Yeah, we had two people do that on the plane of 300 that I went over on. Was funny as hell since one of them was so gun-ho about going. Soon as that Kuwaiti heat hit him, he turned around and damn near had to be arrested because he refused to get off the plane.
Some companies will get you that clearance, which is nice. I had mine within 3 months of landing in Iraq. I know ITT and Raytheon will both do it, not sure about anyone else.
I just got back from 13 months over there, so I'll give you what I can about it.
The positives, for me, are: 1) Money. Every US contractors over there will tell you the money is pretty damned good (save for the Ugandan security forces, they get screwed). I made a little over $130,000 in 13 months. And because of that money, I work because I want to, not because I have to. 2) Study time. Most IT contractors work 10 hours day, 6 to 7 days a week, so you've got a lot of time to study. Even on the job, you've usually got a decent amount of study time. 3) Travel time. Vacations to Europe are pretty easy to do, since Kuwait International Airport has pretty much ever major EU airline in and out of it. You can explore Europe and the rest of the Middle East pretty easily. I recommend KLM flights to Amsterdam or Gulf Air to Dubai. Once there, the rest of the region is open to you. 4) People. You'll meet a LOT of new people, military and civilian, that you'll form some damn good friendships with.
The suck, for me, was: 1) The heat. Worst day in Iraq was 147F. The upside was my sinuses were seared open so I got maybe half the sinus issues I did. Afghanistan is better as far as the weather goes, since they have more then two seasons. 2) Explosions. No matter where you are, you'll hear suicide bombers every now and then. Afghanistan is probably worse, depending on where you go. Get used to the idea that your life is in danger, but don't let the knowledge screw with your mind too much. 3) Away from family. Most IT contractors have to be in country for 5 to 6 months before they can take a vacation, so you might not see your family for 6 to 7 months. 4) Normal corporation BS. IT companies in war zones still BS you and will mess with your pay and other such. Read your offer letter over a couple dozen times before you agree to it, and know everything they can screw you over for. Talk to the other guys on site once you get there or at CRC and see if any of them know any of the normal dirty tricks they company will pull.
Now, all that being said, I can't say if you should go. It was the right thing for me to do. Gave me the ability to be relaxed in ways I've not been able to in years because now I don't worry about money. Check out all the IT companies over there, some pay better then others, some have better benefits then others. Once you decide to do it, go hit the gym. You'll need to be in pretty decent shape to deal with 75lbs worth of gear.
It's not that bad, honestly. I worked in Iraq for a year and it's a normal Secret clearance check. Half the time you can go over and work with a temp Secret clearance and not get a clearance in a year or two.
One of the things I would recommend, which I'm doing myself, is find a company that has international operations now and see if you can get transferred to one of their other countries of operation after a certain amount of time working here in the US. Currently waiting out my time to go to Ireland for a couple years.
The thing is the 440BX chipset has been around forever and a weekend in computer terms. It's so stable because everyone and their sister has beaten on it and gotten Intel to patch the hell out of it. Give AMD a couple years and their main chipset will be like that too.
What bothers me in all these discussions is the lack of load balancing talk. I work in a data center for a Verio large Internet hosting company. We use Intel and Sun based servers, with a couple rows of Cobalt MIPS bases systems as well. I've been a server SA for the goverment and large commercial companies. I hate to say it, but SMP is only really needed, least for Internet servers, on DB servers and huge mail servers (millions of messages an hour). Otherwise, for serving up webpages, ftp servers, or doing DNS, a single processor system will work fine. What I've seen needed more in serving webpages and doing FTP is good load balancing. I think AMD should be looking at this market with eyes wide open. Software and hardware based load balancing on cheapish servers right off the bat makes more sense then trying to shoe horn it onto servers that can barely keep up with the flow.
Let me prefeace what I am going to say with this: I currently work in a large datacenter in Northern Virginia. One of our divisions uses Cobalt servers, and we are starting to roll them out here in several rows of racks. So, I like to think I know of what I speak.
> Now in a serious server environment, it seems to
> me that money is probably not as big an issue,
> so this kind of negated one of Anthlon's main
> advantage over a Intel chip right off.
You'd be supprised. These days you have to get more bang for your buck. We've got several customers who've asked about building Athlon webservers and Duron based mail servers because for $1000 you can build a pretty nice server setup based on AMD. This gives you the chance to do load balancing off the bat instead of having to do it later, plus you can upgrade easier.
