As for all these statistics, someone look up how many people get shot in Switzerland per year as opposed to the States. After all, those guys *have* to have a gun in the house and know how to use it...yet I never seem to hear horror stories about the Swiss going insane and killing each other in the streets...
Ah the Swiss.... arrogant prima donnas for thinking an armed populice would actually be effective at keeping a powerful Nazi force at bay...
Er, wait.
Ironic that the Swiss are the strongest justification for the American Constitution's Second Ammendment: takes a foreigner to remind you, that "No, no, you got it right!"
I'm only posting it because you seem to consider it highly unfair that he is being charged
Investigated would be fair. Even arrested for a while (a day or two) until things got sorted out (though, that's pushing the presumption of innocence). But charged? That's not fair.
The police and crown prosecuter (rather like a DA) admit to believing his story but argue that, even if your life is in imminent danger, to defend it reduces you to the level of those threatening it. Legally, they are correct: you're supposed to wait for the police and they are not obliged to try to help you (this was decided by the Canadian Supreme Court). And, that's what sucks.
Damn straight I think that's unfair. Canadian law encourages peacenik martyrdom at the hands of scoundrals, hoodlums, and hardened criminals. No wonder criminals run the place. Now, shut up, pay your health care taxes and wait your turn for that life-saving operation -- we should get to you in four years or so. Assholes. But, that's another rant.
Still, if several armed men come into your house to take you away and kill
No Jew was taken away "to be killed". They were "legally relocated". That "relocation" just happened to include killing many of them.
If I were to make a sick joke of it, I'd put on my best Gomer Pyle voice: "Surprise, surprise, surprise!" [*]
[*] This is not meant as an attempt at real humour over a tragedy. Much Slavic "humour" is in fact sarcasm, irony, and (outlawed) criticism of a harsh regime disguised as humour. (The Poles are best at this, IMHO). But, if I have to explain that, the reader doesn't get it. I think PaulBu might, though.:-)
They won't penetrate Kevlar, though. But, if your attacker is so protected, you've got worse problems. Hint: they don't make a Kevlar codpiece, and I've not known them to make Kevlar chaps.
Are biting ankles and puking on you considered a clear threat to person?
No, smartass, but a 13 year old that has just smashed the window of your car with a baseball bat is a threat to property (and may be a threat to person).
A handgun is better and a shotgun is even better because you have more of a chance of hitting the criminal.
Either I miswrote, or you misread. I noted that I prefer a shotgun for both of the reasons you mention. Besides just the sound of arming one scares the bejeezus out of any sane person.
Heads: You NEVER point a gun at anything you aren't willing to destroy.
Tails: If you are pointing a gun at the bad guy, you ALREADY DECIDED that you're justified if you use it and you're going to pull the trigger if he makes ONE MORE MOVE toward you
Aye. Good advice that.
I take issue with shooting to injure, though. If at all possible to disable without taking life, one should try. Though, there are few jurisdictions where you have the right to kill without a belief of an imminent threat to one's life. I always thought that was stupid because it forces one to use deadly force to save one's life, when near-lethal force might be sufficient.
Strategically, it is unwise to not shoot to kill, but it is a rare individual who would would actually be eager to do so.
Why German Jews (and Russian "intelligentzia" later in 30s) did not put up ANY armed resistance at all, even after having pretty good reasons to believe that after they leave their house they will never see it again and most probably will be dead, is still a puzzle for me...
Ah, my friend, you have not studied your history...
Hitler had disarmed the Jews long before they were being carted off for slaughter. He was praised at the time by many world leaders for bringing about peace.
The U.S. founding fathers had it right, though I prefer C. Heston's version: "... from my cold,... dead,... hands!"
Doing this under stress is much, much harder of course. However, IIRC, most handguns are used within 7 yards.
My point exactly. There's a world of difference between shooting at a target and aiming a firearm at a human: the latter is actually very difficult to do, calmly. Rationally, yes. Calmly, no.
And, you are right that the most effective part of using a shotgun is not in the firing thereof... for sane attackers, anyway.
