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Doing the Laptop Drive of Shame
netbuzz writes "If you bring your work computer home with any regularity, chances are good that you've done the Laptop Drive of Shame. (Oh, c'mon, admit it.) It's happening more than ever ... and costing more than ever, too, what with the price of gas and all." I'll spoil it for you — they mean leaving your laptop at home. Yay, Monday news cycle.
Stupid unfunny slow news story. Not laughing 'cause it's like a lame stand-up-comedian-dont-you-hate joke. Get yer tomatoes out everyone.
This is the first time I wish I had been rickrolled instead of getting that awful article.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Slow news day ... or no news day?
At the bottom of the
I don't live that far away from work, so if I ever forget my laptop it's not too much of a trek. To be honest I'm more likely to "forget" my pass and then I have to go and temporary one from the lovely girls in premises (I'm not stupid you know).
Seriously though, I usually just put my laptop bag, with the laptop inside it (the most important bit) across my front door so that I have to pick it up to open the door. Obviously this only works if you're the first person out the door in the morning...
Summation 2
Don't bring your work computer home. It's unsafe (unless you are very cautious) and it removes the separation of work and recreation. If you're doing it to use the computer for private purposes, buy your own. The price has gone down a lot and owning your personal computer reduces liability issues. Besides, if any of your spare time computer activities ever becomes valuable, there won't be the issue that it was produced with company equipment and therefore belongs to the company.
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Well, during the "probationary period" I forgot it at home twice and had to do my hour commute home and my hour commute back. After that, I started leaving it at work. I think I talked about getting VPN set up so I could just log in from home rather than lugging the laptop around. Of course, I didn't last much longer at that particular job (Thank God), so it was kind of academic anyway.
I'm an absent minded guy so I figure out various tricks when I need to remember things and not lose things. However, it takes a while for me to set that kind of thing up.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
First of all, shouldnt this be on idle.slashdot.org... since its a time-waster and all?
That said, I don't have to worry about leaving laptops since I rarely take one home. However, being a government contractor, I do use a CAC which allows me access to my laptop. Leaving that at the house is effectively like leaving my laptop at the house. There have been numerous occasions where I have left my card at the house and had to the "drive of shame". Within the last two or three months, though, I have been riding to work, so in that case I have to do the "ride of shame".
...and it should be known by now
Four million.
Good God, editors, it's bad enough someone would submit this story, but you guys let it through?
Can we mod the editors out of office?
Would it be possible to add modding to the published articles? Can we prevent this submitter from ever submitting a story again?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Decline the laptop, and the Blackberry, and the pager, and the company cellphone... If it's that important, call me at home and I'll drive in. It never has been, though.
My coworker (with the Blackberry) regularly gets called for trivial things. Like: Where's that log printout? Hmm? You put it on my desk, you say?
Well, it would be easier to lug that damned thing without the desk. Cut the chain.
Being an old and proud Slashdotter, I'd gone many months with R'ing TFA, and somehow I picked this morning to try it the other way.
Yay me.
Here's looking forward to another long stretch of blissful ignorance.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"it's where I put my phone, wallet, diary, car keys and sunglasses"
I think the word you're looking for here isn't "brief case," it's "purse."
I once had to do a software install on an ice-breaker. I had to fly out to the east coast, catch a twin-otter from a Canadian Forces base north to middle-of-nowhere-ville, then get flown by helicopter out to do an at sea landing on the ship.
After I arrived I discovered I had left one of the install discs on my desk at work.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Eh, but four million US is what, like 300 GBP these days? You can buy an iPhone for that!
But I've definitely forgotten my power supply, so I have about 2 hours to figure how to make that "drive of shame" without being noticed...
For the price of your drive home, or at least my drive home, you can buy another power supply. Yeah, I bought one out of my own money to save me the hassle, even though it's work's computer. (shrug) When lappy goes back on lease-return, I'll put this power brick on eBay and buy one to fit the new laptop, just like I did last time. The hassle savings of remembering and dealing with the power supply every day twice are worth it.
The real question is, why the fark does Dell keep changing the damn plug on the things? Gratuitous change specifically to make the old charger not work on the new laptop is all I can figure.
I occasionally do this on purpose, especially during the warmer months, so that I can go on a nice bike ride to retrieve the "forgotten" laptop.
Nothing shameful about it at all...
So just take a personal day and be done with it. Fabricating the "forgot laptop" story makes you look either like a forgetful idiot or a liar. Your coworkers and management can see right through it - we're not idiots you know. It's a lot easier to respect someone for taking a day when it's 75 and sunny, than that same person taking the day when it's 75 and sunny because they "forgot their laptop".
If you work for someone who doesn't like the honest approach, then get a better boss.
You know what helps cut down on this Laptop Drive of Shame? Letting your employees stay the fuck home instead of having to come into your cramped noisy cubicle farm, particularly if your office is on the outskirts of human civilization.
Not only does this reduce the Laptop Drive of Shame problem, it also saves more gas.
Now, raise your hand if your company gives you a laptop. Hi, you guys are most likely middle managers, so blow me about your whining about your company laptop. The rest of us are still shackled to a desktop.
If this whole laptop and gas thing mattered, we'd stop making people trudge into mind-sucking offices every day for no good reason except to make it easier to corral and boss them around.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Where I work, we have the option of monthly parking passes which are simply smart cards. The daily rate otherwise is $15.
If you are a monthly parker, and forget your smart card, however, you are STILL charged the full $15 daily parking rate, even though you paid for monthly parking.
I used to think this was simple extortion, until I realized that monthly parking is handled electronically, but daily parking is handled by a human and therefore actually costs more to implement. (why I can't just swipe a debit or credit card, as I can at many downtown unattended lots, I don't know).
Still, I'd think a montlhy parker who has forgotten his smart card should be refunded a good chunk of paying the daily rate upon presentation of a daily parking receipt and his active smart card.
Of course, don't get me started on automated car washes that don't warn in advance that (a) their debit card reader is down, and (b) their cash reader only takes exact change -- I was once stuck for 15 minutes in a car wash line with people honking behind me because the stupid reader with broken debit card handling wouldn't even take a $10 bill (and keep the damn change for a $7 wash). Automatec cash readers should ALWAYS allow an option to pay more for convenience if they can't provide change. Those that give receipts could easily indicate the overpayment so subsequent refund could be arranged.
The world is populated by morons. Some design stuff.
In Liberty, Rene