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Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Career?
JordoCrouse writes "There has been an uproar in Salt Lake City, Utah over the comments of the new Iomega CEO, Bruce Albertson. Albertson attacked Utah's very annoying and confusing liquor laws as a reason why Utah has had a serious problem attracting engineers and other technology oriented folk, despite the low cost of living, high quality of firms, and access to excellent education. I didn't grow up here, but I went to college in Salt Lake City, so I was used to the various quirks of the local laws, but I am wondering: Do issues like liquor laws and social life really affect where engineers and programmers want to work? Does Mr. Albertson have a point, or was he just frustrated that he couldn't atract any good prospects?"
There's more to it that the liquor laws. When my brother lived in UT and worked for Novell, he lived in a suburb full of child-bearing age couples with many children, but none of them played outside where they might meet a gentile.
If you order a Coke at a fast food joint, it's flat and nasty tasting, because it's the first one they've sold in a week.
And my bro said they had a lot of trouble hiring service people, because many people couldn't be polite on the phone. They caught an embezzelor, and found out that his boss knew about the crime, but didn't report it because the felon was his bishop!!
So there's more to it than the drinking laws.
A lot.
K-Mart special sale laws?!?
Perhaps you meant Blue Laws.
I interviewed for a position in salt lake city a little over a year ago and was asked which type of church I attended. The question wasn't even phrased whether or not if I was religious --- there was a presumption I was. What I do with my private life is my own business. Living in an area not respecting this privacy is not for me.
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a pissing section in a public pool.
Actually I saw a special on TV one night that linked madness to creativity too. Too much madness and you get a lunatic running around babbling some incoherant prophecy or something...just enough and you get someone who can still function within society, but can still come up with some off the wall stuff.
Personally...I think your policy against hiring a NON drug user is kinda illogical, especially since I know of a number of damn slick clean coders. If I called you a little mad for that, I'd be giving far too much of a compliment.
I mean, what precisely are you expecting? That after the majority is familiarized with your ideas, the planet will convert to Mormonism, "the one true faith", "the sole voice of the Creator"? It's not like every other religion on the planet doesn't have "uncomfortable ideas"...
The tendency to actually believe [apocalyptic] prophecy amongst Mormons is the most worrisome thing, I think, in regards to the political scene (which was the point of this /. article). The attributes of actually believing that all other religions are provably false, and having the political power to try to enforce such beliefs, seem limited to Mormons in Utah & Islams in the Middle East & Indonesia; also several nations in Sub-Saharan Africa -- not really a noble club to be in.
That's not how US's democracy works. If that were the case, then the problems that minority groups have now would be much greater. For instance... slavery might be acceptable. One of the Constitution's main goals it to prevent the tyranny of the majority. It names specific things that aren't allowed, such as church/state allegiances.
One of the nice things about 'bible belts' or 'tech belts' if you will, is that people of a given persuation can enjoy each others' views together
And the other 30% of the population get to suffer? That's just not how things work. Diversity in viewpoints and outlooks on life is usually viewed as a good thing. Let the teetotalers argue their point to others because they might have some good points, just don't let them force others to take their viewpoint.
Seriously, maybe, just maybe the fact that there are millions of devout cultists (aka Mormons) in this state is the reason that everyone stays the hell away.
Some things they preach:
- The end of the world by fire and mass destruction is coming any day now! Really!
- If you are a righteous Mormon you will become a GOD! With your own worlds and people, and creating billions of spritual children with your many wives in heaven! (yes, they do believe that you can have multiple wives in heaven!)
- Their temples, like the endowment cerimony, are straight from the occult! They used to swear on their LIVES! that they would never tell what happened in their cerimonies lest their tongue be cut out, their guts spilled and so on! Crazy stuff...
and all sorts of other stuff. Having a majority of the population that beleives in things like this would be seriously discomforting to most people.
Not just a matter of your age. Software is a global profession, considering how easily people move across continents. Here's my impression, based on personal experience and what I've heard from others.
* Singapore : clean, excellent standard of living, everything you do is monitored. some people like it, some don't. YMMV. probably good for a short term contract, but I wouldn't live there.
* United States: The motherload. No other country offers so many opportunities or so many jobs. Cons - expect to chop off a solid chunk of your life and sacrifice it to the corporate god. If you're a citizen/resident, expect to get good payback. If you're a foreigner on a visa, possible the worst country to work in, because you don't have any freedom (ironic, considering the ideological brainwashing they subject the young kids to there, land of the free and all that). Permanent residency: 3-7 years. People who leave the US after their visa expires invariably end up wondering why they went there in the first place. Europe and Australia are much better alternatives.
* Australia/NZ : Excellent choice. Very safe, good standard of living, relaxed and friendly people, high shortage of tech. talent. Cons - not many choices. handful of cities to live in. not many companies. high level of govt. regulation, which means lower competition, suckass ISPs. Good beer, though. Easy to get a visa in a day or two. Permanent Residency - 6 months. Great place for families, low crime and no guns.
* Europe: Depends on the country. Lots of variety. Visa rules vary hugely. People working in UK have differing stories - the ones near london like it, the ones in the country towns are bored to death. Cultural, linguistic, and racial factors are a big deal in europe.
* Canada: Friendly, cleaner, nicer version of the US, with better cheese and the metric system. Getting a work visa is easy in terms of paperwork, but you won't find many companies willing to hire you on a work visa. Lots of bureaucracy at the company HR level, though the govt. does things speedily. Escape haven for programmers whose US visa is expiring - get Canadian residency (6 months) and then get a job. Good place to settle down for families.
Is social life a factor? what a DUMB fucking question! Despite the stereotype, the fact is that most engineers really do lead active lives beyond work. Additionally, they're likely to be logical people, who like to live in places that aren't insane.
I think that Utah is truly one of the scariest states in the republic. The line between church and state isn't just fuzzy, it's been erased, and the moronic liquor laws are just one embodiment of that problem.
I can safely say I'd never, ever move to Utah, not even to marry my cousin (which is legal there, when you turn 50).
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Or, if no such list is available, perhaps someone can give some info on the blue laws (or lack thereof) for a few specific states. Can anyone speak up for Washington (state), Texas, or Oregon?
Alex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
> As a smoker, I make a conscious effort to keep my smoke away from those who choose not to smoke.
And I too thank you. I wish people like you would join my tours. It seems like every time I travel to Central and South America and join a tour, I'm surrounded by smokers that don't bother to ask me if I mind, but they light up while talking to me or while sitting by me at the table, inside or out.
Frankly, I'd prefer they put their butt right up to my face and let out a big long ripe fart! It wouldn't smell as bad and the stench goes away quicker.....
Depends where in Maryland. The liquor store nearest my home (Howard County) is open Sundays. And in some counties you can buy beer and wine in grocery stores while in others you can't.
But almost all MD counties allow bars to stay open later at night than liquor stores.
The supposed rationale for more liberal regs governing bars than liquor stores is that a bartender serving by the drink can cut you off when you've had enough, but if you buy from the store you can go off alone and glug yourself into a coma.
Yes, the fact that bars can sell "packaged goods" (booze to go) means this is a specious argument, but so is our fine governor's stance against smoking while relying on tobacco tax revenues or railing against gambling while the State runs a lottery.
I long ago gave up looking for logic in government (or big company) actions. You can't find what's not there.
- Robin
Posted by Kewlhandtek:
One thing Utah does need more of is non-Chilis/TGIFridays/Bennigans/Whatever restaurants. man all states could live without that lol
Of course, it helps that the kinds of places I want to live are thriving metropolises with a cosmopolitan nightlife and so the kinds of places that tend to have high-tech employment, but I would choose a place to live entirely on the basis of what it's like to live there, and then look for a job based on that. In particular, as a bi atheist I'm never going to move to somewhere like Utah where the homophobia and religious intolerance is going to be way beyond what I'm prepared to put up with.
--
Xenu loves you!
There are offenders in any ultra-conservative area. Take the western side of Michigan. SUre, it's in the northern, supposedly more progressive half of the country, but there are still several smaller (but booming) towns with ridiculous liquor laws. Hudsonville comes to mind, and Zeeland might be the same way, but I'm not 100% sure.
Werd.
You do, however, have to take a broad definition of the term "social life". For a 22 year old programmer, social life = bars, nightclubs, etc....or it equals hiking, biking and camping availability. For a 35 year old single worker, it probably equals the same thing..but for a married, 35 year old father of two, "social life" is really churches, youth football leagues and PTO meetings.
Whoever you are though, quality of life (which, to a large part, is defined by extra-curricular social interactions) plays a large role in a career selection.
Werd.
And this constitution you speak of is being offended how by Utah's laws? If you want to raise a constitutional crisis, you better be prepared to back it up.
I see your point! So since someone says they want to buy a newspaper (becuase it is the last bastion of anti-LDS free-media) they are...
Wait I did miss your point. Wasn't this about government and not newspapers?
The prop 22 thing is best thought of as a trademark issue, and had the backing of many churches. In our neighborhood only one church didn't donate support in manpower and other resources, it was a new age church.
The trademark issue was the definition of Marraige. So far it has been accepted as between man and woman. They felt that if you think up something else it should be called something else. Just like if you mix sugar and water and cola-bean extract together you might get equal store shelf room but you can't call it Coca-Cola.
So everyone who had interest in the trademark supported it. Everyone who wanted to hijack it got mad. The interest in the trademark was moral, but the issue was just good old fashioned democracy.
So no constitutional crisis here, move along... move along...
Wait! Call the FAA, the ban on smoking advertising is a breach of the First Amendment! At least under your very compelling arguments. You could help set back America 50 years! Why wait?
Here is the Church and here is the steeple, Open it up and see all the people!
It is a trademard issue. A union between a man and a woman is marriage. A same-sex union is entirely different, it can't achieve the same things it doesn't taste the same it doesn't look the same. The only simularity is that it is a union.
Your also very split in your arguments. I sense much pent up anger that is leading to your forked argument. Why do you argue the Mormon Church as weak and giving in to public opinion at the same time you argue it is strong and trying to force its morality on them?
Indeed, it was much more than Mormons that got the overwhelmming majority victory for prop 22. They believed in the trademark and enforced it, all of them. So now, a same-sex union is called a domestic partnership (heck my non-gay old boss registered with his roomate as a domestic partnership to get a discout at Costco.) Its a much more descriptive and appropriate term.
Marraige means something more, and if you don't see that then it isn't my fault. And it doesn't even require the GALC to suffer. They do writh and twist as if they are being punished like spoiled children denied candy before dinner.
Its time to realise it was the right thing to do. It wasn't oppressive, it was simply fair for both parties.
Scientificaly, when we make a hypothesis but the results don't follow then we say the hypothesis is not true.
If you are not a mormon, you are are second-class citizen in Utah. It's like being a black person in a Southern state...
Oh, gee, that's not a complete stereotype. Come on, people, at least make your biases somewhat less obvious.
San Jose sucks... a lot
Move: Santa cruz, Scot's valley, San Francisco, and several other places within driving distance don't suck.
Telecommute a couple of times a week to cut down on time wasted in the car.
If your company won't allow telecommuting, find one with a clue.
YMMV
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Mass has the same law, but the Kosher grocery stores can sell wine on sunday, mostly because they are not open on Sat.
Personaly I would not live anywhere without a Jewish community. Its just to hard to train folks in places without many Jews that no they can't call me on Friday Night/Saturday.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Well, not /everything/ is LDS controlled. I visited there on a business trip about a year and a half back, and stayed at a hotel just up the street from the university stadium where the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies will be held. An adopt-a-highway sign on the road directly across from the stadium noted that that particular stretch had been picked up by the united pagans. I laughed myself stupid. I'm sure that somehow a different group will have that bit of road before the cameras get there, but I can't wait for the Olympics just in case they missed it.
And the roads need all the help they can get. Utah had the worst highway construction I've ever imagined. They had done some new contruction/repair on some long stretches I hit going cross-country, and they had signs up asking big rigs to drive in specific lanes so as to help smooth the surface. I thought it was a prank until I saw the second one. Can't you folks afford steamrollers? Big rigs tend to make roads a bit lumpy - y'know, wheel grooves? - so depending on them to level out a badly laid road is just dumb. A brother-in-law in road construction here in Texas said that if his company walked away from a road in that condition almost anywhere else in the US, they'd never get another public job again, even if they survived the lawsuits. Yet Utah had that level of poor quality over roads across the whole state. Very nice. I've been to places where weather beat the roads up, and where the state just let them stay bad; but never where crews came out and resurfaced, and it didn't help.
-reemul
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
Being a long time resident of Salt Lake City.... Yes the Liquor laws are absolutely bizarre. I do question his claim that there is a lack of engineers and technical people here though. Word Perfect, Novell, Evans & Sutherland were founded here, among many others. There are more game companies than you can stick a stick at (mostly owned by Microsoft now) The pay generally is lower here than in other cities, but at the same time, the cost of living is much lower. My wife having worked for IOMEGA as an enginneer, I can tell you it isn't a fun place to work. If he can't get engineers/CS guys that is his own bloody fault.
;-)
Now to answer the question
For me at least the social situation is very important for a job choice. By that I don't mean how many bars/prostitutes/whatever are within walking distance of my house. The social dynamic of your work is massively important. Some jobs I have had, I hung out with "the gang" after work doing fun stuff. Others I have hated every day of my stay there because of the people I had to work with, even if the work was interesting.
I am just stating the obvious, but hey, you asked the obvious. One thing Utah does need more of is non-Chilis/TGIFridays/Bennigans/Whatever restaurants. There are good restaurants here and there, and some of the best micro-breweries in the nation, but unfortunately, there still isn't anything great to write home about.
Hrmmm... It seems that there might be one or two Mormons in the state of Utah. In fact, apparently 70% of the population of that state is Mormon (with a great many of them abstaining from alcohol). I imagine that even if they appointed people to the State Liquor Commission out of a random sampling of the population it would be made up of primarily non-drinking Mormons.
Somehow it was still possible to get a drink in Utah last time I passed through. This might possibly be because most Mormons (the wacky few aside) believe that people should be able to decide for themselves what to do with their lives.
Wow, imagine a country in which people are allowed to sell and purchase property at will! What an amazingly subversive idea! The LDS church has a big fat pile of money, I imagine that when they want to buy something, they can come up with the cash. Not too mention the fact that they probably own most of downtown Salt Lake City outright anyhow. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if most of the property near Temple Square was leased from the church. I imagine you would rather there were separate rules for property belonging to the Mormon church and its members. That would certainly clear up problems with them purchasing important parts of Salt Lake City and turning them into parks.
The reason that they can specify conduct on their "park" is that it is their own private property. Just because I plant grass on my front lawn doesn't mean you can come over and play soccer there.
I would certainly agree that Utah's unique culture takes more than a little getting used to (I don't live there anymore, nor am I inclined to move back), but saying that there is no separation of church and state is simply ridiculous.
The LDS church believes that the family is ordained of God, and that the roles of husband and wife are designed of God for our benefit. To them the idea of the nuclear family is a pretty big deal.
Currently US law recognizes such a union as special. Can you blame people that hold the term "marriage" as sacred from defending it from being co-opted by people who would change it to mean something else entirely? The LDS Church has every right in the world to use its resources to protect those laws that it sees as important. Just like you have every right to use your resources to overturn those laws that you feel are not right.
That's just part of living in a representative democracy.
That sounds a little like my college, and it was a state run school! All the dorms were single sex, and the women had to go though 2 or 3 sets of locked doors in order to get to their room. However, unlike what I've heard about UofU and BYU, women only made up about 25-30% of the population and of that amount, only a small percentage were what one would consider attractive. For example, my high school graduating class of 36 kids (rural school) had more attractive females than my entire college freshman class! At least at BYU, going out on dates is considered a common event. Most of my spare time was spent watching TV or playing around on my computer because there was nothing else to do (that is if you didn't want to destroy your brain cells at a bar). Come to think of it, that's pretty much what I still do now that I'm married. =)
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Sure, those once were big name Utah companies, but I don't think that their downfall had anything to do with the liquor laws. It had more to do with a certain criminal monopolist in Redmond.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
There are a few other businesses in the Bentonville area that would have sizeable IT depts. Sure, there aren't any big software firms that I know of, and there aren't pages and pages of want ads for programmers & engineers, but from what I've heard, it's a good place to live. The only thing that I wouldn't like about Wal-Mart is that apparently it's mandatory to be at work by 7:30am. I don't think I could handle that.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I would love to have a tech job in a rural area. The job that I loved more than any other was with a USGS facility that was surrounded by farms. After lunch many of the programmers would go for peaceful walks out in the country side. I would like to go back, but my wife hates snow.
So what exactly is it that makes the urban or suburban lifestyle supposedly so attractive? Is it the traffic, polllution, or crime? The people packed into little apartment boxes downtown or cookie cutter houses in suburbia? Twenty-four hour shopping so my wife can waste my paycheck at any time of the night? I go to work and the come home to spend time with the family and tinker on my computer. The _only_ thing these areas offer me is employement. Given a choice between the smaller towns and the metro areas I've lived in, I'd choose the small towns (the only exception to that statement is SLC). Preferably, out in the country away from people.
BTW, a very large majority of the population of Utah live in metro areas. I've heard some census types say that UT is one of the most urbanized states in the US. Sure, it's got lots of land, but most of it's empty.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I lived there for a little bit and loved it! I would certainly move back if I could. It's nice and clean with lots of outdoor activities participate in. Unfortunately, lots of other people have the same idea, and as a result housing can be high. I also prefer living in a state w/o an income tax.
Contrary to popular belief, the state isn't totally LDS (about 70% state wide, less than 50% for SLC, I believe). If you want to drink, at least you can buy it. There are several places in the south where you can't (supposedly the county where Jack Daniels whiskey is distilled is a dry county!). Also, the liquor laws haven't stopped the Hollywood (some would say, Hollyweird) crowd from coming to Park City every year for the Sundance and other festivals.
IMHO, this guy from Iomega is just hopping on Rocky Anderson's bandwagon to change standards for the stupid Olympics.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Uh, actually from what I've heard, people in UT (and CO) are bitching about all the Californians moving in and driving up housing costs.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
No other religion demands 10%
That's not true. Paying tithes or 10% of ones income is a part of the doctrine of most Christian denominations. The difference is that some churches strongly encourage their members to follow doctrine, and others don't. Besides, I'd rather write out a check & mail it to my bishop twice a month than sit through the weekly 15-20 minute begging & groveling for funds part of every service for every Pentacostal church that I've ever been a member of or visited. I'd much rather sit and listen to a guy stumble through his talk and means it than fake, gimicky, pseudo-entertainment that's more for show and lining the pockets of the pastor than worshiping God.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Just my 2c.
RFC2119
Despite the stereotype, the fact is that most engineers really do lead active lives beyond work.
Yeah, last Saturday night we were discussing that at the local Group Against Difamation of Engineers.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
"What is the problem here?" The problem is that for some (my wife included) the presence of second-hand smoke is a matter of allergic reactions and extreme physical discomfort and illness. Your "CHOOS[ing]" is infringing on the physical well being of others around you. It's not a matter of liking or disliking.
I appreciate that you make the effort to keep it away. I make an effort to clean up the feces my dog leaves on the sidewalk. Does that mean there shouldn't be a rule against just leaving it there?
LetterJ
Head Geek
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
The problem in places other than California is that other than my own home and my workplace, pretty much anywhere I go, I'm where someone is choosing to indulge their habit. As it is a health hazard, places for the general public, if they allow general smoking, are making a smoky environment for the majority of people. For the record, I used to smoke.
LetterJ
Head Geek
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I live in Maryland (specifically Montgomery County directly boardering DC on the NW). Our county government sells all the liquor and most of the beer. Every buisness owner can have only one alcohol license. Hence, you can't own two bars, and only one grocery store of each chain sells beer. Further it is illegal for women to be on top during sex, and our state sport is Jousting (though that's kinda cool).
I've concidered North Carolina and California as places I could move to for jobs. But I've rejected the idea cuz they have crazy politicians/politics.
The morons who live in california screw everything up by letting fads run their political system. How many stupid propositions do the dumb califonians get conned into every election cycle? Look at their utility deregulation and three-strike laws. I agree with both on principle, but California screwed the pooch on implementing both.
North Carolina. Can you say Jesse Helms. The man introduced Benazir Bhutto as the Prime Minister of India before the full congress (she was the prime minister of pakistan; for the americans^W^W^Wthose clueless about international affairs Pakistan and India have been voted most likely to nuke each other in the 21st century). Further Jesse is on Chairman of the Foreign Relations Commitee (or as he renamed it "Killin' Fereners Commitee).
So I live blissfully in the Socialist Republic of Maryland. Resting safely in the knowlege that my power will stay on, my roads will be paved, and the worst thing you can say about my senator is she's 5' tall in heels and might be a lesbian, but I bet you my senator can kick your senator's ass.
-- I am not a fanatic, I am a true believer.
You'll love it here in DC. A small village in the city voted to ban smoking OUT DOORS. Soon there after the head of the effort was arrested for child molestation. I am sure it is just a coincidence (either the accusation of child molestation or the act of child molestation buy the self-appointed health-czar).
-- I am not a fanatic, I am a true believer.
no dumbass. Paul Salucci is a Catholic. And it's tax-a-two shits.
From that whacked web site they state
"We also wish to reach believers who truly love the Lord Jesus Christ and were derailed by the great deception which is taking place today. Many are unwittingly caught up in the ecumenical "unity in diversity" movement which originated with Pope John Paul II. With the event of Vatican II in 1962, the Popes began efforts to reconcile Islam, Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons and any and all religions."
So, anyone that's not of your belief is in a cult, hugh? I dunno, but that kind of close-mindedness pegs my cult-o-meter more than anything else.
Hare Krishna!
There is a lot of anti LDS ranting in the comments - this is nothing other than a community that has some laws reflecting the local community. Rockport Mass is a dry town. 80% of Mass is Catholic, and used to have blue laws on the books. This is hardly falling into "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Parts of Arkansas are dry, but then they have drive through liquor stores right over the border in Texas. Utah simply happens to be pretty much a dry state. I wouldn't expect Nevada to close down the Moonlight Bunny Ranch because I'm offended by sex workers any more than I'd expect Utah to have a bunch of cheesy liquor stores. Hmmm, I think I might like that better than living in Paramus NJ. Tech workers aren't alchies anyways.
You know, the LDS church is quite tolerant - they helped provide some funding to build an ISKCON (Hare Krishna) temple in Provo!!!! BYU students and others even helped in the construction of the temple and visit there quite often in interfaith meetings. No kidding.
So think before you get into the typical anti-religious rant. The same people who are so sensitive to other forms of bashing - gay bashing and race bashing, seem to find it ok to bash on traditional values followers.
Be consistant for crying out loud!
By the way, I follow the Gita, and am not a Mormon or other Judeo Christian follower.
Pardon me, but I think this statement is naive. The voting masses have little to do with the Liquor laws in Utah and everything to do with the wealth of the LDS 'church' (term used loosely). The LDS church wields influence based on their power. Power of an organization is generally proportional to the economic influence of that organization and its members.
