With the DC area fully in the throes of gas panic buying, the local news has been out and about trying to show the hysteria. One news helicopter spotted a guy at Freestate, the cheapest, cash-only gas station in my town, filling up his riding mower. He made it on the news! But...this mower is actually his daily driver.

Facebook suggested this little news vid to me, and I was like, wait a sec, I for sure saw this guy at Marathon, the second cheapest station in town, a block from Freestate, and took his picture, a WHILE ago. Thanks to the magic of Google Photos, I just typed in "gas station" and was able to find this pic from August 2020.

Then I checked the FB comments, and sure, there are plenty of people marveling and laughing at this sight. But, turns out I'm not the only one who's seen this guy out and about. Sooo many people know about this gentleman. Thankfully most of them were, shockingly for facebook, kind and charitable. For example:

That's the rockville scrap man. Lost his license. So he runs around in that picking up scrap to keep from drinking.

I seen that guy in rockville when I was working there and I respect the heck out of him.

He goes around every shop checking who has metal scraps to go sell it on his lawnmower and trailer.

He could be in the middle of streets asking for money but no he decides to actually make money in a better way actually working. And no just feeling sorry for his self.

I see him all the time scrapping metal!

If you’re local, you know him. Hardest working man in Rockville.

Yep he’s a neighbor of mine! Lincoln Park OG

Somehow, this of all things has restored my faith in humanity just a little bit.

Somewhere in my many many hours of scouring the CivicX forums for ideas of stuff to do with my Si, I encountered someone who mentioned they got fun vinyl decals for their blank switches from Everything Vinyl Decal. I loved this idea, so I got taco and Eject-O (seat-O cuz) decals for the two blanks forward of my sport button.

Yesterday I got my second Pfizer dose at the mass vaccination site at Six Flags America. Between my wife and myself this is my third pass through the place. Each time it's been less and less busy with increasingly desperate signage out on the main road pleading with the general public to COME ON DOWN AND GET YOUR VACCINE. Now the sign says no appointment needed.

The last step after getting your shot is to pull up to a holding area where you chill in your car for 15 minutes to make sure you don't have any especially concerning reaction to the shot. Various workers guide you to a particular spot and then a nurse comes up to your window to give you a schpiel about put your car in park, and if you have trouble put on your blinkers and honk your horn.

The first two visits were for my wife's 1st dose, then her 1st and my 2nd. We took her Seltos for those because she wanted me to join her in case she reacted to the shot. I went on my own in my Si for my 2nd dose, and when the nurse got to "put your car in park..." she made a long pause trying to figure out if my car was in fact in park, because she could not decipher the markings on this strange object in the console where the automatic shifter would normally be.

It was in neutral, and my electric parking brake--that manual transmission favoring weenies on the internet don't like but I do so nyaaaaa--was on. But she could not for the life of her understand whether my car was liable to creep forward, or not. I told her, "it's in the stick shift version of park," and that was good enough.

T minus 13 days until I can go get my first post-covid pedicure!

Remember when I totally destroyed my achilles playing tennis the very same night I bought my Si? Well, it's been sitting in my parents garage for the past couple months, but I'm now driving it myself!

My orthopedist gave me permission to try driving this week. I started on my wife's CX-5 in our neighborhood, and that worked out fine so we went on a couple errands. Then I picked up my car, and here it is in the garage at physical therapy. I'm still using my walking boot to get around (without crutches) but I swap it out for a shoe to drive. No walking in the shoe yet but hell, driving even a little bit instead of relying on rides the past couple months is a GAME CHANGER.

Wifemobile shopping update: after my test drive bonanza earlier this week, the Kia Seltos SX cemented its place as the frontrunner for my wife's next car. She was very excited about what I told her about it, so we made an appointment with the dealer for her to drive it.

The result of the test drive is the Seltos is pretty much exactly what she wants. The size is more manageable for her than her '18 CX-5, which is by no means a big vehicle, but it has a tall long hood that she's gotten sick of trying to place in tight quarters including our garage. The cowl on the Seltos isn't quite so high, and there are a couple ridges sticking up from the hood that help give a sense of where the front of the car is.

