I got a boring tech job and I love it (well it wasn't boring the last two weeks because my office was almost destroyed by terrorists).
Why do I love it? Because I graduated school in the early 1990's and had to be a dishwasher becaus the economy sucked so bad. After that I became a social worker at a group home. I had to work with retarded adults, I gave bathes, I wiped asses and I changed diapers of quadroplegics, I got feces hurled at me, I had to say words out loud like "Stop Masturbating" in the middle of McDonalds. All this for $6 an hour.
I then moved to New York in 1995 and became a truck driver. I got my fingers broken movig furniture, I got threatened by the police, I saw people get killed in really stupid car accidents, and I am presently getting sued by a moron who hit me head on in Pennsylvania after he swerved into my lane. He's trying to get me to settle out of court for something that was his fault due to a goofy Pennsylvania law.
My knees are still screwed up from that one.
So you wanna know if 'fun' jobs are out there?
If they are, you don't deserve them, I do. And people like me who have had real crappy jobs before.
Too me, getting paid well, not getting hasseled by corupt cops and not dealing in human excrement is a 'fun job', but you can play with Nerf stuff if you work at a group home.
I was there in February (great place,except Puerta Plata) and there were constant blackouts. Most hotels and restaraunts had backup generators to provide power. The main power plants were diesel barges in the harbor. In the countryside I rarely came accross power at all unless it was by a generator...actually I went to a few places that didn't which adds quite a bit of time to your day.
I didn't notice any solar power. But I'm happy to hear that they are attempting to use it. A very good way to get out of poverty is to have the extra time given by available power and sewage systems. I estimated that lack of these things added about 3 hours of work to an average person's day just to keep clean and prepare food. Time that could be much better spent at other educational or profitable endeavors.
If anyone goes there. Go to the k-ramba bar on Calle Isabella in Santo Domingo. The energy engineers hang out there and it is a very good bar.
I used to be a truck driver and a furniture mover. I realised that muscles became less stressed when they were hydrated and were less likely to swell if I took an aspirin, naxproxne sodium, or ibuprofin before starting work. I do this now when I know I'm going to be sitting for long time hunched over a keyboard or when I have to lift monitors from one room to the next all day long. I have never had lower back pain yet.
I 'work' 35 hours a week as a Solaris Admin/Backup operator/PC troubleshooter (I hate NT). Most of my time is really spent just being there. I never tell them that often all I have to do to fix a printer or 'solve' a Win98 problem is re-booting or turning a thing off then on again so I actually am respected (they seem to be less impressed with my network debugging skills). My average work week really ranges from 3 to 35 hours.
I live in Washington Heights (not the so called nice part) so my rent is cheap, but I'm not payed as much as IT people in the private sector. But I'm hardly ever stressed out, it still pays better than my previos professions (Social Worker, Truck Driver).
I'm quite happy with it.
and the pay is alot lower than other Solaris admins but...I get two paid days off this week for election and veterans day, I work 8 hour days with a one hour lunch break (no one cares if you take a two hour break on slow days). I get exellent health benifits including dental and eye care (two free pairs of glasses for computer ops).
The bad parts (asside from the lower pay) we are just budgeted for tech equipment and software, not furniture. The chairs and desks I sit on a re about 15 to 20 years old. If you are neither a democrat or a republican you have to keep your mouth shut about politics (I never talk about politics where I work anyway, but it still sucks not being able to say what you want) My 'boss' knows nothing about Unix, but promotions in the government tech field are done by seniority, not by skills. So he never shows up unless the VAX needs a backup and I do the rest. And I work for a State, not the Feds, so I don't get a sweet raise. But I hope one trickles down.
All and all I like my job and its relaxed atmosphere, but I will take a higher paying private sector job as soon as I put in one years time here, unless I get one of those big raises..
Having been both a janitor and am now a unix op. I can safely say that janitors get treated like crap compared to how I am treated now. But you are dead on about unionising. We could have alot of pull as a union. (and we could stick up for the janitors that clean up our coke cans and power-bar wrappers too)
I think they are getting rid of the h1b's with alot of experience who can ask a premium salary while legislating to get more h1b's with less than six years experience in the US who salary requirements will be more 'flexible'. With this policy all tech workers, foriegn and domestic, get the shaft.
The GUI's are easyer until something goes wrong. Then the user has to either figure it out or get help. Besides if every user had a basic understanding of a computer's OS and how to really work it, I'd be out of a job.
I really like Window Maker but I like IceWM better. A friend of mine who never used Linux before found it very straight-forward.
I would have to recomend Red Hat also, just because of the kick-start setup (however, this recomendation may be due to personal bias).
I would also have to recomend that you download the Nanno text editor. It is simple like Pico, but with better features. It would be a good thing to have in case users needed to do their own editing without having to bother other staff on the use of vi or Emacs.