> Secondly, assuming you have lots of servers in
> an enclosed area, heat is a big deal; you want
> good air condition system. A room full of
> Athlons is HOT. This further offset the "true"
> cost of using Athlon servers
Serious server enviroments heat is not an issue because while you are spending several million dollars on servers, like we have, you are spending several million dollars on a cooling system to remove the heat from the air in the server room. Get a tour of Exodus, Verio, Level 3 or some other large data center company. If you don't have to wear at least a light jacket into their server rooms, they aren't doing it right.
> Also since Athlons use more energy, it stands to
> reason that your UPS system will not last as
> long as a similar number of Pentiums if there is
> a problem. Now for servers, up time is very
> important (unless you run WinXX;-), so this
> seems another strike against Athlon.
Again, serious server enviroment, UPSes are there just to give time for the generators to kick in and warm up. Nothing more.
> And finally like the article said (you did read > it right?), Ahtlon don't have multi-processors > support yet so that is another strike...
I have found for most Internet servers SMP is unneeded and costly. You are better off load balancing a couple cheap servers, which gives you the ability to add more servers later then doing SMP.
I've personally cut back from 50 to 40 or 45 hours a week becouse I was getting burnt out and tired. My boss can kill himself by staying up until 3 am and come in the next day at 9, but I'll be damned if I will anymore. I burnt out in college and my first couple years in the work force. Surge, Cherry Coke, and poptarts don't have the effect they used to, not to mention I've developed Tech Worker's Ass ("The rearend is like a goldfish, it grows to fit it's enviroment" -- Alive, from Dilbert), so I'm not in the shape I used to be and it doesn't help that even at 40 hours a week I still don't have time to get back there.
This could be more then a possible "bad" thing, it could be absolute hell in a cubical shapped classroom. For years I was put through the hell of "special ed" classes becouse I just flat out did not have the motivation to do the work that I was given. It would drive teachers and counselers nuts to see me, even to me sometimes random, that I would excle in classes they thought were too hard for me while I failed the "easier" classes year after year. It drove them insane that I didn't fit into their so easily defined rules of students. Mean while, the students that did great in everything (mostly Bs with an A now and then) would be look at me like I was the worst thing in the world. But, come to history, most science classes, even sports (geek stuck in a jock's body here), I would blow the doors off these bastards and even make the teacher look bad sometimes becouse I could recall the most obscure peice of knowledge at the drop of a hat.
Gotta love the American school system. You don't fit their rules, they'll come up with some to get you out of the way.
The biggest difference between the PowerPC (Motorola-made) and Power3/4 chips is instruction set. IBM went for all out, "God on Silicone" power and Motorola did a version of the MMX instruction set for theirs. the IBM's don't have AlteVeca(sp?), so just do straight bruteforce and floating point processing.
I'm living pretty much the life, though less of an extreme. I work 9 to 11 hours of day and I honestly have no problem with it. I work for a great boss and have a ball doing things.
I can give advice to those out there, and it's simple advice. Find work you like doing. I am a systems monkey. That's why I like being a systems admin. It's fun to me. Find things you like to do.
Leave things at work. Do not let your personal and work life get to bother each other. It'll kill you fast. It's not worth killing yourself over.
"... Morgan Stanley has been seen skulking around Red Hat Software's Durham headquarters in advance of underwriting the company's IPO, which is scheduled to happen later this year. Another Linux vendor, VA Research, is hellbent on beating Red Hat to the punch as the first major Linux developer to go public..."
Get your contracts out and hope like hell there are stock options in them, you lucky Red Hat and VA Research employees. History holds true, you have a load of money coming your way.
Problem with Mr. Gates' comments is the fact that his main products, Windows 95/98 and Microsoft Office, are the exact areas where he says Linux will be confined too. Don't think you can't walk through a company or office building and at least 60% to 80% of the computers running WIndows 98 are used for reports, articles, and the like, with maybe the odd game of Solitair and Minesweeper. If this _IS_ to be the Linux market, as he claims, then Linux has a pretty nice future in the corpworld.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the stickler. But it's pretty easy to do.
Besides, it never comes back clean from KBR.
Number one cause of death is birth.
First $93,000 is tax free.
Yeah, we had two people do that on the plane of 300 that I went over on. Was funny as hell since one of them was so gun-ho about going. Soon as that Kuwaiti heat hit him, he turned around and damn near had to be arrested because he refused to get off the plane.
