I was in that rat race, 70 hour weeks for months on end. I finally quit and went to work for a local temp agency. I now get to change work environments regularly, and make more than I did as a salaried employee. I only work overtime when it is truly important because the client isn't getting the time "free". Over the last two years I've only been out of an engagement for three days. Some company may someday make that proverbial "offer I can't refuse", but for the forseeable future I'm much happier this way. I spend more time with my kids and my wife, and am much less stressed. PHBs don't bother me because I feel free to speak my mind and if they don't listen they either end up paying me or someone else to fix it later.
Actually, Microsoft created COM because they wanted compound documents. CORBA wanted to invent the entire 4-Door sedan, Microsoft wanted a good enough wheel barrow for each feature they added to Microsoft applications:
Compound Documents Embedded Controls Database connectivity (several tries, and none of them has supplanted ODBC)
COM/DCOM has a lot of holes (tossing binaries around the Internet to be executed is terminally stupid), but CORBA has taken way too long to support some of the same features.
What can be done? Provide some socially acceptable environment other than battle.net for exceptional teens. Don't penalize them for being bored by the least common denominator curriculum you dole out in uniform, non-challenging parcels. Give them some advanced curriculum that interests them. Just pay attention to them fer christsake, instead of ignoring and berating them... instead of joining along with the kids you're supposed to be leading. Hear! Hear! School was the same awful hell many others have described until, in the tenth grade, I found a single teacher that recognized this important need. Out of his own pocketbook he purchased an Altair and later an Imsai 8080 and allowed an amorphous band of geeks to hang around after school (or before school, whatever) and hack on this system. In the heyday, we had created a multitasking OS that allowed us run 6 terminals off that Imsai.
The point is that it didn't take throwing gobs of money at a special program. He simply accepted us, and gave of himself. This was his hobby and he chose to share it with us. It gave me a role model and a place to hang my hat, and school was bearable after that.
It didn't stop the bullying, but I had a place to go and belong. The best part is that I gained a small measure of self confidence and was able to deal with my "peers" better.
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It seems to be impossible to less than signs to come out so read < as the less than sign:
Not marking, but you can type 10<< to undent the next ten lines, or 10>> to outdent them one level.
You can also position yourself on a brace (for C/C++ code) and type <% or >% to indent or outdent the block marked by the braces.
I was in that rat race, 70 hour weeks for months on end. I finally quit and went to work for a local temp agency. I now get to change work environments regularly, and make more than I did as a salaried employee. I only work overtime when it is truly important because the client isn't getting the time "free". Over the last two years I've only been out of an engagement for three days. Some company may someday make that proverbial "offer I can't refuse", but for the forseeable future I'm much happier this way. I spend more time with my kids and my wife, and am much less stressed. PHBs don't bother me because I feel free to speak my mind and if they don't listen they either end up paying me or someone else to fix it later.
Actually, Microsoft created COM because they wanted compound documents. CORBA wanted to invent the entire 4-Door sedan, Microsoft wanted a good enough wheel barrow for each feature they added to Microsoft applications:
Compound Documents
Embedded Controls
Database connectivity (several tries, and none of them has supplanted ODBC)
COM/DCOM has a lot of holes (tossing binaries around the Internet to be executed is terminally stupid), but CORBA has taken way too long to support some of the same features.
The point is that it didn't take throwing gobs of money at a special program. He simply accepted us, and gave of himself. This was his hobby and he chose to share it with us. It gave me a role model and a place to hang my hat, and school was bearable after that.
It didn't stop the bullying, but I had a place to go and belong. The best part is that I gained a small measure of self confidence and was able to deal with my "peers" better.