It would be great if the U.S. laws were not influenced by money and power and only by the 'voters', but it does not work this way.
--
"In the land of the brave and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
How about this evidence? I grant you that this source could be considered biased. (See below for another source).
How about some more evidence, on the same topic from the Salt Lake Tribune? Certainly the SLT is unbiased.For additional 'evidence' from the secular Salt Lake Tribune, try the links on this page. The evidence shows that the LDS 'church' is manuvering to control all print media in Utah. It is obvious to me that this type of behavior illustrates the point in my previous post.
--
"In the land of the brave and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
> not in a public [family] restaraunt.
I hate smoking just as much as the next non-smoker, but restaurants are NOT public places. They are private establishments whose rules should be set by the owners, not by the government. You have the choice not to patronize establishments that permit smoking: the wonderful thing about a free market economy is that no sufficient demand will ever go unmet for long, so if enough people want non-smoking restaurants, they will appear.
Stop trying to get the government into everything, people. We need _less_ government intervention into our lives, not more. Quoth Reagan: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government IS the problem."
[ home ]
"Does Mr. Albertson have a point, or was he just frustrated that he couldn't atract any good prospects?" Why the "or"? Who says they're mutually exclusive?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
I take offense to your post.
As a long-time radon inhaler, I can honestly say that there is nothing that bothers me more than having some right-wing tree hugger complain about my "second-hand radon".
While YOU, personally, might not like inhaling radon, there are others of us who CHOOSE to consume this highly radioactive gas and you should have the courtesy to respect their needs as well.
that it sucks to work for Iomega. I live in the Salt Lake area and even interviewed once with them. The weren't a very attractive company to work with so I didn't entertain the notion of working with them any further. I have also had many ex-employees tell me to never work there. Of course you might expect to hear those sort of comments from an ex-employee. But the percentage of ex-employees I have heard make that comment would steer me away from working for them.
I had a job that I liked. The job was in an area that was about as completely lacking in people I could socialize with as possible. I hung on for a year and a half before I moved and got a new job out of desperation. The new job is great, the new place is great, and I'd never think of moving to a place that doesn't have a large community of people to play with again. Not for more money or something more interesting. Period. If it doesn't have the location, there's no way I'll sacrifice the fun part of my life for it.
:(
:)
Before (bad, bad suburb) -
Now (happy, happy city) -
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Social aspects definitely make a difference, but only in extreme cases. For example, Salt Lake City has a massive stigma associated with it. People think that the city is all Mormons who are not allowed to drink liquor or even any caffeinated substance, and they don't want to live there. Most people probably wouldn't want to go to Alaska either. Sure, it's supposed to be beautiful for those two months out of the year when it's summer, but it can get really cold at night for the other ten months. Other areas that are supposedly mostly 'hicks', have a similar stigma. Big cities such as Chicago or New York are bad for people who don't like the smell(pollution)/noise, etc.
Think of the attitude towards alcohol here in Oregon as ``loosening up." When I was a kid, the law was that beer & other spirits could not be advertised on tv on Sunday. IIRC, you could not buy the stuff then either.
Today, we have brew pubs & wine tasting rooms. However, there are a few ``dry" locales (e.g. Monmouth) where you can't buy any liquor. And you have to buy spirits in state-owned liquor stores -- not at almost any store, as is the case in California. And I doubt we'll be seeing ``drive-throughs" as they have in (for instance) Ohio.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I'm certain that LDS folks would not approve of how I live my life, and I'm not confident of their ability to keep their noses out of it.
-=Maggie Leber=-
Ouch.
I don't know what part of Colorado Springs you lived in, but I've been living here for nine years now and I don't find that Focus has any effect on my life. Except for providing a good laugh now and then and a frequent reminder that, yes, people really are that dumb. Most of us in Colorado Springs are not at all proud of that place, and are not the mindless religious zealots that they'd like you to belive we are. The discerning eye soon discovers that Colorado Springs can easily match Denver or Boulder for laid-back coolness, and what's more we don't have the yuppie posers that infest those other cities.
No, stay out of Colorado Springs because it's alreay unable to adequately deal with growth.
--
And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
I don't know about the lifestyle stuff in general, but whenever I return to my midwest home from a trip to a smoke-free-restaurant location, I notice again that it's impossible to go to a restaurant here without one's clothing smelling quite badly of smoke afterwards.
Most workplaces are smoke-free nowadays even in the midwest, by the way.
There are rougly three aspects to my life:
So, is one-third of this triad going to come into play when I decide where I want to live? Of course!
But, see, the thing is that liquor laws aren't all that crippling (execept that they frequently include arbitrary limits on when can buy it, and since I stay up late and get up late, my day tends to be shifted, so this is a problem). What irritates me is the attitude that the State ought to protect me from myself. (And, without confusing the issue, that attitude is why it is very unlikely I'll ever move to Utah generally, and Salt Lake City specifically.)
Well, if WordPerfect, Novell, and Caldera are all Utah companies, and we're now complaining about Utah having funny liquor laws, you could make some connection between difficulty in obtaining alcohol and difficulty in staying out of bankruptcy.
I know what you may be thinking I'm young I dont have a family that's way off in the future and I am a career driven person. I'm 25 y/o and thus far I have worked in two career. Computers Help Desk/Graphic Design and Architecture (what I actually went to school for) Help desk was fun as I went home at 4:30 or whatever hours I chose we coudl play games while we worked and you never had to take it home
This explains a lot, for sure.
I take offense to your post.
As a long time non-smoker, I can honestly say there is nothing that bothers me more than having some moron smoker not understand that SMOKE TRAVELS.
I don't care if a restaurant has a smoking or a non-smoking section. The truth is, you light up and I can not only smell it, but since I have bad asthma I can NO LONGER BREATHE without the aid of an inhaler. You can be off safe in your "non smoking section" but you're still in the same airspace I am.
And to be quite frank, maybe you don't fit in this category but most smokers I see are NASTY FILTHY individuals. They stink. They are litterbugs. Sometime look along the side of a road or store and see all the nasty cigarette butts people carelessly discard for the world to see.
So while YOU personally might like smoking, there are those of us who like clean air, and you should have the courtesy to respect their needs as well.
If you've ever thrown a cigarette butt on the ground, then you sir, are a moron.
Right, so because you want to kill yourself with a cigarette in a public place means I have to imprison myself in my home. Good thinking.
Listen, I didn't choose to have asthma. As a matter of fact, there are many out there just like me who do frequently avoid public places that I know people will be smoking at just because I could be seriously harmed by your "right" to enjoy a cigarette in public.
One of these places that I have to avoid is my son's little league games. Thats right. So many parents of kids sit there and light up that in order to see my kid play I have to stay in the freaking car at the far end of the field. Pardon me if I attack smokers, in reality, I'm only retaliating. You smokers have taken away my freedoms. If you want to make an all smoking restaurant I say GO FOR IT. If you want all smoking bars, more power too you. But in our society where everywhere has a smoking section I feel like a prisoner.
So pardon me if I view you as a moron. Your "habit" has no benefit to you or the rest of mankind and is in reality a money sucking vice. You can try to justify your "freedom" any way you wish, but it is still non-sensical. If you really want that nicotine hit, why not just take it through a needle. At least then you'd be keeping it out of my lungs.
So easy for you to say, go home. Remove myself from society, eh? Again, pardon me for my "elequent use of Ad Hominem" but you are an asshole sir.
I interviewed for a job at Evan and Sutherland whn I lived in Florida. When I found out they were in Utah (before my interview) I basically blew them off. I am not into mormans and that is there home land. They have this screwed up thinking that Joseph Smith is right. Of course they have some good things, but they are all 'holy than thou' and blah blah..
Needless to say I am not trying to bash mormans, I just can't help myself when it comes to them. Anyway.. yes I think it is important. A job is basically your life, so why not make it as enjoyable as possible. After all they wouldn't call it work if you really enjoyed it ALL the time. Dot-commers though that work was always supposed to be enjoyed and now how many of them are looking for new jobs.. including my self ;-)
Anyone looking for a programmer / analyst / software engineer / techie, skilled in Perl, C/ some C++, Java, or php???
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
I moved out there from New York with some trepidation, but more-or-less found interesting stuff to do. I got into skiing (downhill and cross-country) and rock climbing, and one of the real advantages of being in that part of the country is you've got a lot of easy access to places to engage in sports like that and just as importantly, everyone you meet is going to be interested in something like this (the question is typically not "Are you doing anything this weekend?" but "Hey, where are you going skiing this weekend?").
Culturally, the area leaves a lot to be desired. I picked Pocatello as a place to live because it had a small state university. The weekly film series there was watchable, but nothing heavy. The bands that they got to play were tremendously lame (I actually went to see Journey there because I hadn't seen any other live music in months. I left early.) There were was one funky old bookstore (with an impressive collection of hardcore pornography) in the old part of Idaho, but more often then not I ended up going to Waldenbooks and special ordering things. Salt Lake City was a little better in some respects, for example, they had a really good Science Fiction bookstore. I also thought the punk/mod types were interesting... you'd see these kids hanging around on scooters with "Clash" stickers on them. The SF convention in Salt Lake was small, but interesting (e.g. they got Fritz Leiber in as Goh).
The people I met were okay by me, though a lot of them weren't from the area (a lot of ex-auto industry engineers from Michigan, for example). The few Mormon people I did hang around with were fine by me... nice folks with a sense of humor. (I personally have no complaints about Mormon women either... funny, I've heard other women complain about how "flirtatious" they are, though.)
But: I don't know what it would've been like to live around there if I didn't have short hair, if I wasn't a white guy, etc. I also don't drink, so the liquor law weirdness didn't bother me tremendously: but there was one this time when I was doing a road trip through Utah, and a freind of mine wanted to buy beer. He didn't have an ID on him, but I had a NY driver's license (with no photo) and my security pass with photo and "Naval Reactor Facilty" emblazoned across it: They refused to sell me the beer. My friend was incensed by this: "This man has a DOE security clearence! He's authorized to handle nuclear fuel!"
I guess I can remember another off-putting little incident: My girlfriend put in a request for a birthday present; she wanted a collection of nylons/tights of every available color. So I try and buy this stuff at a local department store, using a credit card, and my NRF site ID as photo ID. They went away into the back room and kept me standing around for a solid 20 minutes before deciding it was okay for me to buy women's lingerie. (In retrospect, maybe it was a mistake to try and do this with a "*Naval* Reactor Facility" ID.)
So, bottom line is that I don't regret living there for a couple of years, but I also don't regret that I left after that, and I much prefer living in a "real" city...
I recently turned down several offers in SLC (I was thinking of relocating there). The reason? Mormons, the liquor laws, and basically a beat social climate.
I think I better qualify things now.
Mormons: a) I am single. I like getting laid. Mormon women do not put out (or even go out) to/with unMormon guys. b) with that in mind, a very large portion of the populace out there is Mormon. c) Assuming I met someone and started a family there, I would rather not have my kids picked on in school and bombarded with propaganda because they are not Mormon.
Liquor laws aren't that big of a deal, but I do like Happy Hours. I do like to beable to by nonwatery beer at the supermarket. I do drink a beer or two on Sunday everyonce in a while.
I am from the Washington DC area, and it would be unrealistic to expect SLC to compare culturally. However it was very odd to not see a black face for over a week (I am white BTW). Also, I'll sum it up with some questions: what museaums? What symphony? What hip night clubs?
I am an avid mountin biker, camper, and skier - and in that respect SLC wins without a struggle. However I will note that it is easier to visit there than to stay.
Hopefully things will change after the Olympics attract some new blood into the area.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I wouldn't consider moving to Utah because of the ridiculous blue laws there. Things are bad enough where I live now (midwest), and aren't much better where I am going (central Texas), but they are better than Utah. I personally think that every state should have liquor laws like Nevada... Open 24x7. I also think the drinking age should be lowered to 18.
Of course the stupid politicians, old people and worried mothers of the world will never let that happen...
Unfortunately, the only way to make money programming is to work for a closed source company.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this is a load of excrement. The majority of programmers work in IT shops on in-house projects, not in shrinkwrap software producing organizations. While most in-house software is so specialized that it doesn't make sense to open source it as a whole, much of it contains parts that could be open sourced. It is also tremendously beneficial to use pre-written open sourced parts when developing an in-house application. This type of development works totally well with open source.
And as for programmers not spending their free time writing open source software, it is silly to assume that many of them won't choose to do so on their own. Nothing forces them. Not everyone's idea of unwinding is the same. Programming and fresh air aren't mutually exclusive either when you are working on your own projects, at least not now that laptops and handhelds are readily available.
And at any rate, I think it is more often the poor schmucks who are stuck working long hours in the dungeons of commercial software houses that are the victims of dehumanization than most open source developers. The fact that so many trolls spew the same tired cliches would seem to bear that out.
As someone who lives here in Utah, I can tell you that the liquor laws really suck for people who have not grown up here. No alcohol can be bought on Sunday (this is not due to the church, oh no, people need a day to get sober) and last summer the city voted not to allow micro-breweries in. I myself have lived here my whole life, so there is nothing for me to get used to, but just last week I had to watch one of my good friends leave because she was tired of dealing with the place.
She grew up back east and had a hard time adjusting to Utah (she was here for college). This has happened to many of my friends that I have made in college. They can't handle living in Utah because of how anal^H^H^H^H annoying some of the people are.
But as the common argument goes, move somewhere else if you don't like it. Most people around here have gotten used to it if they are here for very long. And as most out-of-state companies have pointed out to me on interviews, people from Utah usually return to Utah to live after a couple of years. They don't like being away from this place. When I go in to an interview, they don't see someone with skills, they see someone who is of the popular religion and will probably leave after a short time to be back among them (in which case they are incorrect).
Fucking sucks, if you ask me. Oh well.
-Frijoles-
Depressingly enough, your friends are right.
You would be shot, or worse. Probably much worse.
Please don't try it, unless you really want a non-boring suicide. Even the more intelligent folk here hate gays. Hate really is the right word.
Don't even think about southern Idaho.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
I have lived in Utah most of my life. I also attend a University there. As for technology jobs, there are plenty, especially Linux related. (I have worked for several). The cost of living here is pretty high, like most tech places, and I would consider the quality of life/social atmosphere very nice, even though drinking is not very often. (BTW, yes, I am LDS)
Remember that the laws in each state are the laws that people want. The majority of Utah residents do not want certain laws, or to release tight holds on liquor laws. It's the populations choice of what they want, and don't want. I personally like the idea that you can find a job just about anywhere in the US that you want. If you don't like the laws in one state, don't worry about them, work in another state. I think it's pretty nice that here in Utah we keep things more simple. It's the way that many of us like to live, and there shouldn't be anything wrong with that. I enjoy having a higher comfort of security when driving and going to parties, knowing that I'm less likely to be hit by a drunk driver. (This is not to say we don't have any problems)
Now if you still want to get drunk, there are Many bars, micro pubs, and other things to do. Maybe not as many as other places, but it's what the majority of people here want.
Also, many non-LDS families enjoy living here because there is less "negitive-effects" on their children. I think most people in Utah would trade "living a little" for being safer and more family oriented.
The question of if it's a good social place, that totally depends on what you consider a social life. People in Utah would mostly rather do things as a family or community, rather than going out and drinking alone. Because of that, people see liquor as a threat to families. I personaly would trade liquor for family, but that's me....... Live where you want, enjoy where you life. I think a social life is very important. Comprimising your personal life for a job I think is one of the biggest mistakes you could make. I could never live in San Fransisco, and I'm sure many people there could never live in Utah, due to social atmosphere. Each state I think needs it's uniqueness. Would everyone like it if every city was the same? same number of bars, churches, malls, crimes, ski resorts, beaches, etc? I Highly doubt it.
For me, when it comes to a place to live and work, I think location is one of the top 5 things considered. I also would think that it is rare that any engineer would give up a social atmosphere that they like, just for a job. For me, I think family comes before a job, and I think many other engineers also do the same.
So in the end, yes, engineers do look at social atmosphere for where they work. Many engineers however put things such as family before drinking in their social life. It all depends on the engineer.
--Brandon
Church and state laws do merge, because people choose laws, and many people in Utah are in to church... So laws are merged more in Utah than elsewhere, because the people are more church and family oriented there, then in other states. (or atleast press their ideas more)
While I don't have a career (I was fired for sexual harassment 6 months ago and haven't bothered to find another job) and I don't have much of a life, I did spend 18 years in Utah.
I would never go back.
It's not the restrictive liquor laws that are the problem. Hell, if it hadn't been for easy access to liquor I wouldn't have sent the email that got me fired.
The problem is the environment. Utah is ugly as sin. The predominant form of vegitation in the great basin is sagebrush. There are also tall grasses that are green for 2 weeks in the spring and brown the rest of the year. It's ugly.
It's also cold. Bitter cold. The best part is that the Salt Lake valley get's temperature inversions in the winter. This traps a pocket of extremely cold air in the valley. It's actually warmer at the ski resorts then down in the valley. This static cold air quickly turns brown from pollution and the snow gets a dirty crust. It's not pleasant.
In the summer it's worse. The brine shrimp in the Great Salt Lake breed quickly and then die. Then they rot. A breeze will waft this pleasant aroma across the entire valley. I can't describe how bad it smells. If that's not enough, in North Salt Lake, there are sulphur springs. The surrounding area always smells like a fart.
That's why people don't like living in Utah. If you look at popular high tech areas like the Bay Area or the Puget Sound area, they're great places to live. Utah is the armpit of the world.
--Shoeboy
I don't have a social life :. it does not affect my career decisions. Bah. Thats nonsense. Not having a social life _can_ affect my decisions because I seem to prefer an environment where fridays are not launch-pads to weekend parties. I also prefer to work and not chatter about lifes little problems. But hey... thats me. Whatever floats your boat.
; 2b=b;2=1
;P
---
a=b;a^2=ab;a^2-b^2=ab-b^2;(a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b);a+b=b
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Have they tried to censor net porn yet?
I hate to paint with a broad brush, but most of the Mormons I've met have been nice yet painfully dull people. I think SLC would be the *last* place in the US I'd ever move.
Blar.
You beat me to it.
Blar.
> why should smokers have more rights then non-smokers ?
Huh? Sorry that makes no sense. If smoking is allowed in a restraunt it isn't an extra right for smokers. You as a non-smoker simply choose not to take advantage of that particular right.
These non-smoking laws are stupid. A restaraunt can designate the entire building smoke free if they choose. These laws are forcing business owners to do this which is wrong.
If you don't like a restaurant because it's smokey complain to the manager. If they don't listen to you go somewhere else. Simple. You have the freedom of choice, let others have it too.
I'd think it's obvious.
IF you are young, single, have no social life, and career advancement is your top priority, then you don't care about social life, perhaps.
If you have a spouse, a family, or simply think there is more to life than work, then of COURSE you consider where you go to work.
You should always weigh what you get out of work against what you get out of life outside work...
Here's a better question: why must "liquor" and "social life" be codependant terms? Surely drinking isn't all people do to have a social life.. what a sad world we live in if that's true.
Even if I got a great job offer from a non-Mormon, international company in Utah, I wouldn't take it, since as an atheist, if I ever got laid off or wanted to change jobs, I would have maybe 10% of the options available to devout LDS chuchgoers.
And as an atheist, I'm still legally protected by federal anti-discrimination laws, so the worst abuses are prevented or hidden. Banish the thought of ever living and working there if you're openly homosexual. I'd also think twice if I were a minority. It's disgracefully recently that blacks were even allowed to become LDS ministers, and the church doctrine is fundamentally racist. (e.g. Native Americans' darker skin and pretty much their entire culture being a punishment from God is part of the basic story of the Book of Mormon)
It was definitely a consideration when I was looking for my last job. I kept having interviews in these office parks in the middle of woods/swamp/whatever with nothing inside walking distance. I'm a city person, and I don't tend to drive, so a place like that had no chance of hiring me, no matter what they offered. My jobs have always been in the city, and near neighborhoods where there are things to do. Maybe that will change when I get older, or the market gets worse.
I live in the northern part of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex. Liquor laws in my county and in many others near me are very similar to the ones there in Utah (you have to be a member of a private club to buy a drink, and you may not buy liquor by the bottle within the county lines). North Dallas has had zero difficulty attracting and maintaining high-tech industry. (Nortel, Samsung, used to be 3DFX, etc.) Therefore, while I agree with the Iomega CEO's thesis, I don't necessarily agree with his conclusion.
Caveat: I expect the fact that these are county laws, and patchy ones at that, reduces their effect on attracting businesses. So maybe I'm talking out of me arse.
Fun fact: The Unicard Club (the one anybody with a brain who wants to drink around here belongs to, which consists of practically every restaurant in the region) charges establishments several tens of thousands of dollars per year for them to be permitted to enroll people in the Unicard Club (which is attractive, because I don't then have to have a Bennigan's Club card, and a Humperdink's club card, and a Snuffer's club card, ad nauseam). The enrollment is usually free to the drinker. The profits, however, are enjoyed by the very Southern Baptists who lobbied for the passage and maintenance of the law. I love it when people can successfully con the State (or the county in this case) into acting as their financial heavy. I just wish I could figure out a way to do it myself.
(Yes, I'm just joking. But it's more profitable than the damn lotto...)
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Nevada is a state that I could deal with. Instead of haing a 55MPH speed limit Nevada turned down federal highway money. Prostitution is legal and regulated. Guns are OK. Gambling is OK. I don't know of any oppressive porn or booze laws. Anyplace that dispenses with regulations like those is good by me. That means they will be less likely to give me crap about what I want to do. Plus they have great outdoor stuff to do.
I just wish they had good paying (NYC, SF good paying) high tech jobs in the Reno - Carson City - Lake Tahoe part of the state. I'd pack the wife and kids and move there in a heart beat. BTW, I am married, over 35, have 2 kids and don't give a rats ass about religion (save the Church of Emacs).
"No beer and no tv make homer go crazy!!!"
.. something something.
Actually, it was:
Homer: No beer and no TV make Homer
Marge: Go crazy?
Homer: Don't mind if I do!! (insert whooping and hollering sounds here)
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
Drug experiences may bring out different emotions that may positively affect their artistic work, but I really don't believe anyone who says they can eat a mess of acid and suddenly the quality of their code goes up and they can work out new alogrithms they couldn't figure out while straight.
Oh, absolutely you can. Acid (and other psychedelic drugs) don't decrease your ability to focus and think about something like alcohol does, they force you to think about it in much more detail and in an entirely different way and notice things that you never noticed before. Oftentimes this is exactly what you need to work out an algorithm that you're having a problem with or figure out a new way to code up something.
--
i don't know about smoke from cigarettes, but when my neighbor decides to cook, i sure get a whiff. i don't know what kind of spices they use, but my house stinks for days afterwards. maybe apartments should have "spicey cooking" and "non-spicy cooking" sections.
The magic 8-ball made me do it.
