Hi Laurie;
Like Kris, I and some of my colleagues are paid by money which comes from the Federal Government, but we are at companies and universities so depending on timing of when grants & contracts are renewed, paid, invoiced, and the exact language in each contract/grant, plus the policies of our institutions, we could work. What happened to us/them really depended on the "flavor" of money you had, as Kris alluded to. For some groups, for example, even though they had $$ "on-hand", they could not have worked past a "reporting period", which was going to be 01 November. Kinda crazy!
It did impact my daily interactions with scientists and colleagues at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center - they were furloughed and not allowed to work, and we are in the middle of large projects together. To a lesser extent, I and my group were impacted by furloughs at NOAA. We are still waiting for various parts of NASA to come 100% back.
All in all, I'm very glad it's over - even though officially I could work, it did add a lot of stress.
cheers, -KD