Hrqls:  Excellent idea about the weekend.  

Fencer: it is in my favourite boards now .. dont know what went wrong yesterday .. maybe it was my cache (although i never had that problem with firefox) ... it kept giving me the link 'add this board to your favourites' and didnt switch to 'remove this board from your favourites' .. the board didnt show up in my list of favourites either

ah well .. maybe i should have done a manual refresh .. i dont think i tried that :)

its working now .. thats the good thing! :)

MadMonkey: you could set your weekend to tuesday and wednesday .. that way christmas andthe 1st of january would be covered

personally i think 35 vacation days per year are more than enough .. i even am not in favor of people buying extra vacation days .. although its a good income for brainking it also favors the rich people which unbalances the world enough already :)

it would be a good habit to set christmas as a vacation day at the start of the year already

maybe its a good idea to turn of automatic vacation days .. that way you wont use a whole vacation day to prevent 1 single game from timing out and you might have more days spare at the end of the year which can be used to prevent more games from timing out

as everyone said we had 30 vacation days per year, then christmas became an ordinary day and we got 5 extra vacation days per year .. so in fact we got 3 more days per year (i think)

if we go with fixed holidays again then i want 1 for my birthday as well and for queensday .. as i cant play on those days either :)

AbigailII: Its funny... i think most people seem to play more from work than from home, so a holiday off from work is not a good thing for so many people!

AbigailII:  I'm in favor of giving you all the vacation days you want, if that will put you in a more generous mood ;-)

Puckish: I do get off with Christmas, and I don't have to go to work. Which means, I can play. I don't play from the office - perhaps Fencer should give me 225 extra vacation days.

nodnarbo: LOL, yeah, I can't disagree with you. Now that you mention it, I think it would make more sense too. Never really thought about it before.

rod03801: um...yea...well...I was kinda afraid of that cause this isn't the first time something like this has happened...I still think they should still be on the left side though

nodnarbo: Do you mean the boxes on the main message list, to put a tick mark in, to delete or save or whatever? Because mine have always been over on the right hand side of it.

So, I went to my message box today, and the boxes to select messages are now after the message instead of before. has anyone else noticed this, because I find it annoying that it's suddenly moved...

or2ak.com: ok,mark me down with the group who feel the extra 5 days is enough

Jim Dandy:

(or2ak.com: Let me get this straight.You are saying we as players should not recieve an extra perk based on the principal of equality?
Isn't that cutting off your ear to spite your nose?)

Fencer already gave us 5 extra vacation days...  That was the perk 

Puckish: Hanukkah was a poor example,the only people who consider it a big event are non-Jews.I think people feel since it falls near Christmas it must be of parallel importance,it's not.

Puckish:

(or2ak.com: Im pretty sure that even if you dont celebrate
Christmas, it is still a holiday for you, and most people have it as a
day off from work?)

I dont celebrate and no, I dont get the day off.

All I'm saying is I agree with Fencer and others that we have enough vacation days. Use them wisely throuout the year 

rod03801: Yes,the extra 5 days should cover everyones personal faith days.

Jim Dandy: But as has been mentioned, when Fencer ended site holidays, he added 5 vacation days to the standard amount that rooks receive. Seems fair enough to me. We really are given plenty of vacation, in my eyes.

or2ak.com: Im pretty sure that even if you dont celebrate Christmas, it is still a holiday for you, and most people have it as a day off from work?

I am certain that Hanukkah is not a holiday for most people where they get the time off from work etc...

Rose: Maybe because Channukah is a minor holiday in the Jewish calander.Now if you mentioned Yom Kippur.......

or2ak.com: Let me get this straight.You are saying we as players should not recieve an extra perk based on the principal of equality?
Isn't that cutting off your ear to spite your nose?

Rose:

I agree, should be no holiday time off except for using vacation days.
Not everyone celebrates christmas and no extra time should be added.

I am not quite sure how the vacation system works....

Question, if I use a few of my own personal holidays and mark them as vacation days with what I have been allotted with my membership, does the amount of my vacation days left to use get cut by the same amount of days?

I think thats how it works, so Mad Monkey et.al. can take a few of their vacation days at the beginning of the year and mark their holidays, like Christmas time, as vacations, and then even if they use the auto vacation option, they will never run below enough to cover the ones they already have set.... if I understand how it works correctly?

There are (except for New Year's Eve) no site vacation days anymore. Therefore Fencer bestowed each membership 5 extra vacation days.

MadMonkey: We got extra vacation days/year to compensate for the fact that there's to block out period for holidays. Considering this is an international site, time outs would hardly happen if for every holiday somewhere time control is disabled for that day.

Of course, Christmas is only a "problem" for people who 1) don't have holidays left, 2) play games with a time control of 24hours/move or less, 3) aren't taking the time to move on Christmas, and 4) actually have to move that day. Considering that a combination of 1) and 2) is bad anytime, not only at Christmas, I'd say that it's just bad planning, and rules shouldn't be reinstated because of that.

