I've posted reviews on Amazon for things that I didn't buy from them. I kind of consider them the primary resource for product reviews. For instance, if I pick up a game in person from Gamestop and it's terrible, I'm more likely to note it on Amazon than go find out of Gamestop has some place for me to post, because I think it'll do more overall good on Amazon.
You'll note that the assholes that drive like tools over the present ones can drive just as fast as they always do.
Prediction: the viscosity of the fluid will be such that you are required to drive below 15 MPH to ooze through it without a bump, in order to enforce a 25 MPH speed limit.
I actually ran a web-based computer game for five years, and it was far more profitable than writing books has been. It was still probably only a minimum-wage hobby (if that - I overpaid for servers for too long and wasted a fair bit of income). I also liked that I was doing writing, programming, database, and art work, in addition to game design. Sometimes it was tough keeping tabs on all the components, but it almost always meant there was something I was in the mood to do. Problem was, it was pretty demanding in terms of total time and also the need for frequent updates, and after my first kid was born I couldn't keep up.
Writing, in comparison, is a much more forgiving pursuit. It's solitary, easy to pick up or put down as life demands fluctuate, and my eventual book doesn't care if the kids are resisting bedtime this week. So it's a much more suitable project for me, it's just probably a smaller and more crowded market. It doesn't help that two of the novels are literary fiction, which is a depressed niche as it is, while the fantasy novel, which could potentially appeal to mainstream fantasy readers, is heavy enough on retro RPG references that it's marketed specifically to that niche. But there's plenty of people out there writing stuff the public loves, and what I want to write is the stuff that *I* love, so for now I just keep doing it. I still think, even being niche, there's enough people who would enjoy it if I could get the word out, but that comes back to the marketing difficulties.
If I was just in it for the money, I'd go back to copy editing. I used to average $800 for proofing, and for heavier editing a long book can make a few thousand. There's always demand for that, and as work goes it's relatively pleasant getting paid just to read, but it's not the same thing as crafting my own stuff.
No, the SSN as identification is fine. Honestly, that's probably what everyone should use. What's wrong is using it as authentication. Nobody should use it for that, but despite that being obvious for decades, everyone continues to use it that way.
I'm with you there. The skills sets for sitting quietly, imagining things, and crafting slowly don't really line up well with pushy sales, witty public banter, or a lot of the other major marketing techniques. Some people can do both, but it's unnatural to me.
Heh. I've tried three times and haven't had success with novels. Now I'm trying humorous nonfiction handbooks. If that doesn't work, I might try selling my precious bodily fluids - likely more profitable, and less of a time commitment.
I suppose I ought to be a little put out other people are gaming the system and soaking up funds (some of the Kindle money is distributed in shares from a pool), and I suppose I am, but even without the cheaters I don't think it'd be making much of a difference.
Your doctors and hospitals are sensible. We've gotten a bill mailed to us for $0.13 before. I know they paid more on the postage. They did waive it after we called and asked, but I don't know why they don't have that filter built in.
Right now we've got a bill for $1.16 from the pediatrician on our counter. That one isn't quite as absurd, and if we owe it we're happy to pay it, but it still seems silly.
Mine vents to the garage. House was built in '81. Seems like they should have known better by then. I'll admit it's sort of nice in the winter, but it's a terrible idea in the summer.
My upstairs bathroom fan vented to the attic, rather than out the roof. Again, I understand that was acceptable at the time, but it seems like a bad idea and we fixed that one.
Thanks for the suggestions. I definitely like the increased contrast and having the button shapes back. My eyes aren't old enough (yet) for the bold text to be necessary, but the other two definitely help.
Even more confusing, the Cincinnati Reds used to be named the Red Stockings. That got changed a long time ago, though. With good reason.
The problem I have is referring to a singular member of the team. Is he a Red Sock? But it's a x and not an s, so it's not really a plural, even though it's kind of faking it. It's definitely not a Red So. Maybe a Red Soc, just to continue the irregularity?