Hand guns are notoriously inaccurate at much beyond a dozen feet or so. Stop believing the movies.
They also seam to be prone to being "found" by curious children who find them "cool" (again, I blame the movies for that). Somehow, rifles and shotguns are less "cool" and are left alone. Yes, you use a trigger lock or gun safe, or both, but kids are incredibly resourceful at getting things they're not supposed to. Yes, you educate them. Yes, you take all precautions. You still strive to minimize the risks of firearm ownership, and if owning a less "sexy" but sufficiently effective weapon makes it safer, that's what you do.
I had a 25x33 foot family room outside the master bedroom in our home in Texas. There were several windows from which I could defend the yards.
U.S., originally from Canada, where self-defense is a crime. ("It's the job of the police." Yeah, right -- I'll buy that when you supply a rent-a-cop 24/7 in my living room).
And, from experience, it does solve the problem of the beligerent intruder. Quite well. Never had to fire a shot, though, except in practice. (Glad of that, actually: I hate the noise and kick of a 12 ga.).
While I can see theft out of desperation, by that time, it's too late to "intervene", if you can't reason with the intruder. And keeping cheapskate freeloading bastards alive on welfare just breeds more of them.
No, I abhor government help, and find private charity in the U.S. extremely generous to those who have just had a bad run of bad luck. Ask me how many thousands of dollars of "stuff" I've donated to goodwill in the 6 months that I've returned (my low income taxes make it possible to replace stuff that I could not have replaced when I should have, but which was still quite usable, with care). For all the "social programs" I've seen in places like Canada, they;re all ineffective hollow promise, with expensive tax burdens, that fatten some asshole politicians.
/. is so U.S.-centric, that I just assumed the suggestion to arm one's self presumed that as well.
Canada is worse than Europe: there's a shopkeeper who, after the nth robbery in a month, warded off three armed attackers, shooting one of them, who later died in an ally. The shopkeeper is facing murder charges.
I wrote: "While it is easier to kill intentionally with a powerful rifle, it is easier to kill, or seriously maim, unintentionally, with a shotgun."
Some might use that as an argument that a rifle is a "safer" weapon because it is "easier" to use it non-lethaly at medium range. But, I consider all firearms equally deadly, and my amiming one at someone would imply a clear willingness to kill. I don't believe an intent to kill is ever justified -- self-preservation, however, might leave one with no reasonable alternative, but to kill. And, if I have to risk a sloppy shot to save my life, instead of a more carefully chosen one to preserve the life of someone threatening mine, well, that's a no-brainer.
...ess "spread" to more vulnerable areas. Gunshot is nasty.
While it is easier to kill intentionally with a powerful rifle, it is easier to kill, or seriously maim, unintentionally, with a shotgun.
Of course, it is hard to be effective with a rifle and not lethal. (well, relatively speaking: it takes an accurate shot, and acuracy is something that tends go go out the window when one is surprised or frightned).
Well, the questioner didn't want anyone injured, but I concur. I would howver qualify that suggestion with:
Take a firearm safety course.
Take a course to teach you how to handle a firearm effectively.
Know thyself. Under what circumstances will you point a loaded, deadly, weapon at someone? Under what circumstances will you shoot them? When your home is being invaded is not the time to ask such questions.
Have other family members take firearm safety / firearm effectiveness courses.
Select the weapons of choice. I happen to like shotguns: you don't miss, and you'll think twice before you riddle your home with shot. They're safer for the neighbors too. Of course, at close range, rifles offer a cleaner shot, and a greater opportunity to not kill. A handgun? I'm not that good of a shot and I don't like home intruders that close. YMMV.
Get instructions in the use of your selected weapon.
Apply for the necessary permits.
Wait.
Purchase your weapons.
Practice. I'm serious. You need to "be one" with it and comfortable with how it handles, discharges, kicks, etc.
He genuinely wants his group to be happy, work together, and deliver results.
And yet, you earlier noted that excursions are not about happiness.
Groups aren't happy, except indirectly via their members. Only the individuals within a group can be happy.
