They're gonna have to release some movies that are so good I can't wait another month for. Here lately, they haven't managed that feat very often. Frankly I can count on one hand the # of movies released in the last year where another 28 days would really bother me.
Those movies I'll just pirate as soon as a good dvd rip is available anyway, it's rare even without the 28 day wait for a dvd rip not to beat the dvd release by several days.
I don't run red lights, I don't "push" red lights, I'm never in such a hurry that I feel it's worth it. Also before I "take off" when my light turns green I take a just a split second to make SURE no one is running THEIR red light. On my way to taking my kid to school I have to go through, then come back through 2 NOTORIOUS red lights. People ALWAYS run these lights it's almost a given.
IF we had red light cameras, I'd be at 0 risk of getting a ticket, I simply don't run red lights. But I still HATE the thought of red light cameras. Where does it stop? Only -people- should be able to fine or imprison or in any way, negatively affect the population. What's next after red light cameras? Litter cameras? When does Robo-Cop hit the streets? I don't want some faceless automaton, be it a camera, or a robot, writing me a ticket. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, "stuck in the 1900s" perhaps, but unless a "person" catches me, it doesn't really count in my book.
And this coming from someone who never runs red lights, rarely ever speeds, and drives a truck that's likely older than a vast majority of the people posting (it's 22 years old).
one word describes my reaction to this that word? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Seriously there is no other reaction to this beyond intense, hearty, belly laughs. So it's "ok" if some schmoe (like me) gets a ticket with these cameras but god FORBID some COP gets one from them. Cops shouldn't be the EXCEPTION to the laws, they should be the EXAMPLE.
How many cops have I seen going home from their shift and "blue thru" a traffic light? (By "blue thru" I mean turn on their lights and pull through what is normally a busy intersection in their quest to get the fuck home, like the rest of "us") I've seen a LOT (growing up in a small town you just get used to seeing cops using their position for personal.. not really gain let's call it personal "comfort").
So all I can say is HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA really that's my only reply to this.
Total derail to the actual topic at hand but next time, pay with a credit card, Amex is particularly fond of protecting their customers.
Dissatisfied? Can't get satisfaction? Chargeback the bill. If you've used all the usual means at getting a refund for crappy or completely non existent service, just reverse the charges.
I'm sorry that the only easily accessible shopping for you is Wal-Mart, I wasn't trying to fault you just saying it's worth going a few miles out of the way and even spending a dollar or two more not to deal with Wal-Mart if I can avoid it. Luckily for me there's alternatives not requiring a 30 mile drive to make use of.
In my case, I drive about 5 miles to find an alternative, waste that gas, save LOTS of time at checkout, and DO NOT shop at Wal-Mart. Target sucks, but compared to Wal-Mart, they're Macy's. I could (and sometimes do) rant for minutes at a time about how much I hate Wal-Mart's "self checkout" and 3 lanes open during rush periods policies. I'll pay a smidge more and shop at Target where they have more lanes open and often no more than 3 people waiting in ANY lane to checkout, often less. For my groceries I shop at Publix (might be only seen in the south) yes they cost a bit more, but there's never a long checkout lane, and there's usually someone around to show me where is if I need help, sometimes customer service is worth something and "getting it as cheap as possible" isn't as important as "not getting pissed off(on) by where I shop".
I will go out of my way to not give Wal-Mart my business, yes I know, who gives a rat's ass, but I like to hope enough drones will wake up and realize this and maybe Wal-Mart either shapes up or their stock begins to fall. Yes I know, I'm a dreamer, let me have my little fantasies.
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Thank You
You were saying?
That's straight from the link the parent posted. I use FF on Windows XP (and FF on Linux when I want to "work" not play).
One word, yes. It is really that bad, you get more than 3 married women together and they WILL begin comparing diamonds. Often it's subtle "is mine bigger than hers?" with a glance at the other diamond, and often not at all subtle "oh my what a beautiful ring".
I will gladly buy these synthetic diamonds if they're cheaper and sparkle the same (or more since they should have no flaws at all) then I'm all for it. I don't need to know some African got killed mining my diamond to make it "worth owning".