Most of the contractor deaths in Iraq were due to private militaries (think Black Water or Dyncorp) protecting civilian government.
Some companies will get you that clearance, which is nice. I had mine within 3 months of landing in Iraq. I know ITT and Raytheon will both do it, not sure about anyone else.
I just got back from 13 months over there, so I'll give you what I can about it.
The positives, for me, are:
1) Money. Every US contractors over there will tell you the money is pretty damned good (save for the Ugandan security forces, they get screwed). I made a little over $130,000 in 13 months. And because of that money, I work because I want to, not because I have to.
2) Study time. Most IT contractors work 10 hours day, 6 to 7 days a week, so you've got a lot of time to study. Even on the job, you've usually got a decent amount of study time.
3) Travel time. Vacations to Europe are pretty easy to do, since Kuwait International Airport has pretty much ever major EU airline in and out of it. You can explore Europe and the rest of the Middle East pretty easily. I recommend KLM flights to Amsterdam or Gulf Air to Dubai. Once there, the rest of the region is open to you.
4) People. You'll meet a LOT of new people, military and civilian, that you'll form some damn good friendships with.
The suck, for me, was:
1) The heat. Worst day in Iraq was 147F. The upside was my sinuses were seared open so I got maybe half the sinus issues I did. Afghanistan is better as far as the weather goes, since they have more then two seasons.
2) Explosions. No matter where you are, you'll hear suicide bombers every now and then. Afghanistan is probably worse, depending on where you go. Get used to the idea that your life is in danger, but don't let the knowledge screw with your mind too much.
3) Away from family. Most IT contractors have to be in country for 5 to 6 months before they can take a vacation, so you might not see your family for 6 to 7 months.
4) Normal corporation BS. IT companies in war zones still BS you and will mess with your pay and other such. Read your offer letter over a couple dozen times before you agree to it, and know everything they can screw you over for. Talk to the other guys on site once you get there or at CRC and see if any of them know any of the normal dirty tricks they company will pull.
Now, all that being said, I can't say if you should go. It was the right thing for me to do. Gave me the ability to be relaxed in ways I've not been able to in years because now I don't worry about money. Check out all the IT companies over there, some pay better then others, some have better benefits then others. Once you decide to do it, go hit the gym. You'll need to be in pretty decent shape to deal with 75lbs worth of gear.
Yeah, it's not uncommon to double or triple your US salary over there.
It's not that bad, honestly. I worked in Iraq for a year and it's a normal Secret clearance check. Half the time you can go over and work with a temp Secret clearance and not get a clearance in a year or two.
One of the things I would recommend, which I'm doing myself, is find a company that has international operations now and see if you can get transferred to one of their other countries of operation after a certain amount of time working here in the US. Currently waiting out my time to go to Ireland for a couple years.
The thing is the 440BX chipset has been around forever and a weekend in computer terms. It's so stable because everyone and their sister has beaten on it and gotten Intel to patch the hell out of it. Give AMD a couple years and their main chipset will be like that too.
What bothers me in all these discussions is the lack of load balancing talk. I work in a data center for a Verio large Internet hosting company. We use Intel and Sun based servers, with a couple rows of Cobalt MIPS bases systems as well. I've been a server SA for the goverment and large commercial companies. I hate to say it, but SMP is only really needed, least for Internet servers, on DB servers and huge mail servers (millions of messages an hour). Otherwise, for serving up webpages, ftp servers, or doing DNS, a single processor system will work fine. What I've seen needed more in serving webpages and doing FTP is good load balancing. I think AMD should be looking at this market with eyes wide open. Software and hardware based load balancing on cheapish servers right off the bat makes more sense then trying to shoe horn it onto servers that can barely keep up with the flow.
Just one nuts thoughts...
creature
Let me prefeace what I am going to say with this: I currently work in a large datacenter in Northern Virginia. One of our divisions uses Cobalt servers, and we are starting to roll them out here in several rows of racks. So, I like to think I know of what I speak.
;-), so this
> Now in a serious server environment, it seems to
> me that money is probably not as big an issue,
> so this kind of negated one of Anthlon's main
> advantage over a Intel chip right off.
