Oh man, sorry, but screw that. I've been in IT for twenty years and I couldn't be less motivated by "autonomy, mastery, purpose". Seriously, if you're trying to find meaning and purpose in IT, you're looking in the wrong field. Sure, there's probably some strange Eastern or Existential philosophy that "carry on" and "work for the sake of work" somehow leads to meaning in life, but it ain't so.
What will motivate me?
Pay me.
Other than that, my purpose and satisfaction in life has absolutely nothing to do with where I work.
I played about 5,000 hands of Spider Solitaire at 4 suits.. My win percentage is about 8% but I can go for many games at a time without a win and then get 2 wins in a row..and once 4 wins in a row.
My daughter has a couple laptops, a tablet, iPod... symptom of being a geek's daughter. Alas, many households don't even have a single computer. Many parents have never used a computer or even an easy and secure way to retrieve email.
Think PCI regulations are tough? There are regulations on who can see your child's report card. It may contain classroom information that could be used by a kidnapper. The parents may live in separate households (divorced, separated, etc.). Schools are not allowed to disclose if a student is enrolled at a school and putting that information on the Internet makes it open to snooping.
Yes, not insurmountable problems, but with zero dollars available to even give teachers raises, it's no wonder that it's not happening quickly.
Spend anything from $10-40 per plant in potting soil, pots, cages, seedlings, etc. Devote a couple hours of labor, per plant, over the entire growing season to coax them into being productive Be inundated with tomatoes for all of three weeks at the height of summer, at the same time when... Their grocery store sells tomatoes for $2/lb. all year 'round
That's possibly true in some states. One approach might be to select plants that grow naturally in the environment. I have all manner of spices that just seem to grow like weeds down here in Florida. Mint leaves, for example.. I planted one tiny plant once and then it ended up covering the entire flower planter...
There's also things like aloe, scotchbonnet peppers. this hedge plant that bears a cherry-looking fruit (tastes somewhat like a cherry too, but a little more tart), scallions, and other edibles and spices. I don't ever tend them but they grow just fine.
I believe that claustrophobia is a natural instinct as much as standing in a fire is uncomfortable. And I've seen The Descent and read The Hobbit and I know what's down there.
Hmm.. At different points in my life my motivations had changed. When I was 12 or so, learning to program on a DEC PDP-11, it was to pass a class. At home on the Commodores and the Atari 8-bits and the the Apples, it was mainly for enjoyment. For example, I remember several versions of a quadratic equation solver. In my first pre-calculus courses, the homework problems worked out cleanly so my "solver" would just iterate through values of x until it arrived at the correct answer. In later classes, we learned the quadratic equation, so I remade my programs to solve using sqrt() functions and then later secant approximation. Then when I began the calculus courses, the program changed to use other numerical methods and some integration... They weren't very sophisticated programs and the function was still a quadratic, but it was *fun*. Of course, I took various computer classes throughout my academic career and my fun ended up being quite useful.
Right now I'm playing with Android development to scratch an itch and for fun..
Learning about the history of computers was always fun, however. I expect that when Turing arrived, the state of mathematics would have roughly paralleled what was happening with the painting world when photography came about... I could almost imagine Turning drinking a cup of coffee with Godel and arguing, "It doesn't matter!"
I have both iOS and Android devices. The simple reason why I've purchased more apps on iOS is because the free equivalents weren't available as they are in the Android App Market. My daughter uses the iOS device (an iPod Touch) and I have a Droid2 and a Samsung Transformer. When she gets her phone it will be an Android device, likely a Samsung Nexus and she'll inherit the Transformer. So far I've spent about $100 in apps for the Android and that will likely grow because the tablets have proven to be quite useful.
The OP mentioned 3-4 years before he/she graduates, hence "3 years":D I haven't been to University in a couple decades but even then we had several languages represented in the engineering and mathematics classes.