You can't make all individuals within a group happy by appealing to the desires of some of them, only of all of them. This has to be based on something they already have in common: the need to get a job done. Thus, the only guaranteed option is to make their work environment as conducive to productivity as possible.
Either that, or decide to weed some members out for not "fitting in" in a manner that has nothing to do with the job at hand. There are places in the world where firing someone for non-work-related reasons is illegal.
Re:Don't mistake excellent work for teamwork
on
Tech Team Traditions?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If you send four co-workers to Vegas with a $800 a day combined bankroll and they don't get in any trouble, together as a team - you might as well fire all four of them because they don't have a drop of team-worthy blood in any of them... And you have already decided that you and I wouldn't be able to work together. That's not based on technical ability - that's based on synergy, and personality.
No, that's based on the knowledge that I would be fired for refusing to get in trouble - your own words. To be specific: If I worked for you, and you asked me to accompany three coworkers to go to Las Vegas "for fun" (or worse, for "training", hint, hint, nudge, nudge -- in that case I'd turn you in to senior management for fraud and offer my resignation), I would refuse to accompany them. If there was a training session there, and thus a legitimate business reason, I would go, but spend my spare time in my hotel room, catching up on work - 8 hours a day training, and 8 hours a day to make up for lost work time (or to rehash and apply that day's training). By your own standards, you'd have to fire me for not being a "team player".
If I get in trouble, even get a speeding ticket, I can be deported. Fortunately, I have no desire to seek the kind of "thrills" you describe and thus do not consider what you would no doubt find boring an unreasonable restriction.
This has gotten a bit off topic, so I'll offer what I would do with a new, perhaps ungelled team: offer them a budget for the equipment necessary to get their job done, and let them figure out, together, how to spend it. And I'd fight the kind of stupidity that would let me pay for entertainment, but not tools. That said, your other points deserve rebuttal.
You are operating on the mistaken assumption that shared cheap entertainment builds a team where there is none. Such "teams", I've found, are fickle, because they do not naturally exist and have to be "made".
I've encountered them. What happens is that you get a shared "laissez-faire" attitude regarding the really nasty bugs that no one can fix. What you need are people who roll up their shirt sleeves, and don't leave until the problem is discovered. One or two "uber-developers" as you put it are sufficient. What binds people like that is the "chase" of tracking the problem down.
No amount of technical acumen will make up for a lack of personality or cross the chasm of conflicting personalities between members of a group.
There is no place for conflicting personalities in the work place -- you're there to do a job, not to socialize. One puts aside differences to get the job done. Period. And, yes, I've successfully worked with people who I've hated and who've hated me. When it comes to the job, that is irrelevant. The common bond was "getting the job done".
You're trying to create an artificial shared peril when there is a very real one of getting the job done.
As for elitism, I've rescued enough projects from the hands of idiots, single-handedly (thousands of lines of supposedly multi-threaded Java with nary a "synchronized" keyword in sight is a nasty thing to fix "yesterday", esp. when one is a Java newbie like I was -- this was code that we inherited, and being a C/C++/Assembly shop (what WAS management thinking), we were clueless, and the outsourced "expert" devs were, in reality, just as clueless. The "team", impotent as a vasectomized deer staring into the headlights of a deadline, was paralyzed. Took me, equally ignorant of Java, to step forward, "learn", and fix the crap in a weekend. Rinse, lather, repeat a dozen times in a career.), to be a bit of a prima donna. The proof is in the pudding. Fortunately, I now work with people just as competent.
In my example above, the "team dynamic" resulted in: "we're all equall clueless, let's do nothing, and we can't all get fired." Doing what I did ran counter to that dynamic, but, guess what, let us deliver on time. Such a dynamic is not healthy.
I didn't say the 'team building' exercise was for your enjoyment - I just said it would turn you and your fellow programmers into a tight team. Nothing builds a tight team like almost getting in a lot of trouble and subsequently escaping because you worked together as a team.
I don't need any "this is worse so stop bitching", or shared tomfoolery incentive to get me to work hard. That just breeds resentment: of those who think suffering breeds the fear necessary to work hard, and of those who need that kind of encouragement to work hard.