I've also had the 'sticker shock' a few years ago when I started out, our licenses per server for the Ensim control panel ran $119 each, Redhat 7.2 was "free" to download, and life was good. Then that Ensim software went to $149, then $199, then $349. At that time I began shopping for new software, when it hit $649 per server I settled on a newcomer to the market, at less than $100 per server, I was happy again. But what's this, it's "best" on RHEL? $399 per server, we're back to paying as much for the licenses as we do the hardware (well not quite but it's more than half). That's when I discovered the beauty that is Centos, free, based on RHEL sources, and free (did I mention free?).
Problem is no support, but for what support would cost for a "larger than my company company" from Redhat for over 100 servers (we have 112), $399 x 100 = $39900 per year in OS fees (which doesn't include added support just the OS license really), you could easily add one or more (for bigger companies) true linux geeks to staff and let them be your support. I'm pretty good at troubleshooting and have used linux for a long time, so the only support I ever really need is for the software I do pay for.
This also has a side effect of making "being a linux sysadmin" a viable career for YALG (yet another linux geek).
I agree, on 1 of those, panjea, I'd probably turn the J into a G and maybe or maybe not add an extra A if I tried to type it say, in 2 hours from memory.
eefoof? it's pretty easy to remember, silly sure, but easy to remember and type it's only 3 "letters" e-f-o eefoof
We remember the past fondly, and tend to forget the stinkers.
Think of all the great movies from the past, now think of how many BAD movies you don't remember. You remember the good ones. You see this is only 1 year and in ANY 1 year you won't have more than maybe 1 truly good movie, but looking in the "past" there's decades of movies to draw from, decades vs 1 year, or just a few years, so it seems like movies aren't good anymore, when in reality there never were that many good movies made. If you listed all the "good" movies would you even have a movie for each year? Probably not.
In 30 years we'll look back and wonder "why aren't movies now as good as back 90's and early 2K's?".
I'd bet big bucks that they do NOT sell a kitten until they've fixed it by spaying or neutering, I know if I were selling 4000 dollar cats I'd spay and neuter any I sold too!
That's true, things said or written that you agree with (and that the majority agree with) NEED no protection at all, it's the crap you don't agree with that needs protection by the 1st Amendment.
I also wonder how the school would have reacted were the blog post done by his parents.
Every month when my cable bill comes in, I pay a fee, I should be able to time shift and skip any commercials I want, I pay nearly $80 per month for all the bells, whistles, and channels I get and by god I feel like that gives me all the right I need to skip the stupid commercials.
Product placement is gonna get more and more common and intrusive as the old way of just showing commercials becomes less and less profitable. Wait till people stop mid show, hold up a bottle of dawn and smile and say how much they love how it makes their hands feel. What's old is new again.
My google plugin for firefox says it has a PR of 7 which is pretty impressive. I had a nice text link on a PR 8 site a few years ago and it was extremely worthwhile.
Because it's a new way to do an old task. Is it practical? I don't know, how many "impractical" or "silly" things later were found to be extremely useful?
Looking at the article I was just struck with a sense of "whoa neat" at the simplicity of the idea yet the fact (as far as I know) it's never been done before (using a "helicopter" of shifting weight to propel a car forward by it's properly aligned square wheels). Sometimes it's not so much "why?" but "why hasn't anyone ever thought of this before?".
My boss and I got along extremely well, and when we had private meetings we often were quite... informal. Most every conversation we had started off with a zinger or two, unless we were in a meeting with some "real" stuffed shirts, we calmed it down then of course. He was actually quite a cool guy who simply had the not-so-enviable job of being the buffer between the tech geeks and the stuffed shirts.
He called me to his office about some complaints and I responded to them (in private) and he never took offense at what I said or how I said it.
When the dotcom we worked for later went bankrupt, he brought me in on a project or two at his new place of employ as a contractor (hey can't turn down $180 an hour no matter how busy I am).
My boss was also an oracle DBA and not a complete stuffed shirt, he just was clueless when it went beyond the database. So he knew what was up I just had to remind him. We left the private meeting and went to lunch and had a few beers and knocked off early.
