While I'm sure Redhat Linux doesn't have the install base that Windows XP (or Server 2003) has, there's something to be said with a vendor providing a consistently improving, consistently timed, and easily upgraded platform. Not breaking major compatibility on a whim which requires complete re-engineering, without major actual benefits, would be a good start, too.
As the other guy said, cable coding by network is a futile effort. Everywhere I've seen it done, it's never been "right", so you'll be thinking, "ok, so what's grey mean?" - the DMZ ends up being red, orange, and yellow, but then management is also yellow and white, so.... yeah: in my experience, that's ultimately a messy, dangerous, and useless effort.
Bundles of (I like 5) cables of different colors, on the other hand, are much more useful. The color doesn't matter, as long as they're different. Different colors help significantly while tracing cables, and when you're doing a big cable job, it's a trivial effort to get different colors. (Even for a small server room, it's usually pretty straight forward.) You'll sometimes end up with a bundle with two of the same color, or two sets of the same color or something like that out of happenstance, but it's hardly much of a headache: you only have one you have to trace then, not 5, 10, 20...
Cannot recommend this highly enough. Label both ends of every cable and the back of every power plug -- then you'll know what to expect when you pull it out.
NO NO NO NO!
I have seen more outages caused by this approach than I want to even think about. Once is bad, but when I've seen people make the assumption that something is correctly labeled and pull it multiple times, I stop trusting it. It only takes one lazy or tired person to mess this up for a long time to come.
A better approach I have found is to label bundles of 5 and vary the cables (ethernet) in the bundle by color. Bundle the bundles in a discreet fashion so you can tell which bundle is which, and label the 'master' bundle if needbe. Anything more than that is going to cause problems. It's also faster to figure out which cables go where without having to look at documentation - your environment should document itself to the highest degree possible. It still has faults but it's not nearly as error prone.
As long as you're going there, I once had to get a quarter inch u-joint adapter to get at some bolts in a rack. Really, a full ratchet set wouldn't hurt, while you're at it.:P You'll always need just one more tool - it doesn't matter what you're working on.
In a pinch, several adjustable wrenches and a multitool will do...
... did we per chance work at the same place?:P I joyously found most of that stuff at my previous employer's facility when I got there, as well as thousands of dollars in additional "we might use this once" type tools. The above list is what I'd call the essentials. (I don't like labellers, personally - they're time consuming and things change too quickly to justify their use on anything but the racked equipment itself.)
Another useful thing is a pair of walkie talkies. When you're trying to find cable failures in the ceiling, it can be useful.
Another trick I learned: those "etherkill cables" have additional uses. I made up a female RJ45 ported one with AC 110 on the other side and attached it to the bad cable (after it was unplugged from the device on the other side) then crawled into the cable run space (I'm skinny and nimble) with a current testing wand. It made it much easier to find the mouse nibbled cable.
An essential item I realized every server room needs is a decent LED lantern (such as one you might use for camping). You have no idea how valuable that can be in the event of a power outage - it beats a flashlight alone because it provides good flood lighting. I ran into that last spring: everything was still up and running (for hours) except the lights, and work needed to be done in the server room (it was the best time, after all - nobody else was working for days).
Ear plugs can not be under-estimated in their importance.
You may not have noticed this, but pretty much the entire industry is going to a "pay to play" model, mimicking not only Apple's model, but pretty much all media distribution in general. Google Play, Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. - even 'subsidized' cell phone plans - have all but killed traditional models for distribution, and companies are finding that people prefer smaller payments spread out over time than having to plan for large distributions of money every elongated period of time. It's good business sense.
It took me a few days to tweak, but I've figured out how to make the parts that piss me off mostly stay out of my way.
For the tweaking that won't stop, they have medications which can help with the muscle spasms.
(In seriousness, there's absolutely no reason why 'tweaking' should be required to get to a base level of sanity for a professional IT user who's upgrading to the next major version of the same product. NONE. It wasn't acceptable to most people when trying linux for the first time for most of the same people who think W8 is the cat's meow; I don't see any reason why W8 should be considered differently.
Hell, my experience has been that it's an easier move for most people from XP or W7 to KDE than W8. I've now seen two IT people who were singing W8 praises during initial marketing flat out go into a rage after having to use it for a day, swearing it off completely. One of them was what I'd consider a fanboy, and the other one was a genuine 'professional' who was just looking forward to something new and different.