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
Maybe it's just because I /don't/ have a social life, but I've never found the laws here in Utah that confusing. But then, I've never had the slightest desire to get drunk either. The idea of drinking until I lose control of my motor functions, and then waking up in the morning feeling awful fails to entice me.
My social life consists of hanging out online and playing lasertag once a week at the local arena. And that's all I need. Why should I need to drink to have a social life? *shrug* Oh well, I guess it's one of those mystries that I just don't understand.
--
Matthew Walker
My DNA is Y2K compliant
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
Ignoring the flaimbait tone of this, yes I am Mormon, but I haven't always been. I've tried beer, and I've drunk a little wine. Beer I don't like. I thought it tasted nasty. Wine is nice, occasionally, but I don't miss it. If I want to relax, I play computer games, or go out with the few friends I actually have offline. If you think my personal opinions are that offensive, don't read my comments. No one forced you to, and I certainly wasn't trying to force my opinions on anyone.
--
Matthew Walker
My DNA is Y2K compliant
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
I made some statements in my post that were...not fair. I know many people are moderate drinkers. My family however, has a history of various addictions, and as such, I tend to over-react to addictive substances. I myself am an acknowledged caffiene addict.
Anyway... Please forgive my somewhat... extreme comments about drinking above, and take it with a grain of salt. I personally don't drink, and don't want to, though when I used to drink occasionally, I will admit that the occasional glass of wine was nice. Beer sucks, IMHO.
I hope this clears up any misconceptions from my previous post.
--
Matthew Walker
My DNA is Y2K compliant
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
because: it's wrong for you to force me to breathe smoke.
come on over to my place sometime. i like to burn plastic and old tires. you can have a fucking ham sandwich out by the fire pits.
get over yourself.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
you don't have the right to force me to breate smoke, any amount. if you want to breathe smoke yourself, go someplace where you won't inflict your toxins on me.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Let me preface this by saying I'm an engineer in the oil busines.
It is a fact that I have turned down several very high paying engineering jobs that would have had me working in the middle of nowwhere. Not because there is no beer, but because there was an appereance that working in such a place would not allow me to socailize with people my age with my interest. I enjoy sports, skating, beer, nature trails, girls, computers, etc... A job that is 3 hours from civilization, requardless of the money or the abundance of beer is not going to hack it for me.
Is anybody seriously arguing that these types of questions don't affect people's decisions? What are they smoking in Utah?
The liquor laws are just a minor symptom; as a gay man, their religious bigotry would be intolerable.
It all actually happened to us. I'm originally from Missoula, Montana, and am quite familiar with the North vs. South of Idaho. Ya kinda hafta drive through one or the other to go anywhere.
As for waking us up for service, yep, actually happened. The first national motel chain booked us in the wrong city (3 hours away), and where we were was full-up. They were nice, and called around to find an opening. Where we stayed was something like $83 for the night, and almost double what we were planning on paying, but I wasn't up to driving 3 hours at that hour. I also remember driving past one of the campuses the next day, and seeing a huge banner on the front of one of the buildings that read, "APPROVED YOUNG WOMENS HOUSING". I had to ask someone what that meant.
It was all very surreal. And too strange for me to make up.
Found a friend who'd lived in Utah, and he translated. Single-sex dorms. They apparently won't even let the fathers into the place. I'm not sure what they do in medical or other emergencies. ("Sorry, firewomen only.")
Sorry I'm not familiar with the correct terminology. My only real experience in structured religious settings is singing in the choir. That may sound strange (me being an atheist), but I'm actually pretty tolerant. The first time it happened, at a friend's Lutheran church, they needed more singers for the midnight mass on Christmas Eve. I thought, sure, why not. Never seen what goes on at one of those. Kinda fun, and a very nice small church that felt like a church (not the new, warehouse/basketball court churches that are popping up around town). I also got to sing at St. Mary's in San Francisco. Great sounding pipe organ (with the choir immediately below it), and a chap who knew how to use the foot pedals. Nice big building, too, so you could use that 5Hz pedal, and shake things up.
The check out people were saying we could check out _after_. I finally said, "After what?" There was this hushed moment, and an, "oh, sorry," then a quick topic change.
I'm a non-drinker (never even been drunk), and the drinking laws would have nothing to do with me not seeking work in Utah. The overall backward, exclusionary, racist, and conservative attitudes that prevail there, and in southern Idaho, make it impossible for me to consider work there.
An example: my wife (who's not white) and I are travelling through the area (on honeymoon, actually). At restaurants, she's stared at, and there's lots of behind-the-back gossip. When we stayed at a business-class hotel, the hotel came around at 7am, knocking on all the doors, to wake us for service. The front desk folks were positively horrified that we were checking out when we should have been at service (with lots of whispering and finger pointing by the other staff). When I went to fill the tank on our car, the P.A. system at the gas station was playing loud, bad, religious music.
The whole message was, "You're not us, so go away." I'm wondering now how Utah is going to deal with the Olympics when they realize that many of the competitors are [gasp] foreigners and [gasp] not white.
Alcohol is not physically addictive ?!?! Were you drunk when you posted this?
I certainly a fan of the drink, but I'll the first to admit that it is most certainly physically addictive.
Harcore alcoholics get physical withdrawl symptons when the get off their regular patterns, including the DTs (delerium tremens - shakes), agitation, profuse sweating, hallucinations and seizures. See this or a local Google.com near you.
Perhaps you were thinking of marijuana, which has not been proven to be physically addictive (although, like anything, it can can psycological addiction, aka "I like doing it, and am not quiting").
Moron.
No joke!!
Vegas was built and financed by Mormons...pick up some history about it sometime...it's fascinating.
What Mr Albertson is saying is that Iomega drives its employees to drink, and that can be problematic in SLC. That's all.
A non-seat belted driver is more likely to get in a crash, as they are more likely to loose control if they slide away from their steering wheel.
Imagine, there are two drivers coming down the other side of the road. One falls asleep and slams into the side of the other. If the driver of the car that was hit is wearing a belt, he still has some control to avoid hitting me as it drive down the road in the opposite lane.
Basically, please buckle up for my safety.
Your car exhaust bothers me and is bad for my health. Ban it.
Done. In NC you have to take your car in yearly for inspection. Part of that inspection is now emissions testing. I just wish they would apply the same standards to school buses and logging trucks.
Your loud talking in public interupts my thoughts, which negatively effects my well-being. Stop it.
Done. Lots of ordinances are in place to control noise levels.
Your barbeque polutes the atmosphere and poses a serious health risk to others. Please refrain from cooking outdoors.
Done. In most cities, if your barbeque gets to big the local fire department will make it smaller for you.
When you wash your car in the driveway it drains polluted water into my aquifer. Stop washing your car.
Done (sortof). Many controls are place on what can be included in cleaners.
Your grocery bags are filling my landfill. Please find another way to transport your food.
Done. Many grocery stores encourage the use of reusable cloth grocery bags and recycling of the plastic kind.
What else could I help you with.
I used to chew tobacco. I would tell smokers that I was more polite than they, since I didn't force others to share my pleasure; furthermore, if they didn't cease sharing their tobacco smoke with me I would kindly commence to share my tobacco juice with them.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Or, maybe, he was bitching because he could not get the senators drunk while bribing them, requireing him to put a lot more money in the pot of for the same amount of 'education' (as defined by M$).
Or, maybe, he's bitching because he can't get recruits drunk before having them sign NDA/NCA with ridiculous terms.
Or, he's just a whiney fraternity reject who wants to stay smashed, and he's pissed that the politicos in Utah don't worship at his feat like they did in Florida.
Question: Why the hell would the senators be falling all over themselves to meet with this guy any more than any other constituent? If he has something to say, bring it up at a BUSINESS CONFERENCE where everyone can consider any proposals put forth. There is no valid public reason for politicos to meet with the richest merchants in secret back rooms. If Mister CEO has something important to say, say it in public, or write the senator a letter like the rest of us.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
No beer and no tv make homer go crazy!!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Unless you're a mormon, Utah itself and Salt Lake City in particular are very creepy places to be. How would you like to live in a place dominated by a kooky cult? Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I realize a quarter gaziallion have already posted here but let me be one of the many to say: "Heck yes it matters."
I actually moved into Utah in my late twenties. I went to the University of Utah, got my degree, got a job, and I had to move out if I wanted to go anywhere with a career. It isn't that Utah has bizarre liquor laws, it's that the whole culture is bizarre. I told people I worked with that I was the "Token Non-Mormon" in the company. Religion is a standard subject of discussion. Your neighbors either talk to you in hope that you will convert, and then they shun you if you don't convert. They built a temple in Bountiful and I had no less then thirty people ask me if I wanted to tour it.
If I wanted to earn a decent wage I had to leave the state. If I wanted to live around people who didn't send missionaries around every month or so, just to see if I was ready yet, I had to leave. If I didn't want my kids to grow up in an environment where people leave school during the day so that they can attend Seminary across the street, I had to leave.
Utah has two great falacies going for it. First, people there actually believe they have a clean seperation of Church and State. So long is they only pass laws that agree with the Church, that is true. Second, people there believe that so long as the school Seminary isn't actually on school property, then the church isn't messing with the education system.
Utah is probably one of the prettiest states in the Union but it is my belief that the church has actual designs on the Union and any Engineer who convinces himself that moving to Utah is a good career move is seriously deluding himself.
Beware the wood elf!!!
You're right that's the way DEMOCRACY works. This country's form of government however is a REPUBLIC. Furthermore, written into our Constitution the prevailing common law of the land, is protection from the tyranny of the Majority. Laws which violate the rights of the minority are invalid. And simply because no one has chosen to pursue a particular right (yet) does not mean that the law is affirmed. It simply has not been challenged. Additionally, just because someone might or has lost a challenge still does not mean a law is right correct or proper. This applies to court decisions as well. Just because a judge makes a decision which is unchallenged does not make it right, correct or proper.
The seems to be no dearth of Morons actively practicing law on this planet (mostly in the US).
is that people who aren't Mormons have a hard time in Utah. Move there to take a job? Sorry, you'll have to join the Mormon church before your wife can find work too. That's what's wrong with Utah.
I can't imagine why Albertson is exercised about Utah's silly liquor laws. True story: stuck in Salt Lake overnight by a broken airplane, check into a hotel, go into the bar, bartender says "You have to join our private club." I ask what that means. "It means you pay a dollar and I vouch for your character, then you're a member. What are you having?" It's just how they do things there.
On the other hand, there are lots of fine single women in Utah who got fed up with the Mormon "obey thy husband" crap and are looking for a way out. Maybe Albertson should talk about that instead, if he wants to recruit young guys out of Silicon Valley.
i really need to be able to get out and do things, maybe find a town with a local music scene, a museum or two, someplace i can hang out...
as far as im concerned, you have to be able to spend the money for it to be worth the work...
"we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" --Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
No, that's wrong.
The only laws that legislate morality are the victimless crimes: sodomy, drugs, gambling, and some others. Laws against murder and theft don't legislate morality; they just keep people from being opressed.
Well, ok, in that sense laws do legislate morality. But the morality only goes as far as the consitution (rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, etc).
-ben.c
Heck,
I still work in the same town, but 3 years ago I took a 7% cut in pay to take a job that was more compatable with my lifestyle. We all make those kind of choices
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Seat belt laws make sense for children, but not for adults. (some) Children are not yet mature individuals capable of making their own informed decisions.
For adults, if they want to drive without seatbelts, let them. I don't think insurance companies should have to pay the full amount if they claim for any injuries that occured because they weren't wearing a seat belt, though.
Incidentally, I heard that seat belt laws have actually increased the rate of accidents, since people drive faster because they feel safer. More accidents, but any given accident is less likely to cause serious injury. Whether it's a net positive or negative, I don't know.
I believe the Constitutional Amendment that repealed Prohibition also explicitly allowed individual states to pass laws restricting or banning the use of liquor. Given that, Utah is within Constitutional bounds to restrict alcohol (as long as they don't violate other parts of the Constitution).
The moral issue is different. Simply because the majority votes for something does not make it right--that's the classic "tyranny of the majority". Imagine 10 men and 1 woman stranded on a desert island. A vote is held, and by an overwhelming 10-to-1 margin, it is decided that the men should be able to freely have sex with the woman. Democratic, but definitely wrong.
Some rights are absolute, and cannot be taken away even by a democracy.
If I, while of sound mind and by my own free will, choose to engage in an activity which is dangerous to myself but not to others, nobody has the right to stop me. If the activity is dangerous to others (i.e., drunk driving), then it's a different matter.
Beer is allowed to be sold everyday(but not before noon on Sundays!) in counties that have voted to allow alcohol sales. Hard liquor or automobiles may not be sold on any Sunday or State holiday.
Cities may then further restrict alcohol sales as they see fit within their limits ususally through the application of zoning laws.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
A virgin Mormon porn czar?? [Are they kidding?!]
SALT LAKE CITY, UT -- Utah's new porn czar is an acknowledged virgin who rarely watches R-rated movies and has prosecuted a scant five pornography cases in her 15-year legal career. But Paula Houston asserts she knows smut when she sees it.
Utah - a state that regularly appoints teetotallers to its alcohol-regulatory board - is the nation's pioneer in creating an "obscenity and pornography complaints ombudsman."
Besides her experience as a city prosecutor, Houston, 40, unabashedly brings the values of her Mormon faith to an assignment that will include viewing XXX-rated movies, pornographic Internet sites and sexually explicit magazines. Houston's lack of personal sexual experience disqualifies her in the minds of some from passing judgment on just what constitutes pornography. Others say moral judgments are best made by those who are above reproach. For Houston, such arguments are entirely beside the point.
"My personal life is irrelevant," says Houston. [What personal life?]
From an article by Kevin Cantera & Michael Vigh, Salt Lake Tribune, 2/11/01
P.S., the "lameness filter" is a piece of crap! Just because Netscape inserts leading whitespace in copied material is no reason to reject comments!
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
You know what? I do live in utah, work in technology, and he's on crack. Yes, the cost of living is low. Yes, the liquor laws are screwy. Yes, there is also a different culture here if you will.
But the real reason you can't entice good engineers here is because of the much lower pay with fewer 'addaboys', location, and the stigma of "Utah" (are you a mormon? Do you eat your young? Do you have horns? = no, yes, and only on full moons by the way. !These are real questions I've been asked when I was a bartender by people from out of town. *sigh*)
The night life leaves a lot to be desired, but people don't want to move here because it's.. well lets face it. It's a weird place to live. It takes getting used to, and if you had your choice would you really pick Utah?
Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
90% + majority? of what, people? Mormons, as officially reported 2 years ago make up less than 40% of the population of Utah. Alabama was worse to me, although SF is better...
Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
Actually California has more mormons that Utah does.
been there done that.
I don't use eleetism in my Email
Actgually (speaking as a mormon who works at Novell) Utah valley is much less than 90% LDS (higher percentages are found in Mesa AZ nonetheless) and WP moved to Canada years ago. My brother in law was layed off
this sig is deprecated
How about
lineo Their headquarters is in SLC
this sig is deprecated
This is very true. There are even billboards for some kind of chicken or cheese or something processed in California that say "Its from California, but it doesn't drive bad" or "Its from California, but we mean that in a GOOD way"
this sig is deprecated
I think the general attitudes about personal freedom there give people a reason to think twice. Every Utah-located company that has ever wanted to interview me wanted a urine test and none from California have asked for one. I would have no trouble passing but if I am considering a company to work for I want one that will consider my history of accomplishments and not what I do on my own time. And to the whiners who say the don't want to work with someone who is chemically impaired I reply that aggression impairment is a much bigger problem - and no one, Utah or elsewhere, is checking for elevated levels of stress hormones.
The constitution/bill of rights was designed to protect the individual against the mob. That's why we have it. That's why the courts can declare laws that are accepted by the majority invalid. To protect people.
Therefore, since the liquor laws in Utah have not been declared unconstitutional and are in no danger of being challenged, it would be safe to state that they do not infringe on the rights of the individual.
Your analogy makes no sense. And to compare the some silly law passed in some small town somewhere to a state-wide law designed to protect the social fabric of the community is ludicrous.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
Your statement is vague and gives no evidence for your claims.
The truth is that it is illegal for a non-profit religious organization to use it's "wealth and power" to influence politics. The LDS church CANNOT use it's money to influence the liquor laws in the state. It is against the law.
Now you may say that there are ways around this issue. Members of this organization who have the same beliefs and views may use their influence and power to affect the law. Which is the way the system is designed to work! Citizens in this nation have every right to influence politics in any way they want. But it is the citizens, not the church which is doing the influencing.
Don't blame the LDS church when it has nothing to do with it.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
ASSholes. Come on. you can do it. I don't want to see crap or fetch. I wanna see Shit and Fuck.
Shit. Is that good enough? You have your jollies now? Try jerking off, it'll get you more jollies than hearing a mormon swear.
Yes, SLC is high in living and low in pay. I know. I lived there once. This is a place where they tell the population that if all the women stayed at home, the wages would go up!
Who is "they" and what the hell are you talking about?
What a fucking joke. Your religion is the biggest joke in the known religious universe. There is undeniable proof that it is shit, and yet those paid assholes in "Church Headquarters" would rather not let you know about it, or how much they make off of you poor little tithing payers (They make a shitload of money- I know, I was related to one of them.)
Now, of course, relation to a person gives you complete knowledge of their business practices. Since you say you were related to him/her it must mean that it was distant relation because otherwise you would have specified your inner connection to the corrupt LDS church more precisely.
Quit while you can, get out. Know that your jesus is never coming
Is this your undeniable proof?
, and that joe smith died in a gun battle
Oh this is news. What do you expect? For him to just stand around waiting to get killed? He was the one that got killed after all.
, and that your precious B Young ordered 100s of people killed.
Oh mountain meadows? Why don't *you* read the history. Young was so far away from the incident he couldn't have given such an order. There's no excuse for what those people did but don't put it on Young's shoulders.
Learn it. Read your History of the Church-- volume 6 if you have the balls.
Stop blaming your adolesent failures and inadequacies on the LDS church and blame the people who actually treated you poorly. The church as an organization is not to blame.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
I'm sorry, but if your asthma is soo bad and out of control that you can't be in any shared airspace with a smoker, perhaps you should remove yourself from the situation. That's right, get the heck out of that restaurant and cook at home. Or go someplace that doesn't having a smoking section.
We're all glad to see your eloquent use of Ad Hominem. I know i much prefer attacking people than their arguments, but can't we be adults?
slashdot username - at - email.domain.name
Seriously - go see a doctor. Perhaps you need new drugs or need the doses on your old ones changed. If you can't be outside upwind from a smoker, then you have problems. I'm also assuming that with asthma that bad, you can't climb stairs, clean your house, or even go to work.
So why should your serious handicap 'cause others to stop smoking? Especially if they're outside of a building?
PS: Ever given any thought to how hard it is it quit smoking? I'm trying like hell (haven't had a cigarette in 4or5 days) and i'm craving one but not giving in. Most of those smokers want to quit, but can't. (don't give me any arguments about how they're weak-willed or they could if they wanted.) Cigarettes are very addictive
slashdot username - at - email.domain.name
You mean that a social life bites you in the cock?? - damn! better keep away from that then. Lucky I'm working as a programmer. My cock is safe.
Hmm..interesting. That's the reason why I turned down job offers from California. I thought it was too sterile, but then again..I'm from Europe.
Well, duh! ;) Having once resided in the Four Corners region of southwestern Colorado, I'm quite familiar with living around Mormons. The LDS members in that area don't speak very well of "Utah Mormons" - seems they have a holier-than-thou reputation even amongst their own members. And it was in Colorado that I saw my first Eat, Drink and Be Merry, for Tomorrow You May Be in Utah bumperstickers :)
The liquor laws are a symptom of the problem, and I believe Albertson was taken out of context.
:)
Utah is an inhospitable environment if you aren't part of the dominant LDS culture.
Iomega was a great company to work for, and we worked on lots of cool stuff. The guy I worked for was as good as they come--the best manager I've ever had. The people were cool. The money wasn't bad.
If you didn't grow up there, and you don't fit in with the society where 95% of the people you encounter are members of the same religion and (consciously or not) view non-members as outsiders with suspicion, it's not a nice place to live.
Too bad, too, because it's the most beautiful place in the US. Maybe the world.
I live in Austin, now. Nothing to look at, but the motorcycle season is only 12 months long.
Our office is right next door to a liquor store, and Friday production meetings often involve a beer or five. ;)
Then again, maybe that's why our stock price is in the crapper
Kinda like Moe, but just a little more Kool
Yep. Enjoyed displaying my Darwin fish on the back of my car when I lived there.
Nice ski areas near SLC, but unfortunately there is that big stinky briny lake. When I was there, we didn't even get to the water. The smell was horrible, and the flies were busy biting us.
The public lands are nice, except that the ranchers think that only means them. Be careful if on BLM land, and don't dare wear anything that might make someone think you could be a government employee....
"Right-wing" exactly describes the tree-huggers.
They use FUD to promote the nationalization of resources in order to control business and thereby the livlihood and well-being of all of us!
Metrowerks moved from Toronto to Austin, TX because the nicer weather and lack of state income tax made it a more appealing location for potential hires.
I'm 2 years of college, and working 60 hour weeks is something that I don't yet think I need to do, especially since I don't have a family to support and expenses to cover. And really it is possible to find a good full time job that will be a 9 - 5 or 9 - 6 gig without sacriicing too much pay.
I can totally see the point of view of people who don't want to take a job that would require them to move to a socially conservative area, regardless of the living costs.
If you consider the average age of the people in the industry, it's a surprize to me that there are as many people employed in he field outside of large metropolitan areas as there are.
Ñ'
Do us a favor, and stay out of California. You won't be missed.
I've got a newsflash for you. There is a whole lot of tobbacco stench in the non-smoking section of restaurants that allow smoking anywhere in the room. You just can't tell, because your addiction has damaged your sense of smell.
As for "respecting your needs", when I smell your smoke, you are committing an attack on my person with a toxic substance. If you want respect, pick a vice that doesn't affect the people around you.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I despise smoking. But nowhere in the constitution does it say you have a right to clean air! The bill of rights enumerates what the government CAN NOT do to you as an individual. Having a right to a THING would be against that spirit.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it say you have a right not to be shot in the head by your next-door neighbor in his free time, either.
No, I don't consider this a right, either. Nothing should infringe your right to protect your life, family and property from such an intrusion. But what you saying is the government must take steps to make sure that this particular infraction does not occur. No thanks, I don't want a police state and tv monitors on every mailbox to keep it from happening.
My point is, the fact that this smoking ordinance exists is completely separate from and by no means follows from the rights guaranteed by the constitution and its ammendments. In fact, in a rational world, it would be found unconstitutional as it restricts the freedom of the restaurant owners to operate their business in a way that does not infringe on anyone else's rights.
That being said, I love the law because I think smoking is disgusting. But I still think it is completely wrong and another example of the liberty smothering nanny state.
I've said it a thousand times: If you don't want a government, go live somewhere where there isn't one, and stop taking advantage of the benefits provided by the one we have. You can't have it both ways.