"Be ready to do some real support. You may not find it very different form Windows but they will"
That's a load of FUD. I've installed close to a dozen Linux machines in the past year for kids and adults and about as many Windows ones. The support is the same. If anything, it's much easier for Linux because I just point them to the software repository and they can install anything they want with a click. With Windows it's a chore of disks and selections. For example, on the Ubuntu Linux systems I've installed, updating *all* packages is just a matter of clicking a button and entering a password. To do the same on Windows I have a dozen separate installers for packages such as VNC, VLC, Java, Chrome and the office suite. On top of that, it seems every other Windows free application adds some browser plugin or some other nonsense.
Think of cleaning a fish.. You have to get in there, clean out the guts, get rid of the scales, pull out everything but the meat.
Wild game is like that, except that you can't get the nasty stuff from the intestines on the meat. So you have to be very careful with your knife when you skin it so you don't puncture the intestines or the bladder. Doing so will ruin the meat. Fish is one thing. Mammal parasites and diseases are another. And mammal feces are generally poisonous to other mammals. For larger animals you need to bleed it. This means hanging it up, nicking an artery, and let it bleed out. If you don't then the meat will taste horrid, not to mention a host of blood-borne parasites that can play nasty with your body. I've done it for a goat and deer. Believe me, it's not for the squeamish.
If it came down to it, my choices would be fishing first then go after birds. Geese and ducks first. If it came down to it, seagulls. I don't know if I could eat a pigeon again:/. Once was enough.
Ever cleaned game? Wildlife around urban areas tend to be freaking nasty. Mangy, diseased, bony... Not a lot of deer around my city. Not a lot of wild boar either. So you may end up eating rats and bugs. Make sure that you don't puncture the rat intestine and spill rat feces all over that delectable rat meat when you're cleaning that rat. And rats, though they may grow to be large, are still rats and not much more meat than a single drumstick.
Say all you want about a can of pork and beans or tuna, but I'd much rather eat that than a squirrel. And yes, I've eaten rabbit, deer, wild hog, and snake before... I've never eaten rat though.
I've lived through a few hurricanes, been in the woods for a days at a time, have had broken bones, been held up at gunpoint...
Staying calm is vitally important. The best thing to help in staying calm in having experience and knowledge. When confronted with new situations it's much more stressful because you don't know what to do next.
So preparation is key. It might be as simple as stocking up on a few items. Tarps, canned goods, *water*, first aid kits, etc. come in handy. There are also some other less obvious things... A GPS unit is so very helpful... When Hurricane Andrew stopped by it took away all the street signs. I remember driving to check on a relative who lived less than 5 miles away. Without street signs I could not quickly find a house I'd visited dozens of times before... You know what I missed too? Toothpaste. And baby wipes. We were able to flush the toilet, but showering was risky because of possible breaks in the water lines.
Having a plan is helpful. It could be as simple as knowing where the exits in your house are. Where is the closest shelter? If your car is un-driveable (blocked or destroyed), can you walk to that shelter with the 6 days worth of equipment? The sleeping bag and the 2-burner propane stove seems a lot less necessary when you need to carry it 10 miles on foot.
Do you have copies of your paperwork? Some people scan deeds, insurance papers, contracts, etc.. onto a USB stick. Others put them in a fire safe. If you have to leave your home, can you carry that safe along with 200lbs of other equipment?
Do you know how to set a broken bone? Can you use wound gel? What happens if you get punctured by a rusty nail?
We can go on for hours about the things we need. Firearms? Will they help set your broken leg? I'm not discounting their value, but carting around an AR-15 and that heavy-ass ammo is not too likely if you have to move.
On the one hand, if there was no news about this bill, then it *might* just die off. Special interest groups often propose outlandish bills to generate publicity. Suddenly their cause gets millions more people aware. They very well might be a fringe group, but.05% of 300M people is still a large group.
On the other hand, it's very easy for special interest groups to push bills through because of the lack of scrutiny. No one else may care, so rather than fighting a seemingly innocuous addendum, politicians just OK it.
