She would not only certainly sue, but she could get "free" legal representation for her lawsuit -- it would be a slam-dunk case of wrongful termination, and many lawyers would be happy to represent her merely for a cut of the action when they clean you out.
Hiring your girlfriend is opening a very large and particularly smelly can of worms.
Another thing to bear in mind is that in many states, when you form a sole partnership (a sole proprietorship with more than one person) the partners assume liability for each other's debts. Since you are not separating your personal assets from your corporate assets, your own and each of your partner's debts become your collective problem. You can be legally sued and taken to collections over your partner's personal debts. Bear this fact in mind when selecting your partners!
I know whereof I speak; I own a sole partnership, with my partner being my wife. Since we're married, and share our personal debt load already, it doesn't make a difference in terms of the business. However, I once rejected an offer to bring a friend on board to "help run the company" because he had massive personal debt and I didn't want to go through the trouble of converting my sole partnership into an LLC or S-Corp.
Lastly, don't forget to have your girlfriend fill out the applicable paperwork for being a 1099 employee, don't forget to pay your business taxes quarterly, and don't forget to have your tax accountant issue your girlfriend a W-9 at the end of the tax year. There's a lot to remember when it comes to taxes, and you really should hire a good tax accountant. You really do not want to get on the IRS' wrong side.
Anyone who is looking for a job or in danger of being laid off (that's everyone these days!) should take a few hours and read the Ask the Headhunter site from top to bottom. It really is an incredibly valuable source of knowledge.
Speaking of honest head hunters who have integrity, check out Mason Concepts at http://www.masonconcepts.com. Attilio, one of the head hunters there, has been my head hunter for years now. He's a great guy, networks like hell in the California market, always does right by his clients, and is willing to go to bat for you over pay and benefits once an employer announces their interest in you. Very highly recommended.
Re:Another day, another batch of applications
on
Joel Rants About Resumes
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Networking is an art. The hardest parts about it are:
You need to be genuinely interested in your fellow man.
You cannot start networking when you're already in need; it's too late then.
You need to be networking even during the times when you are employed, are doing well in life, and can help others.
People frequently point how resume-spamming and other actions contribute to "appearing desperate." Well, guess what? Coming out of the blue and starting to network once you're already in need absolutely reeks of desperation!
Call it wrong, call it bad, whatever -- by in large, people don't like to help desperate people. Additionally, you must remember that subconscious greed drives a lot of hiring decisions: if you're already employed, you're more likely to get that shiny new job you're interested in than your fellow unemployed people.
Why?
Simple. You're already employed, viz., you obviously must be more experienced and more qualified than the people who are unemployed.
It's ugly, but that's the way it is. But I digress.
Back to the networking issue: it really only works if, when your time of need comes, you can call upon friends and network contacts who you've known and shown a genuine interest in long before you need them. Even better, if some of these networking contacts "owe" you, because of past favors you've done for them, or for ways you've been able to help them in the past, then they'll feel obligated to give you a leg up.
Conversely, if you appear out of nowhere and starting trying to network 'em, and rapidly get to the point of the matter and say "I need a job!" then they will be disinclined to help. In fact, you'll probably piss 'em off.
I speak from personal experience, from both sides of the employment fence. You must take a genuine interest in your fellow creatures, become a good listener, and be willing to help out your friends in their time of need.
And believe me, if you're doing all this purely with a motive of "gotta appear to be interested and caring, so I can ask for something in return someday!" people will see right through it and resent you.
My current job was landed almost entirely by virtue of a cover letter. Allow me to explain.
First, bear in mind that by taking the time to do this cover letter right, I was offered a job in June of last year in San Francisco (very hard hit in the dot-com bust) and the company came up to meet my demands by $15,000 over their initial offer.
Here's what I did:
I carefully read their job description.
In my cover letter, I took the major requirements of the job (as they described them) and detailed how my knowledge and skills met each one.
I expanded on that, and for a few choice job requirements, detailed how with my knowledge and skills, they could go "above and beyond" just what they'd written.
Wherever I was able, I listed the skills I had which met their "optional but preferred requirements."