I'd gladly trade less regulation, less military, less social programs, less government == less TAX for less safety and more responsibility.
Would you trade your remaining freedoms for a completely government controlled life?
The constitution does not preclude the Blah blah
You missed the phrase "in a rational world". Besides, the constitution specifies only regulation of interstate commerce. Are you reading from an abridged version, perhaps?
I want the government to protect my right to clean air, my right to a walk down streets where people are not carrying deadly weapons, my right to cross the street without fear of being run over by a car
You are clearly confused about what the bill of rights in the constitution was about. Or perhaps you are talking about some other set of rights that I'm not aware of. The whole basis for the declaration of independence from england was the doctrine of natural rights which grew from the medieval doctrines of natural law. The founders were greatly influenced by these ideas as well as the idea of a social contract as described by Rousseau. Only in recent history did some more collectivist ideas take hold and led people to think of the government as a great equalizer. If you really want to understand the constitution, the writings of Locke, Rousseau, and Jefferson are particularly enlightening, as are the federalist papers, but those only help with the unamended constitution.
You may eventually understand the spirit of the constitution, and come to understand why your "rights" are not included in it, but still desire your "rights" to be guaranteed. That's your perogative, however, if you want to live in a country where such things are provided for and _guaranteed_, no where will you find such a place. It can not exist.
nowhere in the constitution does it say you have a right to clean air!" as if that was some sort of a reason for the government not to work to provide clean air, an absurd point on its face
Don't put words into my mouth--That was not my point. A right to something is much stronger than "government should work toward". The former will be _guaranteed_ to each individual, the latter is a goal, and may not be achieved. To make collective goals into guaranteed individual rights is a recipe for disaster.
And I repeat, there is no right to clean air, never has been, and never will. It is impossible to guarantee. Do I think government should encourage clean air? Yes, and by any means except misusing its monopoly on legal force.
OT: you would be more interesting to argue with if you didn't assume so much about your opponent...and get it wrong to boot. LOL!
What does it mean, just out of curiousity?
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
> anybody, to indicate that second hand smoke is
> a health risk
on the off chance that you're not a troll and simply horribly misinformed, a quick google search turned up EPA 402-F-94-005, released in June 1994. http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/strsfs.html
Here's an excerpt from the introduction:
The introduction also blows away your claims on metabolization of carcinogens. Here are there conclusions:
for more information, including numerous studies and references to studies, check out the dmoz category on secondhand smoke.
Your point is absolutely right; that is the way a democracy works. But, it also means that anyone who finds the inconvenience, or social aspects, or costs too high for them personally can (and maybe will) refulse to live & / or work in that jurisdiction. I've often flatly refused consulting assignments in venues where smoking isn't allowed anywhere but in your own home.
As most of the electorate in any democracy is highly uninformed, the true cost of any social policy is usually unknown to most.
> Well, if for no other reason, I would consider moving to California because of the anti-smoking laws.
No kidding! Here in Austin, its only in restaurants, but its very nice. I was stunned
when I was in another city and the hostess asked me my smoking preference.
Okay. There's three listed in the latest U.S.News collegiate rankings of Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs with Ph.D. Programs. University of Utah ranks 67th overall (and I recall about 20th in CS, and top 5 in computer graphics). BYU is 86th overall. And Utah State Univresity is 101st.
Face it, Utah Liquor laws are stupid. Forget the restrictions, the loopholes are destructive or just silly.
Supposedly Utah has no bars, just private clubs. But these "private clubs" are ridiculously loose. Walk into one, you are asked if you have a membership. Nope? Okay, the waitress calls out "will anyone sponsor this person/these people?" Half a dozen patrons you never met before raise their hands, you're in. And can bring your kids in! Sheesh. Talk about a lack of state responsibility towards the children involved.
I remember visiting the Olive Garden in downtown Salt Lake City. No mention of wine available on their menu. I said something like "Too bad about that" and was informed that they actually have a full bar buty are forbidden to tell you about it unless you ask first.
Appearance, not substance to the morality in Utah.
Sorry, if the majority of people agree with something stupid, it's still stupid.
It might be where he learned to spell "went".
There's no point in getting fired up about Utah. That's just a specific case illustrating a more general issue. The real issue here is that people have career preferences, location preferences, social preferences, and so forth. Anytime you move to take a new job, you need to weigh all these factors. Everyone does this, whether consciously or not.
To the extent that you are a company located in an area where people do not want to live (for whatever reason), you are going to have some difficulty recruiting. I once worked for a big company in a small town, and the smallness of the town and the corresponding lack of other alternatives presented a real problem for recruiters. They just had to deal with it by finding people like me who like small towns. Likewise, some people like warm weather, and tend to gravitate towards Miami and other places south. I like winter, so here I am up north on the shore of Lake Superior.
Every time I've moved to take a new job, it's been a matter of finding a balance. If I didn't like the location very much, was the job itself good enough to outweigh my location preference? Was the job so-so, but the location really good? Did the job pay well enough that I could travel more in order to compensate for a suboptimal location? In the end, it's important to have a wholistic understanding of your own goals and desires and how they play off against each other.
Giving someone lung cancer is rude too. Try losing a relative to it and see if your opinion doesn't change just a little bit...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Some things just plain transcend law, and are a matter of decency and courtesy. Whatever you want to do in your own space is fine, but I'd rather you didn't try to share your lung cancer with me, thanks. I've got enough to deal with without having your damn tumors to think about...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
It's not so much location for me as it is the hours...
I'm pushing 40, I've got a wife and kids. I've probably shot several interviews by asking if the employees are allowed to have a life.
I don't mind working the occasional 50/60 hour week. Everyone understands crunch time. But if it's a way of life, then there's something seriously wrong with the company.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It ain't just San Jose. Many moons ago (about 15 years), I pulled graveyard shifts in a 7-11 in L.A.
The ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control Board) had set a statewide alcohol curfew from 2AM to 6AM.
AFAIK, that law is still in effect, so 1AM is getting near closing time.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Why shouldn't smokers have the same rights as anybody else?
they do, just put out your cigaret and you can visit all the non-smoking areas you want
why should smokers have more rights then non-smokers ?
---
The point is that smokers are the people creating the problem, and they think the whole world should adapt to them.
offcourse you have the right to smoke, but you don't have the right to put nicotine in my lungs, smoke in you own home where no one is bothered by it.
---
Has anyone seen SLC Punk? It basically sums up this entire state. There's nothing like religious opression to keep the engineers away ;).
There are many more reasons for techies to not move to Utah than just "can't have a beer with dinner".
The LDS church has been behind some of the most vicious, hateful, dehumanizing legislative attacks on gay/lesbians, and has been actively promoting legislation to strip gays/lesbians of what few protections we have. Any attempt to enact legislation for something as basic as "you can't fire me just because I'm gay" or "a gay family should have equal status as a heterosexual childless family" is met with (literally) millions of LDS dollars portraying gays as evil incarnate. And given that in Utah most of their law makers and law enforcers are LDS...
I am gay. I am not a Christian. If I moved to Utah, and someone vandalized my car or assaulted me in a supermarket parking lot, I have no faith that I would be afforded police protection, or that a jury would convict the person responsible. Why on earth would I want to move to a place where I would be demonized? Why on earth would I want to associate with coworkers (or for that matter, anyone) who believe me to be the son of Satan?
Here in the tech industry in Silicon valley, no employer can afford to don the pointed white hood. Tech workers, straight and gay alike, will not put up with racism, sexism, or homophobia. Even if there were no legal recourse, the fact that an offending company would instantly lose its best and brightest (as well as their rank and file) ensures decent behavior. There is no such social environment in place in Utah.
(Credit where credit is due: I worked at Borland at the time that Novell bought out the Quattro Pro for Windows product line. When Novell took over that division, they didn't mess with the corporate culture, at least not while I was there. That was the only employer that didn't balk at me displaying my Gay Pride flag right next to my "I'm the NRA and I vote" poster. Most employers would be uncomfortable with either or both of those, but the QPW group just didn't care.)
We're allowed to have social lives? Awright, I'm trying that....
--Brogdon
This tagline is umop apisdn.
That's why I enjoy living in the City I live in too -- we have no smoking in restaurants unless they're seperately ventilated. Its wonderful for both parties. The restaurant owners complained, of course, about having to build the ventilation systems ...
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Actually, it is how democracy works -- and that's why the Constitution was created. They realised that a democracy would cause forms of oppression and decided to lay some things down permenantly. However, you missed the direction of my comment in your "such as church/state allegiances"; it isn't 'the church' which is passing this law in conjunction with the state. In fact, with the current state of Christian organisations (leaving out Muslim, etc.), its very hard to say that something is a church/state issue unless it were clearly requested of government by a Bishop of the Catholic Church or a ranking presbyter of the AoG.
Church/State union comments need to be kept in context of how Europe used to (and still does?) be very much run by the Church and the Kings / statesmen together. In that context, a large number of Christians / Muslims / etc. voting against drinking does not make for a violation of this part of the constitution.
What form of suffering, btw, are you refering to in the case that you aren't able to have the social life you want if you move to Utah? What forces you to live there and be subject to these rules?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Without getting into another poster's comment that drinking laws have other than religious reasons (drunk driving and public drunkenness are already illegal in most parts of the USA and Canada), I'd like to know what kind of constitutional or legal minority is formed by those wishing to drink against the laws in Utah? Like the minority who wish to drink and drive in my home town? Or the minority who wish to have sex with minors? Or ...
... when do you decide that moral issues become more important than personal freedoms? Rape is illegal because of morality and restricts freedoms, ditto for murder.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
My wife works in a shelter for abused women as well as a group home for mentally disabled adults.
Try asking any of those people about drinking.
--
For those who don't deduce well, most women are beaten by drunk husbands and many mentally ill people are so because their mothers drank while pregnant, which, btw, is a 'freedom'.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
"Set back America 50 years" -- in what way? In many ways, America is no better off than it was 50 years ago. We have some good new laws, and some poor ones. Which would you prefer to repeal and which would you keep? Not all change is progress.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Why?
Should all tax-relieved organisations have their powers curtailed? Would it be different if this church organisation paid taxes? Would it be different if the park were run by, say, a group of wiccans who registered a religious charitible organisation to support their beliefs about nature?
Why is it that non-religious groups should have specific freedoms that religious groups should not? Or are you just complaining because religious beliefs bother you? In that case, you're trying to curtail Utah's state rights for no good reason.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Just to be the devil's advocate (or the church's) -- church/state doesn't come into this much. If the voters happen to be church-folk who don't want drinking, that's the way a democracy works. If the majority did want drinking, the voting would work things out for them. One of the nice things about 'bible belts' or 'tech belts' if you will, is that people of a given persuation can enjoy each others' views together (the non-drinkers together, the tech-heads together). One of the problems is that you end up with a severed sense of a "United" country.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
...and I'm wary of going back to work there for the same reason. Gender separation, cultural enforcement of moral code, assumption of religious belief -- these all run counter to the hacker ethic, IMHO. Hell, they are contrary to what I consider normal American beliefs -- definately bumping into the bill of rights a bit, I would say.
The alcohol laws are more problematic as an INDICATOR of what you will have to deal with than as a specific "Oh, I won't work anywhere unless I can drink 24/7." But it is a sign that you are bound for a place where your "anything goes" mentality is going to be WAY in the minority.
I hae no career, or social life
A couple years ago I was offered a job in Salt Lake, it took me about 5 minutes to decide with a resounding "NO". The liquor laws of Salt Lake City are reflective of the dominant moral culture of the area. I think it's more that culture as a whole that harms Salt Lake when trying to draw prospective recruits.
I live in a fairly liberal community, and that my color this opinion a bit (it's always bad to make generalizations), but techies on broad scope tend toward liberal viewpoints. Living in a conservitive community isn't appealing (it never is to have to hide ones beliefs in order to avoid ridicule). Also the view of Salt Lake (held by many outside the community) is one of almost Mormonistic Nepitism. We hear horror stories of people being passed up for promotions and raises while their mormon co workers climb the ladder with ease. I am sure that stories like this have an effect on migration (despite wether or not they are true).
______________________ There is no
I don't drink so I don't care about that.
But I have vacationed in Utah and could not see living there. The influence of the mormons is just too strong. An agnostic like me would be uncomfortable. So, in that sense their culture would keep me from taking a job there, absolutely.
speak for yourself. i will never ever live in a place were i can't get booze. i wouldn't live more than 20 minute from a liquor store for twice my salary.
Utah bars can and do serve anything that a California bar serves. You can't buy liquor (outside of 3.2 beer) in a grocery store -- you have to go to a liquor store. BIG DEAL. You can buy liquor at any restaraunt that has a liquor license. Bottom line is, it's just as easy to get drunk here in Utah as it is anywhere else.
... etc, etc.
Also, the tech front is looking pretty good here. Intel is building a seven bldg. campus here, with one bldg. already operational. Novel has always been here. Enterasys Networks' main engineering facility is here,
sig: sauer
As a long-time smoker, I can honestly say that there is nothing that bothers me more than having some right-wing tree hugger complain about my "second-hand smoke".
Tree hugger? Trees are not the problem. It's the toxic stink that you emit when you exhale the filthy air that you breathe from the burning end of your dead tobacco stick. Kill yourself if you want to, but do it in your own home -- not in a public [family] restaraunt.
So, while YOU, personally, might not like smoke, there are others of us who CHOOSE to smoke and you should have the courtesy to respect their needs as well.
There are many freedoms we have and enjoy, that are not appropriate in a public setting. Smoking (remember the stink and the carcinogen) is one of them. You absolutely should have the freedom to smoke, but those who choose not to smoke should have the freedom of clean air -- without having to rely on a courtesy that not every smoker provides.
sig: sauer
I went to Park City a few weeks ago, and the night life there was pretty nice. Unfortunately it is about an hour outside of Salt Lake. I'd love to move to Park City just because of the slopes.
Having moved from New Zealand to work in Silicon Valley for the last 10 months I have to agree. Drinking laws in the US are ridiculous and the police presence is rather overwhelming (I live in San Jose). Seems hard to find anywhere around here that's open after 1am on the weekend. US life in general seems rather uptight and unfriendly. Quite frankly I'll be happy to leave this place and head back to the much more relaxed antipodean shores of NZ with a few US$ in my pocket.
http://www.alcbev.state.ut.us/Liquor_Laws/liquor_l aws_affecting_visitors.html
"Go Forth Ye Lemmings and Propagate"
that sounds better, or at least on par with Boston.
On one hand, I know several people here in the Denver-metro area that would love to move (back) to the SLC area. Of course, their religious preferences probably influence that, but that's a quality of life decisions they have made. Add that to the decision that they don't want to put up with the explosive growth, housing costs, and traffic congestion that Colorado is seeing, and you can understand where they are coming from.
On the other hand, I would never live in SLC, or in Texas, simply because the quality of life isn't the same as what I want. I want to be near the Rocky Mountains, have snow without ice-storms, and warm summers without 100+ degrees of heat.
And companies even are concerned about quality of life... For example, the company I'm at now has a headquarters in Brisbane, Australia, and picked Boulder, Colorado for the US office, simply because the quality of life was similar to that in Brisbane. For years the company didn't even have a major client in the same city, but the Boulder atmosphere was what the company wanted, and what they believed would be attractive to employees.
Everybody is concerned with quality of life, but how you define quality of life will likely be completely different from how other people define it.
IMHO, if companies don't like the atmosphere of the SLC area, why are they remaining there? If you can't make employees come to where you are, maybe you should move to where employeers are.
Granted, the Utah liquor laws are a joke, but I doubt that's the only /main reason.
A) No one really knows about it who hasn't lived there (I did for college).
B) Dallas has some seriously funky liquor laws as well but I doubt that's ever stopped anyone from moving there.
I think it's way more about the Mormons and their rep. I liked SLC but there's a seriously them or us attitude with Mormons that gets really tiresome after a while.
The real problem here is not that companies can not get employees to move to these places, but that they would even expect employees to. I have better places to live than puritanical, midwestern backwaters.
My last company moved our datacenter to Indiana, and wanted me to go along. I promptly quit. I currently live a half hour from hundreds of bars, clubs, and concert halls. I can walk from my house in the suburbs to an Irish pub in fifteen minutes. I would never even consider moving to a state like Utah.
Um, maybe in the movies? Sam Neill had Helen Hunt hot to have his kids in "Jurassic Park". Jeff Goldblum had Geena Davis so fond of him she still cried over him croaking after he digested part of her boss in "The Fly". There was that hax0r-chick in "Hackers" that was easy on the eyes.
In real life I have to face up to the fact that if I wanted women falling all over me -- besides getting a hair transplant and dropping 75 pounds -- chances are good I would choose a career that would allow me to work away from a computer, in a more social setting.
Maybe I just run in the wrong circles but I have yet to meet a woman who is interested in a man due to the actual size of his hard drive:
Plastic surgeon -- now there's the "babe motherlode" career. Computer jockey? Well ...
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
...or stoned...
My intelligence insults itself.
"give me a six pack and an all-nighter and ill solve any problem" - a guy i knew in college
tell me about it. it works on a more local scale too.
i work in Toronto now, and while i'd much rather work right downtown (where i live) my company's location is still an acceptable distance slightly outside of downtown. when the lease is up on this building (soon), they're going to move to buttfuck nowhere (aka Thornhill) in the suburbs. why? because it's "cheaper."
yeah, cheaper maybe, but i've already told them i'm leaving if they move out there (and i'm not the only one). how many future employees are they going to lose because they're out in the middle of nowhere? chosing a location based only on rental costs is very short-sighted.
- j
Maybe this helps... http://www.dumblaws.com/states/
I can buy my liquor during the day and deal with obscure stupid laws.. But that isn't what would keep me out'a Utah. The biggest problem is: most of the companies I want to work for are in San Jose. If I lived in San Jose and hated my current job, it would not too hard to get another down the street. In Utah, I'd be hard pressed to find another job at a company I wanted to work for. San Jose -- it is where the opportunities are. Lastly, I can get to San Jose really easily. Utah doesn't have 50-60 daily flights.
I turned down a job offer for roughly twice what I'm making now, because it was far away and I didn't want to relocate to an area where I knew no-one and there was basically nothing to do. I think anyone who knows what's good for them would do the same - having friends you can hang out with and places you can go is better than making tons of money and having nothing to do with it.
Then again, I'm young (19), so maybe I'm just idealistic.
-palp
I avoid Utah not specifically because of their unusual liquor laws, but because of the attitude of the LDS Church, which has undue influence on the government of the state.
If you are not a mormon, you are are second-class citizen in Utah. It's like being a black person in a Southern state, there's a undercurrent of disrespect towards non-mormons in large groups of the Utah population, especially in SLC.
Aside from unavoidable stopovers on the way to Vegas, I've visited Utah, including driving through SLC with a short stop overnight, and saw no reason (other than the scenery) to ever return.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
There's a lot more to social life than consuming alcohol, you know.
Heck yes I consider my social life. It's part of the whole "quality of life" package. I just wish it weren't so blamed hard to find a tech job in smaller communities, because I hate city life. I'm leaving Des Moines for Rochester, MN.
In smaller towns, the "rat race" (and traffic) doesn't stink so bad.
In smaller towns, there seems to be more emphasis on building relationships within the community. Social life is more easily found outside the bars.
In smaller towns, it's easier to get out into the "Big Blue Room" and go fishing, biking, whatever.
Smaller towns are generally safer places to raise a family.
These are things I value. So darned right I consider social life when looking at my career. Yeah, you take a hit in the pay, assuming you can find a job to begin with, but it's worth it.
Constitutionally Correct
...no offense, but that's why I don't want to work in the US, although I could easily have a x2 on my net salary. I think my values are sufficently different from there to significantly decrease my quality of life) and that's the main reason I choose to stay in Canada.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
It sounds to me like they are blaming their financial woes on the fact that the beer laws in Utah are too restrictive. This is pure and simple BS. It is the technology that attracts a programmer not the beer laws!!! Maybe they should offer better incentives to their employees than relying on the ``social hamper'' that alchohol brings to their employees outside of the workplace. This CEO seems clueless on this matter---I guess it's time to sell my Iomega stock...
After reading through many many comments on this article I have concluded that many /. readers are really clueless. If the people of the community voted for a particular figure to be in office and certain laws were passed by that figure in office, how does that have anything to do with the Church? Many of you seem to think that it was the Church that passed those laws. You are so wrong, it was the people. Who do you think punched the holes through the voter cards? Who signed the papers? The people---American people---not the Church or any other religious institution. BTW, whoever said that religion wasn't part of the community/laws? Weren't the nations first documents based on religious beliefs?
I would have to agree with you on this... I live within walking distance of my workplace. I still drive, but if I *were* to lose my car I could just as easily ride my bike to work and even walk. Can't say the same for other states---what a relaxing, low-stress enviroment.
Yeah, that's real wise isn't it. Place liquor in the hands of a 16 year old who just got his/her drivers license. How long were you planning on living?
Don't you think any reasonable private institution would do the same?
Does your local government thwart your creative genius with the law? How about the President of the United States? Each of us is free to choose and actively think about what choices are made---no one did it for you my friend.
I'm certain that LDS folks would not approve of how I live my life, and I'm not confident of their ability to keep their noses out of it.
I agree. Different states/regions are going to have different cultures. I live in NYC. I doubt the majority of residents of Utah would enjoy living here, and I certainly would not like living in Utah.
I think the question posed is when does culture of a region become such that a large number of prospective employees (in this case techies) not want to live there.
Atrow writes: Every restaurant I have ever entered in the past 10 years has established both a smoking section and a non-smoking section.
:-)
How about we put you in a non-smoking section of a restaurant, and set off a hydrogen-cyanide gas bomb the next table over, in the smoking section. You wouldn't have any problem with that would you?
... maybe he's just frustrated that he can't get bombed on a saturday night.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Yeah, its absolutely insane how many cops are out on Fri/Sat nights. Especially in front of the-club-formerly-known-as-FX. Is this level of police presence really justified by anything, or does the city just have too much money? Also, why does SJ have so few night clubs that they all have insane lines?
Question is, we know that drugs and the artistic professions go hand in hand - what about drugs and the rational, engineering professions like Software Engineering?
I completely disagree that software engineering is not an artistic profession. There may be programmers out there who have very little chance to express their creativity, but at the heart of most developers, I believe that there is the urge to create and express themselves through code.
Software engineering may have more "rules" than many other artforms, but there are many recognized forms of art that also have strict rules. Haiku's have a defined sylabic layout, musicians have a defined set of chords that they use and Ballerinas have specific moves that they are taught early on in their education. Creating a program may be limited by the language you are forced to use to create it, or the end goal of its functionality, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of creativity in the process of creating it.
The only difference I see is that the world has found a practical use for the artistic expression of programmers. I would liken it to the police sketch artist...an artist being used to accomplish a practical goal. If that same sketch artist draws or paints outside of work, no one would hesitate to call him an artist (even though some might not call his police sketches art). How many of you have written programs outside of work just because you felt like it? Did you write them simply because you felt that the world needed them in some way, or was it partly because you enjoyed the process of creating them?