Eh, I hope you didn't read my comment as dismissive. Most of what I was saying was intended to work with your suggestion, and plan for how to avoid obsolescence by getting out of a bad spot if you're in one. It may help that I'm a server admin and not a programmer, and it may help that I'm in a small-town environment where tech is just an accessory to other industries, and not the primary focus. But I *know* my company doesn't have an issue with 50-year-old staffers because that represents a third of my current team, so my turning 45 in 3 years doesn't worry me if I'm planning on staying put, which I am. If I was currently old man on campus at some startup, I might be more seriously looking at moving over to a place like the current office.
As for statistics, programming may be 50 years old, but that's only two generations. When boomers were born, it wasn't an option, and plenty of folks like me in Gen X only got into it because we liked our toys. I may have been particularly oblivious, but starting college as late as 1993, I didn't really understand that computer science had an actual career path behind it, rather than being one of those things you took for impractical fun, not too unlike art history. While programming existed in 1967, it was a tiny niche field, and it has ballooned tremendously, in multiple waves, during the home computing, internet, and smartphone revolutions. It would be an almost statistical impossibility for the field to not be younger on average than ancient careers like doctors and lawyers. (I'd wager the average age of ultimate frisbee players is lower than the average age of soccer players, for the exact same reason.) It probably needs another 30-50 years to completely even out, but I'd bet it will. That doesn't mean there's no bias, but for me it's not convincing proof of bias.
I remain convinced these claims are either exaggerated, or occur in certain pockets/niches, because some people swear they see it a lot, but plenty of other people say they don't. (I definitely never have, but I've also never lived in a major tech center.)
If you (the general you) are worried about it, maybe a good choice is to arrange to find yourself by age 40, 45, or 50 at a company or industry that seems to value and support older employees. I'm 42, and I'd say I'm almost exactly at the median age of my company's IT department. We may have a few folks in their 20's, but they're all helpdesk, and the other half of tech support is closer to 30-40. Most admins and developers are between 35 and 55. Management (all of them formerly technical) are in the 50-60 range. We had three people leave the group last year because they retired (one aged 57, and the other two I'm not sure but 60-ish?). I have every confidence it's safe to grow older here.
I know it's not always easy, but if you're 40-ish and concerned about the issue, take your time, but start looking for a place that looks like it's not going to panic when you turn 50. Or bury your head in the sand at a place that's obviously youth-centric, and see how well that treats you, I guess.
As an anecdote, yours is a rough one. But you almost make it sound like the tech industry hasn't existed for the last 16 years, which definitely isn't true.
My experience started out similar-ish. I had a physics degree instead of CS, but I had several programming classes in college and enjoyed the technical side more. I got a job in '98 building web sites, and was frankly pretty lazy about career development. I knew HTML and some JavaScript, but nothing else. When the bubble popped in '01 I was laid off.
I was unemployed for a year after that, mostly due to lack of trying, as my health, social life, and financial life imploded for half a dozen different reasons. I still did a little freelance work, and also a little carpentry just to keep food on the table, and eventually got a dollar store job just for something steady. But I also realized I needed to learn more, and picked up some PHP programming and MySQL database understanding, and then got a job at a small shop where I was under-employed, but it was still better than the dollar store.
From there I transitioned to tech support, which I didn't want to do, but was much more reliable than the previous job. I angled my way from full-time support to half support and half web work at the same company, and put up with that for three years until I had a good enough resume to get a much better second-tier support job, and after two years of that moved up to server admin, which is relatively cushy.
I'd still prefer to be doing programming or database work, and occasionally I get snippets of that at the office and more at home, but I've also done an admittedly poor job of pursuing those options, instead chasing other hobbies, playing games instead of writing them, and raising a couple of kids. At 42 I'm on the fence as to whether I should get off my butt and get into programming while there's a big enough chunk of time for it to be worthwhile, or whether I should just sit back and ride out the server side of things. (Either way I'm learning things to stay relevant, it's just whether I want to put in a few years of serious off-the-clock work to transition, or take the gentler if slightly less rewarding path.)
Either way, I don't find the argument believable that the field of tech somehow ceased to exist in 2001, or that it wasn't possible to stay in the field since then, or that it's necessarily a terrible career path.