What build a strong team is a shared vision to do the impossible and be willing to die trying to effect a commercial success that has a positive impact on the world: I'll clean up your messy init scripts not because we got into trouble together, but rather because you've got other alligators to deal with right now, and while I also do, those init scripts are in my critical path. I'll do this because I've seen you cover my work load when necessary.
In short, goodwill make for better team building than faux camaraderie.
A group of developers will come back from those kinds of outings a 'team' - sitting random newly hired coders beside one another in cubes isn't a team, it is simply RAID (redundant array of inexpensive developers.)
Then you're not hiring the kind of people who are enthusiastic about what you're trying to achieve and would do it for nothing if they could. Anyone can code well (anyone that matters) -- you want people who want to code what you need because it's hardcore cool. It's not a job -- it's doing something that's never been done before.
Of course, if all you're trying to achieve is what is known to be possible, and all you want are second rate code monkeys who can be pushed to deliver on time, I suppose such juvenile tactics work.
They just put us in fertile grounds; we did the rest.
Sorry, but I would be wary of working with the likes of someone who is distracted by glitter and sleaze: how do I know that they will go the extra mile to fix a bug or make a deadline instead of taking a vacation at an awkward time "because such and such an event is in town." They might, but a personality that finds cheap entertainment fun is a strike against them when it comes to establishing that.
And, if you think I've become an old funny duddy, such activities didn't attract me 20 years ago either. It's what those who did not get pleasure from intellectual pursuits did.
Regardless, you should update your resume; it doesn't look like it has been touched in two years.
I have not done any of what I would consider world-class work in the past two years. With the telcom bust, I returned to Canada temporarily, and worked for ATI developing automated test tools for checking rendered video fidelity: decode HD stream, play it, CRC frames (or fields), compare, and check. Yawn. The MPEG2 stuff was fun to play with but the work wasn't exactly earthshattering. Still, one has to eat, and it was a job. I've since returned to the U.S. to develop generic automated test tools. With only an M.Comp.Sc degree, I've gotten an itch to do a Ph.D thesis on software complexity: Dijstra was wrong: GOTO's aren't harmful per se, the complexity they add is. As such, they are on a par with large unscoped contexts and many event-driven systems. Structured languages, scoping, and object orientation are one way to deal with this, but there is little theory as to "why" they are "better". For, do, and while loops are just gotos in handcuffs, and object classes are code and data locked together.
I would consider you for my team if we were hiring, but we would have to get you in a lot of trouble first.
Sorry, that's not the kind of place I want to work. And, frankly, most of the really good people I know wouldn't want to either.
Never know - someone may be looking for an old-school coder
Heh,... who currently hacks in C# and.NET? (It was lacking on my resume, so I figured I should close the gap).
Slashdot Mirror
Ah the Swiss.... arrogant prima donnas for thinking an armed populice would actually be effective at keeping a powerful Nazi force at bay...
Er, wait.
Ironic that the Swiss are the strongest justification for the American Constitution's Second Ammendment: takes a foreigner to remind you, that "No, no, you got it right!"
Investigated would be fair. Even arrested for a while (a day or two) until things got sorted out (though, that's pushing the presumption of innocence). But charged? That's not fair.
The police and crown prosecuter (rather like a DA) admit to believing his story but argue that, even if your life is in imminent danger, to defend it reduces you to the level of those threatening it. Legally, they are correct: you're supposed to wait for the police and they are not obliged to try to help you (this was decided by the Canadian Supreme Court). And, that's what sucks.
Damn straight I think that's unfair. Canadian law encourages peacenik martyrdom at the hands of scoundrals, hoodlums, and hardened criminals. No wonder criminals run the place. Now, shut up, pay your health care taxes and wait your turn for that life-saving operation -- we should get to you in four years or so. Assholes. But, that's another rant.
No Jew was taken away "to be killed". They were "legally relocated". That "relocation" just happened to include killing many of them.
