A lot of people have already mentioned these facts but I thought I'd put it in a different light.
In your work as a "contracted employee" do you feel that you are providing the best customer service given the fact that English may be a second language for you, and that there might be a language gap?
Also, since the U.S. has such a strict laws regarding the export of its software, that you might not have the same version of the software as the folks whose work you are doing, or the people that you are helping, do you feel that it might hamper your ability to provide the best customer service?
In the program security department of a Redmond based company, a team of developers are all sitting at their desks with their hands over their ears going "La La La La I Can't Hear You! La La La!"
Just to be fair, does the test also work if the silver is not silver metal? What if the "silver" in the compound is not in fact silver metal, but a silver salt. Does the testing solutions react to a silver salt as well as a silver metal?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the thermal compounds makers but I do wonder how accurate the acid test is.
In many cases companies report a more easily understood term rather than give the entire chemical name. How many folks remember the joke mail that went around years ago asking people to call or write their senators because of the high amount of di-hydrogen mono-oxide that was being allowed to pollute our drinking water.
As for the compounds, if you say it has silver salt in it, would you be more or less willing to pay a higher price than you would if you were told it has 99.99% real silver in it?
That was my title for 4 years. A Student Laboratory Technical Assistant, or more correctly, a highschool student you slipped under the radar and have working in a university animal lab.
My duties included changing the wood shavings of some 3000 rats, washing their cages, and feeding them whatever crap was being tested on them. That was for the first two years. Then I got "promoted".
The next year was spent taking care of 1500 rabbits housed in wire cages in quonset huts. A channel ran under the cages that would catch the shit and piss. I'd have to use a squeege to clear the channel and collect it all in the holding tub at the end of the rows. Then using a wheelbarrow, take the tubs outside and dump them on a concrete slab so I could mix the mess with wood shavings.
The smell was bad enough, but the rabits would try to bite you if you got close enough to the cages. If they couldn't bite you, they'd try to piss on you as you emptied the channel below them.
From there I got a transfer to take care of the Primates. I thought the rabbits stank! Monkeys are worse, and they love and I do mean love to throw their shit at you. Nasty little bastards.
On the bright side, it got me ready for my first IT job. The owner of the company would tell you how useless you were and how much of a waste you were to your co-workers. But in client meetings, tell the clients how much she depended on you and how valuable you were to the company. After the meetings she then chew you a new one saying that if she had any trust in you at all she wouldn't bother going to client meetings, but did anyway because she knew that you'd screw it up.
But I'm much happier with my new employer now and have been here for almost 4 years.
"Also, I always order an odd number, so that the person making the drink will have an extra shot of expresso left over, and perhaps offer it to me for free. Nothing like a hexpresso drink to get you going after the post lunch doldrums kick in."
A true drinker I see. That's the exact reason I ask for 5 shots. I'd say about 30% of the time I watch them add the 6th for free. And I also have to agree with the fact that barrista is a profession. Being a former Oregon resident, I know several Barristas that earned almost as much as I did as a code cruncher.
My father once told me about a crew member he flew with in the U.S Air Force.
Note: My father was a Navigator on some of the "Looking Glass" flights during Vietnam.
Seems the man was up for promotion and needed to go through a background security check to get his grade increase. After filling out the stack of forms and giving the addresses of every relative, he sat back and waited for final approval and clearence.
After three months of no word, and finding that his C.O. was told to ground him until further notice, he felt he needed to call around to his relatives to find out what the problems were and to find out what, if anything was said.
Being from a very small town in the back hills country of the Ozarks, it took a little while to locate the troubles and find out what went wrong. The man finally got in touch with his own father and asked if Air Force Security had sent someone out to interview them. His father replied, "Yep. Them revenuers been sniffin 'round here askin all sorts of questions 'bout you. But don't worry none. We didn't tell them nothin!"
It took about an hour to straighten out his father and after asking his C.O. to re-submit the paperwork, he got his promotion in about a month.
Only she's taken the story and placed the six blind men in six different rooms, they don't know about each other, and only gives the information she feels each blind man needs to know.
Now build that elephant!
Micro managing noncommunicative hag that she is!
Sometimes she'll pass out the same project to two people just to see which one finishes it first. Nothing like duplication of work!
Taking a camera into a movie theater is a crime we can actually see happening.
("You cheap bastard! How could you.")
While raping a company and stealing millions is so hard to believe or imagine that we almost want to congratulate the person for trying to do it.
("You stole how much and you thought you'd get away with it?!! My God! Well done!")
How can you tell when a corporate suit (or lawyer, President, elected official, etc.) is not telling the truth?
Answer: His/Her lips move.
Lets face it, nobody wants to "Look bad" and if they can alter the records to "help you" forget what they said/did, they will do it. It's what keeps them in power and in control.
Or did we forget that its the winners that write the history books.
It's my wife and her need to open any email she gets using outlook on her windows box. She's just enough of a geek to be dangerous and "enjoys" the preview feature.
And she wonders why her 'puter can't log into the LAN without being Virus checked first.