It's amazing how often that particular line is cited, as if it means something. I guess they're trying to say, "Well, maybe smart people can adjust, but what will we do with the dumb people?" But particularly for something like IQ, where it's 1) only one form of measurement, and 2) there isn't much functional difference between a few points of it, it's basically a red herring. Fully 50% of the population can be lumped in as "more or less typical" with another 25% smarter than that (though still not necessarily more capable, reliable, or suited for the workforce). There's at most 25% of the population where lack of intelligence might be an issue, but even in those cases a lot of people can work, they just do better in a more stable environment, or one that's less mentally demanding.
For a single, large purchase like a car, it does potentially make more sense, but besides that and the house, it's rare for anything to be big enough to make a difference. For an $800 phone over two years, it's really iffy, based both on the lower price and shorter term.
And that 6% can't possibly be guaranteed, can it? The savings options I'm aware of aren't even hitting 1%. Since presumably you're using that pool to pay off the car, an investment that's at risk of going down doesn't make sense to me, which would take the stock market off the table. Are you finding 6% bonds somewhere, which you can cash out in increments?
As for auto-pay, I've been burned by almost every utility I've done business with, and I've had surprise phone bills from every phone company I've done business with. It's harder to negotiate after you've paid, in my experience. I've only ever had one car loan, but they were one of the few I actually trusted to get it right, perhaps because the bill couldn't change from month to month.
The fact of the matter is that when you have the opportunity to take a 0% loan rather than paying upfront, you should always be taking it.
- If your cashflow supports it, and the more loans you take, the less likely that is. - If you're good with making payments, because a single late fee will over-ride any savings you might have due to low interest. - Or, if you trust the vendor to always complete auto-payments properly, which in my experience is a sadly low success rate. - If the hassle of ongoing billing, account management, etc., are less than the few dollars in savings.
Slashdot Mirror
I've posted reviews on Amazon for things that I didn't buy from them. I kind of consider them the primary resource for product reviews. For instance, if I pick up a game in person from Gamestop and it's terrible, I'm more likely to note it on Amazon than go find out of Gamestop has some place for me to post, because I think it'll do more overall good on Amazon.
You'll note that the assholes that drive like tools over the present ones can drive just as fast as they always do.
Prediction: the viscosity of the fluid will be such that you are required to drive below 15 MPH to ooze through it without a bump, in order to enforce a 25 MPH speed limit.
All true.
I actually ran a web-based computer game for five years, and it was far more profitable than writing books has been. It was still probably only a minimum-wage hobby (if that - I overpaid for servers for too long and wasted a fair bit of income). I also liked that I was doing writing, programming, database, and art work, in addition to game design. Sometimes it was tough keeping tabs on all the components, but it almost always meant there was something I was in the mood to do. Problem was, it was pretty demanding in terms of total time and also the need for frequent updates, and after my first kid was born I couldn't keep up.
Writing, in comparison, is a much more forgiving pursuit. It's solitary, easy to pick up or put down as life demands fluctuate, and my eventual book doesn't care if the kids are resisting bedtime this week. So it's a much more suitable project for me, it's just probably a smaller and more crowded market. It doesn't help that two of the novels are literary fiction, which is a depressed niche as it is, while the fantasy novel, which could potentially appeal to mainstream fantasy readers, is heavy enough on retro RPG references that it's marketed specifically to that niche. But there's plenty of people out there writing stuff the public loves, and what I want to write is the stuff that *I* love, so for now I just keep doing it. I still think, even being niche, there's enough people who would enjoy it if I could get the word out, but that comes back to the marketing difficulties.
If I was just in it for the money, I'd go back to copy editing. I used to average $800 for proofing, and for heavier editing a long book can make a few thousand. There's always demand for that, and as work goes it's relatively pleasant getting paid just to read, but it's not the same thing as crafting my own stuff.
No, the SSN as identification is fine. Honestly, that's probably what everyone should use. What's wrong is using it as authentication. Nobody should use it for that, but despite that being obvious for decades, everyone continues to use it that way.
I'm with you there. The skills sets for sitting quietly, imagining things, and crafting slowly don't really line up well with pushy sales, witty public banter, or a lot of the other major marketing techniques. Some people can do both, but it's unnatural to me.