It be interesting if thousands of people suddenly wrote their Congress folk and representatives suggesting that similar provisions in the law be afforded to followers of the FSM. After all, if the existing anti-discrimination law is not sufficient and creationists are being harassed, then certainly the followers of the FSM should also get protection.
I admire that you continue to use older hardware... If it works then so much better for the environment...
But I've noticed that I really appreciate the extra horsepower. Between work, non-work and play, having a fast processor, gobs of memory and great graphics is really nice. For work, I run a VMWare virtual machine so when I connect to the VPN I don't lost my local connectivity. Within that VM need to run compiles, Lotus Bloats, Word, etc.. For my non-work, I run some pretty hefty graphics and finance calculations (image stitching, video editing with effects, etc.). Play includes some graphics intensive games. Before I used to have a desktop system, but really love being able to plunk down at a local coffee shop and do all the same things.
Interesting... But I wonder what the range would be on a laser? I can hit a target at around 30M with a 9mm Glock, but beyond that it's ummm hit or miss..
I literally sleep in front of my computer. I sleep on a sleeping bag on the carpeted floor in front of two laptops attached to a 23" monitor between them. I wake up quite often at 3AM. Sleep is a problem, but I never really attributed it to the equipment. I turn off the monitors, put the laptop displays to sleep, and they don't beep during the night.
For the end-user, it's great that the average lifespan of a drive is measured in years. For the manufacturers, not so good.
Since upgrading my power supplies I've had very few drive failures over the past five years. I've purchased drives to expand storage, but rarely to replace. Across 10 laptops I have replaced two failed drives in two years. On the desktops, with about twenty drives between 5 machines, I've replaced maybe two units in two years. These run continuously, are rarely rebooted, and have semi-annual reboots to replace fans and clean out the dust.
I can see other uses in the far future. Many people prefer to interact with humanoid devices. Whether it's an animated cartoon or an automaton, *some* people are more comfortable speaking to a face, even if it's a robot, than typing commands or talking into a machine. Obviously it's too expensive to put interactive robots into traditional human positions, but the things the researchers learn can help how other technology is designed. Maybe people expect a certain eye movement when someone asks a question. Maybe we can perceive blink rate and associate that with understanding or listening. Maybe we trust people more if their eyebrows arch when they smile.. or maybe it is uncanny.
I dunno... I switch somewhat regularly between small screens (my netbook), to larger single screens (my workhorse laptop), to large multiple displays (my desktop in my home office). One of my big pet peeves with any interface is the inability to bring up context and OS menus at whichever location the mouse is on. For example, if I use my three screen display (1920x1200 each), I potentially need to scroll three screens to get to a menu. Windows UI is particularly atrocious. If I'm on the rightmost screen, I may have to scroll all the way to the left to hit the Start menu. I could place the home screen (main desktop) in the middle. This minimizes the longest scroll, but then I lose the benefit of keeping a purely monitoring display (which I don't interact with often). You can tweak certain things by making the display continuous (mouse wraps on each edge) or orienting vertically (fewer pixels to scroll through), but this changes how I like to work.
Under traditional Linux desktops it is easier. In xfce4 I can customize my desktop menus. I can create multiple keyboard shortcuts. In others I can even tweak how the window borders react to double clicks, control clicks, etc..
The point is that I configure the UI to how I work and not change my work habits to conform to the UI. That's the biggest issue I have with the Windows UI. I hope Gnome doesn't lost the ability to customize the UI to how *I* want it and not what some developers think is the right way.
I use both CentOS and RHEL and still rebuild kernels quite often. This actually makes it easier for me to rebuild the *stock* RH kernel. It makes it somewhat more difficult to take those patches and apply them to the vanilla kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh man, sorry, but screw that. I've been in IT for twenty years and I couldn't be less motivated by "autonomy, mastery, purpose". Seriously, if you're trying to find meaning and purpose in IT, you're looking in the wrong field. Sure, there's probably some strange Eastern or Existential philosophy that "carry on" and "work for the sake of work" somehow leads to meaning in life, but it ain't so.
What will motivate me?
Pay me.