I use Star Office, but people seem to really dig Applixware.
They can take you to trial. They don't have to present evidence at the hearing. I know.. I've had it happen to me. Once the trial starts and the prosecution gives their evidence and the defence claims it was illegally obtained, the judge agrees (hopefully) and throws out the case.
Now what has this cost you, an innocent person?
36 hours in jail. Here in NYC it's central booking..not pretty.
Missed work for that 36 hours, if you don't have coins or a phone card, you don't get to call your employer and you may be fired...hell..you may be fired anyway only criminals go to jail right?
You may want to get out of jail so bad, that you sign a confession or rat out other innocent people. (they just want some names of people you are involved with...no big deal..they just want the names to make the brass downtown happy it doesn't mean anything...whats for supper tonight in holding...they can't eat that bologne again it's rancid!...So tell us some names of your friends..)
Lawyers fees. You don't really want a public defender do you?
Missed work for your araignment.
Missed work for your trial.
Stress.
Heres the deal: Cops can arrest you for whatever they want whenever they want. You may not get convicted, but you will have a part of your life taken away. That is never right and always a big deal.
I can tell you all it's scary stuff. Don't believe it when they tell you it's for court ordered 'wiretaps' because that is only one use for it.
Here is a scenario:
Political Group A decides to collaborate on a project with polital Group B.
Since they are in physically different locations, they communicate on the internet.
Both A and B decide they need to protest at a certain location this year (like a politcal convention)
With the help of Carnivore, the FBI knows about the location and the plans.
Group A and group B are arrested for loitering as soon as they step off the bus and kept in jail for the duration of the convention.
The charges are dropped because of lack of evidence, illegal survelance, or they were just kept too long without areignment.
The govenment has succesfully prevented citizens from voiceing grievances.
Also while waiting for charges to be thrown out because of illegally obtained evidence, the citizens computers, books, and notebooks can be confiscated as evidence and kept for a very long time. (hint, they don't confiscate things made out to be polical flyers...yet)
I wish minors had more of a voice. But I bet what really peeved the Pinkertons was the fact that they found out that they named their fascist program after a made for TV pogram (The Wave).
I Wonder if they were planning a program for the little ones called "Duck...duck..Gulag!"
Golly, who would have thought that a company whose history involves violent union busting and now is engages in changing farmers 'licencing fees' for patented corn and soybeans that they harvest and store, would sink this low? The much applauded economic boom is also greatly enhanceing the value of private 'security' corporations such as Wackenhut and Pinkerton who get paid to keep those unaffected by the boom locked up. Now they want to profit by acting as a filter before they are even out of school. I hate to say it, but when I was just beaten in high school for being different, those were the 'good ol' days'
I'm self taught in linux (I hardly touched a computer until the summer of 1998) I took an administration course just to hone things up and put it on my resume, became A+ certified (which means jack) just to put it on my resume. I apply for 3 to 10 jobs a day and I have had only had one interview. Why? Because I was a truck driver for four years and have no IT work experience, ability I have though. I thought the 'new ' economy was supposed to lust after self taught ambitious people. I'll do your carpel-tunnel job for the same pay as my hernia-job. epseps@hotmail.com
This is only "newsworthy" until a certain age
on
Behold the Lizardman
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· Score: 1
When his stretched nipples and decrepid back can no longer lift car batteries. And his scaley ass is in a wheelchair rolled in front of the future equivilant of "wheel of fortune" on TV....ah sweet reptile of youth.
you saved her life with salt and caffiene? it sounds to me you woke the poor girl up for coke and potato chips (at least her experience in eating them was enhanced...you being there must have been a major bummer though)
i worked as a truck driver for three years and the most dangerous legal thing by far is cars. in three years i saw twelve bodies on the road, all were quite gruesome. sure, statistically 50% of those deaths were caused by drinking and driving but the other 50% were caused by merely driving. If it were not for cars, drunks would walk or take public transportation, and the rest of us would be safer.
With "intellectual property" we citizens must be disciplined severely when we make the confusion of buying a product and thinking it is actually "ours" (like software licenses and genetically modified corn) or mistakingly thinking you can put whatever you want on your web site. We will foot the bill for the trial and incarceration while corpoations reap the benfit of having a cowed populace. It will really be time to worry when the first person is convicted for using a patented catch phrase.
so it seems anonymus coward supports democracy but only if the citizens of the democracy are sensible enough not to believe foolish things. as we saw in tiannemen square ten years ago, china considers freedom of speach and anti- authoritarianism much more foolish than meditation.
and the branch davidians possesed gun dealer licences. thats how they made money to support thier foolish beliefs. the government lied about the 'illegal' part as they are prone to do after killing children under the pretense of saving them from abuse.
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No Nerf Guns! The Horror!
I got a boring tech job and I love it (well it wasn't boring the last two weeks because my office was almost destroyed by terrorists).