You'd be supprised. These days you have to get more bang for your buck. We've got several customers who've asked about building Athlon webservers and Duron based mail servers because for $1000 you can build a pretty nice server setup based on AMD. This gives you the chance to do load balancing off the bat instead of having to do it later, plus you can upgrade easier.
> Secondly, assuming you have lots of servers in
> an enclosed area, heat is a big deal; you want
> good air condition system. A room full of
> Athlons is HOT. This further offset the "true"
> cost of using Athlon servers
Serious server enviroments heat is not an issue because while you are spending several million dollars on servers, like we have, you are spending several million dollars on a cooling system to remove the heat from the air in the server room. Get a tour of Exodus, Verio, Level 3 or some other large data center company. If you don't have to wear at least a light jacket into their server rooms, they aren't doing it right.
> Also since Athlons use more energy, it stands to
> reason that your UPS system will not last as
> long as a similar number of Pentiums if there is
> a problem. Now for servers, up time is very
> important (unless you run WinXX
> seems another strike against Athlon.
Again, serious server enviroment, UPSes are there just to give time for the generators to kick in and warm up. Nothing more.
> And finally like the article said (you did read > it right?), Ahtlon don't have multi-processors > support yet so that is another strike...
I have found for most Internet servers SMP is unneeded and costly. You are better off load balancing a couple cheap servers, which gives you the ability to add more servers later then doing SMP.
creature
I've personally cut back from 50 to 40 or 45 hours a week becouse I was getting burnt out and tired. My boss can kill himself by staying up until 3 am and come in the next day at 9, but I'll be damned if I will anymore. I burnt out in college and my first couple years in the work force. Surge, Cherry Coke, and poptarts don't have the effect they used to, not to mention I've developed Tech Worker's Ass ("The rearend is like a goldfish, it grows to fit it's enviroment" -- Alive, from Dilbert), so I'm not in the shape I used to be and it doesn't help that even at 40 hours a week I still don't have time to get back there.
Ohwell. Such is life I guess.
This could be more then a possible "bad" thing, it could be absolute hell in a cubical shapped classroom. For years I was put through the hell of "special ed" classes becouse I just flat out did not have the motivation to do the work that I was given. It would drive teachers and counselers nuts to see me, even to me sometimes random, that I would excle in classes they thought were too hard for me while I failed the "easier" classes year after year. It drove them insane that I didn't fit into their so easily defined rules of students. Mean while, the students that did great in everything (mostly Bs with an A now and then) would be look at me like I was the worst thing in the world. But, come to history, most science classes, even sports (geek stuck in a jock's body here), I would blow the doors off these bastards and even make the teacher look bad sometimes becouse I could recall the most obscure peice of knowledge at the drop of a hat.
Gotta love the American school system. You don't fit their rules, they'll come up with some to get you out of the way.
I like Delphi, least what little I've used it. One of the few programming languages I can get a grip on. Borland C/C++ would be damn nice to.
The biggest difference between the PowerPC (Motorola-made) and Power3/4 chips is instruction set. IBM went for all out, "God on Silicone" power and Motorola did a version of the MMX instruction set for theirs. the IBM's don't have AlteVeca(sp?), so just do straight bruteforce and floating point processing.
I'm living pretty much the life, though less of an extreme. I work 9 to 11 hours of day and I honestly have no problem with it. I work for a great boss and have a ball doing things.
I can give advice to those out there, and it's simple advice. Find work you like doing. I am a systems monkey. That's why I like being a systems admin. It's fun to me. Find things you like to do.
Leave things at work. Do not let your personal and work life get to bother each other. It'll kill you fast. It's not worth killing yourself over.
From PC Week's rumor collum:
"... Morgan Stanley has been seen skulking around Red Hat Software's Durham headquarters in advance of underwriting the company's IPO, which is scheduled to happen later this year. Another Linux vendor, VA Research, is hellbent on beating Red Hat to the punch as the first major Linux developer to go public..."
Get your contracts out and hope like hell there are stock options in them, you lucky Red Hat and VA Research employees. History holds true, you have a load of money coming your way.
Problem with Mr. Gates' comments is the fact that his main products, Windows 95/98 and Microsoft Office, are the exact areas where he says Linux will be confined too. Don't think you can't walk through a company or office building and at least 60% to 80% of the computers running WIndows 98 are used for reports, articles, and the like, with maybe the odd game of Solitair and Minesweeper. If this _IS_ to be the Linux market, as he claims, then Linux has a pretty nice future in the corpworld.