Other than that, my purpose and satisfaction in life has absolutely nothing to do with where I work.
I played about 5,000 hands of Spider Solitaire at 4 suits.. My win percentage is about 8% but I can go for many games at a time without a win and then get 2 wins in a row..and once 4 wins in a row.
My daughter has a couple laptops, a tablet, iPod... symptom of being a geek's daughter. Alas, many households don't even have a single computer. Many parents have never used a computer or even an easy and secure way to retrieve email.
Think PCI regulations are tough? There are regulations on who can see your child's report card. It may contain classroom information that could be used by a kidnapper. The parents may live in separate households (divorced, separated, etc.). Schools are not allowed to disclose if a student is enrolled at a school and putting that information on the Internet makes it open to snooping.
Yes, not insurmountable problems, but with zero dollars available to even give teachers raises, it's no wonder that it's not happening quickly.
Spend anything from $10-40 per plant in potting soil, pots, cages, seedlings, etc.
Devote a couple hours of labor, per plant, over the entire growing season to coax them into being productive
Be inundated with tomatoes for all of three weeks at the height of summer, at the same time when...
Their grocery store sells tomatoes for $2/lb. all year 'round
That's possibly true in some states. One approach might be to select plants that grow naturally in the environment. I have all manner of spices that just seem to grow like weeds down here in Florida. Mint leaves, for example.. I planted one tiny plant once and then it ended up covering the entire flower planter...
There's also things like aloe, scotchbonnet peppers. this hedge plant that bears a cherry-looking fruit (tastes somewhat like a cherry too, but a little more tart), scallions, and other edibles and spices. I don't ever tend them but they grow just fine.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cave+home+collapse
Indeed.
I believe that claustrophobia is a natural instinct as much as standing in a fire is uncomfortable. And I've seen The Descent and read The Hobbit and I know what's down there.
Hmm.. At different points in my life my motivations had changed. When I was 12 or so, learning to program on a DEC PDP-11, it was to pass a class. At home on the Commodores and the Atari 8-bits and the the Apples, it was mainly for enjoyment. For example, I remember several versions of a quadratic equation solver. In my first pre-calculus courses, the homework problems worked out cleanly so my "solver" would just iterate through values of x until it arrived at the correct answer. In later classes, we learned the quadratic equation, so I remade my programs to solve using sqrt() functions and then later secant approximation. Then when I began the calculus courses, the program changed to use other numerical methods and some integration ... They weren't very sophisticated programs and the function was still a quadratic, but it was *fun*. Of course, I took various computer classes throughout my academic career and my fun ended up being quite useful.
Right now I'm playing with Android development to scratch an itch and for fun..
Learning about the history of computers was always fun, however. I expect that when Turing arrived, the state of mathematics would have roughly paralleled what was happening with the painting world when photography came about... I could almost imagine Turning drinking a cup of coffee with Godel and arguing, "It doesn't matter!"
I have both iOS and Android devices. The simple reason why I've purchased more apps on iOS is because the free equivalents weren't available as they are in the Android App Market. My daughter uses the iOS device (an iPod Touch) and I have a Droid2 and a Samsung Transformer. When she gets her phone it will be an Android device, likely a Samsung Nexus and she'll inherit the Transformer. So far I've spent about $100 in apps for the Android and that will likely grow because the tablets have proven to be quite useful.
"Re:In 3 years? How about now."
The OP mentioned 3-4 years before he/she graduates, hence "3 years" :D I haven't been to University in a couple decades but even then we had several languages represented in the engineering and mathematics classes.
Take a foreign language such as Chinese, Hindi, Japanese or German to ensure you can communicate with your co-workers in 3 years.
I'm only half joking.
Amy Pond is in the library. Amy Pond has been saved.
I'm checking her out.