Why do I love it? Because I graduated school in the early 1990's and had to be a dishwasher becaus the economy sucked so bad. After that I became a social worker at a group home. I had to work with retarded adults, I gave bathes, I wiped asses and I changed diapers of quadroplegics, I got feces hurled at me, I had to say words out loud like "Stop Masturbating" in the middle of McDonalds. All this for $6 an hour.
I then moved to New York in 1995 and became a truck driver. I got my fingers broken movig furniture, I got threatened by the police, I saw people get killed in really stupid car accidents, and I am presently getting sued by a moron who hit me head on in Pennsylvania after he swerved into my lane. He's trying to get me to settle out of court for something that was his fault due to a goofy Pennsylvania law.
My knees are still screwed up from that one.
So you wanna know if 'fun' jobs are out there?
If they are, you don't deserve them, I do. And people like me who have had real crappy jobs before.
Too me, getting paid well, not getting hasseled by corupt cops and not dealing in human excrement is a 'fun job', but you can play with Nerf stuff if you work at a group home.
Creativity with junk will be competing with crap.
I was there in February (great place,except Puerta Plata) and there were constant blackouts. Most hotels and restaraunts had backup generators to provide power. The main power plants were diesel barges in the harbor. In the countryside I rarely came accross power at all unless it was by a generator...actually I went to a few places that didn't which adds quite a bit of time to your day. I didn't notice any solar power. But I'm happy to hear that they are attempting to use it. A very good way to get out of poverty is to have the extra time given by available power and sewage systems. I estimated that lack of these things added about 3 hours of work to an average person's day just to keep clean and prepare food. Time that could be much better spent at other educational or profitable endeavors. If anyone goes there. Go to the k-ramba bar on Calle Isabella in Santo Domingo. The energy engineers hang out there and it is a very good bar.
I used to be a truck driver and a furniture mover. I realised that muscles became less stressed when they were hydrated and were less likely to swell if I took an aspirin, naxproxne sodium, or ibuprofin before starting work. I do this now when I know I'm going to be sitting for long time hunched over a keyboard or when I have to lift monitors from one room to the next all day long. I have never had lower back pain yet.
A good chair helps too.
I 'work' 35 hours a week as a Solaris Admin/Backup operator/PC troubleshooter (I hate NT). Most of my time is really spent just being there. I never tell them that often all I have to do to fix a printer or 'solve' a Win98 problem is re-booting or turning a thing off then on again so I actually am respected (they seem to be less impressed with my network debugging skills). My average work week really ranges from 3 to 35 hours. I live in Washington Heights (not the so called nice part) so my rent is cheap, but I'm not payed as much as IT people in the private sector. But I'm hardly ever stressed out, it still pays better than my previos professions (Social Worker, Truck Driver). I'm quite happy with it.
and the pay is alot lower than other Solaris admins but...I get two paid days off this week for election and veterans day, I work 8 hour days with a one hour lunch break (no one cares if you take a two hour break on slow days). I get exellent health benifits including dental and eye care (two free pairs of glasses for computer ops).
The bad parts (asside from the lower pay) we are just budgeted for tech equipment and software, not furniture. The chairs and desks I sit on a re about 15 to 20 years old. If you are neither a democrat or a republican you have to keep your mouth shut about politics (I never talk about politics where I work anyway, but it still sucks not being able to say what you want) My 'boss' knows nothing about Unix, but promotions in the government tech field are done by seniority, not by skills. So he never shows up unless the VAX needs a backup and I do the rest. And I work for a State, not the Feds, so I don't get a sweet raise. But I hope one trickles down.
All and all I like my job and its relaxed atmosphere, but I will take a higher paying private sector job as soon as I put in one years time here, unless I get one of those big raises..
All professions should unionise. HB-1's should join too, same pay same benifits.
Having been both a janitor and am now a unix op. I can safely say that janitors get treated like crap compared to how I am treated now. But you are dead on about unionising. We could have alot of pull as a union. (and we could stick up for the janitors that clean up our coke cans and power-bar wrappers too)
I think they are getting rid of the h1b's with alot of experience who can ask a premium salary while legislating to get more h1b's with less than six years experience in the US who salary requirements will be more 'flexible'. With this policy all tech workers, foriegn and domestic, get the shaft.
The GUI's are easyer until something goes wrong. Then the user has to either figure it out or get help. Besides if every user had a basic understanding of a computer's OS and how to really work it, I'd be out of a job.
Probably saw the word 'gigaflop' and thought it was a stuffed rabbit.
I really like Window Maker but I like IceWM better. A friend of mine who never used Linux before found it very straight-forward.
I would have to recomend Red Hat also, just because of the kick-start setup (however, this recomendation may be due to personal bias).