I began, and wrapped up, the cover letter with an explanation of how I could (a) hit the ground running, and (b) bring real value to their company by helping them reach their business goals.
Literally within an hour of having e-mailed the cover letter as the body of an e-mail, with my resume attached, they called me to schedule an interview.
Here's the moral of this story: the importance of a well-written cover letter cannot be overemphasized.
I repeat: the cover letter is what separates your resume from those that are read to those that are ignored. You absolutely must capture the reader's attention within the first sentence or two, or there's a good chance that they'll move on to the next one.
The reason for this is clear: any job opening these days receives hundreds if not thousands of submissions within hours of the job offer being made visible.
For example, my company recently posted an opening for a very junior Perl developer on Craigslist, and we received over 500 resumes within the first business day alone! Do you think we read all 500? Eh? No fscking way. We went larger on what the first paragraph of the e-mail said! If it looked like a cookie-cutter e-mail, or it was blank or just said something like "Here's my resume" then it was skipped.
It's called networking, and is the single most important skill in the job marketplace. Trouble is, it tends to be one of the least-developed skills in most geek's repertoires.
The value of networking cannot be over emphasized. I've landed most of my IT jobs purely through knowing the right people.
I strongly recommend reading How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It is a truly excellent book, and an absolute must read by anyone who has the slightest interest in networking themselves.
You're absolutely correct, Ritalin is a member of the methamphetamine family.
What? you say. The ADD victim is already "sped up", and you're giving them speed?
Oddly enough, in hyperactive people -- such as myself, stimulants such as speed, nicotine, and caffeine actually have a calming or slowing effect. I speak from experience; I actually feel calmer and more relaxed after drinking several cups of coffee, wherein a "normal" person might feel jittery or hyper.
This begs the question: since Ritalin is a methamphetamine, and shares its effects with nicotine and caffeine, why not have your five-year-old take up smoking and coffee drinking? Absurd, you say? How so? Now, I'm not promoting smoking or coffee among minors, but exactly how does a doctor signing a piece of paper make Ritalin suddenly so acceptable, when you would balk at cigarettes or coffee?
Ah, it's gladdening to hear that others share the exact same drawbacks at work as I do. I'm the same way with tasks; if I'm not careful, I'll rapidly switch between tasks until getting "stuck" on the most interesting or complex, leaving the simplier but often more important tasks to linger.
I also can't listen to music with lyrics (example: Gilbert & Sullivan) while working, I loose my concentration on the task at hand (UNIX administration). Thus, I tend to listen exclusively to trance, typically from Digitally Imported.
Meetings also tend to be unbearable, although I suspect most people find this to be the case.:-) I will often figure out the outcome of the meeting within a few minutes of the start, and then having to sit there and listen to people rehash the same things over and over and over and...you get the idea.
Thank you for an excellent post, tehdely. You are absolutely right.
Both my wife and I have ADD, she more so than I, so I feel that I'm qualified to comment extensively on this subject.
I think that most Slashdot readers would not hesitate to agree that the vast majority of people are stupid. And that being dumb, or at least acting dumb, is very much the in thing in schools. This has been the case for a long time, but is especially prevelent today. One need only to examine the hip or popular modes of dress, the prefered shuffling gate used when walking, the preponderance of guys wearing their pants halfway to their ankles, and the promotion of gang hand-signs to being a common and cool thing to do to realize this.
The driving force behind this is really quite obvious: smart people can, with varying degrees of success, act dumb. On the other hand, dumb people can only rarely pass themselves off as smart. You take an environment which is populated mostly by idiots (viz., your average public high school) and it's no wonder that being dumb is cool. It's an autonomous ego-preservation reaction on the part of the dumb people, and largely a self-preservation reaction on the part of the smart or intelligent minority.
However, when you're too young to grasp the politics of the situation, and you're being "watched over" by teachers who don't have the time or don't give a damn to keep you safe -- and worse yet, have the misfortune of having parents who can't be bothered to understand the situation and simply swallow and then regurgitate the popular take on ADD, then the "solution" of calling it a disease and perscribing drugs in an effort at slowing down (read: dumbing down) the child to put him or her "on par" with his or her associates is applied.
This is a truly stupid and sickening solution.