"Be ready to do some real support. You may not find it very different form Windows but they will"
That's a load of FUD. I've installed close to a dozen Linux machines in the past year for kids and adults and about as many Windows ones. The support is the same. If anything, it's much easier for Linux because I just point them to the software repository and they can install anything they want with a click. With Windows it's a chore of disks and selections. For example, on the Ubuntu Linux systems I've installed, updating *all* packages is just a matter of clicking a button and entering a password. To do the same on Windows I have a dozen separate installers for packages such as VNC, VLC, Java, Chrome and the office suite. On top of that, it seems every other Windows free application adds some browser plugin or some other nonsense.
Quit spreading that FUD from 1999.
Will I gain super powers if I visit the reactor?
Think of cleaning a fish.. You have to get in there, clean out the guts, get rid of the scales, pull out everything but the meat.
Wild game is like that, except that you can't get the nasty stuff from the intestines on the meat. So you have to be very careful with your knife when you skin it so you don't puncture the intestines or the bladder. Doing so will ruin the meat. Fish is one thing. Mammal parasites and diseases are another. And mammal feces are generally poisonous to other mammals. For larger animals you need to bleed it. This means hanging it up, nicking an artery, and let it bleed out. If you don't then the meat will taste horrid, not to mention a host of blood-borne parasites that can play nasty with your body. I've done it for a goat and deer. Believe me, it's not for the squeamish.
If it came down to it, my choices would be fishing first then go after birds. Geese and ducks first. If it came down to it, seagulls. I don't know if I could eat a pigeon again :/. Once was enough.
Long pig? If it came to that. I have a can of peaches and avocados as dessert.
Ever cleaned game? Wildlife around urban areas tend to be freaking nasty. Mangy, diseased, bony... Not a lot of deer around my city. Not a lot of wild boar either. So you may end up eating rats and bugs. Make sure that you don't puncture the rat intestine and spill rat feces all over that delectable rat meat when you're cleaning that rat. And rats, though they may grow to be large, are still rats and not much more meat than a single drumstick.
Say all you want about a can of pork and beans or tuna, but I'd much rather eat that than a squirrel. And yes, I've eaten rabbit, deer, wild hog, and snake before... I've never eaten rat though.
I've lived through a few hurricanes, been in the woods for a days at a time, have had broken bones, been held up at gunpoint...
Staying calm is vitally important. The best thing to help in staying calm in having experience and knowledge. When confronted with new situations it's much more stressful because you don't know what to do next.
So preparation is key. It might be as simple as stocking up on a few items. Tarps, canned goods, *water*, first aid kits, etc. come in handy. There are also some other less obvious things... A GPS unit is so very helpful... When Hurricane Andrew stopped by it took away all the street signs. I remember driving to check on a relative who lived less than 5 miles away. Without street signs I could not quickly find a house I'd visited dozens of times before... You know what I missed too? Toothpaste. And baby wipes. We were able to flush the toilet, but showering was risky because of possible breaks in the water lines.
Having a plan is helpful. It could be as simple as knowing where the exits in your house are. Where is the closest shelter? If your car is un-driveable (blocked or destroyed), can you walk to that shelter with the 6 days worth of equipment? The sleeping bag and the 2-burner propane stove seems a lot less necessary when you need to carry it 10 miles on foot.
Do you have copies of your paperwork? Some people scan deeds, insurance papers, contracts, etc.. onto a USB stick. Others put them in a fire safe. If you have to leave your home, can you carry that safe along with 200lbs of other equipment?
Do you know how to set a broken bone? Can you use wound gel? What happens if you get punctured by a rusty nail?
We can go on for hours about the things we need. Firearms? Will they help set your broken leg? I'm not discounting their value, but carting around an AR-15 and that heavy-ass ammo is not too likely if you have to move.
And don't forget your towel.
I'm conflicted on this...
On the one hand, if there was no news about this bill, then it *might* just die off. Special interest groups often propose outlandish bills to generate publicity. Suddenly their cause gets millions more people aware. They very well might be a fringe group, but .05% of 300M people is still a large group.
On the other hand, it's very easy for special interest groups to push bills through because of the lack of scrutiny. No one else may care, so rather than fighting a seemingly innocuous addendum, politicians just OK it.