Name another mainstream OS that has been fully supported for as long as Windows XP. Microsoft has been overly generous on their support of older operating systems.
To be fair, pretty much everyone else actually makes upgrading major OS releases fairly easy and painless. Easier than, say, upgrading from R1 to R2 of a Windows Server install, one of the easiest things you can hope for with Microsoft products. Even Office version upgrades tend to cause headaches.
you can get your bug fixed in the OSS world if the project owner / contributors can take time from their paying jobs, if the project if actually still supported, and if the project owner cares about your bug.
Which, in my experience, is pretty close to always, for anything that'd actually need a fix. Ever try it? I've gotten over a dozen bugfixes written "for me" by the developers of projects, and posted a handful of others which have received attention. Some of these were very fringe projects ("IMAP Tools" - a collection of perl migration scripts - has had at least 3-4 fixes/tweaks at my request/direction, as has Wordgrinder, a simple CLI word processor and phpvirtualbox).
Bigger projects will pay you heed if you can prove there's an actual problem and you're not just an idiot, and there is (granted) a slightly higher burden, but except in rare cases my experience is that most of them are fairly willing to make an effort. Many of them are paid to work on those projects, after all - and they've got project deadlines and the like they're trying to hit. Fixing every little bug in the current version, which may or may not even be in the next release, is not always conductive to good use of time. This is why people pay for support through distributions.:)
How does this even begin to approach the GP's concerns? It doesn't.
Sorry, I do not want to have to maintain two address pools because a handful/quarter/third/half of the devices on my network do not fully or properly support IPv6. It's anathema to "internet protocol".
It's the same reason why we hated on IE for so many years, and why technology like OpenVPN and OpenSSL became not only commonplace but have become preferred over the likes of isolationist technologies like IPSEC. (That's what IPv6 is, an isolationist technology.) Hell, that's why Linux has become so popular - it works, with no fuss, in most situations.
IPv6 is yet another example of a niche technology favored by a small elitist segment of a diverse but elitist professional trade categorization, pushing change for the sake of change, against the wishes of everyone else.
Sorry, but when pretty much everyone except the people who gobble up marketing and training material doesn't think IPv6 deployment is a good idea, it's probably not a good idea. We have decades of equipment considerations to phase out, and that's not even counting applications which won't work with IPv6.
It all depends on how big your server room is, how actively it changes equipment, and a number of other things.
For a few hundred (anything), you're not really looking at much of a tool set. There are some 'bare minimums', and 200-300 will be eaten up in very short order. Here's a list of what I consider to be bare essentials:
* A multi-set of philips, flathead, etc. screwdriver bits. Make that two sets, they're cheap. Pick up an extra multipack of #2 and #3 Philips driver bits for another couple bucks. Forget independent screwdrivers, that's just wasteful, and you'll never find the one you want because it's awkward to keep them all together and sort through them. In all likelihood, you'll need #3 and #2 philips only, as more and more systems come toolless; this would be for rack equipment. * A manual torque driver is a must (batteries can fail) - don't be that guy who over-tightens everything and it's impossible to get crap out of a rack without shearing screw heads and stripping bits. You can pick up some pretty decent ones for $10-15. I like the ones with the recessed rear caps which have a cylinder full of different bits. * A good multitool. MUST MUST MUST. SOG are awesome, I love my PowerAssist. I have done emergency recabling jobs with nothing more than a Spartan Swiss Army Knife. Currently, I'm liking my Gerber Balance (and I keep extra bits in my pocket, just in case). This is your tool; it goes in your pocket, and it's your last line of defense against not being able to fix something because someone ran off with the tool you need. * A good flashlight. I'm not talking about a $120 surefire, a cheap $10 Trustfire from DX or the like will do just fine. It just can't be crap. (Personally, this is something I always keep on my person anyway.) * cable tie offs, velcro, cat6 jack heads, spare power and ethernet cables,, etc. - you'll want a supply, because you will probably need them. * RJ punch down tool (to crimp onto your cat6) - the alternative is to buy all pre-cut lengths, and this makes a mess in short order while wasting a fair amount of money. * A network continuity testing tool, preferably one that'll allow you to test things thoroughly and not just give you a 'good' light. * A hardware ethernet tap. You can get a good one for $15 or so. * compact cordless Makita torque/impact driver, preverably the one with the pivoting head. I have spent a lot of time rebuilding etc. racks, and you never know when you'll need
A very nice to have: compact cordless Makita torque/impact driver, preverably the one with the pivoting head. I have spent a lot of time rebuilding etc. racks, and you never know when you'll need it. IMO a 'must have' but only because I've redone entirely too many racks manually.