Host the sites we manage. We farm out the hosting to third party hosts. But we're on their backs to make sure they get patched ASAP. Business hours or not, patch and reboot as soon as a patch is available.
I have Seti@home running on two boxen at work (1 Mac, 1PC) and 5 in my basement at home (4 PC, 1 Mac). They've quietly chugged away for the last year and I've never had a problem with any of the parts or any serious increase with my power bills. In fact with the removal of a 15-year old fridge, my power bill went down.
Granted, I've also spent time keeping the basement clean of dust and dirt, changing my furnace and A/C filters once a month instead of once every three months and keeping the windows closed. One of the side benefits is I don't have to dust the house as often and I find that my allergies don't give me as much trouble as they usually do.
As someone else pointed out, install a distributed computing program if you want to. Don't worry about the lifespan of the parts. If anything fails, it was the part and not the program that caused the failure.
If you're worried about the cost for parts and power, then maybe you shouldn't be using your computer at all then.
Sounds like your co-worker might an a hidden motive to have you spend "company" time looking at expensive geek toys. Were I dealing with someone that didn't trust very well, I'd watch my back.
Who's to say your co-worker doesn't run to the very same VP and rat you out. When the boss comes back to check it out and asks you about the "toys" you sink yourself when you answer him thinking he just wants more information.
Having worked at a company fill of back-stabbing goons, tends to put me on a very careful stance.
Slashdot Mirror
So the folks who spawn kill are okay then because they're simply better at the game?
That's crap.
The thing that screams cheating to me are the kiddies that set-up shop next to your spawn area and frag you as you re-enter the game.
After all if your ability is so poor that you can't even allow the enemy into the game, then you really should fine a newbie server.
-Goran
A lot of people have already mentioned these facts but I thought I'd put it in a different light.
In your work as a "contracted employee" do you feel that you are providing the best customer service given the fact that English may be a second language for you, and that there might be a language gap?
Also, since the U.S. has such a strict laws regarding the export of its software, that you might not have the same version of the software as the folks whose work you are doing, or the people that you are helping, do you feel that it might hamper your ability to provide the best customer service?
-Goran
In the program security department of a Redmond based company, a team of developers are all sitting at their desks with their hands over their ears going "La La La La I Can't Hear You! La La La!"
Different day, same piss poor products.
-Goran
Just to be fair, does the test also work if the silver is not silver metal? What if the "silver" in the compound is not in fact silver metal, but a silver salt. Does the testing solutions react to a silver salt as well as a silver metal?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the thermal compounds makers but I do wonder how accurate the acid test is.
In many cases companies report a more easily understood term rather than give the entire chemical name. How many folks remember the joke mail that went around years ago asking people to call or write their senators because of the high amount of di-hydrogen mono-oxide that was being allowed to pollute our drinking water.
As for the compounds, if you say it has silver salt in it, would you be more or less willing to pay a higher price than you would if you were told it has 99.99% real silver in it?
Its all in how you look at it.
-Goran
That was my title for 4 years. A Student Laboratory Technical Assistant, or more correctly, a highschool student you slipped under the radar and have working in a university animal lab.
My duties included changing the wood shavings of some 3000 rats, washing their cages, and feeding them whatever crap was being tested on them. That was for the first two years. Then I got "promoted".
The next year was spent taking care of 1500 rabbits housed in wire cages in quonset huts. A channel ran under the cages that would catch the shit and piss. I'd have to use a squeege to clear the channel and collect it all in the holding tub at the end of the rows. Then using a wheelbarrow, take the tubs outside and dump them on a concrete slab so I could mix the mess with wood shavings. The smell was bad enough, but the rabits would try to bite you if you got close enough to the cages. If they couldn't bite you, they'd try to piss on you as you emptied the channel below them.
From there I got a transfer to take care of the Primates. I thought the rabbits stank! Monkeys are worse, and they love and I do mean love to throw their shit at you. Nasty little bastards.
On the bright side, it got me ready for my first IT job. The owner of the company would tell you how useless you were and how much of a waste you were to your co-workers. But in client meetings, tell the clients how much she depended on you and how valuable you were to the company. After the meetings she then chew you a new one saying that if she had any trust in you at all she wouldn't bother going to client meetings, but did anyway because she knew that you'd screw it up.
But I'm much happier with my new employer now and have been here for almost 4 years.
-Goran
"Also, I always order an odd number, so that the person making the drink will have an extra shot of expresso left over, and perhaps offer it to me for free. Nothing like a hexpresso drink to get you going after the post lunch doldrums kick in."
A true drinker I see. That's the exact reason I ask for 5 shots. I'd say about 30% of the time I watch them add the 6th for free. And I also have to agree with the fact that barrista is a profession. Being a former Oregon resident, I know several Barristas that earned almost as much as I did as a code cruncher.
-Goran
I'll drink to that!
One small shot of espresso for man,
One 5-shot Venti White Chocolate Mocha for mankind!
Waiter! I'll have two please!
-Goran
How about they eat the birds killed by the wind farm? That way the birds don't go to waste, and the out of work programmers don't starve.
Would that still be thought of killing two birds with one stone or a solution?