The reason the child can't pay attention is often because the topic is either too boring or too obvious to successfully grab and hold their attention. A practical illustration of this would be one of those movies wherein you are able to figure out the entire plot, and thereby loose all interest in the movie, within a few minutes of the start. You know what I mean; like starting to watch a TV show and then saying "yup, they he kills him, she leaves him, the sky falls on her, and they live happily ever after. The end" within, say, three minutes of the show starting. I'll bet you don't then "force" yourself to watch the rest of the show, merely to "keep up" the appearance of being average, viz., stupid like everyone else.
I'm going to be a parent someday, and I'd say there is a good chance my child will have ADD to some degree. And I'll be goddamned if I'm going to have him or her shot full of fucking drugs merely in an effort to slow their intelligence enough so that he or she will "sit still" and behave on par with "everyone else." What a truly fucked up approach!
For those who can't be bothered to click the link, and thereby may miss out on a delightful illustration of exactly how stupid and backwards folk living in the bible belt really are....
Linda Branagan is an expert on daemons. She has a T-shirt that sports the daemon in tennis shoes that appears on the cover of the 4.3BSD manuals and _The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System_ by S. Leffler, M. McKusick, M. Karels, J. Quarterman, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA 1989.
She tells the following story about wearing the 4.3BSD daemon T-shirt:
Last week I walked into a local "home style cookin' restaurant/watering hole" in Texas to pick up a take-out order. I spoke briefly to the waitress behind the counter, who told me my order would be done in a few minutes.
So, while I was busy gazing at the farm implements hanging on the walls, I was approached by two ``natives.'' These guys might just be the original Texas rednecks.
``Pardon us, ma'am. Mind if we ask you a question?''
Well, people keep telling me that Texans are real friendly, so I nodded.
``Are you a Satanist?''
Well, at least they didn't ask me if I liked to party.
``Uh, no, I can't say that I am.''
``Gee, ma'am. Are you sure about that?'' they asked.
I put on my biggest, brightest Dallas Cowboys cheerleader smile and said, ``No, I'm positive. The closest I've ever come to Satanism is watching Geraldo.''
``Hmmm. Interesting. See, we was just wondering why it is you have the lord of darkness on your chest there.''
I was this close to slapping one of them and causing a scene -- then I stopped and noticed the shirt I happened to be wearing that day. Sure enough, it had a picture of a small, devilish-looking creature that has for some time now been associated with a certain operating system. In this particular representation, the creature was wearing sneakers.
They continued: ``See, ma'am, we don't exactly appreciate it when people show off pictures of the devil. Especially when he's lookin' so friendly.''
These idiots sounded terrifyingly serious.
Me: ``Oh, well, see, this isn't really the devil, it's just, well, it's sort of a mascot.
Native: ``And what kind of football team has the devil as a mascot?''
Me: ``Oh, it's not a team. It's an operating -- uh, a kind of computer.''
I figured that an ATM machine was about as much technology as these guys could handle, and I knew that if I so much as uttered the word ``UNIX'' I would only make things worse.
Native: ``Where does this satanical computer come from?''
Me: ``California. And there's nothing satanical about it really.''
Somewhere along the line here, the waitress noticed my predicament -- but these guys probably outweighed her by 600 pounds, so all she did was look at me sympathetically and run off into the kitchen.
Native: ``Ma'am, I think you're lying. And we'd appreciate it if you'd leave the premises now.''
Fortunately, the waitress returned that very instant with my order, and they agreed that it would be okay for me to actually pay for my food before I left. While I was at the cash register, they amused themselves by talking to each other.
Native #1: ``Do you think the police know about these devil computers?''
Native #2: ``If they come from California, then the FBI oughta know about 'em.''
They escorted me to the door. I tried one last time: ``You're really blowing this all out of proportion. A lot of people use this `kind of computers.' Universities, researchers, businesses. They're actually very useful.''
Big, big, BIG mistake. I should have guessed at what came next.
Native: ``Does the government use these devil computers?''
Me: ``Yes.''
Another BIG boo-boo.
Native: ``And does the government pay for 'em? With our tax dollars?''