This list can balloon quickly, depending on how reliant you are on vendors, and how
Except, this happened before. Despite reputed/supposed superior performance, AMD was a big enthusiast preference due to cost and performance advantage in the K6-II through early Phenom days. (We're not talking Windows gamers here, though many of them did, too.)
Guess what? Those guys are all borderline greyhairs now (if they were in high school or college back then at the beginning). They've been working in the field for the better part of a decade (or more) and are probably making those decisions. We dont' really see all that many AMD systems in the server rooms or on company desktops because they're not making decisions on that equipment, they're making decisions on equipment made 10+ years later.:) The people who are enthusiasts today won't make decisions for some time yet, either - they're still the young bucks and the established IT professionals will make the decisions for them.
You need to pick higher quality PSUs and/or boards, and maybe get some power conditioning for your computers. I've run a system with blown caps on both the board and in the PSU (from the period when everyone had that problem) for years without any instability - but they were high quality brands/components (Antec/Gigabyte) otherwise. I've only a couple times seen anything truly fail, and it's usually bottom barrel 'discount price' stuff from Newegg (Zotac or Foxconn comes to mind).
I've long been an AMD buyer, but I have yet to ever upgrade my CPU. It has never been a buying decision factor, really: being able to upgrade the CPU just doesn't matter.
There have been a couple times where I've considered getting the latest/greatest CPU for a board, but even then I don't really feel the cost is justified because there's usually something else 'missing' on the board which makes that upgrade less valuable despite the CPU being potentially cheaper - memory capacity or speed, for instance. More often than not, it doesn't fix the lack of RAM - and by that point, I'm better off getting a whole new rig that'll last markedly longer and not messing with opening the case up for just a little big more, than buying RAM, CPU, etc. and rebuilding an existing system.
Personally, the only thing I've "upgraded" in my computers, going way back to the mid-90s, has been the video card and RAM increases a couple months down the line when prices drop and software bloats a bit more.
You bring Hitler up regarding Eugenics, but it wasn't Eugenics which led to Hitler to put what he viewed as social leeches in concentration camps, killing them by millions, any more than it was the Marxist socioeconomic policies he was trying to institutionalize. You don't exactly see people blaming Marxism/Socialism for Hitler's genocide, do you? So why Eugenics?
My 6 and 8 year old have been the sole users of an HTC HD2 for the past year (a phone that I did more damage to than they have in the two years it was in my pocket). It's just fine, though the finish has started to wear off the metal.
Thank you for your post. I'm currently in a situation where I am questioning the wisdom of leaving my children with my ex due to her apparent inability to think ahead, plan, or really act rationally. She's going to have a lot of pain ahead due to her selfish choices.
But at the same time, she's still their mother. I don't want to deprive them of her; if she is anything, it's a caring parent who does do right by the kids, at least directly. It's the indirect consequences I'm worried about, compounded by her increasing inability to deal with what she's brought upon herself.
What we have today is a system where it is entirely possible for a cheating, non-working spouse with no degree or visible aspirations to walk away from a devoted, loving, work-their-fingers-to-the-bone spouse with half the accumulated wealth of the marriage, alimony, and (if there are children) a significant chunk of money in child support (even with 50/50 custody). How is that even right? I've seen it happen repeatedly.
There absolutely needs to be some 'moral garbage', and honestly, I think it would be best if all marriages had to have a prenuptial agreement covering crucial things like eg. child support and division of assets, just like your will would need to should you pass away.
Honestly, more often than not, the current system for divorce works out to the financial benefit of women, not against them. "But their lifetime income diminishes!" Well, yeah, it does, but only if you consider that many of them don't work while married and then have to find a job. Why not consider their pre-marriage income while determining said figures? After 'spousal support' and the like, I'm pretty sure you'll find that divorce is very much a money making game for women.
Go back and read my first paragraph again. What if the departing spouse was male? What if the departing spouse was female? How would the system (and society) treat things differently? (The irony here is that most divorces are initiated and caused by women, statistically, and that a huge percentage of those divorces completely blindside their husbands.)