So get off your little high horse there, buddy, the POINT I was trying to make is, we (tech types) don't work 9-5 and we're expected to "just fix it" whether it's 9-5 or 4am on a Saturday. But don't let some stuffed shirt in accounting or sales stick their nose into "our" business.
I'm sure if I worked for YOU you wouldn't need to fire me because judging by your corncob up the ass attitude I'd quit before I spent more than 3 days in your employ.
And I'm only an "ex" wizkid because I had the sense to quit working for other people and do my own thing. Sheesh talk about sensitive, you need to loosen up, drink a beer, undo your tie and pull that stick outta your butt.
This is why I as a parent will take (and do take but kindergarten isn't really the mean streets yet) an extremely active part in my child's education. My kid's teachers will know my face on sight, and will know that EVERYTHING that happens with my child will be reported to me and I will ask my child every day when he comes home how his day was and if I hear reports of behavior from teachers and administrators I feel should be addressed you can bet your ass I'll be up there and having a little conference with them.
I put up with a little bit of that shit as a high schooler myself. Not much, a little more than was "average" in my school but the average amount of BS was pretty low compared to the crap today. They refused to let me be valedictorian even though the highest GPA was usually chosen as the valedictorian (which I was highest by a good margin) because I was a bit of an outspoken troublemaker in their eyes. They tried to kick me out for a silly skit we did during the graduation festivities but I already had my diploma and all required courses to graduate so had they kicked me out I'da still graduated, of course the OTHER fellas who were part of that skit would also have to be kicked out, and all those dudes would have not graduated and a couple were "favorites" so... no expulsion for me (all I said was "welcome to Ardmore Coxsey Bible School" at the beginning of the skit, haha they DEMANDED we not say Coxsey Bible when they heard us practicing one night but I did it anyway).
They also "lost" every copy of my transcripts I asked my counselor to send to colleges and scholarships I was competing for, seriously, she just didn't send the fucking things. This didn't happen just once, or twice, I'm not being paranoid, this happened no less than 5 different times. I was not even considered for 5 scholarships because my transcripts never arrived on time. It was so bad that my gifted education teacher finally went up to my school herself, demanded my transcripts, and then SHE made copies of thsoe transcrips and sent them out for me to the scholarships I was applying for! If that crap happens to my kid the shit will hit the fan you can rest assured. Wish my parents had been a little more helpful with that crap but I solved the problem myself regardless and got a whole slew of awesome scholarship offers despite my principal (who I am pretty sure was the one making the counselor "lose" my shit, me and the counselor never really had words, good or bad).
Basically I'll be sure I'm there to make sure my son isn't being shit on.
Speaking as an ex-wizkid type (the only unix man in a dot com that relied on Sun servers was I) I know what you mean.
Boss: "Uhm some people are complaining you telecommute too much." me: "well while I do only show up maybe 2 days a week, I have yet to find a way to get the database and web servers to crash from 9 to 5 on M-F so as long as I'm the only warm body capable of properly bringing those servers back online when they fail, and as long as those servers insist on crashing at times like 1 am on a saturday morning when maintenance runs, or 6 am on sundays when you guys insist on sending out half a million emails to the customers, then well, you can choose, have me here monday through friday 9 to 5 and I'll turn off my pager or I'll keep my pager on and do whatever is required, whenever it's required to keep this shit running smoothly. I doubt these "complainers" are in a habit of getting up at 2 am on a saturday night and babysitting a database backup? I mean if they want to do that then hell I'll start using an alarm clock to get here at 9 from now on". Boss: "yeah ok I see what you mean, forget I mentioned it" me: "already forgotten boss, what's next on the agenda?"
Yeah I was a prick but I also put more than my fair share of time if I had to make the 60 mile trek from home to Exodus Toyama in Sunnyvale on a Sunday morning I didn't complain then either...
Did the servers fail much? Nah not really but I did most of my administration from home, less distractions, plus my ping times and latency to the data center was about 11ms at home, and 40-60 at the office, and I had more bandwidth (being nearly the only person on the newly deployed cable modem node was awesome).
Unlike sales and accounting (etc) server admins simply cannot work M-F and 9-5 and do their job, it's just not how it works.
