It should give pause to anyone joining the military that our citizens, and our own government would seek to arm the rest of the world, potentially to be used against us. better to stay in school, join the military industrial complex and create the weapons, rather than be paid a pittance and die prematurely on the battlefield. Take a page from our congressional leaders.
YMMV, but some of our friends did what you suggested and pursued law. Unfortunately, there is a huge glut of lawyers out there right now, and their pay is (from what we're hearing) rather miserable, with long hard hours as well. I'd be interested to hear otherwise.
Not sure what you're doing your sql in, but may I suggest a few options?
* Intellisense in SSMS is rather good, and can be set to upper case statements. * RedGate SQL Prompt or SQL Refractor are life savers. * SQLInForm http://www.sqlinform.com/
Interesting. I've given thought to this myself - just because I'm not sure the US wishes to remain (or even maintain) its governmental obligations to society. People today tend to believe that government should only be here to wage war and 'defend' the populous. I tend to think government (at least a good part of it) should be to ensure the well being of its people, and that includes equitable health care. How have you found the health care in Toronto in comparison to the US?
In response to the original - simple answer, wrong question. The manager should stay if: 1. The manager can provide some sort of recognizable value to the effort (getting coffee, running interference, coding, whatever). 2. The manager is directly responsible for the late hours being incurred. 3. The manager can provide some sort of morale boost to the employees by physically being present.
On the flip side, should you remain in the office when the manager has to stay late? Perhaps he's staying late because your team didn't finish the code you promised at a particular time. What then? Why isn't the CEO staying late when you have to work overtime?
In response to parent:
Indeed, it may be time for the poster to stop looking at the individual "I'm putting in OT, why isn't my manager here" and start looking inwards, and at the macro level of the organisation. Recently, in an attempt to understand my own organization's psychotic management style (note here I'm not absolving myself of any wrongdoing), I've been reading Edward Yourdon's "Death March". Snippet:
"Companies both large and small are filled with politics and are staffed by managers and technical developers who suffer from hysterical optimism as well as the usual gamut of emotions such as fear, insecurity, arrogance, and naivete. And the combination of re-engineering, downsizing, outsourcing, and global competition - together with the opportunities provided by new technologies... and the internet - suggest to me that death march projects are likely to be a common occurrence for years to come."
The rest of Yourdon's book is spent lending an understanding as to why these things happen from many standpoints, with the hope that you can empower yourself to make a *rational* decision about your involvement in the project, and even the company as a whole. At the end of the day, it's your time, and your life. But at least come to the conclusion that you're 50% of the problem - management isn't solely responsible for your unhappiness. With the frenetic pace of companies today, people have very little time to learn, develop, and get things right. By the time something settles into resembling a normal project, everything changes and the process of education, experience, mistakes, etc. starts all over again. The players, environment - everything changes every single day.
I'm not implying that everyone should throw up their hands. But if you're not actively attempting to change the environment around you through your own education and experience, then I submit that you're just part of the problem.
Where are my mod up points!? Redmine is the beautiful solution which walks the lines between having to input far too much information, being useful for the developer, and still useful for managers. It seems to have quite a few TRAC defectors too. I've never used Trac, so I don't know why. Bugzilla was far too 'developer oriented' for me - Redmine seems to take care of that rather well.
In the first gulf war we slept and lived in tents without airconditioning in the middle of summer (think Marines). The Air Force, not 2 miles away, had all air conditioned tents. I'm glad to hear you're treated better than we were. It was effing miserable.
MARS was around when I was in Japan in 1988 in Iwakuni. Made life a lot better, since phone calls back then long distance could cost you your whole paycheck in the span of an hour or two.
Well, so far from Google I get maps, email, groups and a kind-of crappy office suite that is only usable online plus photo management(Picasa). In order to use any of their services, I need some kind of software installed, which they don't provide, or sell. Or, I can go buy a smart phone and use some of their basic services.