Maybe it's because other products are so much cheaper than Apple's, or maybe it's because Apple's products are still significantly more useful than their competition, but I have only ever seen iPhones with significantly cracked and broken screens. Hell, even my HTC Sensation, which is fairly slimsy and receives a lot of abuse (it's in my pocket all the time, including during brutal SD winters (2 so far), climbing in engine bays and under vehicles, dropped on the ground multiple times, etc.) and still doesn't have a cracked screen.
Or, maybe it's just because the iPhone is designed to break easily.
You might be keen to realize that those who were less worse than Christians probably didn't survive long enough to reproduce for more than a couple generations. Christianity, then, appears to be a fairly resilient evolutionary belief system.
I'm not saying you're wrong in the general sentiment of your statement (racism is wrong), but: what is intrinsically wrong with saying races/ethnicities are different? We know that they are - it's intellectually dishonest to say otherwise. Different genes are present, and different genes express more strongly in different races. How, and why, is it wrong to say "sickle cell anemia is bad" or "red hair is bad"?
I'd love to get ahold of one of those. If indeed it's what you say it is (source?), that's one hell of a computer. I wonder how long until someone's ported linux to it...
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While I'm sure Redhat Linux doesn't have the install base that Windows XP (or Server 2003) has, there's something to be said with a vendor providing a consistently improving, consistently timed, and easily upgraded platform. Not breaking major compatibility on a whim which requires complete re-engineering, without major actual benefits, would be a good start, too.
As the other guy said, cable coding by network is a futile effort. Everywhere I've seen it done, it's never been "right", so you'll be thinking, "ok, so what's grey mean?" - the DMZ ends up being red, orange, and yellow, but then management is also yellow and white, so.... yeah: in my experience, that's ultimately a messy, dangerous, and useless effort.
Bundles of (I like 5) cables of different colors, on the other hand, are much more useful. The color doesn't matter, as long as they're different. Different colors help significantly while tracing cables, and when you're doing a big cable job, it's a trivial effort to get different colors. (Even for a small server room, it's usually pretty straight forward.) You'll sometimes end up with a bundle with two of the same color, or two sets of the same color or something like that out of happenstance, but it's hardly much of a headache: you only have one you have to trace then, not 5, 10, 20...
Cannot recommend this highly enough. Label both ends of every cable and the back of every power plug -- then you'll know what to expect when you pull it out.
NO NO NO NO!
I have seen more outages caused by this approach than I want to even think about. Once is bad, but when I've seen people make the assumption that something is correctly labeled and pull it multiple times, I stop trusting it. It only takes one lazy or tired person to mess this up for a long time to come.
A better approach I have found is to label bundles of 5 and vary the cables (ethernet) in the bundle by color. Bundle the bundles in a discreet fashion so you can tell which bundle is which, and label the 'master' bundle if needbe. Anything more than that is going to cause problems. It's also faster to figure out which cables go where without having to look at documentation - your environment should document itself to the highest degree possible. It still has faults but it's not nearly as error prone.
As long as you're going there, I once had to get a quarter inch u-joint adapter to get at some bolts in a rack. Really, a full ratchet set wouldn't hurt, while you're at it. :P You'll always need just one more tool - it doesn't matter what you're working on.
In a pinch, several adjustable wrenches and a multitool will do...
... did we per chance work at the same place? :P I joyously found most of that stuff at my previous employer's facility when I got there, as well as thousands of dollars in additional "we might use this once" type tools. The above list is what I'd call the essentials. (I don't like labellers, personally - they're time consuming and things change too quickly to justify their use on anything but the racked equipment itself.)
Another useful thing is a pair of walkie talkies. When you're trying to find cable failures in the ceiling, it can be useful.
Another trick I learned: those "etherkill cables" have additional uses. I made up a female RJ45 ported one with AC 110 on the other side and attached it to the bad cable (after it was unplugged from the device on the other side) then crawled into the cable run space (I'm skinny and nimble) with a current testing wand. It made it much easier to find the mouse nibbled cable.
An essential item I realized every server room needs is a decent LED lantern (such as one you might use for camping). You have no idea how valuable that can be in the event of a power outage - it beats a flashlight alone because it provides good flood lighting. I ran into that last spring: everything was still up and running (for hours) except the lights, and work needed to be done in the server room (it was the best time, after all - nobody else was working for days).