I decided that it was time to jump ship.
Me: ``No. Nope. Not at all. Your tax dollars never entered the picture at all. I promise. No sir, not a penny. Our good Christian congressmen would never let something like that happen. Nope. Never. Bye.''
Yeah, but the Army still has not figured out how to Save and Reload games. You can't even Quicksave a game. Until there's at least an Undo option, count me out.
From what I've gathered in talking with non-geek friends, acquaintances, and coworkers, atypical "social" activities would include:
Going to a bar with >= 1 friend of the same sex (getting injured in a barfight, and/or getting sufficiently drunk to vomit on your friend, are all considered 'male bonding experiences.'
Getting so drunk with >= 1 friend of any sex that you can't remember the rest of the evening, or even of driving home that night.
Going with friends to watch a gaggle of baffoons chase a little white spot all over the greensward (viz., Golf)
The above, but actually chasing said white speck all over the grass
Going with friends to one of those ridiculous events wherein you pay good money to sit on an exposed terrace, with the sun baking your brains, while watching a tiny collection of distant humans -- no larger than ants from you elevation -- engage in some kind of frippery involving a sphere or ovoid that two logical groups are insistent upon removing from the other's posession
Going with friends to observe a group of fools race their cars 'round a track, when one could enjoy more speed and carnage merely by standing next to a given stretch of Highway 17*
Etc, etc, etc.
* A highway which runs south of Silicon Valley to Santa Cruz in California, known for its idiotic drivers, frequent accidents, widely-ignored speed limit, insane switchback curves, and sheer dropoffs.
Oddly enough, going on a date does not seem to count as a "social activity", I would assume since it tends to exclude other parties from the activities. However, a double-date might count. Going to a Star Trek convention does not count. Going to the Opera does, and generally grants you at least +5 Charisma with all female companions.
You are also often granted the time to carefully weigh and formulate an answer, and not be interrupted or have the topic abruptly changed on you. This various of course, depending on the communication medium. IRC is probably the worst, and e-mail the best; IM technologies would fall in the middle, IMHO.
I met my wife on ICQ, when we lived on opposite sides of the United States. I'm a UNIX admin, so I spend 90% of my day online. My wife is a financial consultant, and spends a great deal of her time online. We routinely chat during our work days via Jabber. I rarely watch TV, but am an avid reader -- as is my wife. We typically read one to two paperback novels apiece during a given week, and I'd say Netflix is definitely edging out broadcast TV when we do watch the idiot box.
Slashdot Mirror
Hiring your girlfriend is opening a very large and particularly smelly can of worms.
I know whereof I speak; I own a sole partnership, with my partner being my wife. Since we're married, and share our personal debt load already, it doesn't make a difference in terms of the business. However, I once rejected an offer to bring a friend on board to "help run the company" because he had massive personal debt and I didn't want to go through the trouble of converting my sole partnership into an LLC or S-Corp.
Lastly, don't forget to have your girlfriend fill out the applicable paperwork for being a 1099 employee, don't forget to pay your business taxes quarterly, and don't forget to have your tax accountant issue your girlfriend a W-9 at the end of the tax year. There's a lot to remember when it comes to taxes, and you really should hire a good tax accountant. You really do not want to get on the IRS' wrong side.
You mean Bill Gates uses IE (Internet Explorer) to run over squirrels? Wow!
Me, I always use '\bind r "vsay FTReviveMe"'.
Brilliantly stated! You summed up my feelings perfectly.
For some truly excellent articles on this topic, check out Ask the Headhunter, where you can find such gems as Keep Your Salary Under Wraps and Everything You Know About Job Hunting Is Wrong.
Anyone who is looking for a job or in danger of being laid off (that's everyone these days!) should take a few hours and read the Ask the Headhunter site from top to bottom. It really is an incredibly valuable source of knowledge.
Speaking of honest head hunters who have integrity, check out Mason Concepts at http://www.masonconcepts.com. Attilio, one of the head hunters there, has been my head hunter for years now. He's a great guy, networks like hell in the California market, always does right by his clients, and is willing to go to bat for you over pay and benefits once an employer announces their interest in you. Very highly recommended.