If I check on Microsoft's area, they basically offer all of this (email, office suite, picture management, maps, myriad of dev tools) plus a ton of other products and services. Have you seen what they actually provide? The comparison between the two can only take place between about 5 products. After that, Microsoft seems to have much more in their arsenal.
My father was a college level teacher for over 50 years. Tenure and unions are very important aspects of college career. Here's why:
During the civil rights movement, my [white] father held on to his job while being able to protest blacks *not* being allowed into university. If it wasn't for the tenure, he would certainly have been let go. You see, universities teach science, philosophy, and other disciplines which frequently go against the cultural fad of the day. It is important for freedom of thought to be part of education; without it, teachers would live under constant fear of being fired for simply expressing non-PC views. Think of the number of nuts who want creationism taught as "science" in school.
Universities are turning more and more to private enterprise for funding. This is dangerous, because it lets pointy haired MBAs treat education like a for profit enterprise, which it shouldn't be. Education funding should only be given by the state, federal and individual. Special interests need to stay out. If you think I'm wrong, just look at our congress.
There is another factor - $$ in college are allocated disproportionately to sports programs. Just take a look at the budgets of university sports programs in comparison to other departments. That's where your tuition goes - not to the pittance salary your professor gets.
As far as your other union related comments - I kind-of laugh and flinch at the same time. It's very vogue right now to look down on unions, to think that your "sheer skills" will somehow catapult you above all your peers, and that anyone who is in a union is a slacker. To some extent, this may be true. However, unions, social security, and other social programs came about because of one very important factor: greed. It's the same greed you see today in Wall Street. Prior to the advent of unions, people suffered tremendously at the hands of companies. Do your homework - read up on why they came about. Time changes little - today in the US system companies would love you to be slave labor (read: WalMart). What do you think WalMart would pay its employees if the federal or state minimum wage wasn't in effect?
In the end, extremes encourage strife. Government, business and people need to live in constant tension, and in balance. There should always be a tug of war happening between all three, with government erring on the side of its people whenever possible.
I can't agree more. I'm in AZ, so I have a similar issue - standing in 110 degree heat and melting.
However, if all of these resources were poured into a really *good* transit system (trains, busses, better places to *catch* the bus) then I'm sure that could be addressed.
I used to drive a Geo Metro back in the 90s, because I had to give up my motorcycle for something that had room for 2. I actually *forgot* that I needed to fill the car. I would go an entire month of hard driving without filling the tank - it was wonderful.
What no one discusses is that all the money sunk into (personal) cars, insurance, sales, marketing, roads, disposal, repair, hazardous waste, gas, oil etc - must be in the high billions per year. I just can't understand why the words "public transportation" are so evil here. The most common statement is "I love the freedom of the road". WTF? You mean, getting in your car and sitting in a traffic jam in an overpowered Hummer for 2 hours on the way to and from work, while you're unable to *do* anything else during that time? You mean, paying 1/3 of your take home pay for the opportunity to have a hunk of metal which, by and large, provides exactly the same purpose as every other hunk of metal next to it? Enjoy the dangers of personal commuting that kills thousands per year (read more deadly than Juliani/11)? Love smog? I mean for gods sake, this isn't the 50s with long stretches of road with no-one driving (no offense Senator Ted Stevens). At the end of the day, it's a huge disgrace that people are so *used* to driving personal automobiles that we aren't all in an uprising for something better, something cheaper, and something that truly serves everyone in our country.
Amen. I'm really glad to see this post, because I've done the calcs like that myself. I have a 1999 Honda Accord, paid off years ago. Until I absolutely *must* buy a new car, I'm going to wait it out. My current car has 101,000 miles on it, and probably at least 120,000 more to go. I feel like the hybrids are going through lot of "early adopter" pains both technically as well as financially. On top of all of that, I'll save three or four thousand dollars just by getting a one year old "used" car, instead of paying the new car penalty. And.... if you're in your 20s or early 30s and take that $350 a month car payment and put it towards retirement, you can shave 5 years off your retirement timeline.