Ear plugs can not be under-estimated in their importance.
You may not have noticed this, but pretty much the entire industry is going to a "pay to play" model, mimicking not only Apple's model, but pretty much all media distribution in general. Google Play, Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. - even 'subsidized' cell phone plans - have all but killed traditional models for distribution, and companies are finding that people prefer smaller payments spread out over time than having to plan for large distributions of money every elongated period of time. It's good business sense.
It took me a few days to tweak, but I've figured out how to make the parts that piss me off mostly stay out of my way.
For the tweaking that won't stop, they have medications which can help with the muscle spasms.
(In seriousness, there's absolutely no reason why 'tweaking' should be required to get to a base level of sanity for a professional IT user who's upgrading to the next major version of the same product. NONE. It wasn't acceptable to most people when trying linux for the first time for most of the same people who think W8 is the cat's meow; I don't see any reason why W8 should be considered differently.
Hell, my experience has been that it's an easier move for most people from XP or W7 to KDE than W8. I've now seen two IT people who were singing W8 praises during initial marketing flat out go into a rage after having to use it for a day, swearing it off completely. One of them was what I'd consider a fanboy, and the other one was a genuine 'professional' who was just looking forward to something new and different.
Name another mainstream OS that has been fully supported for as long as Windows XP. Microsoft has been overly generous on their support of older operating systems.
To be fair, pretty much everyone else actually makes upgrading major OS releases fairly easy and painless. Easier than, say, upgrading from R1 to R2 of a Windows Server install, one of the easiest things you can hope for with Microsoft products. Even Office version upgrades tend to cause headaches.
you can get your bug fixed in the OSS world if the project owner / contributors can take time from their paying jobs, if the project if actually still supported, and if the project owner cares about your bug.
Which, in my experience, is pretty close to always, for anything that'd actually need a fix. Ever try it? I've gotten over a dozen bugfixes written "for me" by the developers of projects, and posted a handful of others which have received attention. Some of these were very fringe projects ("IMAP Tools" - a collection of perl migration scripts - has had at least 3-4 fixes/tweaks at my request/direction, as has Wordgrinder, a simple CLI word processor and phpvirtualbox).
Bigger projects will pay you heed if you can prove there's an actual problem and you're not just an idiot, and there is (granted) a slightly higher burden, but except in rare cases my experience is that most of them are fairly willing to make an effort. Many of them are paid to work on those projects, after all - and they've got project deadlines and the like they're trying to hit. Fixing every little bug in the current version, which may or may not even be in the next release, is not always conductive to good use of time. This is why people pay for support through distributions. :)
How does this even begin to approach the GP's concerns? It doesn't.
Sorry, I do not want to have to maintain two address pools because a handful/quarter/third/half of the devices on my network do not fully or properly support IPv6. It's anathema to "internet protocol".
It's the same reason why we hated on IE for so many years, and why technology like OpenVPN and OpenSSL became not only commonplace but have become preferred over the likes of isolationist technologies like IPSEC. (That's what IPv6 is, an isolationist technology.) Hell, that's why Linux has become so popular - it works, with no fuss, in most situations.
IPv6 is yet another example of a niche technology favored by a small elitist segment of a diverse but elitist professional trade categorization, pushing change for the sake of change, against the wishes of everyone else.
Sorry, but when pretty much everyone except the people who gobble up marketing and training material doesn't think IPv6 deployment is a good idea, it's probably not a good idea. We have decades of equipment considerations to phase out, and that's not even counting applications which won't work with IPv6.
It all depends on how big your server room is, how actively it changes equipment, and a number of other things.
For a few hundred (anything), you're not really looking at much of a tool set. There are some 'bare minimums', and 200-300 will be eaten up in very short order. Here's a list of what I consider to be bare essentials:
* A multi-set of philips, flathead, etc. screwdriver bits. Make that two sets, they're cheap. Pick up an extra multipack of #2 and #3 Philips driver bits for another couple bucks. Forget independent screwdrivers, that's just wasteful, and you'll never find the one you want because it's awkward to keep them all together and sort through them. In all likelihood, you'll need #3 and #2 philips only, as more and more systems come toolless; this would be for rack equipment.