<$0.02>
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Yeah. And what has become of them? Well, maybe Caldera is an exception. But only because open source is not only developped in Utah.
Once I've been sent to Lexington, KY, for an assignment, and boy was that boring! Yes I'd strongly suggest everyone seeking for a job stays alone there over a rainy weekend. If one didn't kill oneself by Monday, one might be fit for that job.
C'mon, there is more to life than just commercials interrupted by a late night show or some news.
Use The Source, Luke!
If you cannot attract talent to the firm, move the firm near the talent.
Utah isn't a good place for a technology firm IMHO. Even Rolla, Missouri is a better location. Got a college nearby to hire engineers from. Big "party" town on St. Patrick's day.
But hey, if you just want to hire people who are like me and are dull and boring and don't drink or smoke, then go right ahead. But you won't find very many of us out there. Most of the talent likes to live it up, some like me don't like to live it up and would rather do other things.
I'm gonna have to disagree here bob, Utah does not have the right to curtail minorities rights by passing laws that are relgious in nature. Its in the constitution bro :) ... the constitution wasn't written to protect the rights of the majority, the majority always takes care of itself. The seperation of church and state in the constitution was written to protect those in the minority.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
http://www.acluutah.org/alcohol.htm
http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.a sp ?documentID=12354
Fact: In utah restruants are not allowed to SUGGEST a alcoholic drink http://saltlakecity.about.com/citiestowns/mountain us/saltlakecity/library/weekly/98art/aa012598.htm
These are serious first ammendment issues
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Wait, wait, let me get this straight, you want MORE people to come to Colorado? Especially Boulder: every time I go back home someone else has to be squeezed out to make room.
:), but I say let em' go to Utah, there's plenty of room: while backpacking I saw some entrepreneurial folks who even built their houses into a sandstone outcrop.
Now I just might be one of those lousy Mines engineers
I agree that Denver-area Colorado is fun (there's really no other way to put it) and I can't imagine not wanting to live here apart from the lack of water bodies, but at the same time let's not be encouraging people. US36 may indeed be an "exponentially increasing tech corridor" but it's also digusting sprawl. Did we really need yet another damned massive super-duper mall-to-end-all-malls?
To the citizens of the United States of America,
In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy.
Your new prime minister (The rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed".
2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.
3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard.
4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.
5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.
6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005.
7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 97.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "sh*t".
8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".
9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
Thank you for your cooperation.
no sig.
That said, I grew up on east coast and was always used to being in smoky bars and restaurants and at the time, it never really phased me even though I don't smoke. After having lived in CA for a while with the non-smoking laws, I have found that not only do I enjoy restaurants more, but ALL of my smoking friends do as well! They have no problems with stepping outside to keep the restaurant air clear. Of course, weather is much more mild in CA so stepping outside for a smoke is not a big deal.
- tokengeekgrrl
As the old saying goes, "having a no smoking section in a restaurant is like having a no peeing section in a pool".
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
did you know that research causes cancer in rats?
Take this personaility test.
Let's make one thing clear when it comes to jobs. We have a job so that we can pay for things to live and maybe enough to actually enhanced our lives. I would never choose a job that did not fit that purpose.
Actually, my experience has been that the church goes out of its way to emphasize that they do not take stands on who to vote for. Occasionally, they make statements on certain issues, but never people. Some people in the church are politically minded and pass out flyers or what have you. But they can't use church property for political rallies.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
I tell ya, I agree totally! I can spit on the floor in my home, on the street, in the park, but restaurants will not let me! I do not know why they do not allow me to spit wherever the f*ck I want...talk about discrimination!
Yup, there should be a spitting section and a non-spitting section so the tree-hugging jerks can sit out of spit's way. (Except for the occasional stray spray)
I dunno what the world is coming to...
So, while YOU, personally, might not like spit, there are others of us who CHOOSE to spit and you should have the courtesy to respect our needs as well!
Oh, BTW- I am a smoker. I just think your argument was pretty lame.
I think you just described people everywhere.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
The issue here is not what people do, but where they do it. Utah is not the only place to work as a geek, thankfully, for if it were, youbetcha I'd be looking for another line of work. To some extent, whether or not one can have a balanced personal life comes into a lot of people's considerations of career. But I don't care how much I wanted to work at Iomega, and how much they'd be willing to pay me, I'd never in a million years work in Utah.
Can you have sex with a Mormon woman in Utah if you are not Mormon? Or will you burn in hell or something? If not, then they have to ship in the non-Mormon women in first before I go there.
"# ps ax | grep social_life
12579 pts/0 S 0:00 grep social_life"
Nothin... let's see...
"# man social_life No manual entry for social_life"
*shrug*
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Not sure who said it first, but having "smoking" and "non-smoking" section in a restaurant is kind of like having a "peeing" and "non-peeing" sections in a swimming pool. It just doesn't work.
Personally, I think smokers should have the right to smoke, but that right does not extend to imposing their filthy habit on me. What you do in your own home is your business, be it nicotine or heroin. But don't expect me to support your right to do either in the booth next to me at a restaurant.
there are others of us who CHOOSE to smoke
Heheh... Yea right. You smoke because you're an addict. There isn't a medical doctor in North America that would disagree with me.
Temkin
Sorry, smokers haven't taken away your freedoms, nature has. You're understandably bitter about it. Asking the rest of the world to change because you have a problem is fairly unreasonable, if that problem prevents you from dealing with others in an open-air environment. Someone's home? Sure. Restaurants? I could understand that. But if you have problems at little league games even, then yes, perhaps removing yourself from society is the option that has to be taken, or other alternatives have to be searched for.
Unfortunately, it's just not leftists anymore. The above statements are used all the time by conservative Republicans, many of whom are hypocrites who preach the ideas of freedom and Constitutional principles, except when it comes to social policy. In those cases, it's safe to screw around with laws and bans "for the greater good" and "for the family" all they want. It seems like Libertarians are the only honest right-wingers anymore.
You know what? In this day and age, -choosing- to have 8 kids IS irresponsible. Since I doubt they were the family making the news for having 8 children, I would have to assume they did this by choice, and that IS irresponsible.
I choose where I live very carefully:
There must be a bar close enough to my home that I can walk to, and crawl home from.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Every place has annoying laws. Here in Chicago, I remember I went shopping one morning, and wanted to restock the slug traps that protect our rose bushes. We load cheap beer into the slug traps because it attracts them and kills them.
However, I found out that I couldn't buy before 11am. No beer for slugs before 11am in Chicago. Oh well.
Its not bad in Lex if you are part of the Good Ol Boys network or don't mind working for UK or startups that fail due to Jim Host's Interference, but besides that, the Databeam/Lexmark/Lotus/IBM connection here in Lex is great.
Read my plan to save the Bengals
I'm just saying, it's really hard to get free beer when it's illegal. I spent some time in Utah, when I was living in New Mexico (where they did repeal the blue laws, btw) and I have to say it's a beautiful state full of a bunch of self-righteous pricks. Of course, now I live in New York City, which isn't even beautiful. But there's beer a-plenty.
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
I can definately say with much certainty that working in Utah is not that much fun if you would like to go to a bar after work. I have been working for a company in Roy Utah for 5 months. I have had to import my own beer and wine because the stores there sell the crappy 3.2 beer and the wine selection is terrible. I would consider moving there for the skiing and the good working conditions. But I enjoy to much being able to go the bar around the corner to have a drink and not be forced to order food just to have a drink.
If my social life was my primary concern then I obviously would have chosen a much more lucrative position such as male stripper or some other profession that catered more to a better social existance and a lot more SEX!!!
Then again, I don't know if the rush of getting naked in front of beautiful women could ever compare with the amazing feeling of completing awesome code or firing up the latest and greatest hardware for the first time...I guess I was just destined to be a geek!!! :-)
- not-2-quick
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
I think the phrase the Founding Fathers had for what you describe is "tyranny of the majority." They didn't trust the people ("Your 'People,' Sir, is a great beast." -- A. Hamilton to T. Jefferson) any more than they did the government. If rights are truly inalienable, then majority vote can't take them away any more than a king's decree can.
Well? ;)
When I considered relocating to SLC, the weird liquor laws didn't bother me, but what put me off for good was when a local warned me that my kid would, sooner or later, come home saying, "So-and-so's parents won't let me play with him any more because we're not Mormons. Daddy, what's a Mormon?"
Your choice to smoke ends where my lungs begin. End of story.
I'm sick of selfish people who argue for their rights without any consideration of the rights of those around them. I imagine you would argue that the ban against boom boxes on buses is also an offensive deprivation of your freedom of choice, since you choose to blast music. Wearing headphones solves the problem in that case -- so, develop a similar solution for smoking and I'll fight for your right to smoke anywhere you wish. I choose not to have my air polluted with the your stench of your affectatious habit.
Wanna smoke near me? Use a containment device or forget it.
(Happily living in smoke-free CA).
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I have met 19 year old women that do NOT understand how conception occurs.
You're kidding, right? Or exaggerating, perhaps?
How the fsck can someone be 19 and not know that, even without sex ed?!
--
My conclusion is that SLC is not a particularly nice place to visit, and I certainly wouldn't want to live there. In fact, about the only thing I can say in Utah's favor is that they post minimum speed limits on their highways.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
For reference, I am an ASIC design engineer with an advanced degree from a top university. My specialty is in demand, and there are no shortage of jobs in my field.
I am currently planning on relocating, and have been considering various locales. Do liquor laws make a difference? A little, but I don't really see turning down a job over them unless it was a completely dry county.
For me, what is much more important than liquor laws is gun laws. As it stands, I have basically struck California off of the list of places I would accept living and working in. It would take an extremely generous offer for me to even consider changing this opinion, on the order of double the salary I would command elsewhere. In speaking with other engineers and programmers, I know I am not alone in this opinion.
I never looked at any of the specifics, but the overall "look and feel" of /utah/slc/ has turned me off from pursuing career options there, in spite of the lower cost of living &c.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I personally am on the job hunt myself, as I will be graduating from college in May, and I for some unknown reason, I chose to go to school in North Dakota of all places. I guess I figured I would be so bored I would spend all my time studying.. which I was basically right.
From living here (ND) I definetly know I personally would like someplace where there will be a variety of social activities to partake in, and they will not be so restricted. As for here, you have a choice of movies, bowling (but not on league nights), and the bars (which close at 1am and aren't generally open on Sundays).. as ND has a lot of Blue laws also that say pretty much little can be open on Sunday, though it had laxed up in the last 10 years supposedly.
But other things I am personally am considering in the job hunt is more things that will directly and indirectly effect ones ability to have a social life.
1)Salary and Benefits Package of Employer
2)Cost of Living
3)General Location and Available Recreation Opt.
4)Blue Laws & Other So Called "Morality Laws"
5)Having a Good Cultural Mix and not a ethno-centricly concentrated population (ND + UT).
6) State Income Taxes and Sales Tax in that part. location. (Would actually be #3-4 if ranked in importance).
Taxes is one thing that really suprised me when taking into account the cost of living and evaluating potential employers. As taxes, and especially not sales taxes are always considered into a cost of living estimate. And if your sales taxes are high, that amount adds up rather quickly. I originally left a state with currently no sales tax to go to school, but I have seen state sales taxes as high as 7.1%, plus local sales taxes in the places I have evaluated so far.
I guess I got a little off topic, but yes.. it does effect severly in my opinion my decision to take a job with an employer, as unless I am able to enjoy that little time I do spend away from work, I want to be able to do more than just sit at home if I want.
Chris Souser
aka Volhav
volhav@acerbic.org
My right to breathe clean air an not be forced into a crippling and multi-day hospitalizing asthma attack trumps your right to smoke every time. America is all about liberty and the freedom to to whatever you want, as long as it does not infringe on the liberty of others. I promise not to shoot my guns into the crowd you are standing in if you promise not to smoke in the crowd that I'm standing in. You don't have a right to smoke in public. Go read your copy of The Constitution again. ...And then get over yourself.
I read the article, but cant see what the laws are that he`s complaining about.
A mate of mine has a sign in his office:
I enjoy sex as much as you enjoy smoking but i dont fuck on your desk so please dont smoke in my office.
I think that about sums it up.
I don't think anyone's saying that Utah doesn't have every right to be a backwards, sexist, prudish, pious state if the voters there so choose.
But techies also have every right to not go somewhere where their typically more libertine approach to life is likely to get them arrested and/or shot.
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
I got three offers for a tech job out of college. One was in Detroit, MI, another in Boston, MA, and a third in Newark, DE. Now in considering which job to take, I factored in three things: the job duties, the pay, and the location. All three were important, because I value my happiness as my number one priority. Job duties helped me figure out if I would like doing the work, and a combination of pay and location told me 1) if I could afford to live where the job was, 2) if I would have enough money to spend for "entertainment" and 3) if my out of work life would fulfill my number one priority. I turned down the job in Detroit because the pay wasn't good enough, AND I coudn't see having that much fun in the Detroit area (I went to U of M in Ann Arbor). I turned down the Boston job because the pay wouldn't sustain an enjoyable life up there (barely would have been able to afford to live there, much less have fun there) even though Boston is a great city. The DE job was a good combination of the three, so here I am. Work is not my life, so where I live, and how my job contributes to living the lifestyle I choose to, is very important to me.
getting loaded and having a social life does not mean the same thing.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
I always consider my social life. I'm in a relationship with a really great girl, and there's no way I'm going to allow someone to decide I can't spend time with her.
So, now I'm looking at starting my own company so that I can set the rules a bit. As a manager, I've always encouraged people to be focused on their home lives, with friends and family. I think it results in better work from the people involved.
No matter what, I always try to make sure to never punish anyone with extra work just for being efficient, unless I'm looking to pay them more.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
I don't know about stock in Pepsi, I've heard the same about Coke but haven't done any research. (no desire)
You are correct about caffeine but many Pepsi products don't contain caffeine. You can even find caffeine free Pepsi (and Coke) in many fountains. I don't think I've ever seen that in any state other than UT.
African Americans have never been denied membership.
One is PLENTY for me. I don't think I could handle any more (can't handle the one I've got). They'd gang up on me and I'd never win an argument, err.... discussion. ;-)
You're rigth!! There are some non smokers that complain too mouch about the smoke, if they don't like it they are free to go away, but nooo they want to be with the smokers so the smokers have to stop smoking (and must do it) while they still complaining about the smoke. That is not fair
That's my point. Of course the Mormons who were persecuted aren't there anymore. The point is that the attitudes that the original generation came by honestly are passed down to the next generation.
In this case, the attitudes in question are isolationism and insularity. The current generation of Utahns (including the church leadership) aren't isolated, but they were raised by parents who were. It isn't so easy for most people to adopt radically different viewpoints from their parents; it has to be a gradual thing.
As a side point, the world view of the current leadership isn't really much distorted when compared to, say, evangelical Christians or other devoted religious groups. I think it's the other way around -- it's the "common" Utahns and the local leadership who cause the repression more than the guys at the top.
You are somewhat correct about the role of SLC in the westward migration; but the permanent nonMormon population was rather small (maybe 1 or 2 percent -- that's a guess), and didn't contact the Mormon population all that much. Those who passed through did exactly that -- they passed through. Also, the majority of Mormons at the time didn't live in SLC. They lived in Logan, or Provo, or Kanab, or even more isolated places, and didn't really see anybody much. In addition, the army was stationed at the far southern end of the Salt Lake Valley -- 30 miles from the city itself -- and was basically ordered not to have any contact with the population.
A nonmormon population of a few hundred (thousand?), plus an isolated army post, plus a couple of thousand people a week stopping by to buy supplies does not an integrated community make.
Now, about Mormon persecution. I never said that Joseph Smith was perfect. Yes, I know he was mayor of Nauvoo, and he had more power than most mayors of the time. Yes, I know he was a polygamist. I also know the sordid history of the burning of the Expositor. And, yes, he was both imprisoned and killed at Carthage.
I did not intend to defend Joseph Smith, nor was I talking about his death -- I was referring to the persecution of the body of the mormon church. They were, in fact, forced out of their homes in New York at gunpoint. They went to Ohio. They were again forced out by violence. Then they went to Missouri, where not only were they forced out but several hundred were actually killed by mobs. All of those actions occurred *before* polygamy was introduced and *before* the burning of the Expositor. Then they went to Illinois, where they were forced out one final time by mob violence. Again, several hundred, including women and children, were killed.
So. Maybe Joseph's actions weren't legal. Certainly some of them weren't wise. But were his actions adequate cause to force an entire population from their homes, killing and raping in the process? *No.*
Revisionist or not, some facts are indisputable; that hundreds of Mormons were killed, including women and children, is one. That tens of thousands of Mormons were forced from their homes by mobs is another.
Finally, Jospeh had not sent anybody farther west that Missouri before he was killed. He may or may not have discussed going farther west -- the records are unclear because they consist mainly of personal journals. Heading for Utah was strictly Brigham Young's idea.
Unfortunately, most of the people posting have no understanding of the historical reasons why Utah is as messed up as it is.
I'm mormon. I think for myself, thank you very much. I lived in Utah for six years, and I'm never goin' back. I found it to be just as closed-minded as most of you. But you can't blame Mormons, the Mormon church, or a homogenous culture in general for Utah's problems.
After the LDS church was founded in 1832, most people who joined were ostracized from their communities and often were disowned from their families. Mormons were driven out of New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. Men, women, and children were murdered in cold blood. When they were forced out of Illinois by mob violence, it happened in the middle of a winter night. Finally the body of the church went to Utah because at the time (1846) it was such a godforsaken place that nobody else wanted it, and they figured they could live in peace there. And that's (mostly) what happened for the next hundred years. It's only been since about the 1950's that anybody who wasn't Mormon had any reason to even visit Utah, much less move there.
So. Utah has been "integrated" for about fifty years. Unfortunately, it takes a culture longer than that to correct it's problems How long did it take for white and black people to peacefully coexists? About a hundred years, and we still have major problems. It'll take Utah about that long to adjust as well.
So: I don't blame anybody for not liking Utah, or for having a negative impression about Mormons who live there. But before you judge, remember that hateful, closeminded people made Utah, and those people weren't the Mormons who went there.
Making games would be cool, but a schedule like that would kill most people.
IMHO I think too many people forget that the reason you work is so you can enjoy your time off, and if your time off is destroyed by your job, you should re-evaluate your career.
________
But Texas is improving our Blue Laws. Remember back in the 80s when you couldn't visit any store on Sunday? We've improved. Now on Sundays' you can shop til you drop as long as it's not alcohol & before noon or a car (all car dealerships have to be closed on either Saturday or Sunday. They can't be open on both days!)
Ps. I don't drink much and I tend to forget about the blue laws. Albertson frequently thinks I'm from LA because I want to get smashed on Sunday before Noon.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Any time I've been there, I was always really pleased to go into a restaurant and not be bothered by second-hand smoke.
And, YES, this does significantly impact my social life...
Also, in a capitalist society (or mostly capitalist), businesses are supposed to be able to stand on their own merits, not whine about how government leaders have not cow-towed to them.
What I don't understand is how this is not merging Church/State. I mean, it makes sense over here in the UK, where we have an "official" religion (although I suspect that the UK is in fact, quite a bit less religious than the US), but over there, you're supposed to separate the church from the State... Any USians care to explain?
Nowhere does the constitution say, "your right to do whatever you please may not be infringed upon." We are indeed guaranteed certain specific rights; outside of thouse, however, municipalities, states, and the federal government can and do place restrictions on the actions of individuals in order to further the greater good of the community as determined by the voting public. Example: in the town where I used to live in NJ, a yuppie couple moved into my neighborhood at the top of a hill, covered with picturesque trees. They razed their lot and put up an unsightly fence around the entire property. The mayor of the township happened to live across the street; the town subsequently passed a law requiring a landowner to obtain a permit before cutting down trees older than X years. As a libertarian, I think this is a very poor law, but it is entirely legal. And, as the previous poster points out, if I don't like it, I'm free to move. (I did, but not just for that reason. :)
Given that I basically use my job to finance my life, things that impact my quality of life are more important than salary. That's one reason why I work for the university instead of one the high tech firms in my area. I want a decent, but not massive salary and enough time to pursue outside interests. Now, if there were laws in the state that impacted the way I want to live my life, I wouldn't even consider going to that state. Utah's liquor laws aren't an issue for me since I'm pretty much a tea-totaler, but the state is largely Mormon. Now, I don't have anything against Mormons, but you're dealing with a group of people who have fairly rigid beliefs, and vote to shape the state's laws around those beliefs. No problem in and of itself. I mean that's democracy in action more or less. However, I have very different values and I don't know that I'd feel comfortable or compatible with the local culture. Salt Lake City is a bit different because that's a fairly large city and is characterized by the same multi cultural patterns as other American cities. I might live in Salt Lake City, but I don't know how well I'd get along in the rest of the state.
There's other considerations to be sure. For instance, No. Cal is out because of the rents and property prices in the area. In order to live in the area, I'd probably have a long commute by car and that's not something I'm into. I'll ride an hour on my bike, but not by car. Its my own little hypocrisy. For me it all depends on how good of a life I can have in the area, and that life is shaped by the values I carry. Some things I'd look at are: morality and reproductive laws, access to higher education, sprawl and commuting, racial distribution, and the arts scene. Basically I hate commuting and detest sprawl. Someday I wanna go back and get my graduate degree and I love the arts. I also grew up in very racially mixed town and am comfortable with a variety of people. So, I'm looking at either a midwestern town with a major university or a city--not a burb--in the Northeast or west coast. If it ain't one of those places, I don't care how much money they're offering I won't go. They can't offer me the life I want to lead.
WordPerfect was in Utah for a long time. What about Novell?? Caldera???
Fight Spammers!
When I came out of college I had two offers: Oracle and Lawrence Livermore National Labs. Oracle had volleyball and a party at someone's house after the interview. LLNL didn't. I joined Oracle.
> Would you care to elaborate on this? Specifically, how does US life seem brainfucked
Mmm. A few ones. Two weeks of holidays per year. Possibility of getting fired in the day. Disgusting cheese. Omnipresence of cars. Cult of money. Stupid laws [no drink before 21, but can drive a car at 16, smoking laws]. What seems to be social clustering (all house looking similar in a road is nightmare vision, for me). Omnipresence of litigation. Violence (Police everywhere, lot of Guns owner. Death penalty)
> and what do you find superior about life in your country?
I grew there. You may note that I did not said that it _was_, but that it _seemed_. And this is the whole point of the article too. I don't think he said that Utah sucks (even if he probably think it is the case), but that Drink laws make state looking intrusive.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
> News flash buddy: London is more dangerous than most US cities, with the exception of US cities with gun bans.
News flash buddy: I don't live in London. I don't even live in England. I am not even british. (It was not that hard to guess, I cited 'Disgusting cheese' as a downpoint for the US...)
> A gun in my belt makes me a hell of a lot safer [...]
<scared joke>
Seeing how fast you are to make judgment, I must confess that a gun in your belt makes me feel a hell less safer...