It be interesting if thousands of people suddenly wrote their Congress folk and representatives suggesting that similar provisions in the law be afforded to followers of the FSM. After all, if the existing anti-discrimination law is not sufficient and creationists are being harassed, then certainly the followers of the FSM should also get protection.
I admire that you continue to use older hardware... If it works then so much better for the environment...
But I've noticed that I really appreciate the extra horsepower. Between work, non-work and play, having a fast processor, gobs of memory and great graphics is really nice. For work, I run a VMWare virtual machine so when I connect to the VPN I don't lost my local connectivity. Within that VM need to run compiles, Lotus Bloats, Word, etc.. For my non-work, I run some pretty hefty graphics and finance calculations (image stitching, video editing with effects, etc.). Play includes some graphics intensive games. Before I used to have a desktop system, but really love being able to plunk down at a local coffee shop and do all the same things.
I know you were trying to be humorous with the title, but did you actually mean to say "Their English sucks" - coz your's does too.
heh.. Love the OP...
On the face of it, it could be the *incorrect* "Their English sucks."
But it could also be, " [Over] there, English sucks."
I can hardly contain my amusement at this clever entendre.
But which one did the OP intend?
Interesting... But I wonder what the range would be on a laser? I can hit a target at around 30M with a 9mm Glock, but beyond that it's ummm hit or miss..
I literally sleep in front of my computer. I sleep on a sleeping bag on the carpeted floor in front of two laptops attached to a 23" monitor between them. I wake up quite often at 3AM. Sleep is a problem, but I never really attributed it to the equipment. I turn off the monitors, put the laptop displays to sleep, and they don't beep during the night.
For the end-user, it's great that the average lifespan of a drive is measured in years. For the manufacturers, not so good.
Since upgrading my power supplies I've had very few drive failures over the past five years. I've purchased drives to expand storage, but rarely to replace. Across 10 laptops I have replaced two failed drives in two years. On the desktops, with about twenty drives between 5 machines, I've replaced maybe two units in two years. These run continuously, are rarely rebooted, and have semi-annual reboots to replace fans and clean out the dust.
I can see other uses in the far future. Many people prefer to interact with humanoid devices. Whether it's an animated cartoon or an automaton, *some* people are more comfortable speaking to a face, even if it's a robot, than typing commands or talking into a machine. Obviously it's too expensive to put interactive robots into traditional human positions, but the things the researchers learn can help how other technology is designed. Maybe people expect a certain eye movement when someone asks a question. Maybe we can perceive blink rate and associate that with understanding or listening. Maybe we trust people more if their eyebrows arch when they smile.. or maybe it is uncanny.
I dunno...
I switch somewhat regularly between small screens (my netbook), to larger single screens (my workhorse laptop), to large multiple displays (my desktop in my home office). One of my big pet peeves with any interface is the inability to bring up context and OS menus at whichever location the mouse is on. For example, if I use my three screen display (1920x1200 each), I potentially need to scroll three screens to get to a menu. Windows UI is particularly atrocious. If I'm on the rightmost screen, I may have to scroll all the way to the left to hit the Start menu. I could place the home screen (main desktop) in the middle. This minimizes the longest scroll, but then I lose the benefit of keeping a purely monitoring display (which I don't interact with often). You can tweak certain things by making the display continuous (mouse wraps on each edge) or orienting vertically (fewer pixels to scroll through), but this changes how I like to work.
Under traditional Linux desktops it is easier. In xfce4 I can customize my desktop menus. I can create multiple keyboard shortcuts. In others I can even tweak how the window borders react to double clicks, control clicks, etc..
The point is that I configure the UI to how I work and not change my work habits to conform to the UI. That's the biggest issue I have with the Windows UI. I hope Gnome doesn't lost the ability to customize the UI to how *I* want it and not what some developers think is the right way.
I use both CentOS and RHEL and still rebuild kernels quite often. This actually makes it easier for me to rebuild the *stock* RH kernel. It makes it somewhat more difficult to take those patches and apply them to the vanilla kernel.