I tend to think of it another way - energy costs are going UP. And in Arizona, in order to keep your 1900 sq ft house cooled to 78 degrees in the summer (which is 5 months long) it costs about $400 per month, average.
So - if you install at $36k, and just say you cut your costs down to 1/5 per month - the number of years to recoup your cost over time goes down significantly if you roll in the cost of inflation, energy costs rising, and the fact your can probably gain some of the outlay back on when you sell your house.
My (then pregnant) wife got rear-ended on the freeway by a medium size rental car. In the car were three female Department of Homeland Security lawyers. Needless to say, they were very nice and horrified with what had occurred (my wife was fine fortunately).
We started the process of getting reimbursed through the DHS. We found that a lot of stuff had to be sent in within a very, very short time period, and if the DHS hasn't responded to you in six months, then they aren't required to at all.
Yes, you read that right. Basically they can (through proxy) damage your property, make you jump through hoops, then, without any fault of your own, simply ignore the fact that anything ever happened, and you are powerless to do anything about it. We have tried calling multiple times to their posted phone numbers without success. We filed through our insurance agent because she thought (through prior experience) we wouldn't get reimbursed - and at least if DHS didnt' cover us then our insurance company would. It's nearly the 6 month mark or more now, and no word.
You got modded funny, but the first part of your post was suggested in Popular Science back in the early 80s. I remember reading that they had made four "pods" that people would be seated into prior to the plane arriving. Once it taxied in, the crane would lift the pods in and out of place. Everyone at the airport would have done all the time wasting seating already!
Another aspect was they figured that each "pod" could act as it's own life capsule - deploying large parachute in case of emergency, helping with survival on water landings, etc. It was a really fascinating article. Last I heard, it was (of course) too expensive and would require too many modifications to the (crappy) system we have now.
"One can argue, that if your company can't afford the outlay for a working exchange environment, your company doesn't need it, and it would probably be a waste of time trying to replicate its features."
I can only say that I've been one of the real ground pounders with the 75lb pack, and none of us were ever jumping.
I don't believe your developer challenge has much weight to be honest; Call of Duty severely crippled bunny hopping in their second patch by giving the player the ability to jump, but when they landed they had to spend a few moments recovering before moving forward, and during that time they were vulnerable. This pretty much eliminated the rampant hop/spritz/kill moves the players were doing.
Dice/EA hired on the Trauma Studios (Desert Combat) team for "consulting". Apparently they didn't listen much....
The game has it's good points, but it feels massively rushed to production, and shipped with some glaring bugs. However, even with all the issues I list below, it's still FUN, but very frustrating at times. I figured this would bide my time until Call of Duty 2 comes out in October.
No COOP! Yes, you're screwed. There are hacks to help you out, but Dice/EA decided that COOP wasn't to be.
There's only ONE kind of map mode - no CTF, no others whatsoever.
Many of my friends bomb to the desktop on a continual basis. It's a huge point of contention in the BF2 world right now.
1999 called, and it wants it's game browser back. Its incredibly bad in-game browser is beyond reproach, probably because it's based off of Gamespy technology. No favorites, no way to store or pull up previously played servers, slow refresh times, etc.
There is a new "punish" system in the game, which is being terribly misused. For instance, if you mine areas as an engineer, they show up with giant red skull/crossbones warning your teammates that there are mines in the area. Yet should they roll over them and die, they can "punish" you, which deducts your score, and can sometimes boot you from the server. Other tricks are to run in front of vehicles, getting yourself killed and then punish the people - getting them kicked from the server. It's just stupid.
Flying planes in BF2 means you really just take your joystick and plant it in a circle - the game maps are far too small to get any feeling of flying. The stingers that are supposed to provide ground troops some protection are woefully underpowered, and it can take *5* of them to bring down a plane.
The point system for unlocking weapons (hello developers, aren't we over this stupid crap yet?) is silly. It's being exploited by some clans and groups of people who go off on a map, sit in a corner, and knife/revive each other until their points are ridiculous, thus giving them new ranks and abilities.