Otherwise, the space, features, and drive are right on with what she wants. She was especially impressed with the amount of room inside vs. the overall size of the car and easy handling. The seats are comfier than the CX-5 and the center console is more out of the way of our knees. The 1.6T + DCT combo felt more responsive to her than the 2.5 NA + 6AT in her CX-5. That tracks with the specs, since the Seltos makes 175 hp & 195 lb/ft (at 1500 rpm!), and weighs 3,317 lbs, while her CX-5 makes 187 hp & 186 lb/ft (at 4000 rpm) and weighs 3,655 lbs.

In my test drive jamboree wrap up post, I mentioned the Seltos has start-stop. I've now realized that this is part of the Smart drive mode and (I think) not active in Normal or Sport modes. When we first started driving the Seltos today it was in Normal but when I switched it to Smart the start-stop kicked in. I think this is a pretty dang decent start-stop implementation. My wife has no prior familiarity with start-stop but was impressed by it. We'd probably leave it in Smart mode most of the time.

The only wrinkle here continues to be color choice and the blasted sunroof. The sunroof is not standard on the otherwise-loaded SX trim and instead is in the sunroof "package," which I have no idea why it's called a package, because it includes a sunroof and...nothing else.

We want a Mars Orange Seltos SX, and there are no Mars Orange Seltos SXes with sunroofs available in the US, at least not yet. Zero. Our local dealer doesn't have a Mars Orange SX on their lot, but they claim to be able to get one in a dealer trade within the next couple weeks. So it was either sunroof or get some other color. The 2nd closest dealer to us has a Starbright Yellow SX with a sunroof, but try as we might, we can't bring ourselves to like that color.

We pretty quickly ended up deciding to forego the sunroof, for a few reasons. The biggest is that my wife doesn't particularly give a shit about a sunroof and the interest in it is more driven by me. It's her car, and she says she can do without it.

The other reason is infinitely more interesting.

If you recall, the Chevy Trailblazer made its way onto our shopping list based solely on the two-tone look of the Activ trim, in a very similar orange to the Seltos.

Kia is doing a limited amount of 2-tone color schemes on the Seltos, but not like the Trailblazer above. Buuuuuuuutttttt.....I got to talking with my wife about, hey what if you let me hook up this car a little for you, lemme show you what I can do, and I produced this for her:

She saw this and was like, holy shit yes please I want that. This would involve wrapping the roof and mirrors white, blacking out the satin silver trim that runs below the windows and separates the roof from the rest of the car, tinting the front windows to match the factory tint on the rears, swapping on body-color door handles from a lower trim because Kia inexplicably gives the SX satin silver door handles to make it look "fancy," and Sparco Terra wheels in rally bronze. She is HERE FOR THAT.

Since that's the case, skipping the sunroof "package" saves $700 on the price of the car, and makes it easier for the roof to be wrapped.

Now we just gotta wait for the dealer to get this orange non-sunroof Seltos SX in stock, do the haggling, and it'll be ours. We'll see just how quickly after taking delivery it ends up at the wrap shop.

We've got another new car at my house: my wife's brand new Mars Orange 2021 Kia Seltos SX Turbo. After she test drove a Seltos at our local Kia dealer (Dealer A), she loved the car, and we agreed Mars Orange was the color we wanted. Welp, we've got the car we wanted, and we didn't buy it from Dealer A.

After the test drive with my wife, I talked with Dealer A's sales manager about getting us an orange Seltos SX. Before I brought her in for the test drive, I had searched Auto Trader, and the exact car we wanted was listed for sale at Dealer B, in another suburb of DC about 45 minutes away from us. After some calling around, the sales manager said Dealer B's car was already sold, but Dealer C (which he didn't name) had one just like it in transit that they could get us in a trade. Ok, sounds good, we'll wait for you to get that for us.

Since we really wanted to get an orange Seltos SX, I kept looking at Kia's inventory search and Auto Trader. A couple new cars showed up so I emailed links to the sales manager at Dealer A. He responded that one of them was Dealer C's car and Dealer D's car was sold.

This Monday, after 9 days with no update from Dealer A, I once again looked at Auto Trader. Dealer B's car was still there! It felt like Dealer A's sales manager was BSing me about it being sold. I told my wife about this, and we agreed we should check directly with Dealer B about this car. I filled out the 'I'm interested' form on their website, and a whole 2 minutes later their internet sales person called me and said, "yes we have that orange Seltos SX when can you come in to look at it?"

So, clearly, the sales manager at Dealer A was full of shit when he said this car was sold. Right away we both were like, fuck Dealer A, let's go buy this car that's been chillin at Dealer B this whole damn time! Dealer B's advertised price was pretty solid, but I nailed down the details and got a bit more of a discount by email and made an appointment to buy it on Tuesday night.