Heh. I've tried three times and haven't had success with novels. Now I'm trying humorous nonfiction handbooks. If that doesn't work, I might try selling my precious bodily fluids - likely more profitable, and less of a time commitment.
I suppose I ought to be a little put out other people are gaming the system and soaking up funds (some of the Kindle money is distributed in shares from a pool), and I suppose I am, but even without the cheaters I don't think it'd be making much of a difference.
What happens if you listen to John Cage's 4:33? Do you get both benefits?
Funny. My last post on Twitter was: "Title Tuesday: 'Redacted: The Novel'"
I can only assume I'm channeling your resistance to Twitter into tweets.
Your doctors and hospitals are sensible. We've gotten a bill mailed to us for $0.13 before. I know they paid more on the postage. They did waive it after we called and asked, but I don't know why they don't have that filter built in.
Right now we've got a bill for $1.16 from the pediatrician on our counter. That one isn't quite as absurd, and if we owe it we're happy to pay it, but it still seems silly.
So ... what you're saying is, fish get their plastic from eating us?
Mine vents to the garage. House was built in '81. Seems like they should have known better by then. I'll admit it's sort of nice in the winter, but it's a terrible idea in the summer.
My upstairs bathroom fan vented to the attic, rather than out the roof. Again, I understand that was acceptable at the time, but it seems like a bad idea and we fixed that one.
Thanks for the suggestions. I definitely like the increased contrast and having the button shapes back. My eyes aren't old enough (yet) for the bold text to be necessary, but the other two definitely help.
You wouldn't hand sign for a car, would you?
Even more confusing, the Cincinnati Reds used to be named the Red Stockings. That got changed a long time ago, though. With good reason.
The problem I have is referring to a singular member of the team. Is he a Red Sock? But it's a x and not an s, so it's not really a plural, even though it's kind of faking it. It's definitely not a Red So. Maybe a Red Soc, just to continue the irregularity?
I think it's a Mercury transit, but something is coming up.
Eh, I hope you didn't read my comment as dismissive. Most of what I was saying was intended to work with your suggestion, and plan for how to avoid obsolescence by getting out of a bad spot if you're in one. It may help that I'm a server admin and not a programmer, and it may help that I'm in a small-town environment where tech is just an accessory to other industries, and not the primary focus. But I *know* my company doesn't have an issue with 50-year-old staffers because that represents a third of my current team, so my turning 45 in 3 years doesn't worry me if I'm planning on staying put, which I am. If I was currently old man on campus at some startup, I might be more seriously looking at moving over to a place like the current office.
As for statistics, programming may be 50 years old, but that's only two generations. When boomers were born, it wasn't an option, and plenty of folks like me in Gen X only got into it because we liked our toys. I may have been particularly oblivious, but starting college as late as 1993, I didn't really understand that computer science had an actual career path behind it, rather than being one of those things you took for impractical fun, not too unlike art history. While programming existed in 1967, it was a tiny niche field, and it has ballooned tremendously, in multiple waves, during the home computing, internet, and smartphone revolutions. It would be an almost statistical impossibility for the field to not be younger on average than ancient careers like doctors and lawyers. (I'd wager the average age of ultimate frisbee players is lower than the average age of soccer players, for the exact same reason.) It probably needs another 30-50 years to completely even out, but I'd bet it will. That doesn't mean there's no bias, but for me it's not convincing proof of bias.
I remain convinced these claims are either exaggerated, or occur in certain pockets/niches, because some people swear they see it a lot, but plenty of other people say they don't. (I definitely never have, but I've also never lived in a major tech center.)
If you (the general you) are worried about it, maybe a good choice is to arrange to find yourself by age 40, 45, or 50 at a company or industry that seems to value and support older employees. I'm 42, and I'd say I'm almost exactly at the median age of my company's IT department. We may have a few folks in their 20's, but they're all helpdesk, and the other half of tech support is closer to 30-40. Most admins and developers are between 35 and 55. Management (all of them formerly technical) are in the 50-60 range. We had three people leave the group last year because they retired (one aged 57, and the other two I'm not sure but 60-ish?). I have every confidence it's safe to grow older here.
