You put everything into perspective, and I wish this article had existed about four months ago.
I actually moved from Alabama to Wisconsin. Even with my salary increase and moving bonus it all barely covers the difference in the cost of living. Bad planning on my part there. Add this with an hour commute each way, lack of southern hospitality, and need even say NO SWEET TEA it is an all around bad combination for this sourthern boy. Right now I am looking for a foothole to get back to the south without just packing up and leaving. The best responses to my resume have been in Huntsville. Maybe I will see you around...
I think being a geek is not all about sitting in front of a computer or studying. To me it has always been about learning and improving things which already exist. For one that means my body. In in 2003 I suffered from depression and anxiety disorder, high blood pressure, and I weighed in at 215lbs. I was 21 years old. Three years prior I was heavily involved in athletics, band, and very outgoing. Amazing how quickly things can change when you become chained to a desk, make excuses for late nights, and forget how important it is to take care of yourself.
Today I am at 165lbs give or take. I eat right, stay away from caffeine, and I run 3-6 miles a day. My depression and anxiety have both been removed by taking care of myself. The high blood pressure went down from a combination of everything. My day starts 6:00 and I usually go to bed around 11. My mind now works best during the day instead of night. On the weekend my schedule might vary some, but I try to keep it steady. Everyone in my life has been able to tell a difference, and I have now taken on new challenges and opportunities I would have been unable to complete just two-and-a-half years ago.
The moral of this story is anyone with enough determination can change for the better. It is for people who call themselves geeks and hackers . For people who argue the are nocturnal to give excuse for performing poorly during the day, oversleeping, and often missing work. (I was this person!) Hacking the one thing you are given -- your body -- is the ultimate hack (see Hacker's Diet). It will be the only project you can always continue to develope and be amazed by.
If you will look at most of the successful people in the world they are often committed to diet and some form of exercise. Movie stars, United States' presidents, CEOs, etc. It can work for programmers, hackers, coders, and GEEKs too.
As a white 'caucasian' sixteen year old white male I started working for a small whitebox OEM company. My responsibilities included building the systems, installing Windows, performing the burn-in, and troubleshooting. When I came to work at the company I had a pretty big head on my shoulders. I thought there was nothing that was unsolvable for me to tackle and I could get to a solution in half the time it took other technicians. Until... I was handed a network issue at one of the client sites. I tried for two weeks to solve the issue exhausting everything solution I could think of. It finally came down to making it work or for the company pulling out of the deal so they sent me one day to meet-up with one of the head field technicians -- Dwight.
Dwight was an older blackman and he worked (and still does) in one mode, slow. When we began working together it fustrated me so much because he would take his (and my) precious time doing EVERYTHING. Even waiting on him to click the mouse could be excruciatingly painful for me a times. So let me say that patience is greatest value this man taught me, but more importantly he taught me how to think out problems before acting. Dwight has a determination to exhaust all possibilities before putting a practical and definitive solution into motion. Whereas most technicians, programmers, and just people in general will go into a situation with all their guns blazing using trail-and-error attacks until they get the appropriate response Dwight will methodically plan out his attack until he is sure it is going to work (for the long term).
Needless to say, in a matter of hours Dwight had the network up and going according to the client's specifications and after teaching this new pup a thing or two. This was only the beginning. Over the next two years Dwight taught me a lot about being a good technician but more importantly a good problem solver not only with computers but in life in general.
Today the values and traits Dwight taught me are still with me today as a software engineer. It has been six years since I was under his mentorship full time. Today if I had a problem in either a technical matter or a personal matter I know he is there to teach me. I have not learned as much from my peers, superiors, or college professors as much as I have from him. Besides my parents he will always be one of the greatest people who influence my life.
I know companies are out there who would not hire Dwight because of his color, age, and now he has a few medical problems which require regular care. To me this is ludicris because if he could teach some of the guys I have worked with in the past half as much as what he taught me it would be a grand investment.
The success with a VOIP depends on many factors. There are many companies who provide VOIP service who meet the QOS rule of five nines (99.999% uptime). It depends on the type of service you sign-up for with the VOIP provider. What may be suprising to find out is that many cellular providers are already using VOIP on the backend to process calls, but it is transparent to the user.
Less overhead (bandwidth) is needed to handle voice calls than data/fax calls. There are plenty of companies who provide VOIP Fax using the T.38 protocol) which is reliable.
Compared to the traditional telephone VOIP is in its infancy. Marginal improvement have been made over the last couple of years thanks to the OpenSource movement. If you really want to find out more about VOIP checkout the OpenSource Asterisk PBX at asterisk.org.
It only takes Gentoo
on
Embedded Gentoo?
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
Hey wait a minute.
Are you saying that SCO is going to make even more money from licensing embedded Linux devices? Let me go get stock!