There was more delaying and haggling over trade value than I wanted, and the finance guy was especially slimy and kept pulling his mask off his goddamn mouth and nose while we were in his little phone booth of a fucking office. But armed with a very generous Carvana trade-in quote, I managed to extract some positive equity from the leased 2018 Mazda CX-5 we were trading in, and we were double masked with that fucking finance schmuck so fingers crossed we don't have the 'rona.

With the long-ish drive home, which I did because my wife hates driving on DC area highways, I got a little more familiar with the Seltos. The seats and center console are much better than the CX-5 for manspreading while highway cruising. The ADAS gizmos like active cruise, lane keep and blind spot warning are generally more intelligent than those on the CX-5. There's a little more road noise, but nothing objectionable. The 1.6T + DCT is just enough torque and quick shifting to make the car feel quick-ish for what it is. The color is great, but it shows more as a blood orange almost red in diffuse light like the cloudy day it is today. The orange pops more in direct sunlight.

Modern new cars from mainstream brands keep getting better and better. I'm really very over luxury brands. Both this Seltos SX and my Civic Si are by no means luxurious, but they're just plain good-ass cars with high levels of refinement and build quality, comfy & quiet rides, and interesting colors. The Seltos packs a ton of interior space into an extremely manageable overall vehicle size, with great options content and motor for the price. The Si has fantastic practicality along with driving feel that embarrasses much more expensive cars, plus legit sporty goodies like adaptive dampers and a helical LSD. And we paid $25k-ish for each of them.

All hail the regular-ass cars!

Tonight, my wife asked me to pick up some cookies from the new foo foo artisanal cookie place that went in near us recently, because of course I live somewhere that foo foo artisanal cookie shops are a thing. As I got out of my car, I noticed a small silver hatchback that looked unremarkable, and yet unfamiliar. I had to look at the badges on the back, and it's a SEAT Leon, with diplomat tags on it, like all the other non-USDM cars I see here around DC.

Shortly after I took this picture, the owner of the Leon walked up to their car, and I said, "this is the first time I've seen a SEAT in the US!" to which they replied, "you're the first person to notice my car!"

Oh, and yes the cookies were good.

She didn't even need to say anything more than an emoji.

An L.A. dock worker has leaked a couple preproduction 400Zs which arrived at their work recently, to the 400ZClub forum. These may be press cars for autojournos.

Aside from little details like amber side reflectors in the headlights and various sensors, the main change from the Z Proto seems to be the addition of a little ducktail spoiler, and variations with the 2-tone roof and front grille.

Of the two cars here, the silver one has a black roof and manual transmission while the gray one has a body color roof and automatic. Looking at the grilles, the upper eggcrate section of the grille on the gray one is either body color or some other kind of gray trim that is close to the body color, while the silver car has that section in black like the Z Proto.

Personally, I prefer the 2-tone roof look of the silver car, but I think the body color eggcrate on the gray car does a good job of making the "mouth" look less like a goofy The Oatmeal comic than the all black grille.

Here are a couple walkaround vids...

I've been seeing a steady stream of chatter that OH NO THE EPA IS GOING TO BAN TUNING CARS AND RACECARS WE GOTTA STOP THEM! As is the case with many controversies, there's a grain of truth here, but the people who are upset about it have blown shit wayyyyyyy the fuck out of proportion.

Long story short, in early 2020, the EPA issued a bunch of rules clarifications and other stuff in their guidance on enforcing the Clean Air Act, where they reiterated that it's illegal to remove emissions equipment from cars driven on public roads, and they also specifically said that race cars that aren't driven on public roads, but made from street cars, also need to keep their emissions equipment intact. Then they started fining tuning companies that sell stuff to facilitate the removal of emissions controls from cars, i.e. catless downpipes, EGR bypasses, diesel particulate filter removal kits, and the assorted ECU tunes that block the check engine light from turning on in response to codes from removal of emissions equipment (i.e. the dreaded P0420 code that says you've got no cat anymore).

Of course, because we are in the worst timeline, even though it's totally obvious that the EPA is only saying, 'go on modifying your cars gearheads, just leave the cats, EGRs and DPFs in place,' all the toxic-est fuckhead gearheads are screaming about the EPA wanting to outlaw modifying cars entirely, or ban internal combustion engines, and even though this uptick in EPA enforcement activity began while Trump was president, there is much carping that this is all Biden's fault.