</scared joke>
Cheers,
--fred
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> Do issues like [...] social life really affect where engineers and programmers want to work?
Of course. For instance US life seems so brainfucked from this side of the atlantic that I refused to move over several time.
Cheers,
--fred
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First off, this company is in Utah and they DIDN'T concider(sp?) that when they started/moved (whichever it was) there? Second, Utah is the closest thing to a theocracy you can have in the U.S., and the church's statements about liquor are rather clear. You really think Utah drinking laws *won't* be convoluted? End rant.
I have no tag line
Does Nevada have anything besides the casinos, guns, Lake Tahoe, nuclear test bed and some nature?
Or you need to be telecommuting? How good are the schools? How high are the taxes?
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
So, if some programmers use LSD, why should we condemn Mormons who use the LDS drug? ;-)
;-)
Speaking seriously, there are a lot of different esoteric traditions on the Earth, and some of them require drugs to enter the "Altered state" (like some shamanic ones, and Castanedian toltecs). Others don't and even contradict using it (I study chi-kung (aka qi-gong), and my Teacher told us right away that as we progress and gain clarity and awareness of our bodies, we will become less tolerant to alcohol, drugs and smoking; these things will affect us much stronger. but I'm OK with that, because I think that the goal is worth it.). And pretty much every church/sect uses one of the technics.
My boss is a Mormon (BTW, I have never had a better boss), and he listens to religious music while working all the time. He is always cheerful and corteous; I'd call him a "positive man" in a second. So, should I care about him not drinking?
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
The odd thing is if you look at Las Vegas, you see a skinny, tenous tendril reaching between Vegas and LA and a much thicker pipe reaching up to Salt Lake City.
"And where did you spend your weekend Elder Smith?"
"In the desert wasteland refreshing my soul..."
I read that article. Seems to be just be whining to me. Elected officials giving lip-service? Unheard of! Probably couldn't buy beer before his Sunday football game. I feel his pain, but geez. I think there's something wrong with recruiting in the tech industry. My wife just graduated with a 3.65 GPA in Computer Science, but she can't seem to land a job. Everyone she talks to was looking for marketing or sales or something less "geek" like, despite the admitted need for IT workers. It seemed to me, they were looking for change in the parking lot, but stepping over five dollar bills, "Sorry, only looking for spare change." Its really frustrating for her.
...or maybe not.
of course
kiku wa ittoki no haji kikanu wa matsudai no haji
Freely available booze sounds like a pretty good one. ;)
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
Waah, waah waah waah. I live in Santa Cruz. This is like a little san francisco; Gentrification has pushed rents to such levels that a room upstairs in an apartment downtown is now $975 and up, if you want enough square footage for a bed AND a desk (what luxury!) The roads are constantly clogged with "Valleys" (Stay in San Jose, please) and a very significant percentage of the population of Santa Cruz works in San Jose, making Highway 17 basically impassable during commute hours.
This happens to every city worth living in. It's just the price you pay. This is supposed to be the land of the free, remember? Neither you nor I have any right to tell people where to live.
Unless, maybe, you're a Native American. And I don't mean 1/16, either.
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just so we know I am not a mormon I like to say it out load i am a CHRISTIAN knowing they are wrong seeing there is not factual evidence to prove there bible ... I have to say this is BS!
People have many things to blame except themselfs I hate to admit it is PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY not any given faction of the population ... when they pass a law that seems cool do we look at the little stuff they add to it no.. it is fine and dandy but when it gets to a point that it is bullshit and people can't stand it that point fingures at each other. well point it right back to yourself! I wnet to the whole MPAA vs 2600 i tried to make a stance... but I am the few .. the many just complain and do shit .. instead of psting your WAKED OUT IDEAS they gotting a soap box and screamming your opinion to your state rep. or right a Profeesional letter to them ... get people stand up instead of bullshitting off in the background QUIT COMPLAINING! TAKE ACTION!
Thsi country was founded for THE PEOPLE not for the POLITION .. but it is leaning more and more that way GET UP RISE AND EXPRESS YOUR GOD GIVEN FREEDOM DON'T LIKE IT CHANGE IT FIGHT FOR YOUR IDEAS that is what this country is about and people for get that! WE DO HAVE THAT FREEDOM ..... for christ sake stop complaining and get people with you no matter what it is and fight for what THE PEOPLE WANT NOT THE PIGS IN CONGRESS WANT... political parties was created to tare us apart ... 1st time since these baby boomers will retire is the first that party is out and .. what WE THE PEOPLE want in there case Socail security and damn that they won't get it ... that is something they all agree ... we amercans have to make a stand in our beliefs and have PEOPLE run this country not the few ... we have the country founded by the MAJORITY AND NOT THE MINORITY!
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish." -Albert Einstein
Because all I ever do is sit in front of
my computer. 8am - 5pm. Then I go home
and sit at my computer some more.
Why would I need a social life?
Please. Get real.
Anonymous posts are filtered.
If you want to see church state, try Tulsa Oklahoma. 800 churches in this small backwards ass red necked town.
Where did you get it? I want one! I also want a bumper sticker that says 'Real men love Darwin', that should piss the cult off!
However, I didn't stay in Utah for 2 reasons.
- Very few Utah based tech companies activly recruited at my school (Iomega being one that didn't).
- Tech salaries in Salt Lake are generally 10k to 15k less than elsewhere. People I graduated with in December 2000 that stayed in SLC were only offered 45k. Considerably less than what I was offered to go to Idaho, or Nevada.
As for the cost of living being lower there, housing prices are very close to where I actually did end up (Boise, ID) and I got way more money to come up here than I would have in SLC. Don't let Bruce Albertson tell you that it is Utah's liquor laws that keep people away. If they paid Software Engineers what they are worth, people would stay!!IANAL... But I play one on
I worked at a San Francisco-based company that moved its headquarters to a suburb of the Salt Lake City area. At the time, the SF office was packed wall-to-wall with engineers, while the new SLC location had enough space to house 6 times as many people.
The company wanted its key developers to leave the SF area and relocate to the SLC area.
A few did.
Many others refused.
And, when college recuiting season rolled by, many prospective employees accepted our job offers on the condition that they work in the SF. The space problem became so bad that we had to open another office in SF, and also open a new office much closer to the San Jose area.
I've been to SLC. It's nice for a brief visit, but I would never live there.
Besides, I was too freaked out by the 80%+ homogenous population. I felt oddly out of place.
Although I don't make quite as much as I would working for a bigger company, my place of employment does offer a few perks that I find very hard to give up. Chiefly, my bosses remind me of the aliens who took over the Enterprise in ST and commanded the engineers to "make it go" As long as I "make it go" I can read Slashdot all day long if I choose. They would never be the wiser. Beyond this I get all my computer books either free or at a nicely discounted price. And, perhaps the best perk of all, I can take any and all code I write home with me.
So my question is, how hard is it to take your code home with you as an engineer in the average software or web shop? Hell, I plan on being able to start my own company before long with the pile of code I've amassed.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Close, but a bit off...
The Ninth Amendment states: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
So, we are not guaranteed certain specific rights. The most important ones are enumerated and an undetermined number more exist. The Bill of Rights itself only took shape after a rough debate. There were those who did not want the Bill of Rights ever written, so that government could not claim to erase such a right by removing the amendment. Also, to nit pick, they are not guaranteed in any fashion if the people are not willing to stand behind them and tell the government "don't touch". Just having it on paper does nothing, which is why the right to free speech and the right to keep and bear arms is so important. We must have a voice, and the power to back it up should mere words not be enough.
The Bill of Rights was written in order of importance, after all.
The Tenth Amendment goes on the state: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nore prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
In short, if the Constitution provides a power and the states do not object, then the United States government has a power. Otherwise, they don't. It would then be reserved to the judgement of the community (the States) or the people, which would be hashed out in court upon disagreement.
So, yes, communities can set standards, but if a court finds that these standards violate the rights of an individual (which as the Constitution states is far greater in scope than the first eight amendments,) than the law is unjust and removed.
Common Law would also make a case that unless you are violating the rights of another, your actions are your own business.
-Xiombarg
Hypocrisy is the Vaseline of social intercourse. -- R. Heinlein
In most countries, you have to be 18 to buy liquor. In some countries, only 16. In the UK you have to be 18 to buy it from a store/bar, but you can drink it if you are over 16 with a meal in a restaurant. A minimum age of 21 (US) is ridiculous, especially when you only have to be 16 to drive!
Well you are maybe - but I'm not. Both my wife & I have very busy social lives - I'm a sysadmin, she's a qa geek.
"For example, how many programmers do you know that actually get out much? I bet RMS doesn't do much outside of GNU, just look at his website."
RMS is a special case - he is in no way representative of geeks in general.
"Although I must concede that the stricter alcohol laws in Utah might have an adverse affect, seeing as many jobs such as tech support are depressing and stressful enough to cause drinking and other drug problems."
I think it is the general tenor of Utah - with it's outrageous (to me) "our religion is the only way to think" intolerant attitude that is so prevalent in the culture there.
I am LDS and I didn't like it in Utah either. I found intolerance as well. This is the fault of imperfect people, not a religion.
Being a fairly conserative LDS I can tell you that even though your choice of lifestyle might not be something that I would like, I have no right to attack you for it. I have no right butting into your life and anyone who claims to be LDS and does either of these things is a hypocrite! We have conservative views, but we are not perfect. I think that we sometimes forget that.
The blurring of church and state is also a misperception. The LDS church by and large stays out of the political arena. There have been times that when laws that have been very important to religious freedoms have been up for approval that that the church has gotten more involved. This aside the official directive that we are given is to try and influence the political process through the voting procedures in our area. The Laws that people are having difficulty with were made by conservative law-makers who might have been LDS, not by the LDS church.
I work with people from many different walks of life, and I show each of them the same respect. I consider many of these people to be friends even though many of us have different views on sensitive subjects. I am sorry that you have not met more LDS people who share my views. That is unfortunate for them and you.
Please, in the future don't place us all in the basket of intolerance. Even though tolerance is one of our most important ideals, we are still human.
I have heard the same things during meetings. However these were not things that must be done, they were recommendations for maintaining a conservative government. If anyone was telling you to vote for a particular candidate they were out of line. As you know the main principal of the LDS church is the freedom to choose. And the Church's official policy is not to dictate political views from the pulpit. This is a choice that is left to the individual.
Hehehe I just love this one. I thought it was very clear from the post that I an *not* a really gung ho Mormon and then for people to go and write something like this guy did. Cracks me up people who base their lives (or a good portion of) around being anti-mormon. In any case you are right. And as far as people making money so what? The LDS church is rich get over it. Also look at all the people they help and this is true. In any case I enjoyed your post. And better the volume 6 of History of the Church are the Porter Rockwell stories. I for one am proud of that bit of history.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
and I'm a fairly active Mormon (in that I go to church, mostly because my wife thinks it is a good idea) I should fit right in in Utah but right now I'm very involved in trying to move to the Portland Oregon area (btw if you need a good Unix/GNU/Linux systems guy and are in that area send me a mail) Why? Becuase Utah has many problems above and beyond drinking laws. First I have no idea where this myth that Utah has a low cost of living came from but it is not true. Also taxes tend to be very high and wages much lower than other spots that have the same cost of living. And then there are the Mormons. In other places in the country that I have lived I have really liked many of my fellow Mormons and in fact enjoyed going to chruch. Here in Utah most of them tend to be aholes. In short people not coming to Utah has nothing to do with liquor laws but more to do with the fact that on many other levels it sucks.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
So I think that the article may apply to some people, but certainly not to all. An alternative might be for Iomega to try to recruit locally (and in states near Utah) with more seriousness. They would not only get people who were used to Utah liquor etc. laws, but they would find people who would be used to living in Utah too.
I could go on and on explaining the validity of this quote, but instead I'll just use it. I found it when I moved from a bad job to a good one:
We do not live to work; We work to live.
Now I don't suggest you find a place to work, then find a job... but if you have a large assortment of offers, environments of your personal life should be a large factor in your decision.
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
My Utah experience: I went to Provo to visit my girlfriend's daughter and son-in-law, who are Mormons. One night after visiting with them, we decided to get a bottle of wine to take back to our hotel room. It took us 45 minutes to locate the state-run package store situated in a dingy part of town. It looked like a run-down methadone clinic, with bars on the windows, burned-out neon sighs, and a trash-strewn parking lot. We got the bottle of wine from their lousy selection and wanted to get a corkscrew. No gots. At a liquor store. So we go to a large supermarket and ask one of the 18-year-old stockboys where to find a corkscrew. He didn't know what a corkscrew was. Finally had to track down the manager to ask, and he ultimately led us to where they were. Moral: if you're going to drink in Utah, have it shipped in from elsewhere so that you don't have to deal with the locals.
"Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Location?"
This, in a perfect world, would be an irrelevant question for many people in a high-tech company. The Iomega should have been able to hire the very best and brightest programmers if they fully supported telecommuting. I'd happily work a schedule anywhere in the country (or world) if the company flew me in for regualarly scheduled meetings (maybe a couple days a month for F2F with the managers and the other programmers) and I was able to work the rest of the time from home.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
It's a common practice in manufacturing to locate facilities in very rural areas. This has several benefits. Land is cheap, labor is cheap, unions tend to leave you alone, by being the biggest employer in a small town you get a lot of influence over local regulations, you tend to get a lot of tax breaks, and a few other things. But it also has some drawbacks and one of the biggest is in getting technically skilled workers to work in very rural areas.
People who are skilled with technology and have the corresponding education to go with it, tend not to want to live out in the middle of nowhere. Tech workers tend to be young, educated, and like the lifestyle afforded by living in a more urban (or suburban) area. Not to say there aren't exceptions but as a rule this is very often true. Since technology is daily becoming a bigger part of manufacturing, this is daily becoming a bigger problem. People like to be surrounded by people who want a similar lifestyle to their own.
Lifestyle is important and there is a reason more people live in cities than in the country. People like it that way. If Utah has problems attracting tech workers, you can be quite sure lifestyle has at least something to do with why. I've been to Austin and San Francisco. I understand why those areas might appeal to young tech workers and why Utah might not be at the top of their lists of places to live.
Well, guess you have not meet me...
If you choose to go to a place (restaurant, pub etc.) where smoking is permitted, then you will breathe in miniscule quantities of second hand smoke. If you don't like that, don't go where smoking is permitted. It's really as simple as that.
Smokers pay for everything they recieve (and much more) through penal tobacco taxation. About 80% of the cost of a packet of cigarettes in the UK goes in tax. Smokers pay for a third of the NHS through tobacco taxes, for example.
As for the "Where do we put the washrooms" argument, learn a little tolerance why don't you?
realize how bad their whining sounds to those of us who believe that smoking (be it cigarettes, cigars, or pipes) is not a crime and tolerance is always better than repression.
Remember the Wiccan Rede - "If it harm no one, do what thou wilt*"
*Note I said harm, not irritate - if things can be criminalized because they irritate other people, how come mobile phones, N'Sync, William Hague, or Windows ME are still permitted to exist?
The most difficult thing that people from out of state find about the Minnesota winter is the driving. Controlling a car on iced-over roads is enough of a challenge. At that to the fact that we are a state full of people who don't know how the hell to merge properly, and it becomes a real mess.
Sooner or later, you learn that your time from November to March is best divided between winter sports, staying indoors with the gf, and drinking.
Springtime in Minnesota is a magical thing. The moment the temperature gets up to 60F, the women start wearing all the revealing clothing that's been in the back of their closets all winter. The air becomes thick with a cathartic explosion of desires and emotions that have been building steam, under pressure, for several months. Close your eyes for a moment and you can't help but sense the Amore that surrounds you. Even the rocks and plants seem to be horny as hell. It's almost a kind of mass hysteria. It's the sort of thing that can really only be achieved by shutting everybody inside from the snow all winter long.
Seriously, live in Minnesota all the way through April, and you'll discover why some people actually like it around here.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
That's not that uncommon a low actually. Here in Ontario, liquor stores (which are all government-run) were closed on Sundays until a few years ago. It was a fairly big thing the first Sunday they were open. By the same token, there was no Sunday shopping either.
Obviously, these types of laws are in place due to religious influences when the Catholic church had more political stroke in North America. It's the same deal in Utah, where Mormons have a lot of influence. The difference is that Ontario (specifically southern Ontario and Ottawa) is a very multicultural province. With this multiculturalism comes a vast array of religious beliefs. It was finally realized there were a lot of Jews who held Saturday as the Sabbath, not Sunday, and Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Atheists, Wiccans, and followers of every other religion, who had differing beliefs. So, by catering to the cries of one religion, the government was not being impartial, and ignoring a large, and growing section of the population. Hence, the laws were repealed. (True, it was more likely for economic purposes, but this works as a more PC reason).
This won't happen anytime soon in Utah, or anywhere across the Bible Belt, because of the strength of Mormons and other religious groups. As long as someone can get voted out of office because they want to change a law most vocal group in the state supports, they will refuse to change that law. Regardless of whether it makes sense or not.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
I think Utah won't attract a critical mass of tech (or other professional) people until its social norms are modified. I, for one, would love to live in the desert instead of the Northeast, but won't move to SLC because of the very conservative social atmosphere. It's certainly not the climate that keeps people away. SLC (and greater Utah) is not a choice as long as other alternatives exist such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc.
Hmmm, asides from the blurb he linked to in the SL Tribune, I haven't heard anything. Last I checked, my mailing address was in Utah.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
"For a 22 year old programmer, social life = bars, nightclubs, etc....or it equals hiking, biking and camping availability. For a 35 year old single worker, it probably equals the same thing..but for a married, 35 year old father of two, "social life" is really churches, youth football leagues and PTO meetings."
For this 22 year old programmer my social consists of Quake, IWD, Deus Ex, C&C..
:)
Before I move anywhere I always like to check out the prices, quality, and quantity of the pot in the area.
I am a geek and have a social life... why, for valentine's day, I bought my gf some new ram and we went to the local computer shack here to browse the hardware selection. On normal days, we walk hand-in-hand looking at eachother's palm(pilots)... We go out quite a bit... to the local cybercafe so we can surf the net in a different atmosphere.
ok. I'm getting ridiculous--nevermind.
Humorless sig goes here.
Hmmm... that does make some sense. But wouldn't it have made more sense to have more logical zoning restrictions and keep the residence areas and town square/hall/etc seperate? My friend ended up there and thinks it is really annoying. Can't pickup dry cleaning or look for a new stereo or anything on Sunday. For me, Sunday is when I get my stuff done. Of course the loophole is, sell some food and stay open. That's what Blockbuster does.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
These laws place ridiculous restrictions on:
- Business Hours (eg: it is illegal to be open on sunday in one NJ county unless you sell food)
- Alcohol (eg: no alcohol on sundays, or after 8pm, or before noon, or on a full moon)
- Free Speech (eg: anything judged pornographic and the whole "i know it when i see it" camp)
- Physical Activities (you'd be surprised how many states make it illegal to place certain parts of yourself in certain parts of your significant other or the fact that in some states it is actually illegal to live together without being married)
These laws never had a time or a place, they were just forced upon us by the "moral majority"... that, when you get down to it, isn't very moral at all.Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Interestingly, at the time I moved away, there was a flap in the making regarding how those confusing and annoying liquor laws would affect the 2002 winter olympics. For some reason, the liquor-oriented business in Utah think that visitors from all over the world won't like the fact that there are only a few places where you can get beer, and even fewer places for a mixed drink or wine. Imagine that.
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get your war on
The fact is, in Utah, the LDS church doesn't really have to overtly get involved in politics. Nearly all of the politicians (and most of their constituents) are LDS, so of course an LDS perspective dominates. That is to be expected, but it is no excuse for passing laws that enforce LDS morality for everybody.
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get your war on
This does not represent a trademark issue, it represents a (successful) use of church resources to codify religous tenets into law.
In any case, most of the cultures of the world are polygynous (read an anthropology book), as were the antecedents of Christian culture. LDS history is a telling point here. Defining marriage as between one man and one woman is a terribly narrow and blindered approach, both temporally and culturally.
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get your war on
One would think that LDS people would be sensitive to legal pressure brought to bear on nontraditional family arrangements. Polygyny is still the LDS ideal, despite the fact that it is not currently practiced (it is still the preferred family model of the LDS afterlife). The religious freedom of the LDS people was legally curtailed about 100 years ago, and now they're doing the same thing to someone else.
In my (obviously biased) opinion, the Church authorities and/or the membership in general are more concerned with being accepted as a mainstream Christian church than with standing up for what's right. LDS doctrine states that one of the prime events leading to the fall of Lucifer was his insistence that living humans should be *forced* to do what is right, while Jesus argued that people should be free to make their own choices, right or wrong. How LDS people justify the discrepancy between their doctrine and their actions is beyond me.
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get your war on
i can't smoke pot in a restaurant in north america and i don't complain, so get a fucking life and deal with the fact that you live in an oppresive right wing christian regime built to make rich people richer and put poor people in jail
Many companies locate where they are precisely because of this factor. Sam Walton often commented on how his location in Bentonville, Ark. weeded out those who weren't willing to really commit to Wal-Mart. On the other side, the recent run-up (and subsequent crash) in downtown office rents in major cities had a lot to do with techs and dot-coms locating in cities to be closer to their employees. So it's definitely relevant.
sulli
RTFJ.
For me it wasn't so much the nightlife as the general convenience and fun of living in SF. But the rule still applies - I like shopping on Haight St., others like good nightlife. Employers who locate in the middle of nowhere ignore these factors at their peril.
sulli
RTFJ.
Think for a moment slashdotters. Calling Alchohol Restrictions "rediculous" is obviously a matter of opinion. One of the great parts of our government is that local states/counties/cities are left alone to decide some matters for themselves. The local people take a vote and if the majority of the people wanted to outlaw owning a cat then the city could legally pass such an ordinance and owning a cat would be illegal....stupid? well i think so but if the majority doesnt then its not stupid. The same goes for alcohol, it has been proven over and over again that alcohol realted car accidents, public intoxication, personal injury etc, cases are lower in areas that have laws against selling of alcohol. These counties are safer to live in. That is a fact backed up by numbers. So in answer to the posters question, does this effect where you live? yes it does. You need to find an area with a majority of the people that agree with you on matters of this importance. I live in KY one of the greatest alcohol producing states in the nation, and some 85 percent of its counties are "dry". Yes its the Bible Belt, but that just means that people believe a certain thing and express it with their votes.
"...your future, make it a reality, all you have to do is fight for me"
Granted, this is all personal experience talking here, but from the LDS strongholds I visited there (including Salt Lake City), the people, not the laws were the problem.
If you're a tourist and don't walk around with an "Elder [insert your name here]" badge on, you're treated as if you have some horrible communicable disease, walk around drinking cheap whiskey from the bottle, smoke 38 packs of cigs a day and attempt to get their children going on it and want to have sex with anything that moves and some things that don't.
The skiing is nice, but not good enough to make me ever want to go back.