To add to that, some people have serious allergies to cigarettes. My wife is asthmatic as well as severely allergic to cigarette smoke. One or two lungfuls of second hand smoke and we're in the ER. Indoor concerts, all bars, most lounges, many restaurants are totally off limits to us. We simply can't go.
When the largest city near us (Huntsville AL) put a new smoking ban into effect I wanted to cheer. We went to our first indoor concert in 12 years a couple weeks ago, granted people STILL smoked but the people in the seats (where we were, I'm not dumb enough to think the floor will be smoke free) were quickly asked to put it out. Hallelujah.
The ban is actually a good one - establishments can either be NON smoking, or ALL smoking, IF it's all smoking, no one under 19 can go in, or work there. So bars? Unaffected. Restaurants? No more smoking section (rock the fuck on). The smokers didn't even bitch "too" much since they can still go to bars and some restaurants and puff away. And let's face it man, if you can't get thru a MEAL without having to light up you got a serious problem, is it THAT HARD to just go outside anyway?
Never heard of them myself but hell I'll grab the torrent and give 'em a listen.
If it doesn't suck and I see them playing somewhere locally I'd be very likely to go see them live (heck even if they do suck a little I might go anyway just to get out and go someplace).
I hope this is a huge success for them and other artists begin following along. The more artists who get on the bandwagon the better.
Yes I could use all the free crap and XP home but, don't think they GIVE XP Home or Media edition away either so there's still a cost associated with it.
If I'm gonna use all that free and shareware stuff why not just go all the way and use a free OS while I'm at it?
And yep it absolutely is a personal preference and one I'm not likely to change no matter how annoying of an assneck you are. Now shuffle off little troll, I'm all outta troll-chow for today.
I personally quit using Windows for many reasons, viruses via email was only one of many. Part of the problem is cost, I have 7 or 8 pcs on my network, one that does email services, 2 or 3 that are file servers (ripped dvds, music, etc), 1 in my theater to play dvd's, 1 on my tv to play dvd's, my wife, my kid, my own pc, my laptop. Now I'm against software piracy, if I bought Windows and each subsequent "upgrade" that'd cost me a bundle, so the mere cost of software is one consideration for linux, beyond my own personal "like" of it.
I keep 2 windows PC's around, one to play games on, one for my son to play games on (so we can play networked games), the rest are Linux with the one Mac.
Now on top of the $1xx per system for Windows XP Pro, add in antivirus, anti spyware, some kinda office software, etc etc, bah forget that, open source for life, Suse or Centos + Openoffice + firefox + thunderbird makes me a happy man. No IE patches, no M$ tax, no spyware. Yes you CAN do that with Windows, I know, I've done it, but it's a pain in the ass, it costs $$$ and after dealing with Microsoft for years as a "support" "professional" I do all I can to stay away from it.
Now if only you could join the anti-spam movement in the original topic without HAVING to use Windows:)
My main "bad habit" personally, was being on entirely too many contact lists, so I was guaranteed to get a copy of the latest viruses the second they were released. It never fails, I have to "battle" the latest virus for a day or so, THEN I see it mentioned places like Yahoo or/. or Yahoo as the "next big thing" in viruses.
In those days I worked as a Windows and WinNT admin/tech support for a largish computer store with quite a few clients in the business sector. The very second a new virus was released, I was just about guaranteed a copy of it. I never opened attachments, I had virus scanners, this was the days BEFORE spyware, there WAS no spyware scanners or anti spyware services (96/97 or so) and I "did" use Eudora but I kept running into some bug or limitation in Eudora that kept pushing me back into the leperous arms of Outlook or Outlook Express.
This was before the patches to stop viruses from infecting you via the "preview pane" even if you saw the damned virus in your inbox and knew it had to be, the simple clicking of the subject to delete it was too late, infection ensued.
I chose to quit using Windows to "work" on not quite but almost 10 years ago, I'd been using Linux since the early days and used it a lot even at work as a "windows guy". Once I started my own business the one rule was "no Windows, period, for anything, ever, if I can't do it with Linux I don't need to do it".