SEMA has even gotten in on the fun, pushing what it calls the RPM Act, which basically says that actual race cars made from street cars can remove their emissions equipment, as long as they really are race cars and not driven on public roads. SEMA's words are:

The EPA has announced that enforcement against high performance parts—including superchargers, tuners, and exhaust systems—is a top priority.

This is bullshit. Here's a very long article from Motor Trend that goes into more detail than I will, but some highlights:

• The EPA is sick of performance parts manufacturers selling "race only" parts that remove emissions equipment and are installed on street-driven cars instead of race cars.
• The EPA has not "taken an enforcement action" against any individual vehicle owners who have proven their vehicles aren't driven on public roads.
• In the EPA's words, "The proposed rulemaking creates no new law or policy, and absolutely is not a statement of any change in direction of our enforcement efforts."

This is so, so stupid. The EPA isn't trying to kill car culture, or internal combustion engines, or even ban superchargers and exhausts. They're only saying to quit removing emissions controls from street-driven cars, and also to keep those emissions controls on non-street-driven race cars made from emissions-certified street cars.

The problem that the tuners and SEMA are claiming exists, doesn't. Their proposed RPM Act, if passed, would do fuck all to protect the average gearhead fucking around with their street-driven car, because it only applies to non-street-driven cars. The number of actual race cars made from production cars is tiny compared to the number of street driven cars with "race only" hop-up parts that remove emissions control equipment, and the RPM Act, by design, does nothing to protect the use of those "race only" parts on street cars.

Now, let me confess to a dirty little non-secret: on my last car, my 335xi, I ran a catless downpipe and an ECU tune that defeated the P0420 code. I'm not a saint! But I justified that action to myself because unlike the rear-wheel drive 335i, my awd 335xi had a couple of secondary cats in the midpipes that I thought would do a halfway decent job of cleaning up the exhaust, somewhat. Welp, that turned out to not be the case. That car could belch some smoke when it wanted.

But I've learned my lesson, and that's the first and last catless downpipe I'll ever be buying. I care about the environment and I don't want to drive a mass polluting car. My Civic Si can make plenty of power with the factory downpipe still in place, which I intend to keep, because even though there are aftermarket catted downpipes available for this car, the cats in them are tiny and I can't imagine they're especially effective at cleaning up the exhaust.

The fun toy cars I'm thinking about for down the road like say a Porsche 987/997 or BMW Z4M have aftermarket catted headers and midpipes available that do maintain effective pollution control. Look at these sexy aFe catted headers and midpipes for the BMW S54 motor:

Of course, not every aFe catted downpipe-like object is necessarily a home run. This is their downpipe for my Civic Si, and the cat is just too damn dinky for me to think it's effective.

This one little bitty cat would be the only cat on my Si, vs. the 4 bigger cats aFe leaves the Z4M with. Sure, my Si has a little 1.5 liter turbo 4 vs. a Z4M's 3.2 liter NA I6, but with Honda relying entirely on the downpipe cat to clean up the tailpipe, I'm not confident the aftermarket options will maintain enough of the factory cat's pollution-cleaning capability.

Sure, upgraded aftermarket exhaust parts that have cats in them aren't going to make as much power as completely removing the cats, but come on y'all, let's be responsible. If getting that last 10-15 hp out of a street driven car means turning that car into a mass polluter vs. keeping the tailpipe clean, just leave those extra horsies on the table. It's not worth the damage to the environment.

Where I'm less prepared to be a stickler is with ECU tuning. Sure, a tune that makes more power might make slightly more emissions, but if it's applied to a car that still has all of its physical emissions equipment in place, that car's tailpipe, relatively speaking, is still pretty clean. To me, this feels like a happy medium where even if the letter of the law is not being completely followed, its spirit largely is.

The aftermarket companies need to stop yelling nonsense that the EPA isn't actually doing. Spreading political bullshit that's not at all rooted in reality is not the right path. Buck up and start making more emissions-compliant parts. It is eminently doable.

@derp @krustywantout The military and the whole rest of the federal government definitely care about weed use among employees. Pot is not in any way decriminalized or legalized at the federal level.

Drug testing is not a requirement for a security clearance, but there are questions in the paperwork about past drug use/involvement that can and do trigger drug testing.