I would also have to recomend that you download the Nanno text editor. It is simple like Pico, but with better features. It would be a good thing to have in case users needed to do their own editing without having to bother other staff on the use of vi or Emacs.
I use Star Office, but people seem to really dig Applixware.
Is that your personal experience?
They can take you to trial. They don't have to present evidence at the hearing. I know.. I've had it happen to me. Once the trial starts and the prosecution gives their evidence and the defence claims it was illegally obtained, the judge agrees (hopefully) and throws out the case.
Now what has this cost you, an innocent person?
36 hours in jail. Here in NYC it's central booking..not pretty.
Missed work for that 36 hours, if you don't have coins or a phone card, you don't get to call your employer and you may be fired...hell..you may be fired anyway only criminals go to jail right?
You may want to get out of jail so bad, that you sign a confession or rat out other innocent people. (they just want some names of people you are involved with...no big deal..they just want the names to make the brass downtown happy it doesn't mean anything...whats for supper tonight in holding...they can't eat that bologne again it's rancid!...So tell us some names of your friends..)
Lawyers fees. You don't really want a public defender do you?
Missed work for your araignment.
Missed work for your trial.
Stress.
Heres the deal: Cops can arrest you for whatever they want whenever they want. You may not get convicted, but you will have a part of your life taken away. That is never right and always a big deal.
I can tell you all it's scary stuff. Don't believe it when they tell you it's for court ordered 'wiretaps' because that is only one use for it.
Here is a scenario:
Political Group A decides to collaborate on a project with polital Group B.
Since they are in physically different locations, they communicate on the internet.
Both A and B decide they need to protest at a certain location this year (like a politcal convention)
With the help of Carnivore, the FBI knows about the location and the plans.
Group A and group B are arrested for loitering as soon as they step off the bus and kept in jail for the duration of the convention.
The charges are dropped because of lack of evidence, illegal survelance, or they were just kept too long without areignment.
The govenment has succesfully prevented citizens from voiceing grievances.
Also while waiting for charges to be thrown out because of illegally obtained evidence, the citizens computers, books, and notebooks can be confiscated as evidence and kept for a very long time. (hint, they don't confiscate things made out to be polical flyers...yet)
I wish minors had more of a voice. But I bet what really peeved the Pinkertons was the fact that they found out that they named their fascist program after a made for TV pogram (The Wave).
I Wonder if they were planning a program for the little ones called "Duck...duck..Gulag!"
Golly, who would have thought that a company whose history involves violent union busting and now is engages in changing farmers 'licencing fees' for patented corn and soybeans that they harvest and store, would sink this low? The much applauded economic boom is also greatly enhanceing the value of private 'security' corporations such as Wackenhut and Pinkerton who get paid to keep those unaffected by the boom locked up. Now they want to profit by acting as a filter before they are even out of school. I hate to say it, but when I was just beaten in high school for being different, those were the 'good ol' days'
I'm self taught in linux (I hardly touched a computer until the summer of 1998) I took an administration course just to hone things up and put it on my resume, became A+ certified (which means jack) just to put it on my resume. I apply for 3 to 10 jobs a day and I have had only had one interview. Why? Because I was a truck driver for four years and have no IT work experience, ability I have though. I thought the 'new ' economy was supposed to lust after self taught ambitious people. I'll do your carpel-tunnel job for the same pay as my hernia-job. epseps@hotmail.com
When his stretched nipples and decrepid back can no longer lift car batteries. And his scaley ass is in a wheelchair rolled in front of the future equivilant of "wheel of fortune" on TV....ah sweet reptile of youth.
you saved her life with salt and caffiene? it sounds to me you woke the poor girl up for coke and potato chips (at least her experience in eating them was enhanced...you being there must have been a major bummer though)
i worked as a truck driver for three years and the most dangerous legal thing by far is cars. in three years i saw twelve bodies on the road, all were quite gruesome. sure, statistically 50% of those deaths were caused by drinking and driving but the other 50% were caused by merely driving. If it were not for cars, drunks would walk or take public transportation, and the rest of us would be safer.
With "intellectual property" we citizens must be disciplined severely when we make the confusion of buying a product and thinking it is actually "ours" (like software licenses and genetically modified corn) or mistakingly thinking you can put whatever you want on your web site. We will foot the bill for the trial and incarceration while corpoations reap the benfit of having a cowed populace. It will really be time to worry when the first person is convicted for using a patented catch phrase.
I'm outta here (tm)
so it seems anonymus coward supports democracy but only if the citizens of the democracy are sensible enough not to believe foolish things. as we saw in tiannemen square ten years ago, china considers freedom of speach and anti- authoritarianism much more foolish than meditation.
and the branch davidians possesed gun dealer licences. thats how they made money to support thier foolish beliefs. the government lied about the 'illegal' part as they are prone to do after killing children under the pretense of saving them from abuse.