it to a Colombian coffee magnate. When the magnate was convicted of fraud, Abess bought a majority stake out of bankruptcy in 1985 for $21 million, all of it borrowed, and then acquired the rest for $6 million.

The bank, under his ownership, grew from $400 million in assets and seven offices to $2.75 billion in assets and 18 offices.

While other bank CEOs passed out million-dollar bonuses to their cronies as their institutions failed, Abess kept City National profitable and received no money from the federal bank bailout. When he sold an 83 percent stake to a Spanish bank for $927 million, he decided to share the bounty with his 399 employees and 72 retirees.

"Those people who joined me and stayed with me at the bank with no promise of equity, I always thought someday I'm going to surprise them," he told the Herald. "I sure as heck don't need" the money.

But others persuaded him that dropping such large checks on the employees without warning wasn't a good idea.

Abess, who remains the bank's chairman and chief executive, made a video telling the employees a bonus would be coming with the sale and assuring them it wasn't severance. A vice president, Linda Naughton, contacted some retirees and told them they would be getting a letter from Abess and should "sit down before they opened it."

Joyce Andrews, who has spent 57 years at City National, including a stint working as a secretary for Abess' father, has known Abess since he was a toddler. On Tuesday night, the 75-year-old woman said, she was so proud she felt like his mother.

Andrews would not say how big her bonus was, but she said she invested it for her retirement.

"It's so unbelievable. I think it has to be the best feel-good story of the year. Don't you? When a man shares that much, $60 million. The fact that he could even do it or thought about it," she said. "There are people that get money that don't do a thing. It's theirs, you know? I think it was a wonderful thing."

murscclub · Chairman Of The Board

Of course I'm biased being from Pittsburgh, but the city is full of good people like this:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09106/963233-455.stm

MzHartz · Permanent Vacation

Doctor saves boy's life with power drill

Posted Wed May 20, 2009 8:15am AEST

A country doctor is being hailed as a life-saver after using a power drill to bore into a 12-year-old boy's skull.

Nicholas Rossi suffered bleeding to the brain and began drifting in and out of consciousness after falling from his bike near a friend's home in Maryborough, Victoria.

After realising the local hospital did not have the necessary surgical equipment, Dr Rob Carson used a drill from the maintenance room to bore into the boy's skull and relieve the pressure on his brain.

He was given advice on the phone by leading Melbourne neurosurgeon David Wallace.

Michael Rossi says his son would have died if Dr Carson had not acted quickly.

"He came out and he saw us and he said he's only got one shot at it, and one shot only," he said. "[He said] 'I'm going to drill into Nick's head and try and relieve the pressure'."

"And he said if we can relieve the pressure he's going to reach Melbourne via air ambulance in a lot better shape than if we don't try something.

"Dr Carson told me all he can remember saying is, 'Get the Black and Decker'."

Anaesthetist David Tynan assisted with the procedure and says Dr Carson saved the boy's life.

"He seems to have made a marvellous recovery," he said.

"It was obvious the next morning [when] they were able to take him off the ventilator and in fact by Sunday he was up and walking around."

Mr Rossi said Mr Wallace said it was a life-saving procedure.

"If they hadn't done that it was the difference between a patient arriving dead or alive. It just pointed out to us just how vital that procedure [was] that was done in Maryborough," he said.

He said the case was similar to the death of Liam Neeson's wife Natasha Richardson.

"Mr Wallace the neurosurgeon basically said it was a classic case of the movie actress - Liam Neeson's wife," he said.

"You think nothing's wrong but she had a bleed and you go unconscious and don't wake up."

Nicholas Rossi has made a full recovery after the procedure and celebrated his 13th birthday yesterday.

Health investment

The Rural Doctors Association says the life-saving treatment highlights the need for more investment in rural health.

Nola Maxfield says the Victorian Government should ensure all rural hospitals are equipped to handle such an emergency.

"You need well trained doctors with a wide range of skills in rural communities," she said.

"You can't simply rely on patients being able to be transferred out."