Kevin Riley, Person 2 Person, and a rat.

The company that I have worked for for the past several weeks (Person 2 Person) declared bankruptcy this weekend. And they just informed us that they may not be able to pay us the wages and expenses that they owe us. As you can imagine, I'm a bit angry.

According the Person 2 Person's owner and director Kevin Riley, American Express suddenly decided to pull their contract because they weren't getting the results they required. This bankrupted the company and they have no assets. Of course it's an LLC, so Mr. Riley's personal wealth is not at stake. According to him, AmEx still owes him money on a number of received credit card applications so he claims he will eventually pay us if that comes through.

According to my slightly more reliable sources, AmEx has been threatening to cancel Person 2 Person's contract for months now. It's funny that we were never told anything until the last day of our most recent pay period. Essentially, we worked for the maximum amount of time possible before they would've been expected to pay us. It all seems a wee bit fishy to me. He's lost nothing except a business built on leases and credit, we've lost 2 weeks of productivity and a significant amount of money in travel expenses.

It's not so bad for me. New Zealand has a "holiday pay" law, where employers are required to save an additional 8% of their employee's salary which must be paid out upon termination of employment. Basically, if you have worked for a year, making $100,000 per year, when you are terminated at the end of the year you will receive $8,000. Furthermore, Person 2 person had a paid vacation time scheme. I've only worked there for a couple of weeks - I had no paid vacation time, and my holiday pay amounts to about $40. But there are people who have worked for Mr. Riley for over 2 years. They are out $6000 - $10,000. And that doesn't include unpaid commission. I'm out $100 in expenses plus about $550 in wages, and I'm livid. I can only imagine how my long-term coworkers must feel.

Anyways, we've filed a complaint with the labour department, so we have first dibs on any assets that are seized from Person 2 Person. And we talked to a labour union and they are looking into using "leverage" against Mr. Riley, whatever that means. I believe some people have already seized a few assets in advance. Frankly, I don't blame them...

On a brighter note, one of my friends may have found me a job at a little coffee stand in the mall. It looks like a fun job, I've always wanted to learn how to make a good latté.

Update

I haven't been traveling at all because I've been too busy.

I got a job working as an American Express sales rep. I'm one of those annoying people you see in the mall shouting at you to learn about special rewards and promotions. It's been an experience. I've met some really interesting people though. My co-workers are all Asian, and they've been teaching me Hindi, Chinese, and Malay. I'm working on finding another job, but for the time being it's nice to be working. I do like having money coming in.

As I said earlier, we moved into a basement flat in Remeura. It's NZD$250/week for the place including water. I haven't uploaded pictures or anything because, until 3 days ago, we had no internet. I was leeching off of one of our neighbors. Unfortunately, NZ ISPs charge per gigabyte of usage, so I didn't want to leech too much.

We have our own now, but it is abonimable. I'm getting about 300kbps (compared to your typical cable internet of around 6000kbps). My torrents are taking days and weeks to download. I know it's possible to get decent speeds here, my generous neighbor is getting about 3000kbps, so I got in touch with the ISP (tech support here is only available during business hours!) and they are "sending someone out sometime."I'll upload pics when I'm feeling less lazy.

The Brain Mouse.
I'm really excited about a new gadget I discovered today - the OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator. Yes, it's as cool as it sounds. It's a brain computer interface device that uses biopotentials from your forehead to interface with your computer. It's basically a combination electro-encephalogram, electro-myogram, and electro-oculogram. The NIA detects the electrical activity in your brain, upper facial muscles, and eye muscles and matches the "movement" with a preset command on your computer. It reads your mind and puts it on your computer (sort of).

It can't read direct thoughts like "go up" or "shoot", it only measures different levels and locations of electrical activity. So, you couldn't shoot a gun in Half-life by thinking about shooting a gun, but you could by blinking or twitching your eyebrows. Furthermore, the NIA can detect Alpha and Beta brain waves, so hypothetically, you could scroll down by relaxing.

This thing is pretty much my dream come true, one step closer to plugging my brain into a computer, Matrix-style. I'm getting one asap. Unfortunately, it's not available in NZ for some reason, so I'm going to have to smuggle it in.

Here are some links (in order of interestingness):
Hot Hardware's Review
OCZ nia Official Site
AnandTech (source of hokey picture)
Wikipedia

Another, similar device is coming to market around Christmas called the Emotiv Epoc.

Finally, here is a link to the full gallery of images from my previous trip to Rotorua and Taupo. Let it never be said that I am not generous.

Cheers.