If I were to make a sick joke of it, I'd put on my best Gomer Pyle voice: "Surprise, surprise, surprise!" [*]
[*] This is not meant as an attempt at real humour over a tragedy. Much Slavic "humour" is in fact sarcasm, irony, and (outlawed) criticism of a harsh regime disguised as humour. (The Poles are best at this, IMHO). But, if I have to explain that, the reader doesn't get it. I think PaulBu might, though. :-)
I could probably kill more people on a lazy sunday afternoon with my car, than I can with a (conventional) firearm.
They're such docile sitting ducks, leaving church and all.
</sarcasm>
Should we outlaw cars, then?
They won't penetrate Kevlar, though. But, if your attacker is so protected, you've got worse problems. Hint: they don't make a Kevlar codpiece, and I've not known them to make Kevlar chaps.
No, smartass, but a 13 year old that has just smashed the window of your car with a baseball bat is a threat to property (and may be a threat to person).
Either I miswrote, or you misread. I noted that I prefer a shotgun for both of the reasons you mention. Besides just the sound of arming one scares the bejeezus out of any sane person.
I didn't write that firearms were dangerous, either.
Tails: If you are pointing a gun at the bad guy, you ALREADY DECIDED that you're justified if you use it and you're going to pull the trigger if he makes ONE MORE MOVE toward you
Aye. Good advice that.
I take issue with shooting to injure, though. If at all possible to disable without taking life, one should try. Though, there are few jurisdictions where you have the right to kill without a belief of an imminent threat to one's life. I always thought that was stupid because it forces one to use deadly force to save one's life, when near-lethal force might be sufficient.
Strategically, it is unwise to not shoot to kill, but it is a rare individual who would would actually be eager to do so.
Ah, my friend, you have not studied your history...
Hitler had disarmed the Jews long before they were being carted off for slaughter. He was praised at the time by many world leaders for bringing about peace.
The U.S. founding fathers had it right, though I prefer C. Heston's version: "... from my cold, ... dead, ... hands!"
In Texas, an adult trespassing after dark can be shot. A child can be shot of they are a clear threat to person or property.
My point exactly. There's a world of difference between shooting at a target and aiming a firearm at a human: the latter is actually very difficult to do, calmly. Rationally, yes. Calmly, no.
And, you are right that the most effective part of using a shotgun is not in the firing thereof... for sane attackers, anyway.
Private charity has, historically, been more effective at alleviating poverty and helping people get out of it.
In addition, he was facing armed robbers.
They also seam to be prone to being "found" by curious children who find them "cool" (again, I blame the movies for that). Somehow, rifles and shotguns are less "cool" and are left alone. Yes, you use a trigger lock or gun safe, or both, but kids are incredibly resourceful at getting things they're not supposed to. Yes, you educate them. Yes, you take all precautions. You still strive to minimize the risks of firearm ownership, and if owning a less "sexy" but sufficiently effective weapon makes it safer, that's what you do.
I had a 25x33 foot family room outside the master bedroom in our home in Texas. There were several windows from which I could defend the yards.
And, from experience, it does solve the problem of the beligerent intruder. Quite well. Never had to fire a shot, though, except in practice. (Glad of that, actually: I hate the noise and kick of a 12 ga.).
While I can see theft out of desperation, by that time, it's too late to "intervene", if you can't reason with the intruder. And keeping cheapskate freeloading bastards alive on welfare just breeds more of them.
No, I abhor government help, and find private charity in the U.S. extremely generous to those who have just had a bad run of bad luck. Ask me how many thousands of dollars of "stuff" I've donated to goodwill in the 6 months that I've returned (my low income taxes make it possible to replace stuff that I could not have replaced when I should have, but which was still quite usable, with care). For all the "social programs" I've seen in places like Canada, they;re all ineffective hollow promise, with expensive tax burdens, that fatten some asshole politicians.
Canada is worse than Europe: there's a shopkeeper who, after the nth robbery in a month, warded off three armed attackers, shooting one of them, who later died in an ally. The shopkeeper is facing murder charges.