"Bunny Hopping" is still somehow in the game, which everyone has complained about since time began. Just try carrying about 75lbs of gear, and then hopping around like a bunny while shooting your M203 grenade launcher. I'm sure it's a tactic recommended by most modern armies. There's no excuse for this.
Still no scripting/modding tools for the community.
If you want to really get a feel for how the game is, just go to these forums and listen in: http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/
I haven't listed even a smidgen of the valid complaints people have listed online.
Slashdot Mirror
It should give pause to anyone joining the military that our citizens, and our own government would seek to arm the rest of the world, potentially to be used against us. better to stay in school, join the military industrial complex and create the weapons, rather than be paid a pittance and die prematurely on the battlefield. Take a page from our congressional leaders.
Cool beans. Best of luck to you - I've thought about the same thing multiple times but keep coming back to IT - it's what I love.
YMMV, but some of our friends did what you suggested and pursued law. Unfortunately, there is a huge glut of lawyers out there right now, and their pay is (from what we're hearing) rather miserable, with long hard hours as well. I'd be interested to hear otherwise.
Not sure what you're doing your sql in, but may I suggest a few options?
* Intellisense in SSMS is rather good, and can be set to upper case statements.
* RedGate SQL Prompt or SQL Refractor are life savers.
* SQLInForm http://www.sqlinform.com/
Just to name a few.
Interesting. I've given thought to this myself - just because I'm not sure the US wishes to remain (or even maintain) its governmental obligations to society. People today tend to believe that government should only be here to wage war and 'defend' the populous. I tend to think government (at least a good part of it) should be to ensure the well being of its people, and that includes equitable health care. How have you found the health care in Toronto in comparison to the US?
Except that today, that will land your child a quick trip to Guantanamo....
In response to the original - simple answer, wrong question. The manager should stay if:
1. The manager can provide some sort of recognizable value to the effort (getting coffee, running interference, coding, whatever).
2. The manager is directly responsible for the late hours being incurred.
3. The manager can provide some sort of morale boost to the employees by physically being present.
On the flip side, should you remain in the office when the manager has to stay late? Perhaps he's staying late because your team didn't finish the code you promised at a particular time. What then? Why isn't the CEO staying late when you have to work overtime?
In response to parent:
Indeed, it may be time for the poster to stop looking at the individual "I'm putting in OT, why isn't my manager here" and start looking inwards, and at the macro level of the organisation. Recently, in an attempt to understand my own organization's psychotic management style (note here I'm not absolving myself of any wrongdoing), I've been reading Edward Yourdon's "Death March". Snippet:
"Companies both large and small are filled with politics and are staffed by managers and technical developers who suffer from hysterical optimism as well as the usual gamut of emotions such as fear, insecurity, arrogance, and naivete. And the combination of re-engineering, downsizing, outsourcing, and global competition - together with the opportunities provided by new technologies ... and the internet - suggest to me that death march projects are likely to be a common occurrence for years to come."
The rest of Yourdon's book is spent lending an understanding as to why these things happen from many standpoints, with the hope that you can empower yourself to make a *rational* decision about your involvement in the project, and even the company as a whole. At the end of the day, it's your time, and your life. But at least come to the conclusion that you're 50% of the problem - management isn't solely responsible for your unhappiness. With the frenetic pace of companies today, people have very little time to learn, develop, and get things right. By the time something settles into resembling a normal project, everything changes and the process of education, experience, mistakes, etc. starts all over again. The players, environment - everything changes every single day.
I'm not implying that everyone should throw up their hands. But if you're not actively attempting to change the environment around you through your own education and experience, then I submit that you're just part of the problem.
Where are my mod up points!?
Redmine is the beautiful solution which walks the lines between having to input far too much information, being useful for the developer, and still useful for managers.
It seems to have quite a few TRAC defectors too. I've never used Trac, so I don't know why.
Bugzilla was far too 'developer oriented' for me - Redmine seems to take care of that rather well.
This is genius. I'm imagining the same thing on "Car Talk":
Caller: Hi, I'm calling from BFE, Arizona. My 1998 Honda Accord has the following problem...