/tma
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My last run in with silly liquor laws was in New Hampshire. I still do not understand why, but I was not able to get a scotch at a motel bar/restaurant. Now, I am not a person who drinks a lot, nor am I a person who cannot have fun without incapacitating myself with alcohol. On the other hand, when I want a Chivas with my Guinness, I want it. This, along with the lack of adequate food means that I would never live in New Hampshire. I realize that New Hampshire is a small place, most people only live there to avoid taxes and go to Massachusetts for fun, but I am just not willing to go very far to dine and drink. To me driving more than a few miles to party is a waste of time.
I am a programer, I spend a lot of time on the computer, BUT that does not mean I don't like to have fun.
I enjoy going out to a club, or bar and having a few drinks. I enjoy having a beer at a restraunt. I would not take a job someplace where the laws try to govern what I do in my spare time.
I dont have a
I am a non-Mormon who grew up in Utah, and I am writing this from my desk at work in Salt Lake City.
Almost everything said in the preceeding message is a pile of horseshit.
When my brother lived in UT and worked for Novell, he lived in a suburb full of child-bearing age couples with many children, but none of them played outside where they might meet a gentile
When I was a child there was one family who would not let their children play with me as I was not a mormon. Yes, it was terrible. But they were allowed to play outside with all the mormon kids, and the other 50 mormon families had no problem with me.
If you order a Coke at a fast food joint, it's flat and nasty tasting, because it's the first one they've sold in a week.
Okay, several things:
1: Mormons drink coke. Cold caffine-containing beverages are okay, just not hot ones. It makes no sense to me either, but that's the rule. In fact, the local coke bottler (Swire Coca-Cola) is owned in part by the Mormon church. The mormon university "BYU" does forbid students from drinking caffine, but they are an exception.
2: Most mormons I know are addicted to coke even more than hackers. A mormon friend of mine goes into physical withdrawl without at least 2l of Mountain Dew per day.
3: Since fast food establishments mix CO2 and the syrup at the dispenser, it is impossible for the drink to be "flat and nasty tasting", unless all the drinks are flat.
I suppose it is possible you did have a brother who lived in Utah and told you these things, but he is either a liar or a fool. Also, Novell is located in Provo, which is so boring and full of Mormons that most of us stay away from the place.
There are fifteen people working here with me at a new Utah startup company, and only one mormon. My last company had 100 engineers and probably 20 non-engineers and was very mormon; about 60-70 percent (as they had hired most of their staff from an old company that was very mormon-dominated). But we had beer at are monthly picnics, and we all got along.
Salt Lake City is only about 40% Mormon. Yeah, the liquor laws are a pain, but hardly the end of the world.
However, location is very important to me and Utah would be one of the LAST places I'd voluntarily move to. The Liquor laws are just one part of it. I'm usually a 'Coastee' and need my salt water oceans to feel at home. Not to mention the one time I went to Utah to visit my sister, I almost died! the drivers in Utah suck!( And I'm not even going to mention the fat chicks!)
So rry...QwkHyenA=Pig. But, that's what therapy is for!
LFS. Have you built your system today?
People like you are precisely why you never see "moderators" and "crack-free" in the same sentence.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
I'm sorry, did he just mention 'geek' and 'social life' in the same sentence?
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
if your going to live life you might as well enjoy it. even if you had a better job that payed more you would not be able to enjoy the money.
That said, I once worked for a company that was planning to relocate all its scattered operations in one place. SLC was one of the final candidates, and I can tell you that probably 75% of my coworkers said flat-out, "I will quit before I will move there." It wasn't just liquor laws, though I'm sure that was a consideration to some extent. I think it was more the cultural aspect: People wanted to live someplace where a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints was accepted and welcomed. Many of my coworkers were atheists, and many are Jewish, and both those groups said they'd feel very uncomfortable living someplace where the church (any church) had such influence.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Of course my social life was important when I made a career choice. I worked as a roadie for almost 20 years. Getting paid to hang out in bars, drink heavily and leer at women? No questions there. I'd do it again if I wasn't so old.
- - - If the sun is a star, why can't I see it at night?
Correction: Hallucinogens and opiates are there to provide an escape from ordinary reality. Stimulants are taken for boosting alertness and keeping a person awake for longer periods of time, and their use is rampant in the professional world.
Coffee, anyone?
Of course, I personally have found that I am more productive and healthy if I take the occasional break from reality. That's why we have fiction, religion, sleep, and I try not to fault or condemn the people who rely on those things that I do not. This "occasional escape in my free time" argument seems to be the point he was making in his original post, not "drop acid and try to work on code", though his condemnation of those who choose not to use drugs was way too harsh and judgemental and certainly earned a heated response.
If you want to get a feeling for what I believe in, pick up some of Ayn Rand's books. I suggest "Virtue of Selfishness : A New Concept of Egoism " and "For the New Intellectual". "
Oh for Christ's sake....and you were dogging on him for being a flake. Look man, Ayn Rand was a big old crank fiend and her paranoid self-centered ideas attract social lepers the way continental philosophy attracts star-eyed undergrads. The only difference in these two opposing intellectual types is that the star-eyed undergrad actually has an active sex life and friends.
My greatest fear is going to work somewhere and not finding good social opportunities. You know its fun hanging out with the guys, but there is more to life than LAN parties, albeit not much ;^). Keep in mind the male/female ratio in the IT field is way out of balance, not that I would recommend office romances, but there is nothing worse than a pickle party. Besides women have their own unique way of keeping life interesting.
- "Not that I would say women have no character, but that they have a new character every day." (I don't remember the author)
LDS in SLC must be confusing DSL with LSD.
He does make a good point, however, you can work around certain things to fit your lifestyle.
I live and work in Colorado Springs and they have a law where you can not purchase alcohol from liquor stores on Sunday ("dry" city on sunday). So I work around it. I purchase everything I need on Saturday. If I'm not to drunk to remember. It is annoying though when I forget and if it ever becomes that big of a hassle I would consider moving and finding another job.
I work in Portland,OR and love it here. A firm in Salt lake would have to offer me considerably more than triple my current salary to even be considered. (Whereas a local Portland firm would not have to offer anywhere near as much).
It's nota my planet, monkey-boy - Dr Lizardo.
I most certainly do consider social and cultural life when deciding where to work. In addition to being a software engineer, I'm an artist. I also have a varied, active social life. Without my art and my social life, I'd soon be a basket case, burned out like entirely too many geek workaholics I've seen.
When considering a place of employment, I look at a number of factors:
Places like Utah with their restrictive drinking laws and other puritanical excesses clearly turn me off. OTOH, places like NYC with exorbitant cost of living and general hassle factor also turn me off.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
In other news, the CEO of Iomega, the company that makes those unreliable drives that are warrentied till "the end of their life", bitched today that he could not get drunk while bribing senators to save his companies ass.
Burn Hollywood Burn
The local liquor laws are silly, but mostly just take some getting used to. It isn't as if Utah is a 'dry' state. I think that those who aren't members of the LDS church would worry more about simply being surrounded by Moromons than about the liquor laws in particular.
Utah has a lot to offer to offset all the strangeness if you are into skiing, hiking, mountain biking, or rock climbing. However if you like big cities, or can't stand the lack of diversity, then Utah isn't for you.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I have to partly disagree w/Shoeboy, though I know it's a matter of aesthetics.
:)
First off, where I agree:
I hate winters. I hate being cold. As such, I am not happy in Utah in the winter. Utah is only nice between April and October (southern Utah gets sort of a break, as parts of it can be tolerable in the winter). It's also mostly ugly in the winter, except in the places where the snow doesn't melt into a turgid brown.
Second of all: some parts of Utah really do look like Tatooine. The drive between SLC and Nevada on I-80 is one of them. I went camping out at Iosepa (and old 1800s Hawaiian LDS colony town, now long since in ruins) this last summer, and the heat was terrible, and the land was pretty barren.
But if you do some looking, an interesting thing happens. You can find places that are absolutely beautiful. Some of them might take some aesthetic adjustments to appreciate -- for example, and acquiantence of mine who hailed from the florid east took two years to finally see there was beauty in "a bunch of rocks" (by which she meant: the mountains, Zion's Nat'l park, Arches, etc) -- but some of the monoliths and arches that appear in the landscape are just spectacular. And as you get up into some of the mountains, you really do see a lot of interesting vegetation, and even some real forests. Wildflowers in the cirques and meadows upon timp are a sight to behold. The waterfalls I found in the Uintahs last summer were delightful. And in the summer, when the trees have leaves and the inversion isn't there, the valleys where most of the cities are (Provo, Salt Lake, Ogden) are even pretty.
Of course, I'm already sick of the dominant political philosphy pushing unlimited growth and "progress" here, and basically trying to make all the mistakes they made in Los Angeles as far as development goes. So please: DON'T MOVE HERE. They've turned enough fruit orchards into strip malls in my area.
But feel free to visit.
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Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Hope you're not implying that the only reasons to restrict alcohol use are religious.
Frankly, I think the amazing thing is that society is as tolerant of it as they are, considering the bevy of ill effects that come along with it.
Yes, the associated conviviality is well and good.
The relaxation benefits can be real. But most of the ex-drinkers I know feel like even those benefits were crutches, and worth giving up along with the downsides. Sometimes, legislators feel the same way.
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Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
church doctrine is fundamentally racist. (e.g. Native Americans' darker skin and pretty much their entire culture being a punishment from God is part of the basic story of the Book of Mormon)
Common misconception, even among some LDS churchgoers. Maybe that's how you picked it up.
First off, the "darker skin" that one culture was apparently given was NOT the punishment. The punishment was the loss of the spirit of God, and the divine communication and direction associated therewith (this makes sense, if you're going to reject the idea that it exists, then you lose it. That's what the people/culture in question did, roughly). According to the text, the darker skin was affected to differentiate clearly who belonged to what camp and discourage intermingling between the two cultures that had some fundamental historical and spiritual differences going back to a severe family problem.
Second off, if you actually read the Book of Mormon all the way through, it becomes pretty clear that being good/bad is completely independent of skin color. The lighter guys are sometimes bad guys. The darker guys are sometimes good guys. And the cultural/racial differences that followed from lineage are eventually completely disregarded and nearly erased.
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Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
First off, Bruce: do you ever go outside? Have you not, perhaps, noticed, that Utah really is first rate for outdoor recreation activities? If you're into clubbing, no, this is not the place to come, but there are other sorts of recreation. And some of it here in Utah is first rate. Zion's nat'l park. Arches. Uintah national forest. To say nothing of skiing and snowboarding.
Second: have you ever tried to get alcohol in Utah? Getting into one of the "private clubs for members" where drinks are served is pretty easy. Grabbing a six pack is even easier.
Third: I do consider my social life when I apply for a job. Mostly, though, I look for flexibility in terms of schedule and vacation and weekly hours no greater than 40. That's what social life means to me: I get time off. My job is NOT my life. Are you doing that? Try offering a month of vacation to your engineers and tell them they only occasionally will have to work overtime. You'll probably get a decent response.
Fourth: Are you aware that there's a fairly large talent pool endemic to Utah? There's 3 universities here with student bases of over 20,000 and more than decent engineering schools. Some of these people want to leave (me), but I'd expect that many of them wouldn't mind staying.
Gripe, gripe, gripe. Engineering is a high-demand profession at the moment. Attracting good talent is hard. Find the strengths of the place you're located at, make your corp a happy place to work for, and get over it. Hell, serve drinks at work, if it's that important to you.
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Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
I was about to post something sarcastic, to the effect of, "Who would want a bunch of living-for-the-weekend alcoholics to work for his company anyway?" But there is a truth behind this story.
When I graduated from college and started considering places whither I could move and work, I considered a number of cities other than Seattle. I _did_ get a message from a company in Salt Lake City, expressing interest in interviewing me; I didn't take it seriously for a second. Why? Because it's _Salt Lake City_. Mormonville. My father was born there, escaped when he was young, and has never expressed the slightest sign of homesickness for the city of his birth.
An older and wiser friend of mine did point out that any city of Salt Lake City's size is going to be less parochial and more cosmopolitan than I might suspect; "It's not Ogden," I remember he said. All the same, I couldn't think of a good reason why any self-respecting coffee-drinking, liberal-voting queer should move to the land of the Latter-Day Saints and Sen. Orrin Hatch, when there were other options open to me.
(Yet I never seriously considered San Francisco either, partly because I didn't want to have to try to afford San Franciscan rents.)
I'm not too sorry I chose Seattle, although I think if I knew what I know now, I would have moved to Portland instead. Less pretentious, a better highway system, and cheaper; and I wouldn't have to put up with overcompensating nerds like Paul Allen trying to remake the city the way they like. Say what you will about Bill Gates; at least he's not trying to prove to the world that he really _is_ cool, because he likes the Seahawks and Jimi Hendrix.
hyacinthus.
Ahh, and of course a rich and powerfull organization would never dare to do anything illegal.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Don't know why this is relevent but I'm Irish and if I my drinking options were restricted, I probably would have a career.
Blessed are the pun makers, they shall inherit the mirth
Liquor laws aren't an issue for me when choosing a job, but social life is. I like a place to have pleanty to do, movies, arts, theater, etc. But more importantly is proximity to friends and family, is it going to be a 2-4 hour drive, a flight what when I want to visit.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
No. A career to me is just a way to make money. I'm a professional programmer, but the only reason I do it is because it pays well. I generally don't like other programmers, because most are about as interesting as a wet sock. My career is not my life.
I personally, would never work/live in Utah for precisely this reason. But of course, I would'nt work in any other highly religious area. I don't care how good the job is. If I can't go out after work or on the weekend with my honey to grab a few drinks, then it's not worth living there.
From what I understand, Alaska has virtually unenforced marijuana laws. That's a large reason why I'm moving there.
I think I would not hesitate if the interest of the project is good. However, you think that Utah is restrictive ? Look at what happens in Saudi Arabia for all these Microsoft employees! Do you think Linux would be flexible enough to handle these requirements ?
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
I never go out drinking so liquor laws don't really affect me. But let's take something I do like: books. I don't scope out the library at my new location, I just move. If the nearest library is no good, check the next nearest--or a used bookstore, or whatever. School no good? Get on the school board and fix it. No good clubs? Grow up and stop wasting your time.
What's the saying? "An unreasonable man changes the environment to suit HIM." I'm unreasonable.
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
"Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Career?"
I thought this was going to be a question about " marketers get the babes" vs "bankers have more meaningful relationships".
Turns out you REALLY mean to write "Do You Consider Your Social Life When You Choose A Location?" Which, of course, is totally unrelated to computers, technology or anything resembling "News for Nerds".
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
happiness
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
It isn't that mormonism freaks everyone out (well, actually it does) but that they thrust their ideas and living standards on everyone around them. I hate it when a mormon says "please don't swear around me" God! Why can't I have the right to free speech to say god! whenever I want? Or, how about the condescending looks one gets when seen in Provo, or Orem, or SLC, drinking a coke, or a beer? You are shunned in Utah for those things. You see, your beliefs in being a super missionary religion dictate that you try to force your views on the rest of the world. You preach it. Your semi annual conferences thrust your mission in your face. 19? bye bye for 2 years. No choice. That is your religion. It revokes choice by using fear on its members. Worse, it then turns outword, and does the same damn thing to everyone else around them. Proof? Give us 10% of your money or you won't get to have sex in the next life. That is your basis of motivation in the mormon religion.
People slam mormons for another reason as well. The religion in which they believe has been debunked by everyone from the Smithsonian to International archeologists of great respect. Their books are fiction. And the leaders know it.
About those mormons I work with (or, rather used to). Everyday beliefs always seeped into their work. I had an accounting department head who tried to get everything for free, while working obscene hours to make as much money as possible. So, he demanded free work and services, and in turn pinched every penny he could for himself. I had this same problem with a certain glass company in Provo Ut that actually cut our piece rate so that they could raise the pay of the owner's sons! Don't tell me it isn't the fault of the dominant religion. It most certainly is. Your 'zion' is the toilet bowl of major US cities. And mormonism is the major reason for it.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
The problem is, the area is growing by leaps and bounds, and most of the new comers are not conservative or mormon. They want things to change, and yet, they can't get anything changed. This religion has the state in a vise. It does not allow for freedom of anything except being mormon.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Yes, but your church makes everyone aware that they are conservative and typically republican. Remember, far worse than the church being in Utah, is the fact that the culture of the church reigns supreme. If you took that culture away, the place would be more bearable.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Absolutely. Why would I want to live in a community where the society frowns on anything not like them, or worse, a society that legislates that frowning.
SLC was terrible from the religious bias, and the social dysfunction. I have lived all over the US, and it was one of the worst places I have ever been for discrimination on account of religion, or anything not 'them' (read: mormon)
Your state will remain back-ass-words until the religous ropes that throttle it are lossened.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
That's ad hominem, but I'll let it slide to make my point:
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has been saying the same thing for years. Who's more geeky than an atomic scientist?
How many geeks consider themselves to be programming gods, whose glorious work will endure forever (aside from the geeks who left us the Y2K legacy to clean up, because clearly they weren't thinking long term)? Secondarily, how many modern westerners (including a large proportion of geeks) have multiple partners over the course of their lives? In what way is serial monogamy a superior morality to polygamy, if all parties concerned are consenting adults?
Apparently, someone didn't keep those vows, or you wouldn't know about that part of the ceremony. In any case, many religious and non-religious traditions include both explicit and implied consequences for failure to adhere to the standards of the group. Ask any soldier about the consequences of failure to abide by an oath to uphold principles. And, it should be noted, that only fully-informed adults who want to make a clear commitment to their faith are making these vows. Finally, as you noted, the part about tongues and guts is no longer a part of the ceremony.
By definition, a majority of people believing these things would mean that only a minority of people would be discomfited. That logical fallacy aside, you are correct. Most people are uncomfortable with these ideas. Which is why members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continue to be a minority except in places like Utah (outside of Salt Lake City), southeastern Idaho and northern Arizona.
MacOS, Windows, BeOS, GNOME, KDE: they're all just Xerox copies
Atlanta is a quickly growing area for the tech industry, and has the highest number of strip clubs (which are all-nude and serve alcohol) per capita in the nation. Coincidence? I think not.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
When searching for a job, the first thing I decided was where I wanted to live. I chose Boston for both it's technology and it's atmosphere. Then I did a focused search for a job. I wouldn't even consider SLC strictly because of it's social atmosphere.
Who would consider moving anywhere without taking into account the social aspect?
I would also hazard a guess that the percentage of Bible thumpers is lower among geeks/scientists/engineers than the general populace.
hi all (george here)
i think if i were to move to a new city for a new job i would HAVE to look at liqour laws. i mean as an employer you don't want drunks as employees, i mean you don't get much done at meetings if everybody is PLASTERED!! but still reasonable drinking is definitely a requirement and i would never EVER EVER take a job where i had to live in a place like FUNDY VILLE where alcohol was banned and you could be put in jail for discussing the theorys of stephen hawking.
this is one of the things that companys NEED to consider when they decide where to locate themselves. you will NOT attract people if you are in an area where there is no entertainment or high toxicity in the water. so do not put your company in the middle of montana or anywhere even near new jersey!! put it in a place where REAL people want to work and live, where REAL people will be happy to move to!! avoid places with crappy shitty weather and ridiculous laws that curb drinking potential. AVOID all places that restrict basic human rights and FREEDOM in this way. remember that if you are looking for high tech workers many of them will REQUIRE freedom and the american way and so they will shy away from the shackles of religious or environmental or corporate censorship. my wife wanted to move us to tulsa and i was like "NO WAY" we are not moving to tulsa.
your bud
-gbd
hi coward (george here)
I also live and work in Utah, and the regulations are enough to drive anyone who wants an occasional drink insane.
are you saying that the liqour laws are so bad they drove you to drink!! hehehehehe!!
your bud
-gbd
My wife used to work at a Walmart here in the Texas panhandle. For several months, she did the overnight shift.
Now, the way Texas's blue laws work, you cannot buy alcohol period after 2 A.M. After 12 A.M. you can only buy from a bar, and after 9 P.M. you cannot buy from liquor stores. This means no hard alcohol for mixers after 9 and 24 stores like Walmart and Albertsons have to refuse alcohol purchases after midnight and until noon on Sundays. This *really* makes sense in a state where the biggest pastime is sitting around the tube watching football all day sunday with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other.
As you can imagine, the Mrs. got some very angry customers who couldn't buy alcohol when they wanted to.
One day, a former Texas Representitive walked into the store at 4 A.M. Sunday morning. He picked up several bottles of wine, and a couple nice cases of beer. He was getting ready for an all day family get together, see?
So when my wife told him that no, he could *not* buy the booze, he slapped himself on the forehead and said, "I just had to sign on that renewal bill, didn't I?"
Most legislation is passed by people who aren't even paying attention to what they're doing.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
That job sounds like a good reason to move to Utah to me...can anyone get in, or is it by invite only? I'm gonna have a hard time concentrating at my normal job after seeing this one
You rush a Miracle Man, you get rotten miracles - Miracle Max, TPB
Of course, that's just what I've heard, I don't claim personal experience. YMMV.
OK,
- B
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http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
I am an active Mormon, so I am a little bothered by the anti-mormon attitude throughout these postings. The problems with Salt Lake (and I acknowledge there are many) have very little to do with the particular religion and everything to do with the face that everyone is a member of that religion. I grew up in a predominatly catholic community, and they had many of the same problems. The problem is in the lack of diversity, and you can see the same problems come up anywhere the vast majority of the population holds the same, strong religous (or political for those you take their politics very seriously) beliefs. If you don't believe me, take a look around you. Chances are pretty good that one of you co-workers is one of those fanatical mormons you are talking about...
I lived there for years of my life before finally moving to Austin last summer. I'm so glad I did. Got tired of hugeness of the city (takes 1.5 hours going 80 mph to cross it), the heat and humidity and the fact that there really is not much of a nightlife there.
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i have yet to meet a CS, EET or any sort of Tech person who doesnt LOVE to get drunk.... HI FRANTZEN!!!!!!!!!
Hash Bang Slash Bin Slash Bash
During my last job hunt, I got several serious offers from SLC. I barely even considered them. The pay and benefits were competitive, but the community wasn't. I don't go to the bar that frequently, but I sure would hate to live somewhere where I didn't have the option.
If you want me to work in Salt Lake City, you'd better pay me enough to get the hell out of there with great regularity. We're talking 12 weeks paid vacation and a big buffer in my salary for plane tickets and what-not. Otherwise, I'm going to take the job in the city without a religious bug up its butt.
A city run by morons...ah mormons can't expect to attract the same diverse demographic seen in almost all other cities. I know after countless hours of signal analysis I need a beer, in a nice bar, without some silly membership. I've visited my ski bum buddies there, unless your supplying the party forget it.
-The more you learn, the more things you realize you don't know-
you are a social non-smoker!
In my opinion, sure, things like alcohol laws and access to social activities (both of which are in short or just nasty supply in Utah) are very important to where I'd move for a job. When I'm done coding some large project for Iomega, I'm going to want to go out and ingest one or eight strong drinks to forget the workplace for a little while. Not only that, but these laws are indictive of other things such as the lines between church and state (and let's face it, when your state is definitely Mormon in the majority, these lines will be very blurred), government control, fellow citizen's attitudes, et cetera.