Some might use that as an argument that a rifle is a "safer" weapon because it is "easier" to use it non-lethaly at medium range. But, I consider all firearms equally deadly, and my amiming one at someone would imply a clear willingness to kill. I don't believe an intent to kill is ever justified -- self-preservation, however, might leave one with no reasonable alternative, but to kill. And, if I have to risk a sloppy shot to save my life, instead of a more carefully chosen one to preserve the life of someone threatening mine, well, that's a no-brainer.
While it is easier to kill intentionally with a powerful rifle, it is easier to kill, or seriously maim, unintentionally, with a shotgun.
Of course, it is hard to be effective with a rifle and not lethal. (well, relatively speaking: it takes an accurate shot, and acuracy is something that tends go go out the window when one is surprised or frightned).
Take a firearm safety course.
Take a course to teach you how to handle a firearm effectively.
Know thyself. Under what circumstances will you point a loaded, deadly, weapon at someone? Under what circumstances will you shoot them? When your home is being invaded is not the time to ask such questions.
Have other family members take firearm safety / firearm effectiveness courses.
Select the weapons of choice. I happen to like shotguns: you don't miss, and you'll think twice before you riddle your home with shot. They're safer for the neighbors too. Of course, at close range, rifles offer a cleaner shot, and a greater opportunity to not kill. A handgun? I'm not that good of a shot and I don't like home intruders that close. YMMV.
Get instructions in the use of your selected weapon.
Apply for the necessary permits.
Wait.
Purchase your weapons.
Practice. I'm serious. You need to "be one" with it and comfortable with how it handles, discharges, kicks, etc.
He genuinely wants his group to be happy, work together, and deliver results.
And yet, you earlier noted that excursions are not about happiness.
Groups aren't happy, except indirectly via their members. Only the individuals within a group can be happy.
You can't make all individuals within a group happy by appealing to the desires of some of them, only of all of them. This has to be based on something they already have in common: the need to get a job done. Thus, the only guaranteed option is to make their work environment as conducive to productivity as possible.
Either that, or decide to weed some members out for not "fitting in" in a manner that has nothing to do with the job at hand. There are places in the world where firing someone for non-work-related reasons is illegal.
No, that's based on the knowledge that I would be fired for refusing to get in trouble - your own words. To be specific: If I worked for you, and you asked me to accompany three coworkers to go to Las Vegas "for fun" (or worse, for "training", hint, hint, nudge, nudge -- in that case I'd turn you in to senior management for fraud and offer my resignation), I would refuse to accompany them. If there was a training session there, and thus a legitimate business reason, I would go, but spend my spare time in my hotel room, catching up on work - 8 hours a day training, and 8 hours a day to make up for lost work time (or to rehash and apply that day's training). By your own standards, you'd have to fire me for not being a "team player".
If I get in trouble, even get a speeding ticket, I can be deported. Fortunately, I have no desire to seek the kind of "thrills" you describe and thus do not consider what you would no doubt find boring an unreasonable restriction.
This has gotten a bit off topic, so I'll offer what I would do with a new, perhaps ungelled team: offer them a budget for the equipment necessary to get their job done, and let them figure out, together, how to spend it. And I'd fight the kind of stupidity that would let me pay for entertainment, but not tools. That said, your other points deserve rebuttal.
You are operating on the mistaken assumption that shared cheap entertainment builds a team where there is none. Such "teams", I've found, are fickle, because they do not naturally exist and have to be "made".
I've encountered them. What happens is that you get a shared "laissez-faire" attitude regarding the really nasty bugs that no one can fix. What you need are people who roll up their shirt sleeves, and don't leave until the problem is discovered. One or two "uber-developers" as you put it are sufficient. What binds people like that is the "chase" of tracking the problem down.
No amount of technical acumen will make up for a lack of personality or cross the chasm of conflicting personalities between members of a group.
There is no place for conflicting personalities in the work place -- you're there to do a job, not to socialize. One puts aside differences to get the job done. Period. And, yes, I've successfully worked with people who I've hated and who've hated me. When it comes to the job, that is irrelevant. The common bond was "getting the job done".
You're trying to create an artificial shared peril when there is a very real one of getting the job done.