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They're gonna have to release some movies that are so good I can't wait another month for. Here lately, they haven't managed that feat very often. Frankly I can count on one hand the # of movies released in the last year where another 28 days would really bother me.
Those movies I'll just pirate as soon as a good dvd rip is available anyway, it's rare even without the 28 day wait for a dvd rip not to beat the dvd release by several days.
I don't run red lights, I don't "push" red lights, I'm never in such a hurry that I feel it's worth it. Also before I "take off" when my light turns green I take a just a split second to make SURE no one is running THEIR red light. On my way to taking my kid to school I have to go through, then come back through 2 NOTORIOUS red lights. People ALWAYS run these lights it's almost a given.
IF we had red light cameras, I'd be at 0 risk of getting a ticket, I simply don't run red lights. But I still HATE the thought of red light cameras. Where does it stop? Only -people- should be able to fine or imprison or in any way, negatively affect the population. What's next after red light cameras? Litter cameras? When does Robo-Cop hit the streets? I don't want some faceless automaton, be it a camera, or a robot, writing me a ticket. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, "stuck in the 1900s" perhaps, but unless a "person" catches me, it doesn't really count in my book.
And this coming from someone who never runs red lights, rarely ever speeds, and drives a truck that's likely older than a vast majority of the people posting (it's 22 years old).
one word describes my reaction to this
that word?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Seriously there is no other reaction to this beyond intense, hearty, belly laughs. So it's "ok" if some schmoe (like me) gets a ticket with these cameras but god FORBID some COP gets one from them. Cops shouldn't be the EXCEPTION to the laws, they should be the EXAMPLE.
How many cops have I seen going home from their shift and "blue thru" a traffic light? (By "blue thru" I mean turn on their lights and pull through what is normally a busy intersection in their quest to get the fuck home, like the rest of "us") I've seen a LOT (growing up in a small town you just get used to seeing cops using their position for personal.. not really gain let's call it personal "comfort").
So all I can say is HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA really that's my only reply to this.
Total derail to the actual topic at hand but next time, pay with a credit card, Amex is particularly fond of protecting their customers.
Dissatisfied? Can't get satisfaction? Chargeback the bill. If you've used all the usual means at getting a refund for crappy or completely non existent service, just reverse the charges.
I'm sorry that the only easily accessible shopping for you is Wal-Mart, I wasn't trying to fault you just saying it's worth going a few miles out of the way and even spending a dollar or two more not to deal with Wal-Mart if I can avoid it. Luckily for me there's alternatives not requiring a 30 mile drive to make use of.
In my case, I drive about 5 miles to find an alternative, waste that gas, save LOTS of time at checkout, and DO NOT shop at Wal-Mart. Target sucks, but compared to Wal-Mart, they're Macy's. I could (and sometimes do) rant for minutes at a time about how much I hate Wal-Mart's "self checkout" and 3 lanes open during rush periods policies. I'll pay a smidge more and shop at Target where they have more lanes open and often no more than 3 people waiting in ANY lane to checkout, often less. For my groceries I shop at Publix (might be only seen in the south) yes they cost a bit more, but there's never a long checkout lane, and there's usually someone around to show me where is if I need help, sometimes customer service is worth something and "getting it as cheap as possible" isn't as important as "not getting pissed off(on) by where I shop".
I will go out of my way to not give Wal-Mart my business, yes I know, who gives a rat's ass, but I like to hope enough drones will wake up and realize this and maybe Wal-Mart either shapes up or their stock begins to fall. Yes I know, I'm a dreamer, let me have my little fantasies.
You were saying?
That's straight from the link the parent posted. I use FF on Windows XP (and FF on Linux when I want to "work" not play).
One word, yes. It is really that bad, you get more than 3 married women together and they WILL begin comparing diamonds. Often it's subtle "is mine bigger than hers?" with a glance at the other diamond, and often not at all subtle "oh my what a beautiful ring".
I will gladly buy these synthetic diamonds if they're cheaper and sparkle the same (or more since they should have no flaws at all) then I'm all for it. I don't need to know some African got killed mining my diamond to make it "worth owning".