Tom: STOP RIGHT THERE! You need to sell that car, and get a Lexus. We only recommend Lexus.
Caller: Uh, well, I've got a problem here I was hoping you could solve instead of a $40k solution...
Tom: Well, you were too stupid when you bought that. Sorry. Just go get a Lexus. Problems solved!
Tom: Next caller!
In the first gulf war we slept and lived in tents without airconditioning in the middle of summer (think Marines). The Air Force, not 2 miles away, had all air conditioned tents.
I'm glad to hear you're treated better than we were. It was effing miserable.
MARS was around when I was in Japan in 1988 in Iwakuni. Made life a lot better, since phone calls back then long distance could cost you your whole paycheck in the span of an hour or two.
Donald Rumsfeld, is that you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RpSv3HjpEw
Well, so far from Google I get maps, email, groups and a kind-of crappy office suite that is only usable online plus photo management(Picasa). In order to use any of their services, I need some kind of software installed, which they don't provide, or sell. Or, I can go buy a smart phone and use some of their basic services.
If I check on Microsoft's area, they basically offer all of this (email, office suite, picture management, maps, myriad of dev tools) plus a ton of other products and services. Have you seen what they actually provide? The comparison between the two can only take place between about 5 products. After that, Microsoft seems to have much more in their arsenal.
http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx?pf=true&group=All+Products
Subscribe to some random twitter/tweets? I hear that's the place to be if you're ADHD....
http://election.twitter.com/
My father was a college level teacher for over 50 years. Tenure and unions are very important aspects of college career. Here's why:
During the civil rights movement, my [white] father held on to his job while being able to protest blacks *not* being allowed into university. If it wasn't for the tenure, he would certainly have been let go.
You see, universities teach science, philosophy, and other disciplines which frequently go against the cultural fad of the day. It is important for freedom of thought to be part of education; without it, teachers would live under constant fear of being fired for simply expressing non-PC views. Think of the number of nuts who want creationism taught as "science" in school.
Universities are turning more and more to private enterprise for funding. This is dangerous, because it lets pointy haired MBAs treat education like a for profit enterprise, which it shouldn't be. Education funding should only be given by the state, federal and individual. Special interests need to stay out. If you think I'm wrong, just look at our congress.
There is another factor - $$ in college are allocated disproportionately to sports programs. Just take a look at the budgets of university sports programs in comparison to other departments. That's where your tuition goes - not to the pittance salary your professor gets.
As far as your other union related comments - I kind-of laugh and flinch at the same time. It's very vogue right now to look down on unions, to think that your "sheer skills" will somehow catapult you above all your peers, and that anyone who is in a union is a slacker.
To some extent, this may be true. However, unions, social security, and other social programs came about because of one very important factor: greed. It's the same greed you see today in Wall Street. Prior to the advent of unions, people suffered tremendously at the hands of companies. Do your homework - read up on why they came about. Time changes little - today in the US system companies would love you to be slave labor (read: WalMart). What do you think WalMart would pay its employees if the federal or state minimum wage wasn't in effect?
In the end, extremes encourage strife. Government, business and people need to live in constant tension, and in balance. There should always be a tug of war happening between all three, with government erring on the side of its people whenever possible.
Don't be scared.
I can't agree more. I'm in AZ, so I have a similar issue - standing in 110 degree heat and melting.
However, if all of these resources were poured into a really *good* transit system (trains, busses, better places to *catch* the bus) then I'm sure that could be addressed.
Amen, but I'm one of those Americans. :-)
I used to drive a Geo Metro back in the 90s, because I had to give up my motorcycle for something that had room for 2. I actually *forgot* that I needed to fill the car. I would go an entire month of hard driving without filling the tank - it was wonderful.