As for elitism, I've rescued enough projects from the hands of idiots, single-handedly (thousands of lines of supposedly multi-threaded Java with nary a "synchronized" keyword in sight is a nasty thing to fix "yesterday", esp. when one is a Java newbie like I was -- this was code that we inherited, and being a C/C++/Assembly shop (what WAS management thinking), we were clueless, and the outsourced "expert" devs were, in reality, just as clueless. The "team", impotent as a vasectomized deer staring into the headlights of a deadline, was paralyzed. Took me, equally ignorant of Java, to step forward, "learn", and fix the crap in a weekend. Rinse, lather, repeat a dozen times in a career.), to be a bit of a prima donna. The proof is in the pudding. Fortunately, I now work with people just as competent.
In my example above, the "team dynamic" resulted in: "we're all equall clueless, let's do nothing, and we can't all get fired." Doing what I did ran counter to that dynamic, but, guess what, let us deliver on time. Such a dynamic is not healthy.
Four bad-ass uberDevelopers
24/7 implies non-holidays. 24/7/356 implies every day.
And face a bogus sexual harassment charge the next day? I don't think so.
I don't need any "this is worse so stop bitching", or shared tomfoolery incentive to get me to work hard. That just breeds resentment: of those who think suffering breeds the fear necessary to work hard, and of those who need that kind of encouragement to work hard.
What build a strong team is a shared vision to do the impossible and be willing to die trying to effect a commercial success that has a positive impact on the world: I'll clean up your messy init scripts not because we got into trouble together, but rather because you've got other alligators to deal with right now, and while I also do, those init scripts are in my critical path. I'll do this because I've seen you cover my work load when necessary.
In short, goodwill make for better team building than faux camaraderie.
A group of developers will come back from those kinds of outings a 'team' - sitting random newly hired coders beside one another in cubes isn't a team, it is simply RAID (redundant array of inexpensive developers.)
Then you're not hiring the kind of people who are enthusiastic about what you're trying to achieve and would do it for nothing if they could. Anyone can code well (anyone that matters) -- you want people who want to code what you need because it's hardcore cool. It's not a job -- it's doing something that's never been done before.
Of course, if all you're trying to achieve is what is known to be possible, and all you want are second rate code monkeys who can be pushed to deliver on time, I suppose such juvenile tactics work.
They just put us in fertile grounds; we did the rest.
Sorry, but I would be wary of working with the likes of someone who is distracted by glitter and sleaze: how do I know that they will go the extra mile to fix a bug or make a deadline instead of taking a vacation at an awkward time "because such and such an event is in town." They might, but a personality that finds cheap entertainment fun is a strike against them when it comes to establishing that.
And, if you think I've become an old funny duddy, such activities didn't attract me 20 years ago either. It's what those who did not get pleasure from intellectual pursuits did.
Regardless, you should update your resume; it doesn't look like it has been touched in two years.
I have not done any of what I would consider world-class work in the past two years. With the telcom bust, I returned to Canada temporarily, and worked for ATI developing automated test tools for checking rendered video fidelity: decode HD stream, play it, CRC frames (or fields), compare, and check. Yawn. The MPEG2 stuff was fun to play with but the work wasn't exactly earthshattering. Still, one has to eat, and it was a job. I've since returned to the U.S. to develop generic automated test tools. With only an M.Comp.Sc degree, I've gotten an itch to do a Ph.D thesis on software complexity: Dijstra was wrong: GOTO's aren't harmful per se, the complexity they add is. As such, they are on a par with large unscoped contexts and many event-driven systems. Structured languages, scoping, and object orientation are one way to deal with this, but there is little theory as to "why" they are "better". For, do, and while loops are just gotos in handcuffs, and object classes are code and data locked together.
I would consider you for my team if we were hiring, but we would have to get you in a lot of trouble first.
Sorry, that's not the kind of place I want to work. And, frankly, most of the really good people I know wouldn't want to either.
Never know - someone may be looking for an old-school coder
Heh,... who currently hacks in C# and .NET? (It was lacking on my resume, so I figured I should close the gap).