- You need to be genuinely interested in your fellow man.
- You cannot start networking when you're already in need; it's too late then.
- You need to be networking even during the times when you are employed, are doing well in life, and can help others.
People frequently point how resume-spamming and other actions contribute to "appearing desperate." Well, guess what? Coming out of the blue and starting to network once you're already in need absolutely reeks of desperation!Call it wrong, call it bad, whatever -- by in large, people don't like to help desperate people. Additionally, you must remember that subconscious greed drives a lot of hiring decisions: if you're already employed, you're more likely to get that shiny new job you're interested in than your fellow unemployed people.
Why?
Simple. You're already employed, viz., you obviously must be more experienced and more qualified than the people who are unemployed.
It's ugly, but that's the way it is. But I digress.
Back to the networking issue: it really only works if, when your time of need comes, you can call upon friends and network contacts who you've known and shown a genuine interest in long before you need them. Even better, if some of these networking contacts "owe" you, because of past favors you've done for them, or for ways you've been able to help them in the past, then they'll feel obligated to give you a leg up.
Conversely, if you appear out of nowhere and starting trying to network 'em, and rapidly get to the point of the matter and say "I need a job!" then they will be disinclined to help. In fact, you'll probably piss 'em off.
I speak from personal experience, from both sides of the employment fence. You must take a genuine interest in your fellow creatures, become a good listener, and be willing to help out your friends in their time of need.
And believe me, if you're doing all this purely with a motive of "gotta appear to be interested and caring, so I can ask for something in return someday!" people will see right through it and resent you.
DBA's are doing very well, at least from what I see of and hear from my DBA associates.
Sysadmins are doing decently, not as well as DBAs, but pretty damn good considering what the Shrub is busy doing to the economy.
As for network engineers, I can't really say. I don't know enough of 'em to form a qualified judgment.
First, bear in mind that by taking the time to do this cover letter right, I was offered a job in June of last year in San Francisco (very hard hit in the dot-com bust) and the company came up to meet my demands by $15,000 over their initial offer.
Here's what I did:
Literally within an hour of having e-mailed the cover letter as the body of an e-mail, with my resume attached, they called me to schedule an interview.
Here's the moral of this story: the importance of a well-written cover letter cannot be overemphasized.
I repeat: the cover letter is what separates your resume from those that are read to those that are ignored. You absolutely must capture the reader's attention within the first sentence or two, or there's a good chance that they'll move on to the next one.
The reason for this is clear: any job opening these days receives hundreds if not thousands of submissions within hours of the job offer being made visible.
For example, my company recently posted an opening for a very junior Perl developer on Craigslist, and we received over 500 resumes within the first business day alone! Do you think we read all 500? Eh? No fscking way. We went larger on what the first paragraph of the e-mail said! If it looked like a cookie-cutter e-mail, or it was blank or just said something like "Here's my resume" then it was skipped.
The value of networking cannot be over emphasized. I've landed most of my IT jobs purely through knowing the right people.
I strongly recommend reading How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It is a truly excellent book, and an absolute must read by anyone who has the slightest interest in networking themselves.
Sheesh, people. Go read Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson.
Now, when the dolphins leave, then we know we're in trouble. :-)
Bah, big deal. I'm still waiting to be able to purchase my very own pair of Double Joo-Janta 2000 Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses.
* At least, everyone who watches Nickelodeon.
What? you say. The ADD victim is already "sped up", and you're giving them speed?
Oddly enough, in hyperactive people -- such as myself, stimulants such as speed, nicotine, and caffeine actually have a calming or slowing effect. I speak from experience; I actually feel calmer and more relaxed after drinking several cups of coffee, wherein a "normal" person might feel jittery or hyper.
This begs the question: since Ritalin is a methamphetamine, and shares its effects with nicotine and caffeine, why not have your five-year-old take up smoking and coffee drinking? Absurd, you say? How so? Now, I'm not promoting smoking or coffee among minors, but exactly how does a doctor signing a piece of paper make Ritalin suddenly so acceptable, when you would balk at cigarettes or coffee?
I also can't listen to music with lyrics (example: Gilbert & Sullivan) while working, I loose my concentration on the task at hand (UNIX administration). Thus, I tend to listen exclusively to trance, typically from Digitally Imported.