Know what I'd recommend? Head east about six hours to the beautiful state of Colorado. We are the microbrew capital of America (i.e., no "Captain Bastard's"-brand beer like in Utah -- no kidding), have an exponentially increasing tech corridor within short drives to the mountains, and dammit, it's FUN out here (also, per the concerns of this person, it's GREAT here. ;)
Utah is great to an extent, and I'll certainly head out there once a year to go backpacking, but living there? Nah. Iomega, move your operations out here and you'll get your engineers. We are also one of the more laid-back states, that's for sure. Stay out of Colorado Springs (home of Focus on the Family, which otherwise tarnishes a great city and my former hometown) and your religious, social, and living views won't matter much more than an iota, neither will anyone else's.
Ryan
"All your base are belong to this file I send in order to have your advice."
Contrast that with the town I came from (Tulsa, OK) where, at the time, there was NO other option if you were (as I was) laid off - you had to leave town just to secure a job.
As to the underlying culture and laws promoting business, I dunno, he MAY have a point. But, I'm here because the jobs are.
Display some adaptability.
dave@eyes# man sociallife /etc/rc.d/init.d/sociallife start
no man entry found
dave@eyes# locate sociallife
dave@eyes# which socialife
dave@eyes#
Operation failed
dave@eyes#
DAMMIT! I tried everything! Oh well... back to hangin with my friend Bash....
--Dave
This article implies that techies don't move to Utah because of strict liquor laws. So does techie=drinker always? Personally, I find that hard to believe. I'm an engineer, I don't drink, and I'm sure there are others out there like me, even outside of Utah. Again, the fact that I don't drink probably biases my opinion, so take what you will.
People with similar social habits will group together to enjoy those same social habits together. The majority of the U.S. already has bars and other facilities for those who drink. Don't you think it's only fair that those of us who don't drink should have a place to group where drinking is not THE social thing to do? And if we're in the minority, and we all end up in Utah, so be it. Everybody will be happy doing what they want to do. The non-drinkers can all be together without being bothered by the drunk people, and the rest of the nation can party as hard as they want.
This is not a troll. This is my actual opinion.
Let the flames begin! :-)
this reminds me of watchin that movie SLC punk. bunch of young punks hated the liquor laws so they just drove to wyoming to get all their beer and liquor.
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Tres_Status
stephen
I won't go so far as to call the idea unAmerican, but to geographically insulate yourself from different opinions and mores, that's just not for me. They're welcome to stay out there, I'd rather find a nice warm melting pot thank you. I've always found having such a large country to be the best asset of the USA - don't like it here, move on somewhere else. There's country to spare. That's always been my philosophy.
If you're stupid enough to open a factory in the desert (with only Mormons for 1000 miles), eat some sand.
It's probably more the problem that Salt Lake City, and Utah as a whole, has few redeeming characteristics other than the high population of LDS folks (and that's only a benefit for other LDS folks). Imagine you're a CEO:
"I could set up shop in the Silicon Valley, a scant 30 minute drive from San Francisco, one of the coolest places on Earth, right next to all my business partners, or I could go out to the barren desert of Utah where it smells like rotten eggs half the year from the big smelly lake."
Which would you choose?
I personally only came to New York after I made sure there were enough dumpsters to sleep in, and the urinals had plenty of cigarette butts to smoke. After that, does anything even matter?
"I don't mind the swelling, it's the itching I could do without."
hoping your rules and wisdom choke you, since 1976
Open container? No problem.
24/7 purchasing? Yes, please.
Hard liquor availability? Try convenience stores, supermarkets, and just about anywhere else! (There's a drive-through daiquiri store not three miles from the house I grew up in.)
Laissez les bons temps roullez, indeed!!!
hoping your rules and wisdom choke you, since 1976
I don't smoke but I still think you are a whiny prick. You'll never be happy until you buy an oxygen tent and wrap it around your head. Solution: Stop going to little league games just to sit in your car in a self righteous tizzy.
I am a smoker, I have become very tolerant of non-smokers. I do not smoke inside my home, I don't smoke in front of children in public places ( even in a resturant that allows smoking as consideration to them ). But I do not tolarate any body telling me that I can not smoke in my favorite watering hole, unless of course they ask me nicely.
Being polite is half of the battle. I might be a small person, but hell if I'm going to let you stop me from smoking unless you ask politely.
Last year, in a bar that I go to every week to play pool, A man about 6'3" tall and just about as mean looking as you could get said very loudly "put that cigarette out or I'll put you lights out" needless to say I look at him and said very nicely "if you say please" and keeped on smoking.
A standoff can be very dangerous things, and in a bar that has poll tables... well enough to say that it can get mighty nasty. Needless to say, there was enough tension in the air.
In this situation their was only 2 solutions (well 3 ), I snuff out or he say's please. I came up with a third. I approached him with a lit cig and said "I'll shot you for it" Saved him and myself face.
No fight, no lit cig, best out of 7 racks for the win. I couldn't smoke for those games and he couldn't curse. Loser had to quit grumbling.
I won fair and square, he then bought me a beer and said very loudly (and to my surprise) "please don't smoke" and I politely told him to go to hell and put out my cigarette.
If all you non-smokers just ask politely, I bet 99 out of 100 smokers would put out there cigarette in seconds flat. Just because you asked nicely.
ONEPOINT
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I would call Mormonism more of a cult than a church due to the secretive nature of some their religious practices. (Not to mention the polygamist marriage practices that do happen out there). That's the reason I wouldn't move to Utah, despite any laws that may be on the books there. Sorry if I offend any Mormons on /., but that would be my reasoning for not wanting a job in Utah.
When taking a job that involves a relocation, you absolutely should consider aspects other than job responsibilities. Unless you spend 24/7 at the office, you want to live somewhere where you can have some fun (whatever that may be). I just took a job that has me relocating to Houston. I turned down IBM because I didn't want to live in NY with its high state and local income taxes. Everything is a factor.
Space Invader... Lurker of the Far and Beyond. Welcome to my Realm...
Just as background, I've lived in a few large European cities and now I reside in St. Louis. These are all very different places with varying degrees of social amenities, be those amenities party-oriented or facilities of a healthier nature. I've had a great time in every place, but surprisingly (to me at least), St. Louis, smaller than the rest and alleged to be a conservative mid-Western city, is inching out the others to top the list! I really think that who you are and how you approach your social life is much more important than what's available in the area. Of course, meeting good, friendly people always helps... and St. Louis has those by the boatload.
I personally spent the majority of my university years whilst studying continental philosophy under the influence of LSD.
Question is, we know that drugs and the artistic professions go hand in hand - what about drugs and the rational, engineering professions like Software Engineering?
I would argue that they do, but only in moderation. Drugs can be considered a break from the rational world for the mathematical software developer, and when he returns from his blissful trip he is all the more ennabled to take on the rational world, and emulate it.
Through escaping it occassionally, he can better understand it.
Drugs and software development are a natural match, so much so that I am suspicious of those who do not take drugs. Are they really creative or bold enough? No, they are cowards, afraid of the unknown and unwilling to expirement.
I would never employ a drug free software developer. Such a person is just a drudge. Only the bold, the Human Becomings rather than the Human Beings, are for me.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
The state of Utah is probably the best for the outdoor recreationalist geek-incredible mountain climbing, rock climbing, and skiing are all within minutes of downtown (repeat-MINUTES).
The state of Utah is also arguably the scariest socially- they have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation yet the state legislature (which is church controlled-make no mistake...they tell you who to vote for) voted NOT to teach sex ed in schools. I have met 19 year old women that do NOT understand how conception occurs. The legislature voted not to appoint a special poligamy prosecutor in utah, though they have a lot of it around...
The state sold the church a big section of main street, which the church promptly went and blocked off and ripped up. People will ask you not to walk down the PUBLIC sidewalk in front of the temple if your appearances aren't up to the standards of the church.
Now don't get me wrong. In all fairness the people I dealt with on an individual basis were all very friendly and enjoyable. But when they get together their actions are somewhat appalling. I left to keep from starting trouble with people who's actions and thoughts I could simply NOT BELIEVE, not because of any liquor laws...
Church and state are to be seperated for a reason...
you think it's easy, but you're wrong...
I remember very clearly the last time I was in Salt Lake, visiting my very-mormon sister. A good cup of coffee was next to impossible to find! How does a state expect to attract geeks without a cornucopia of caffinated beverages?
--
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
i think that sums it up quite nicely...
you are what you is -- FZ
This is my personal experience. I was born in the Seattle area, but moved to Utah for college (full tuition scholarship). After a few low-paying tech jobs in Utah I was offered a one year networking contract at a software company in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After the one year Imoved back to Utah. I couldn't find ANYTHING!! It was very discouraging. I thought that I had good skills and a great resume, but I couldn't get a decent job. After two months my brother recommended Arizona and within a week I had four offers paying WAY more than Utah. So after a year and a half in Arizona, I had to laugh when I see these articles about "Utah not finding enough qualified engineers". Pay me more than minimum wage, and I might think about it.
As an earlier reader commented, spot on.. As far as Europe goes, Germany and Italy..
Germany: pretty decent working hours (mostly 9-5, even for software engineers).. huge holidays (try 6 weeks paid vacation ;o), great country to travel, hike, mountain climb (I was in Munich, which is 45 min driving away from the Bavarian Alps, beats Lake Tahoe hollow ;o))
Italy : Nice place to work in, a bit chaotic, but quite ok.. lots of things, especially culture to absorb, and the women are quite simply 'da bomb'... ;o) the southern part has pretty good weather as well, so useful for lazing around in a beach... when you get some time off, that is..
US: sorry guys.. I'm on a visa here.. and the tech is awesome, the pay is good and I lurrrve the bandwidth, but.... its not quite the same as Europe... so overall, I'd probably settle for Europe...
just my $0.02 ;o)
I live in the Bay Area bkz I like the way I can live here. It's all abt the lifestyle. I work for companies here bkz they're convenient. I'm a techie and I could probably get a job anywhere in the world that techies get jobs.
But liquor laws have nothing to do with it. As far as I can tell Utah is a theocracy, and an insane one at that. They have a porn czar, for God's sake. And she's a 40-yr-old virgin. In any sane country the woman would either be treated for whatever psychological issues she has or left to resolve them on her own. She wouldn't be given a government mandate to crack down on pornography.
Not that any sane countries exist, as far as I can tell.
Hehe.. sounds like a place I would not live. I despise the government's so called "quality of life" laws. They suck. It's just the government trying to nose into people's private lives. Just from the statement made above ("random drug tests, 3 percent alcohol, membership req'd for clubs that server alcohol"). That would definately affect my desire to move to that city. I may not drink too much, and when I do, it's not in a bar usually, but I disagree with those fascist beliefs, and would not subject myself to them. So, yea, it would definately affect my choosing of a job...
Place sig here.
Of course you have to consider a social life when choosing your carreer. After all, a job is only something that helps support a social life.
As to "confusing liquor laws," I doubt that's the main problem. I am unfamiliar with the laws in question, but I'm sure it's not impossible to get a drink.
Salt Lake City just has a reputation of being nothing but Mormon. I know I wouldn't want to live there.
My apologies to any Mormons or people from Salt Lake City.
Utah is a good place to live if: 1. you are Republican 2. you hold strong Christian values 3. If you agree that Big Business should have a heavy influence in state government policy(or does that refer back to #1?) None of this, however, guarantees that people will be nice to you or treat you with mutual respect, even if you fit into one of the three categories above. My experience with Utah has been overwhelmingly negative, which I see as a shame because it can be a very beautiful place to live and work.
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!" - a dog
With a computer science degree in hand, I am now searching for greener pastures. And I find myself asking this very same question of myself, "Do issues like liquor laws and social life really affect where engineers and programmers want to work?"
Unfortunately, I probably fit the computer science geek stereotype closer than I care to say. I've spent my fair share of Friday nights behind my monitor coding whatever pet project that had caught my interest that week. However, I'm still a healthy single twenty year old that likes to go out with girls and dance and drink!
So today I've spend another day on the net, searching for companies that would be the "perfect match". And too tell you the truth, the city the company in is more important to me right now than the company itself. Being downsized has really made me bitter to the corporate scene. Therefore, I value my time away from the office more than time spent in it. Which means I don't want to live in a boring town or an oppressive environment that won't let me enjoy my free time in a manner that I find enjoyable.
Shameless self promotion ----->
And for anybody that wants to give a young software developer a job, you can view my resume at www.thomasmis.com/resume.
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Where do you put the washrooms? Do you make the non-smokers walk through the smoking section to get to the washrooms? That doesn't work for me. Or, do you put the washrooms in the non-smoking section? And if so, how do you make sure the smokers kill their smokes before they walk through?
There is a social cost to smoking that is not born by the smoker. For instance, smoking raises the cost of everyone's health insurance.
Yes, I don't like it. I _really_ don't like it. Why the heck should I be tolerant of it? Why the heck shouldn't I spell out in detail how disgusting and repugnant smoking is?
Yes, governments around the world are hooked on the taxes on Tobacco products. I believe that most of the retail price of smokes in the UK is some form of tax.
But you seem to be saying that since the government takes a cut you have somehow paid in advance for the right to make a big fat mess.
You will have to try a lot harder if you are going to convince me that you paid enough.
Smoking is very costly. You say that smokers pay for a third of the National Health System? Do you think that that means it is OK for British smokers to put the health of non-smokers at risk? Do you think that those taxes cover the full, real, social cost of smoking? Over and above the extra inroads smokers make on the NHS please add the extra inroads made to the health system from the effects of second hand smoke. Please add the social cost of orphaned children, whose parents died from smoking related diseases. Please add the social cost of the lost productivity when smokers poor health makes them call in sick. Please add the social cost of the lost productivity when smokers have to rush out to sneak a smoke. Then there are fires. Careless smoking causes fires. And it might seem trivial, but smoking is a dirty habit. It is costly to clean up cigarette butts, empty ashtrays, replace scorched floor tiles, windows and walls get a yellow stain.
Then there is the social cost of the unpleasantness factor. Who the heck gave you the right to set the cost of the revulsion being exposed to smoke engenders in me?
Salt Lake City is the last place on the entire planet I would ever consider living. They'd have to be paying mega-salaries to convince me to live there for any length of time. I visited once and the place is clearly run by backward, religious nutcases. I'd rather live in Texas and that saying a lot (Texas being backward redneck central).
I'm not an alcohol drinker, but the alcohol laws and how late clubs can stay open invariably reflect the level of general tolerance and degree of conservatism of a place.
I currently live in downtown SLC and there are three pubs within one block from my apartment. There are dozens more within four blocks. I can get virtually any kind of booze imagineable at most of them.
It's got nothing to do with liquor laws -- it's just easier to blame the liquor laws than to blame the closed-minded social environment that has resulted from over a hundred years of influence from the Mormon religion.
Mormons are highly unusual bible-thumpers. In fact the bible is really secondary to them. Mormonism resembles more of a very large scale cult and members will do just about anything -- including sacrificing their freedom and dignity -- to fit into the religious hierarchy. Something like eighty percent of Utah's population are members of the church. That translates into eighty percent of the people not thinking for themselves, but blindly following the orders of old, conservative white-boys. Needless to say it creates an unwelcome environment for those of us who'd rather do our own thinking.
It's really this unpleasant and shallow social atmosphere that turns most people off -- not the liquor laws. But maybe blaming the liquor laws is just Mr. Albertson's way of saying what I just said, without actually having to say it.
I would personally have serious doubts about trying to raise kids in Utah. Probably the only way to raise normal kids here is to live near downtown SLC and have them attend a private school. For me it's not a problem right now because I don't plan on having kids anytime soon.
On the other hand, the reason I DO live in SLC is because of the diverse outdoor experiences that the geography of Utah offers. And much of it is only a stone's throw away from the metro area. Furthermore, the ratio of Mormons to normal people in SLC is actually only about 40% (much lower than the state-wide average) -- and it's consistently dropping each year. So yes, it is getting better. And for the Snowboarding and Rockclimbing it is well worth it!
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
Actually, I would say that it matters. Some of us nerds actually choose to go out and be social sometimes, instead of just reading slashdot. Slashdot is as much as forum for discussion (among nerds) as it is a place for news. The quote in the slashdot logo is not by any means dogma. Take off every SIG...err...ZIG.
What I want to know is this: why would someone going into a tech job even consider what kind of social life that they would lead? I mean, I know that this would matter to most people, but tech people are a special case.
For example, how many programmers do you know that actually get out much? I bet RMS doesn't do much outside of GNU, just look at his website.
Although I must concede that the stricter alcohol laws in Utah might have an adverse affect, seeing as many jobs such as tech support are depressing and stressful enough to cause drinking and other drug problems.
Is your company running tools written by ma
--Later, friends--
--Later, friends--
Frogisis, Master of
I work for a company that has an office out in SLC Utah. We certainly have this problem, we can't hire anyone who isn't all ready out there. Anyone we hire and want to put in that office turns it down as soon as they here it is in Utah. They don't want the liquor, sex, etc restrictions that the Mormons try to force on everyone out there. It's been impossible to get anyone to work there that isn't Mormon or all ready living there. I have to say that I myself if faced with that decision would turn it down. Who wants to give up booze and women for a job???????
And a good portion of the rest of us aren't. For double my salary, I'd move to fucking alaska. For a little while anyway. Not that i like money....
Was this just a rhetorical question?
If you have a life outside of work, then of course you're going to consider it when selecting a job.
If you don't have a life outside of work, then your job is your social life, so it would be impossible to choose one without considering the other.
Either way, you've taken your social life into consideration.
'nuff said.
Of course programmers and engineers desire a social life. While this fact is obvious, it has been overlooked repeatedly by the open source development community. In fact, it is accurate to say that open source requires that a programmer give up his social life.
Programmers are human. They need to eat, and they need shelter. These things are not free. Thus, to pay for them, programmers must work. Unfortunately, the only way to make money programming is to work for a closed source company.
When is the work supposed to be accomplished on the open source projects, then? The assumption is that the programmers will spend their free time hunched in front of a computer, coding away at something for the 'community'.
This is cruel. People need fresh air, and time with their friends. They need time to unwind and relax. Programmers are no code machines; they are people. Too often this gets lost, though, by proponents of open source methodology.
- qpt
--
Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
what's weird is Salt Lake City is only about 25% mormon and Utah state is roughly only 50%.
It's amazing how so few people can obviously influence their community so much.
Iomega's CEO would like to blame his problems on Utah's drinking laws but the real problem is that Iomega is in Roy, Utah. Roy is a "suburb" of Ogden which barely tops out at 100,000 people. It's hard to attract people when you are trying to bring them to fast-paced Roy, Utah.
The liquor laws have nothing to do with it. If I had a big company and was trying to attract top engineers to the happening town of Pueblo, Colorado(also population 100,000), where you can buy a drink anytime, it would be just as tough. That's because small towns aren't exciting, glamorous places to live. People would be just as reticent to move to Pueblo or Roy. It's not the liquor laws it's the whole lifestyle issue that comes with living in a small town.
Most of the liquor law griping comes from anti-Mormon bigotry. People don't like living around Mormons so they vent on the liquor laws. To put that in perspective, who would like to come on Slashdot and gripe about living in New York because of all of the racial minorities there?
And thats exactly why I encourage people to stay away from the SF Bay area. There is nothing left here culturally. Every nook and cranny is filled with a wanna be tech company. Of course you can join the affluent flight and move further out, but I won't consider driving 3 hours to work.
Perhaps there should be a slashdot database of nerd living locations. We can see what area is the real karma hog.
Yes, I considered social life very carefully before moving to Utah. There's some of the best climbing in the world here. The cost of living is low. The air is (relatively) clean, as is the water. My commute is 5 minutes, compared to a daily 15 miles/1 hour commute on the East Coast. Besides, I don't drink much ;-)
I was born in Utah and lived there all my life until two years ago. Since I was not a member of the LDS faith, I was subjected to years of both subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination. The LDS people in Utah are clannish, unfriendly, and feel that the State of Utah is theirs to do with as they please. If you complain, or try to change things (ie: their asinine liquor laws) the most common response is : "if you don't like it, leave". When I saw my kids getting the same treatment I did twenty or thirty years ago, I packed up my family and left! Even though Utah is a beautiful place, I would never live there again. This discrimination happens in the public schools, when job-hunting, and even in your own neighborhood. In the suburb where I lived, there were four LDS churches within a 1/2 mile of my house. The closest liquor store was 8 miles away, in another city. When I inquired why our suburb of 60,000 people didn't have a state liquor store, I was told by the mayor's office: "because *WE* don't want one here!" See what I mean? If you want any type of social life and are not either LDS or a ski bum, stay away from Utah. It's a shame that such a beautiful state is so closed-minded and inhospitable.
Excessive drinking is fine...in moderation.
Utah is, geographically, gorgeous. You have four seasons, all relatively mild, great mountains for recreation in any season, and you're only five hours from Vegas. But, there is a couple of problems politically: The first, which most of this has been hitting pretty hard, is that these people not only know exactly what God wants them to do (which can be annoying enough) but, they know exactly what God expects of you, too, and are going to do their damnedest to make sure that you do it, even small things; like driving: I have time and again seen some little mini-van pull into the fast line of an interstate directly in front of someone going an ungodly 75 miles an hour, just to hold them to the posted 65 (or below), and refuse to move. Ask truckers who pass through here, they have a term for it: The "Mormon blockade". The second issue is, these people want to believe that in spite of their size, they are "Big Fish" and make an impact; they think that they are more important if they have the same concerns as a major metropolis, and so they make them up. A few years ago they had stats all over the place showing that we had a worse gang problem than LA(!) and implemented a bunch of rediculous control laws; I have never had such a low impact on my life from gang activity as here. Then, they have built a "light-rail" system here (which, in defiance of conventional wisdom, runs at surface level and competes with traffic for right-of-way); in the first year they had seven fatalities (two before it was even operational) in crossing collisions. Now, light rail, subways, elevateds: these are designed to conquer the problem of a lot of people in a small amount of area: but here, they have the opposite problem: hardly anybody sprawled out over hundreds of square miles. The bus system has had to resort to non-collection of fees to ride the light rail and actually routing passengers through the light rail system, even if it adds hours to their trip, in order to increase ridership. Oh, as a further gotcha: When an increase in taxes to pay for the light rail was put to the ballot at a general election, the proposal was soundly defeated: but, officials figured that their flock was just confused, and sold lands bought through taxes to fund it. Now, the reason why you have naive numbskulls running the government here is because, regardless of what the majority may or may not want, they are forced to elect as officials people who are supported by the local religion; you are usually reduced to voting between "Brother" So-and-so, or "Sister" So-and-so. As you can tell, I've been stuck in Salt Lake for the past six years or so, and have just had the thousands of countless inconvieniences about this place stack up past my usual high-tolerance level. It is really to bad that the society here detracts from the natural beauty; they could have so much going for them!