I've also had the 'sticker shock' a few years ago when I started out, our licenses per server for the Ensim control panel ran $119 each, Redhat 7.2 was "free" to download, and life was good. Then that Ensim software went to $149, then $199, then $349. At that time I began shopping for new software, when it hit $649 per server I settled on a newcomer to the market, at less than $100 per server, I was happy again. But what's this, it's "best" on RHEL? $399 per server, we're back to paying as much for the licenses as we do the hardware (well not quite but it's more than half). That's when I discovered the beauty that is Centos, free, based on RHEL sources, and free (did I mention free?).
Problem is no support, but for what support would cost for a "larger than my company company" from Redhat for over 100 servers (we have 112), $399 x 100 = $39900 per year in OS fees (which doesn't include added support just the OS license really), you could easily add one or more (for bigger companies) true linux geeks to staff and let them be your support. I'm pretty good at troubleshooting and have used linux for a long time, so the only support I ever really need is for the software I do pay for.
This also has a side effect of making "being a linux sysadmin" a viable career for YALG (yet another linux geek).
I agree, on 1 of those, panjea, I'd probably turn the J into a G and maybe or maybe not add an extra A if I tried to type it say, in 2 hours from memory.
eefoof? it's pretty easy to remember, silly sure, but easy to remember and type it's only 3 "letters" e-f-o eefoof
Revver same deal, r-e-v
We remember the past fondly, and tend to forget the stinkers.
Think of all the great movies from the past, now think of how many BAD movies you don't remember. You remember the good ones. You see this is only 1 year and in ANY 1 year you won't have more than maybe 1 truly good movie, but looking in the "past" there's decades of movies to draw from, decades vs 1 year, or just a few years, so it seems like movies aren't good anymore, when in reality there never were that many good movies made. If you listed all the "good" movies would you even have a movie for each year? Probably not.
In 30 years we'll look back and wonder "why aren't movies now as good as back 90's and early 2K's?".
Ahh the good old days.
I'd bet big bucks that they do NOT sell a kitten until they've fixed it by spaying or neutering, I know if I were selling 4000 dollar cats I'd spay and neuter any I sold too!
That's true, things said or written that you agree with (and that the majority agree with) NEED no protection at all, it's the crap you don't agree with that needs protection by the 1st Amendment.
I also wonder how the school would have reacted were the blog post done by his parents.
Every month when my cable bill comes in, I pay a fee, I should be able to time shift and skip any commercials I want, I pay nearly $80 per month for all the bells, whistles, and channels I get and by god I feel like that gives me all the right I need to skip the stupid commercials.
Product placement is gonna get more and more common and intrusive as the old way of just showing commercials becomes less and less profitable. Wait till people stop mid show, hold up a bottle of dawn and smile and say how much they love how it makes their hands feel. What's old is new again.
Just make an HD disk count as 2 movies out instead of one, boom done and done.
My google plugin for firefox says it has a PR of 7 which is pretty impressive. I had a nice text link on a PR 8 site a few years ago and it was extremely worthwhile.
Because it's a new way to do an old task. Is it practical? I don't know, how many "impractical" or "silly" things later were found to be extremely useful?
Looking at the article I was just struck with a sense of "whoa neat" at the simplicity of the idea yet the fact (as far as I know) it's never been done before (using a "helicopter" of shifting weight to propel a car forward by it's properly aligned square wheels). Sometimes it's not so much "why?" but "why hasn't anyone ever thought of this before?".
My boss and I got along extremely well, and when we had private meetings we often were quite... informal. Most every conversation we had started off with a zinger or two, unless we were in a meeting with some "real" stuffed shirts, we calmed it down then of course. He was actually quite a cool guy who simply had the not-so-enviable job of being the buffer between the tech geeks and the stuffed shirts.
He called me to his office about some complaints and I responded to them (in private) and he never took offense at what I said or how I said it.
When the dotcom we worked for later went bankrupt, he brought me in on a project or two at his new place of employ as a contractor (hey can't turn down $180 an hour no matter how busy I am).
My boss was also an oracle DBA and not a complete stuffed shirt, he just was clueless when it went beyond the database. So he knew what was up I just had to remind him. We left the private meeting and went to lunch and had a few beers and knocked off early.
