One point not yet mentioned (I think) is that these people are not away with an emergency, they are here...

I like auto vacations too, for emergency use. But maybe it could be set to only work if a player is not on the site? If they are here and purposly not playing games that are due to time out, the auto vacation should not be kicked in. Personally, I dont think any vacation days should be valid if the person is on site. If you can accept a 5 day limit game, and you are able to get on site, you should have to play your games at that limit, period.