Hrqls: Nothing special, you should be able to do it.

Rose:  What's unfair about it?  No one has a vested right in the time system.  It exists to keep the games moving along at a certain pace.  At a time of year when many people of all religions pause to relax and reflect, it's entirely appropriate to offer this opportunity.  If some games finish a few days later than they otherwise would have, what of it?  This site is for leisure, after all.

I have no personal interest in this as I have plenty of vacation days left and don't accept games that don't allow vacation.  I just think it would be a nice thing to do.

Hrqls: I have it added - added it before the first post.

Do you have the link near the top of board to add it?

http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=146

When you click it, what does it do? If you then see the "(remove from favourite boards)" - it might just be a few minutes before your favourite board list is updated to include that board.

alanback:  I dont think that  would be fair to the many hundreds of people here that dont celebrate that Christian Holiday. I didnt see any one ask for time controls shut off during the start of Channukah.. 

Fencer: i cant add the interview board to my favourite boards .. is this board something special ?

MadMonkey:  It would be good of Fencer to shut off time control from, say, Xmas Eve to New Year's Day.  

WellyWales & coan.net: I think this should be looked into again myself

I (like others) have no vacation days left, BUT do not really want to have to (but would love to pop on) come on line Xmas Day

When i added 6 months to my membership this year i did not even think about Xmas, now i have no days left to use, or apart from buying MORE membership can not get any more, thats why i requested a while ago about the ability to buy and 'X' amount per year if needed , after all, its still money for BrainKing

The site should be more flexible when things like this come about.
We have a site action for the month about buying membership and getting extra for what you pay, which is great if you have spare money at this time of year. Sadly, like MANY others i do not, as family etc... have to come first this time of year

I will mention more in my interview

Xmas should be a time for people to be happy, have fun, relax, hopefully be with family, play games if they have time BUT NOT be made to feel they have to be here, as much as we love the site

PLEASE Fencer, lets keep saying

WellyWales: I do not believe there are any site holidays anymore. Instead of site holidays (since many people celebrate different holidays), most members have plenty of vacation days to use if needed.

http://brainking.com/en/Settings?p=1

(I'm not 100% sure since I have Tuesday set as one of my weekend days, but if it was a site holiday, it would not give you the option to set a vacation day.)

Are Xmas Day, boxing days and New Years day, set holidays or do we need to tick them...... I cannot see it mentioned anywhere

MadMonkey: I've already suggested it to Fencer, along with some other improvements. If you have any suggestions for the interviews system, please post them at the new Interviews board (since this subject has just become off-topic here, now that the other board exists) and I'll forward them to Fencer.

pauloaguia: hmmmm, i think you as you are the main contact person, SHOULD be able to have those options, OR it could be open to abuse

I just found out about a new board that was created for discussing interviews. People that like to follow up on this subject can now visit the new Interviews board.

MadMonkey: No. The author can edit the question but that's all (at least for now).

Eriisa: coan.net is right.

Eriisa: Pbarb was the person before MadMonkey - so I believe that is in the "answer" stage - that is if she goes to that page, she should be able to add the answers.

Fencer: Why does Pbarb have questions, but I cannot add one?

Fencer: Does pauloaguia (or whoever lol) have the ability to delete / edit any questions that need to be

MadMonkey: Well, that just goes to show how well you know yourself

Fencer: hey, i can send myself a question

Probably get the answer wrong anyway

1) Vikings interview has been released a while ago. You can find it at the Interviews page.
2) A new system of interviews has been implemented at the same time, so it's no longer necessary to send the questions to pauloaguia. Simply go to the Interviews page, click the interview which is marked "open" and post your question(s).

More information will be posted soon (most likely at the blog site).

MadMonkey:

pauloaguia: Have you had any yet

Christmas is coming and so is MadMonkey's interview.
If you're going on vacations or you'll be busy buying last minute Christmas presents, don't forget to send your questions for the interview as soon as possible.

On a related note, as an official BK translator I've noticed some interview related messages being added to the site, so I'm guessing the whole process will become simpler and faster soon...

In the meantime, don't forget MadMonkey's Christmas present and send me all the questions you want to ask him on his interview

rod03801: Thanks, I did not want to bother him with my minor question if someone else had the answer

tinksbell: Well, you could send Fencer a private message about it. I think you could either ask him to switch it so that you go through your rook membership first, then have the rest of your Knight kick in at the end of it. OR, he might convert the Knight membership time down to how long it would be if it were a rook membership.

I'm pretty sure he would do one of the two, for you.

Not sure if this is the right place to put this. I managed to get in on the red code last night for rook membership. YEAH! especially since my current job allows me about 30 out of 40 hours to play
:)

Anyway, I also have a knight membership, is there anyway for the knight to "turn into" a rook? Right now the knight is the membership level in use for another year or so...
Thanks!