That said there are plenty of federal employees and contractors who use pot. It's recreationally mostly legal in DC, medical with widespread dispensaries in MD, and more recently medical with not so many dispensaries in VA. There is not any recurring drug testing while employed by the feds or federal contractors, and for most non-cleared employees, or people with the lowest level public trust clearance, they don't have any pre-employment drug screenings either.

@essextee I want to say I had this and successfully defeated it but I'm not remembering exactly how I did it. Maybe try long pressing on this notification and it'll give some options to remove it. Either that or swipe left on it. Even if it's not dismiss-able there could be a little gear icon that appears on the right when you swipe left which would also give you the option to make it go away. Could even be that little down carrot in the top right of the notification in your screenshot.

@bison78 Yes, employers do leave unvested matching contributions sitting in 401k accounts until ex-employees roll their accounts over. You don't need to roll over a 401k after you leave a company, it can sit there collecting interest indefinitely. If someone leaves a company with un-vested 401k matches, and they think they might go back, sure, maybe don't go rolling that 401k over. Usually, but not 100% guaranteed, rehired employees' former service can be counted towards vesting after they're rehired, but here's no blanket way that's going to go every time. As far as resuming vesting upon rehire, there are a lot of quirks there and companies may try to delay rehired employees from resuming vesting immediately upon their new start date. There can be up to a year waiting period for vesting to start back up, it comes down to what's in that individual company's policies.

@monkeepuzzle Judging by the first name could be a language barrier and/or bargaining culture difference.

Haggling and bargaining culture in Latin countries is very different than here, and my experience with FB marketplace is it skews more Latino than the general population.

@taylor-martin said in I've Been Employed! (and some personal stuff):

@texturedsoyprotein said in I've Been Employed! (and some personal stuff):

Really where this applies is so you know what to expect with regard to that money so you can plan on how long you want to stay with them. Not that you're thinking about your next job yet, but let's say you have a 4 years vesting schedule and 2 years down the road you get approached with some awesome opportunity. You just gotta know what if any portion of your employer match is going to get clawed back if you take that new job.

Aaaah I get it now... seems a little evil

Welcome to capitalism!

(You may not want to email HR asking about a vesting schedule. They're going to have their handbook published on an intranet somewhere for everybody. Just ctrl-F in there for "vest" and "safe harbor" and see if anything comes up. If they say safe harbor that means no vesting, the money's yours right away no takesie-backsies.)

@chariotoflove Frankly, I resent this particular call for civility. It's one thing to say keep it civil and un-political. It's another to say he deserves to be honored.

@taylor-martin Investing and vesting are two different things.

You and your company invest money in your 401k. The money your employer invests into the account is called a matching contribution. That money sits in the same account, but it's walled off as the employer contribution part.

You become vested in the 401k matching contributions over time. This is dictated by the company's vesting schedule, if they have one, which is typically in the employee handbook. The vesting schedule is the amount of time you have to stay with the company before you can take all the company match money with you when you leave.

So for example if you vest 25% for each year of tenure with the company, after 1 year it's 25%, 2 years 50% etc. It takes 4 years to become 100% vested. If you left this hypothetical company any time before you reached 4 years of tenure, you only would keep the vested % of the current value of the employer's matching contributions.

Basically, when a company has a vesting schedule for 401k matches, they're putting money into employees' 401k accounts where it earns interest. But if the employee leaves their job before the end of the vesting schedule, the employer gets some of that money back, including the interest it's earned while it sat in your account. It's a way for them to offer the benefit on paper, without actually having to spend all that money, because many people leave jobs before they become fully vested in their employers' 401k matches.

Really where this applies is so you know what to expect with regard to that money so you can plan on how long you want to stay with them. Not that you're thinking about your next job yet, but let's say you have a 4 years vesting schedule and 2 years down the road you get approached with some awesome opportunity. You just gotta know what if any portion of your employer match is going to get clawed back if you take that new job.

@awesomeaustinv Personally I'm quite thrilled to have things like smartphone mirroring, adaptive dampers, and active cruise/lane centering. Base models are for basic bitches.

@taylor-martin You gotta let your hair down a little, my dude. I'm not saying you have to be some big partier. I'm definitely not. I'm an extroverted introvert and have a finite amount of energy I can expend interacting with people in a given day. I'm big on "me time" to keep my sanity. Give yourself permission to cut loose from time to time, and create and take advantage of all the "me time" you can.