I know it's not always easy, but if you're 40-ish and concerned about the issue, take your time, but start looking for a place that looks like it's not going to panic when you turn 50. Or bury your head in the sand at a place that's obviously youth-centric, and see how well that treats you, I guess.
As an anecdote, yours is a rough one. But you almost make it sound like the tech industry hasn't existed for the last 16 years, which definitely isn't true.
My experience started out similar-ish. I had a physics degree instead of CS, but I had several programming classes in college and enjoyed the technical side more. I got a job in '98 building web sites, and was frankly pretty lazy about career development. I knew HTML and some JavaScript, but nothing else. When the bubble popped in '01 I was laid off.
I was unemployed for a year after that, mostly due to lack of trying, as my health, social life, and financial life imploded for half a dozen different reasons. I still did a little freelance work, and also a little carpentry just to keep food on the table, and eventually got a dollar store job just for something steady. But I also realized I needed to learn more, and picked up some PHP programming and MySQL database understanding, and then got a job at a small shop where I was under-employed, but it was still better than the dollar store.
From there I transitioned to tech support, which I didn't want to do, but was much more reliable than the previous job. I angled my way from full-time support to half support and half web work at the same company, and put up with that for three years until I had a good enough resume to get a much better second-tier support job, and after two years of that moved up to server admin, which is relatively cushy.
I'd still prefer to be doing programming or database work, and occasionally I get snippets of that at the office and more at home, but I've also done an admittedly poor job of pursuing those options, instead chasing other hobbies, playing games instead of writing them, and raising a couple of kids. At 42 I'm on the fence as to whether I should get off my butt and get into programming while there's a big enough chunk of time for it to be worthwhile, or whether I should just sit back and ride out the server side of things. (Either way I'm learning things to stay relevant, it's just whether I want to put in a few years of serious off-the-clock work to transition, or take the gentler if slightly less rewarding path.)
Either way, I don't find the argument believable that the field of tech somehow ceased to exist in 2001, or that it wasn't possible to stay in the field since then, or that it's necessarily a terrible career path.
It's amazing how often that particular line is cited, as if it means something. I guess they're trying to say, "Well, maybe smart people can adjust, but what will we do with the dumb people?" But particularly for something like IQ, where it's 1) only one form of measurement, and 2) there isn't much functional difference between a few points of it, it's basically a red herring. Fully 50% of the population can be lumped in as "more or less typical" with another 25% smarter than that (though still not necessarily more capable, reliable, or suited for the workforce). There's at most 25% of the population where lack of intelligence might be an issue, but even in those cases a lot of people can work, they just do better in a more stable environment, or one that's less mentally demanding.
And yet they're also one of the few surviving chains of its kind. CompUSA, Circuit City, Radio Shack ... where are they now?
I can see myself saying, "Cortexa, get me Alana!"
For a single, large purchase like a car, it does potentially make more sense, but besides that and the house, it's rare for anything to be big enough to make a difference. For an $800 phone over two years, it's really iffy, based both on the lower price and shorter term.
And that 6% can't possibly be guaranteed, can it? The savings options I'm aware of aren't even hitting 1%. Since presumably you're using that pool to pay off the car, an investment that's at risk of going down doesn't make sense to me, which would take the stock market off the table. Are you finding 6% bonds somewhere, which you can cash out in increments?
As for auto-pay, I've been burned by almost every utility I've done business with, and I've had surprise phone bills from every phone company I've done business with. It's harder to negotiate after you've paid, in my experience. I've only ever had one car loan, but they were one of the few I actually trusted to get it right, perhaps because the bill couldn't change from month to month.
The fact of the matter is that when you have the opportunity to take a 0% loan rather than paying upfront, you should always be taking it.
- If your cashflow supports it, and the more loans you take, the less likely that is.
- If you're good with making payments, because a single late fee will over-ride any savings you might have due to low interest.
- Or, if you trust the vendor to always complete auto-payments properly, which in my experience is a sadly low success rate.
- If the hassle of ongoing billing, account management, etc., are less than the few dollars in savings.
Seriously, you're citing basketball as the origin of this term?
A word 400 years old, coming from French, that means to rotate or change direction, now has become owned by a sport?
Run the numbers and pick the cost-effective choice, whatever it may be.