So get off your little high horse there, buddy, the POINT I was trying to make is, we (tech types) don't work 9-5 and we're expected to "just fix it" whether it's 9-5 or 4am on a Saturday. But don't let some stuffed shirt in accounting or sales stick their nose into "our" business.
I'm sure if I worked for YOU you wouldn't need to fire me because judging by your corncob up the ass attitude I'd quit before I spent more than 3 days in your employ.
And I'm only an "ex" wizkid because I had the sense to quit working for other people and do my own thing. Sheesh talk about sensitive, you need to loosen up, drink a beer, undo your tie and pull that stick outta your butt.
This is why I as a parent will take (and do take but kindergarten isn't really the mean streets yet) an extremely active part in my child's education. My kid's teachers will know my face on sight, and will know that EVERYTHING that happens with my child will be reported to me and I will ask my child every day when he comes home how his day was and if I hear reports of behavior from teachers and administrators I feel should be addressed you can bet your ass I'll be up there and having a little conference with them.
I put up with a little bit of that shit as a high schooler myself. Not much, a little more than was "average" in my school but the average amount of BS was pretty low compared to the crap today. They refused to let me be valedictorian even though the highest GPA was usually chosen as the valedictorian (which I was highest by a good margin) because I was a bit of an outspoken troublemaker in their eyes. They tried to kick me out for a silly skit we did during the graduation festivities but I already had my diploma and all required courses to graduate so had they kicked me out I'da still graduated, of course the OTHER fellas who were part of that skit would also have to be kicked out, and all those dudes would have not graduated and a couple were "favorites" so... no expulsion for me (all I said was "welcome to Ardmore Coxsey Bible School" at the beginning of the skit, haha they DEMANDED we not say Coxsey Bible when they heard us practicing one night but I did it anyway).
They also "lost" every copy of my transcripts I asked my counselor to send to colleges and scholarships I was competing for, seriously, she just didn't send the fucking things. This didn't happen just once, or twice, I'm not being paranoid, this happened no less than 5 different times. I was not even considered for 5 scholarships because my transcripts never arrived on time. It was so bad that my gifted education teacher finally went up to my school herself, demanded my transcripts, and then SHE made copies of thsoe transcrips and sent them out for me to the scholarships I was applying for! If that crap happens to my kid the shit will hit the fan you can rest assured. Wish my parents had been a little more helpful with that crap but I solved the problem myself regardless and got a whole slew of awesome scholarship offers despite my principal (who I am pretty sure was the one making the counselor "lose" my shit, me and the counselor never really had words, good or bad).
Basically I'll be sure I'm there to make sure my son isn't being shit on.
Speaking as an ex-wizkid type (the only unix man in a dot com that relied on Sun servers was I) I know what you mean.
Boss: "Uhm some people are complaining you telecommute too much."
me: "well while I do only show up maybe 2 days a week, I have yet to find a way to get the database and web servers to crash from 9 to 5 on M-F so as long as I'm the only warm body capable of properly bringing those servers back online when they fail, and as long as those servers insist on crashing at times like 1 am on a saturday morning when maintenance runs, or 6 am on sundays when you guys insist on sending out half a million emails to the customers, then well, you can choose, have me here monday through friday 9 to 5 and I'll turn off my pager or I'll keep my pager on and do whatever is required, whenever it's required to keep this shit running smoothly. I doubt these "complainers" are in a habit of getting up at 2 am on a saturday night and babysitting a database backup? I mean if they want to do that then hell I'll start using an alarm clock to get here at 9 from now on".
Boss: "yeah ok I see what you mean, forget I mentioned it"
me: "already forgotten boss, what's next on the agenda?"
Yeah I was a prick but I also put more than my fair share of time if I had to make the 60 mile trek from home to Exodus Toyama in Sunnyvale on a Sunday morning I didn't complain then either...
Did the servers fail much? Nah not really but I did most of my administration from home, less distractions, plus my ping times and latency to the data center was about 11ms at home, and 40-60 at the office, and I had more bandwidth (being nearly the only person on the newly deployed cable modem node was awesome).
Unlike sales and accounting (etc) server admins simply cannot work M-F and 9-5 and do their job, it's just not how it works.