Meetings also tend to be unbearable, although I suspect most people find this to be the case. :-) I will often figure out the outcome of the meeting within a few minutes of the start, and then having to sit there and listen to people rehash the same things over and over and over and...you get the idea.
Both my wife and I have ADD, she more so than I, so I feel that I'm qualified to comment extensively on this subject.
I think that most Slashdot readers would not hesitate to agree that the vast majority of people are stupid. And that being dumb, or at least acting dumb, is very much the in thing in schools. This has been the case for a long time, but is especially prevelent today. One need only to examine the hip or popular modes of dress, the prefered shuffling gate used when walking, the preponderance of guys wearing their pants halfway to their ankles, and the promotion of gang hand-signs to being a common and cool thing to do to realize this.
The driving force behind this is really quite obvious: smart people can, with varying degrees of success, act dumb. On the other hand, dumb people can only rarely pass themselves off as smart. You take an environment which is populated mostly by idiots (viz., your average public high school) and it's no wonder that being dumb is cool. It's an autonomous ego-preservation reaction on the part of the dumb people, and largely a self-preservation reaction on the part of the smart or intelligent minority.
However, when you're too young to grasp the politics of the situation, and you're being "watched over" by teachers who don't have the time or don't give a damn to keep you safe -- and worse yet, have the misfortune of having parents who can't be bothered to understand the situation and simply swallow and then regurgitate the popular take on ADD, then the "solution" of calling it a disease and perscribing drugs in an effort at slowing down (read: dumbing down) the child to put him or her "on par" with his or her associates is applied.
This is a truly stupid and sickening solution.
The reason the child can't pay attention is often because the topic is either too boring or too obvious to successfully grab and hold their attention. A practical illustration of this would be one of those movies wherein you are able to figure out the entire plot, and thereby loose all interest in the movie, within a few minutes of the start. You know what I mean; like starting to watch a TV show and then saying "yup, they he kills him, she leaves him, the sky falls on her, and they live happily ever after. The end" within, say, three minutes of the show starting. I'll bet you don't then "force" yourself to watch the rest of the show, merely to "keep up" the appearance of being average, viz., stupid like everyone else.
I'm going to be a parent someday, and I'd say there is a good chance my child will have ADD to some degree. And I'll be goddamned if I'm going to have him or her shot full of fucking drugs merely in an effort to slow their intelligence enough so that he or she will "sit still" and behave on par with "everyone else." What a truly fucked up approach!
(No, I am not affiliated with them in any way; I don't even use their products. I just always though their logo was very funny, is all.)
For those who can't be bothered to click the link, and thereby may miss out on a delightful illustration of exactly how stupid and backwards folk living in the bible belt really are....
Linda Branagan is an expert on daemons. She has a T-shirt that sports the daemon in tennis shoes that appears on the cover of the 4.3BSD manuals and _The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System_ by S. Leffler, M. McKusick, M. Karels, J. Quarterman, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA 1989.
She tells the following story about wearing the 4.3BSD daemon T-shirt:
Last week I walked into a local "home style cookin' restaurant/watering hole" in Texas to pick up a take-out order. I spoke briefly to the waitress behind the counter, who told me my order would be done in a few minutes.
So, while I was busy gazing at the farm implements hanging on the walls, I was approached by two ``natives.'' These guys might just be the original Texas rednecks.
``Pardon us, ma'am. Mind if we ask you a question?''
Well, people keep telling me that Texans are real friendly, so I nodded.
``Are you a Satanist?''
Well, at least they didn't ask me if I liked to party.
``Uh, no, I can't say that I am.''
``Gee, ma'am. Are you sure about that?'' they asked.
I put on my biggest, brightest Dallas Cowboys cheerleader smile and said, ``No, I'm positive. The closest I've ever come to Satanism is watching Geraldo.''
``Hmmm. Interesting. See, we was just wondering why it is you have the lord of darkness on your chest there.''
I was this close to slapping one of them and causing a scene -- then I stopped and noticed the shirt I happened to be wearing that day. Sure enough, it had a picture of a small, devilish-looking creature that has for some time now been associated with a certain operating system. In this particular representation, the creature was wearing sneakers.