I better power up the lights, fire up the stove, and hit the net and look for an answer!
-Goran
The pre-cursor "Hunter-Killers" of Terminator fame get built, and I still have to wait for my flying monkey men.
Damn science!
I want my monkey men!
-Goran
My father once told me about a crew member he flew with in the U.S Air Force.
Note: My father was a Navigator on some of the "Looking Glass" flights during Vietnam.
Seems the man was up for promotion and needed to go through a background security check to get his grade increase. After filling out the stack of forms and giving the addresses of every relative, he sat back and waited for final approval and clearence.
After three months of no word, and finding that his C.O. was told to ground him until further notice, he felt he needed to call around to his relatives to find out what the problems were and to find out what, if anything was said.
Being from a very small town in the back hills country of the Ozarks, it took a little while to locate the troubles and find out what went wrong. The man finally got in touch with his own father and asked if Air Force Security had sent someone out to interview them. His father replied, "Yep. Them revenuers been sniffin 'round here askin all sorts of questions 'bout you. But don't worry none. We didn't tell them nothin!"
It took about an hour to straighten out his father and after asking his C.O. to re-submit the paperwork, he got his promotion in about a month.
-Goran
I've got an account exec that needs this book.
Only she's taken the story and placed the six blind men in six different rooms, they don't know about each other, and only gives the information she feels each blind man needs to know.
Now build that elephant!
Micro managing noncommunicative hag that she is!
Sometimes she'll pass out the same project to two people just to see which one finishes it first. Nothing like duplication of work!
-Goran
If it means I'll get my flying monkey-man or dogs that spit bees, I'm all over it!
-Goran
For Dinner tonight, we'll be serving a nice fresh Filet of SCO cooked in it's own juices...
-Goran
It's crime on a different scale.
Taking a camera into a movie theater is a crime we can actually see happening.
("You cheap bastard! How could you.")
While raping a company and stealing millions is so hard to believe or imagine that we almost want to congratulate the person for trying to do it.
("You stole how much and you thought you'd get away with it?!! My God! Well done!")
-Goran
I for one welcome our new evil MPAA Overlords and the order they bring to our chaotic lives...
-Goran
How can you tell when a corporate suit (or lawyer, President, elected official, etc.) is not telling the truth?
Answer: His/Her lips move.
Lets face it, nobody wants to "Look bad" and if they can alter the records to "help you" forget what they said/did, they will do it. It's what keeps them in power and in control.
Or did we forget that its the winners that write the history books.
-Goran
too much about fire.
It's my wife and her need to open any email she gets using outlook on her windows box. She's just enough of a geek to be dangerous and "enjoys" the preview feature.
And she wonders why her 'puter can't log into the LAN without being Virus checked first.
-Goran
Tera, Giga, Exa, Don't give it to me in those terms. Put it in terms I can understand!
Just how much of that was porn?
-Goran
Then I can tell it to install Linux and then delete itself! Thank you Microsoft for finally creating a piece of software I like!
-Goran
Host the sites we manage. We farm out the hosting to third party hosts. But we're on their backs to make sure they get patched ASAP. Business hours or not, patch and reboot as soon as a patch is available.
Dance monkey, Dance!!
-Goran
I have Seti@home running on two boxen at work (1 Mac, 1PC) and 5 in my basement at home (4 PC, 1 Mac). They've quietly chugged away for the last year and I've never had a problem with any of the parts or any serious increase with my power bills. In fact with the removal of a 15-year old fridge, my power bill went down.
Granted, I've also spent time keeping the basement clean of dust and dirt, changing my furnace and A/C filters once a month instead of once every three months and keeping the windows closed. One of the side benefits is I don't have to dust the house as often and I find that my allergies don't give me as much trouble as they usually do.
As someone else pointed out, install a distributed computing program if you want to. Don't worry about the lifespan of the parts. If anything fails, it was the part and not the program that caused the failure.
If you're worried about the cost for parts and power, then maybe you shouldn't be using your computer at all then.
-Goran
You mean they had one to begin with?!!!
...a response about computer researchers who publish flaws in Microsoft products, 'I wish those people just would be quiet.'
He recognizes the fatal user flaw of not applying patches and introduced an educational plan to help correct this.
Well, that should fix THEIR own boxes. But what about the rest of us?
Oh I get it! You'll fix your boxes and the hell with the rest of us!
Jeese! You just gotta love that kind of business plan! Well heck! Crap to you too!
-Goran
My name isn't on it!
I mean come on now! I know I'm a hot stick with a keyboard!
Or does it mean that we're all tied for 51st place?
(a legend in my own mind)
-Goran
Sounds like your co-worker might an a hidden motive to have you spend "company" time looking at expensive geek toys. Were I dealing with someone that didn't trust very well, I'd watch my back.
Who's to say your co-worker doesn't run to the very same VP and rat you out. When the boss comes back to check it out and asks you about the "toys" you sink yourself when you answer him thinking he just wants more information.
Having worked at a company fill of back-stabbing goons, tends to put me on a very careful stance.
-Goran
That's why you should also sign up for your state's No-Call List.
-Goran