What no one discusses is that all the money sunk into (personal) cars, insurance, sales, marketing, roads, disposal, repair, hazardous waste, gas, oil etc - must be in the high billions per year. I just can't understand why the words "public transportation" are so evil here. The most common statement is "I love the freedom of the road". WTF? You mean, getting in your car and sitting in a traffic jam in an overpowered Hummer for 2 hours on the way to and from work, while you're unable to *do* anything else during that time? You mean, paying 1/3 of your take home pay for the opportunity to have a hunk of metal which, by and large, provides exactly the same purpose as every other hunk of metal next to it? Enjoy the dangers of personal commuting that kills thousands per year (read more deadly than Juliani/11)? Love smog? I mean for gods sake, this isn't the 50s with long stretches of road with no-one driving (no offense Senator Ted Stevens).
At the end of the day, it's a huge disgrace that people are so *used* to driving personal automobiles that we aren't all in an uprising for something better, something cheaper, and something that truly serves everyone in our country.
Amen. I'm really glad to see this post, because I've done the calcs like that myself. I have a 1999 Honda Accord, paid off years ago. Until I absolutely *must* buy a new car, I'm going to wait it out. My current car has 101,000 miles on it, and probably at least 120,000 more to go. I feel like the hybrids are going through lot of "early adopter" pains both technically as well as financially.
On top of all of that, I'll save three or four thousand dollars just by getting a one year old "used" car, instead of paying the new car penalty.
And.... if you're in your 20s or early 30s and take that $350 a month car payment and put it towards retirement, you can shave 5 years off your retirement timeline.
I tend to think of it another way - energy costs are going UP. And in Arizona, in order to keep your 1900 sq ft house cooled to 78 degrees in the summer (which is 5 months long) it costs about $400 per month, average.
So - if you install at $36k, and just say you cut your costs down to 1/5 per month - the number of years to recoup your cost over time goes down significantly if you roll in the cost of inflation, energy costs rising, and the fact your can probably gain some of the outlay back on when you sell your house.
My (then pregnant) wife got rear-ended on the freeway by a medium size rental car. In the car were three female Department of Homeland Security lawyers. Needless to say, they were very nice and horrified with what had occurred (my wife was fine fortunately).
We started the process of getting reimbursed through the DHS. We found that a lot of stuff had to be sent in within a very, very short time period, and if the DHS hasn't responded to you in six months, then they aren't required to at all.
Yes, you read that right. Basically they can (through proxy) damage your property, make you jump through hoops, then, without any fault of your own, simply ignore the fact that anything ever happened, and you are powerless to do anything about it. We have tried calling multiple times to their posted phone numbers without success. We filed through our insurance agent because she thought (through prior experience) we wouldn't get reimbursed - and at least if DHS didnt' cover us then our insurance company would. It's nearly the 6 month mark or more now, and no word.
You got modded funny, but the first part of your post was suggested in Popular Science back in the early 80s. I remember reading that they had made four "pods" that people would be seated into prior to the plane arriving. Once it taxied in, the crane would lift the pods in and out of place. Everyone at the airport would have done all the time wasting seating already!
Another aspect was they figured that each "pod" could act as it's own life capsule - deploying large parachute in case of emergency, helping with survival on water landings, etc. It was a really fascinating article. Last I heard, it was (of course) too expensive and would require too many modifications to the (crappy) system we have now.
I don't know which to choose from....
Description of Composition:http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallaci es/composition.html . html a ble-cause.html
or
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/post-hoc
or
Questionable Cause:: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/question
or maybe even slipperly slope - so many to choose from.
I don't believe your developer challenge has much weight to be honest; Call of Duty severely crippled bunny hopping in their second patch by giving the player the ability to jump, but when they landed they had to spend a few moments recovering before moving forward, and during that time they were vulnerable. This pretty much eliminated the rampant hop/spritz/kill moves the players were doing.
The game has it's good points, but it feels massively rushed to production, and shipped with some glaring bugs. However, even with all the issues I list below, it's still FUN, but very frustrating at times. I figured this would bide my time until Call of Duty 2 comes out in October.
If you want to really get a feel for how the game is, just go to these forums and listen in: http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/ I haven't listed even a smidgen of the valid complaints people have listed online.