They continued: ``See, ma'am, we don't exactly appreciate it when people show off pictures of the devil. Especially when he's lookin' so friendly.''
These idiots sounded terrifyingly serious.
Me: ``Oh, well, see, this isn't really the devil, it's just, well, it's sort of a mascot.
Native: ``And what kind of football team has the devil as a mascot?''
Me: ``Oh, it's not a team. It's an operating -- uh, a kind of computer.''
I figured that an ATM machine was about as much technology as these guys could handle, and I knew that if I so much as uttered the word ``UNIX'' I would only make things worse.
Native: ``Where does this satanical computer come from?''
Me: ``California. And there's nothing satanical about it really.''
Somewhere along the line here, the waitress noticed my predicament -- but these guys probably outweighed her by 600 pounds, so all she did was look at me sympathetically and run off into the kitchen.
Native: ``Ma'am, I think you're lying. And we'd appreciate it if you'd leave the premises now.''
Fortunately, the waitress returned that very instant with my order, and they agreed that it would be okay for me to actually pay for my food before I left. While I was at the cash register, they amused themselves by talking to each other.
Native #1: ``Do you think the police know about these devil computers?''
Native #2: ``If they come from California, then the FBI oughta know about 'em.''
They escorted me to the door. I tried one last time: ``You're really blowing this all out of proportion. A lot of people use this `kind of computers.' Universities, researchers, businesses. They're actually very useful.''
Big, big, BIG mistake. I should have guessed at what came next.
Native: ``Does the government use these devil computers?''
Me: ``Yes.''
Another BIG boo-boo.
Native: ``And does the government pay for 'em? With our tax dollars?''
I decided that it was time to jump ship.
Me: ``No. Nope. Not at all. Your tax dollars never entered the picture at all. I promise. No sir, not a penny. Our good Christian congressmen would never let something like that happen. Nope. Never. Bye.''
Texas. What a country.
Yeah, but the Army still has not figured out how to Save and Reload games. You can't even Quicksave a game. Until there's at least an Undo option, count me out.
Going to a bar with >= 1 friend of the same sex (getting injured in a barfight, and/or getting sufficiently drunk to vomit on your friend, are all considered 'male bonding experiences.'
Getting so drunk with >= 1 friend of any sex that you can't remember the rest of the evening, or even of driving home that night.
Going with friends to watch a gaggle of baffoons chase a little white spot all over the greensward (viz., Golf)
The above, but actually chasing said white speck all over the grass
Going with friends to one of those ridiculous events wherein you pay good money to sit on an exposed terrace, with the sun baking your brains, while watching a tiny collection of distant humans -- no larger than ants from you elevation -- engage in some kind of frippery involving a sphere or ovoid that two logical groups are insistent upon removing from the other's posession
Going with friends to observe a group of fools race their cars 'round a track, when one could enjoy more speed and carnage merely by standing next to a given stretch of Highway 17*
Etc, etc, etc.
* A highway which runs south of Silicon Valley to Santa Cruz in California, known for its idiotic drivers, frequent accidents, widely-ignored speed limit, insane switchback curves, and sheer dropoffs.
Oddly enough, going on a date does not seem to count as a "social activity", I would assume since it tends to exclude other parties from the activities. However, a double-date might count. Going to a Star Trek convention does not count. Going to the Opera does, and generally grants you at least +5 Charisma with all female companions.
You are also often granted the time to carefully weigh and formulate an answer, and not be interrupted or have the topic abruptly changed on you. This various of course, depending on the communication medium. IRC is probably the worst, and e-mail the best; IM technologies would fall in the middle, IMHO.
I met my wife on ICQ, when we lived on opposite sides of the United States. I'm a UNIX admin, so I spend 90% of my day online. My wife is a financial consultant, and spends a great deal of her time online. We routinely chat during our work days via Jabber. I rarely watch TV, but am an avid reader -- as is my wife. We typically read one to two paperback novels apiece during a given week, and I'd say Netflix is definitely edging out broadcast TV when we do watch the idiot box.