Amen.
To add to that, some people have serious allergies to cigarettes. My wife is asthmatic as well as severely allergic to cigarette smoke. One or two lungfuls of second hand smoke and we're in the ER. Indoor concerts, all bars, most lounges, many restaurants are totally off limits to us. We simply can't go.
When the largest city near us (Huntsville AL) put a new smoking ban into effect I wanted to cheer. We went to our first indoor concert in 12 years a couple weeks ago, granted people STILL smoked but the people in the seats (where we were, I'm not dumb enough to think the floor will be smoke free) were quickly asked to put it out. Hallelujah.
The ban is actually a good one - establishments can either be NON smoking, or ALL smoking, IF it's all smoking, no one under 19 can go in, or work there. So bars? Unaffected. Restaurants? No more smoking section (rock the fuck on). The smokers didn't even bitch "too" much since they can still go to bars and some restaurants and puff away. And let's face it man, if you can't get thru a MEAL without having to light up you got a serious problem, is it THAT HARD to just go outside anyway?
Never heard of them myself but hell I'll grab the torrent and give 'em a listen.
If it doesn't suck and I see them playing somewhere locally I'd be very likely to go see them live (heck even if they do suck a little I might go anyway just to get out and go someplace).
I hope this is a huge success for them and other artists begin following along. The more artists who get on the bandwagon the better.
Yes I could use all the free crap and XP home but, don't think they GIVE XP Home or Media edition away either so there's still a cost associated with it.
If I'm gonna use all that free and shareware stuff why not just go all the way and use a free OS while I'm at it?
And yep it absolutely is a personal preference and one I'm not likely to change no matter how annoying of an assneck you are. Now shuffle off little troll, I'm all outta troll-chow for today.
I personally quit using Windows for many reasons, viruses via email was only one of many. Part of the problem is cost, I have 7 or 8 pcs on my network, one that does email services, 2 or 3 that are file servers (ripped dvds, music, etc), 1 in my theater to play dvd's, 1 on my tv to play dvd's, my wife, my kid, my own pc, my laptop. Now I'm against software piracy, if I bought Windows and each subsequent "upgrade" that'd cost me a bundle, so the mere cost of software is one consideration for linux, beyond my own personal "like" of it.
:)
I keep 2 windows PC's around, one to play games on, one for my son to play games on (so we can play networked games), the rest are Linux with the one Mac.
Now on top of the $1xx per system for Windows XP Pro, add in antivirus, anti spyware, some kinda office software, etc etc, bah forget that, open source for life, Suse or Centos + Openoffice + firefox + thunderbird makes me a happy man. No IE patches, no M$ tax, no spyware. Yes you CAN do that with Windows, I know, I've done it, but it's a pain in the ass, it costs $$$ and after dealing with Microsoft for years as a "support" "professional" I do all I can to stay away from it.
Now if only you could join the anti-spam movement in the original topic without HAVING to use Windows
My main "bad habit" personally, was being on entirely too many contact lists, so I was guaranteed to get a copy of the latest viruses the second they were released. It never fails, I have to "battle" the latest virus for a day or so, THEN I see it mentioned places like Yahoo or /. or Yahoo as the "next big thing" in viruses.
In those days I worked as a Windows and WinNT admin/tech support for a largish computer store with quite a few clients in the business sector. The very second a new virus was released, I was just about guaranteed a copy of it. I never opened attachments, I had virus scanners, this was the days BEFORE spyware, there WAS no spyware scanners or anti spyware services (96/97 or so) and I "did" use Eudora but I kept running into some bug or limitation in Eudora that kept pushing me back into the leperous arms of Outlook or Outlook Express.
This was before the patches to stop viruses from infecting you via the "preview pane" even if you saw the damned virus in your inbox and knew it had to be, the simple clicking of the subject to delete it was too late, infection ensued.
I chose to quit using Windows to "work" on not quite but almost 10 years ago, I'd been using Linux since the early days and used it a lot even at work as a "windows guy". Once I started my own business the one rule was "no Windows, period, for anything, ever, if I can't do it with Linux I don't need to do it".