Slashdot Mirror
You put everything into perspective, and I wish this article had existed about four months ago.
I actually moved from Alabama to Wisconsin. Even with my salary increase and moving bonus it all barely covers the difference in the cost of living. Bad planning on my part there. Add this with an hour commute each way, lack of southern hospitality, and need even say NO SWEET TEA it is an all around bad combination for this sourthern boy. Right now I am looking for a foothole to get back to the south without just packing up and leaving. The best responses to my resume have been in Huntsville. Maybe I will see you around...
Again, good post.
I would be interested in find more information on this.
I think being a geek is not all about sitting in front of a computer or studying. To me it has always been about learning and improving things which already exist. For one that means my body. In in 2003 I suffered from depression and anxiety disorder, high blood pressure, and I weighed in at 215lbs. I was 21 years old. Three years prior I was heavily involved in athletics, band, and very outgoing. Amazing how quickly things can change when you become chained to a desk, make excuses for late nights, and forget how important it is to take care of yourself.
Today I am at 165lbs give or take. I eat right, stay away from caffeine, and I run 3-6 miles a day. My depression and anxiety have both been removed by taking care of myself. The high blood pressure went down from a combination of everything. My day starts 6:00 and I usually go to bed around 11. My mind now works best during the day instead of night. On the weekend my schedule might vary some, but I try to keep it steady. Everyone in my life has been able to tell a difference, and I have now taken on new challenges and opportunities I would have been unable to complete just two-and-a-half years ago.
The moral of this story is anyone with enough determination can change for the better. It is for people who call themselves geeks and hackers . For people who argue the are nocturnal to give excuse for performing poorly during the day, oversleeping, and often missing work. (I was this person!) Hacking the one thing you are given -- your body -- is the ultimate hack (see Hacker's Diet). It will be the only project you can always continue to develope and be amazed by.
If you will look at most of the successful people in the world they are often committed to diet and some form of exercise. Movie stars, United States' presidents, CEOs, etc. It can work for programmers, hackers, coders, and GEEKs too.
Hope this helps someone out there!
As a white 'caucasian' sixteen year old white male I started working for a small whitebox OEM company. My responsibilities included building the systems, installing Windows, performing the burn-in, and troubleshooting. When I came to work at the company I had a pretty big head on my shoulders. I thought there was nothing that was unsolvable for me to tackle and I could get to a solution in half the time it took other technicians. Until... I was handed a network issue at one of the client sites. I tried for two weeks to solve the issue exhausting everything solution I could think of. It finally came down to making it work or for the company pulling out of the deal so they sent me one day to meet-up with one of the head field technicians -- Dwight.
Dwight was an older blackman and he worked (and still does) in one mode, slow. When we began working together it fustrated me so much because he would take his (and my) precious time doing EVERYTHING. Even waiting on him to click the mouse could be excruciatingly painful for me a times. So let me say that patience is greatest value this man taught me, but more importantly he taught me how to think out problems before acting. Dwight has a determination to exhaust all possibilities before putting a practical and definitive solution into motion. Whereas most technicians, programmers, and just people in general will go into a situation with all their guns blazing using trail-and-error attacks until they get the appropriate response Dwight will methodically plan out his attack until he is sure it is going to work (for the long term).
Needless to say, in a matter of hours Dwight had the network up and going according to the client's specifications and after teaching this new pup a thing or two. This was only the beginning. Over the next two years Dwight taught me a lot about being a good technician but more importantly a good problem solver not only with computers but in life in general.
Today the values and traits Dwight taught me are still with me today as a software engineer. It has been six years since I was under his mentorship full time. Today if I had a problem in either a technical matter or a personal matter I know he is there to teach me. I have not learned as much from my peers, superiors, or college professors as much as I have from him. Besides my parents he will always be one of the greatest people who influence my life.
I know companies are out there who would not hire Dwight because of his color, age, and now he has a few medical problems which require regular care. To me this is ludicris because if he could teach some of the guys I have worked with in the past half as much as what he taught me it would be a grand investment.
The success with a VOIP depends on many factors. There are many companies who provide VOIP service who meet the QOS rule of five nines (99.999% uptime). It depends on the type of service you sign-up for with the VOIP provider. What may be suprising to find out is that many cellular providers are already using VOIP on the backend to process calls, but it is transparent to the user.
Less overhead (bandwidth) is needed to handle voice calls than data/fax calls. There are plenty of companies who provide VOIP Fax using the T.38 protocol) which is reliable.
Compared to the traditional telephone VOIP is in its infancy. Marginal improvement have been made over the last couple of years thanks to the OpenSource movement. If you really want to find out more about VOIP checkout the OpenSource Asterisk PBX at asterisk.org.
Hey wait a minute.
Are you saying that SCO is going to make even more money from licensing embedded Linux devices? Let me go get stock!