Jon,We need to communicate. E-mail between us doesn't seem to happen. I need to know what your situation is with regard to the AVSIM Conference.

Tom,As I said some time ago, it doesn't look good. I was supposed to leave in 3 weeks for Chicago but, as you may or may not know, the company was recently sold and things have gone a bit weird. About the same time, the paper I was to present was 'hijacked' by another group and edited to suit their needs. At that point, it ceased to have any relevance to the world in general and I believe the conference organisers removed it from the agenda. If it IS still being presented, I've been totally ripped-off :-grrI was still to be attending the conference anyway but I've heard nothing about that. I will send a few emails today and see what's going on. As you can tell, I'm not very happy right now. Clare was looking forward to it so much (first overseas trip). At this rate, if I do go, I'll be lucky to set foot outside Chicago before coming back. I'll probably spend more time in the air than in the US :-(PS the Hotmail address is OK again - the idiots have gone away (for now...). The office one is just strange!Regards,**************Jonathan Point**************"I'd rather be down here wishing I was up there than up there wishing I was down here"

Jon,I'm sorry to hear of your problems. I have been in similar situations. I worked for a mining company at one time that was owned by British Petrolium. We had a pretty good relationship with BP until they bought out Standard Oil. (BP had owned 55% of Standard for many years but they bought the rest.) Standard owned it's own minning company. It was decided to put the assets of both mining companys into one company. We lost. The dumb part was that they decided to use our computer & accounting systems but the other companies computer & accounting staff. At least I made some pretty good consulting bucks for a while teaching them how to use them.I guess we will plan on Rhonda doing both sessions in the sims with me. That way if you do show up I'm sure she will be more than happy to give one of them over to you. Keep me posted!

Yep, this is my 3rd corporate takeover in 10 years but I think we'll be OK in the long run. The reason is, we are now owned by that great American institution; Eaton Corporation. Now, I'm not saying that they aren't a hungry multi-national but they've only posted 2 non-profit years since 1911 or something :-eek Better than other tinpot places I've worked! We all feel a lot better than we did with Invensys (I can say it now that they're gone...).The issue I mentioned before related to the '