In a given weekday I go from morning slackin/chillin, to Director of Recruiting-ing, to gym rat-ing, to being a goofy stoner watching silly shit late at night. If all I did was focus on my job I'd be miserable.

Also, let me fully explain the difference between 401k & Roth since that is well within my job description.

A 401k is always funded by pre-tax payroll deductions from your employer. This means that any money you put in a 401k, lowers your taxable income by that amount. If you make $60k but put $5k in a 401k, your taxable income is $55k. The money in a 401k sits back and earns interest and that interest is not taxed. Where taxes come into play is when you withdraw the money after it's been earning interest for years. Those withdrawals are subject to taxes, and there are penalties if you withdraw before age 65.

A Roth IRA is always funded by post-tax money. Because of this, when you go to withdraw from it, you don't pay taxes then. The money was already taxed before it went in. Most Roth IRAs are not tied to employers. Anybody can go get one. If an employer lets you make Roth payroll deductions, all they're doing is opening a Roth IRA on your behalf and letting you slide post-tax pay into it. Whereas if you had your own Roth IRA, that money would go to your bank first and then you'd transfer it into your Roth. But there's no difference in taxes.

There are also traditional IRAs but they're not really something where you want to directly contribute to them. I have a traditional IRA that I roll over 401ks to when I leave jobs. But you don't need to do this because when you leave a job, the money stays in the 401k and you can let it chill there indefinitely, or roll it over to your new employer's 401k tax-free. But I like to have all that money in the same place, and you can tax-free roll over 401ks to traditional IRAs.

What I'd recommend for keeping shit as simple as possible is start out by contributing only to your 401k and doing at least whatever their matching % is. You can bump it up and/or make Roth contributions later. It's definitely good to start saving for retirement as early and often as possible but younger people in entry level jobs should generally start with their 401k, not Roth.

You should look into what if any vesting schedule they apply to the employer match contributions. Many companies will have a schedule where you have to stay there for a certain period of time before those matching contributions will actually go with you when you leave. Let's say for example you have a vesting schedule where you become 25% vested in the 401k match for each year of tenure with the company. If you left that job after 2.5 years, you'd be 50% vested. Which means if the employer match balance in your 401k was $20k, only $10k of that would actually be yours, and the other half gets clawed back to the company. The opposite of a vesting schedule is a safe harbor matching contribution. This means there's no possibility for the company to claw that money back, it's yours right away.

(My company makes safe harbor matching contributions and I explain this to basically every person I phone interview. Far more companies than employees know about sneaky tricks like vesting schedules. So it's a selling point to come work for us but like maybe 1/4 of the people I talk to know what vesting is.)

@taylor-martin Unless they're doing strict time keeping, remote work means as long as you get your shit done, you can create a lot of freedom for yourself.

Me personally, I'm a night owl, I hate work clothes, I hate commutes, and I hate just being at an office for no particular reason other than that's what's expected of me. I looove WFH because I don't have to do any of that shit.

Most days I wake up at 8:30 at the very earliest and I take plenty of time to chill in the morning before I start working. I cut out from work to run errands, or go to medical appointments, or go to lunch, or whatever. As long as I get my shit done, I'm on calls & meetings when scheduled, and I'm responsive to colleagues when they need, what I do other than that during the work day is my business.

My tricks for keeping the schedule I want while not looking like I'm doing that are quite simple:

1. I leave my phone logged in to MS Teams, always. I don't always respond but sometimes I do.

2. When I first come downstairs I turn my computer on immediately so I'm logged into Teams as active. Otherwise I would show to colleagues as logged in on mobile but inactive for 14+ hours or whatever it is.

3. If a colleague contacts me early in the morning (usually email, sometimes Teams) and an urgent response is needed, I pause my coffee time to respond. I often will do this even if I don't really need to respond, just to be responsive.

4. If someone contacts me from 5:30-7 pm, I'm probably signed out for the day, but I try to respond, again, to be responsive.

5. If someone contacts me after 7 pm, and I can make a quick response, I type it out and schedule it to be sent the next morning, before I'm likely to wake up. All that colleague knows is that "I" emailed them at 7:53 or 8:17 or whatever time I guess chipper morning people start firing off emails.

So yes, I'm making myself available and I respond to people where I need, but often these are quick little responses where I can briefly interrupt my personal time and it's no big deal for me to do that. In exchange for extending that availability to my colleagues, I let plenty of personal-oriented time seep into my workday. This is a more than acceptable tradeoff for me.