* A manual torque driver is a must (batteries can fail) - don't be that guy who over-tightens everything and it's impossible to get crap out of a rack without shearing screw heads and stripping bits. You can pick up some pretty decent ones for $10-15. I like the ones with the recessed rear caps which have a cylinder full of different bits.
* A good multitool. MUST MUST MUST. SOG are awesome, I love my PowerAssist. I have done emergency recabling jobs with nothing more than a Spartan Swiss Army Knife. Currently, I'm liking my Gerber Balance (and I keep extra bits in my pocket, just in case). This is your tool; it goes in your pocket, and it's your last line of defense against not being able to fix something because someone ran off with the tool you need.
* A good flashlight. I'm not talking about a $120 surefire, a cheap $10 Trustfire from DX or the like will do just fine. It just can't be crap. (Personally, this is something I always keep on my person anyway.)
* cable tie offs, velcro, cat6 jack heads, spare power and ethernet cables,, etc. - you'll want a supply, because you will probably need them.
* RJ punch down tool (to crimp onto your cat6) - the alternative is to buy all pre-cut lengths, and this makes a mess in short order while wasting a fair amount of money.
* A network continuity testing tool, preferably one that'll allow you to test things thoroughly and not just give you a 'good' light.
* A hardware ethernet tap. You can get a good one for $15 or so.
* compact cordless Makita torque/impact driver, preverably the one with the pivoting head. I have spent a lot of time rebuilding etc. racks, and you never know when you'll need
A very nice to have: compact cordless Makita torque/impact driver, preverably the one with the pivoting head. I have spent a lot of time rebuilding etc. racks, and you never know when you'll need it. IMO a 'must have' but only because I've redone entirely too many racks manually.
This list can balloon quickly, depending on how reliant you are on vendors, and how
Except, this happened before. Despite reputed/supposed superior performance, AMD was a big enthusiast preference due to cost and performance advantage in the K6-II through early Phenom days. (We're not talking Windows gamers here, though many of them did, too.)
Guess what? Those guys are all borderline greyhairs now (if they were in high school or college back then at the beginning). They've been working in the field for the better part of a decade (or more) and are probably making those decisions. We dont' really see all that many AMD systems in the server rooms or on company desktops because they're not making decisions on that equipment, they're making decisions on equipment made 10+ years later. :) The people who are enthusiasts today won't make decisions for some time yet, either - they're still the young bucks and the established IT professionals will make the decisions for them.
You need to pick higher quality PSUs and/or boards, and maybe get some power conditioning for your computers. I've run a system with blown caps on both the board and in the PSU (from the period when everyone had that problem) for years without any instability - but they were high quality brands/components (Antec/Gigabyte) otherwise. I've only a couple times seen anything truly fail, and it's usually bottom barrel 'discount price' stuff from Newegg (Zotac or Foxconn comes to mind).
I've long been an AMD buyer, but I have yet to ever upgrade my CPU. It has never been a buying decision factor, really: being able to upgrade the CPU just doesn't matter.
There have been a couple times where I've considered getting the latest/greatest CPU for a board, but even then I don't really feel the cost is justified because there's usually something else 'missing' on the board which makes that upgrade less valuable despite the CPU being potentially cheaper - memory capacity or speed, for instance. More often than not, it doesn't fix the lack of RAM - and by that point, I'm better off getting a whole new rig that'll last markedly longer and not messing with opening the case up for just a little big more, than buying RAM, CPU, etc. and rebuilding an existing system.
Personally, the only thing I've "upgraded" in my computers, going way back to the mid-90s, has been the video card and RAM increases a couple months down the line when prices drop and software bloats a bit more.
Marxist redistribution of wealth and the current hatred of the "super rich" seems to be headed that way pretty damn quickly.
You bring Hitler up regarding Eugenics, but it wasn't Eugenics which led to Hitler to put what he viewed as social leeches in concentration camps, killing them by millions, any more than it was the Marxist socioeconomic policies he was trying to institutionalize. You don't exactly see people blaming Marxism/Socialism for Hitler's genocide, do you? So why Eugenics?
My 6 and 8 year old have been the sole users of an HTC HD2 for the past year (a phone that I did more damage to than they have in the two years it was in my pocket). It's just fine, though the finish has started to wear off the metal.
Thank you for your post. I'm currently in a situation where I am questioning the wisdom of leaving my children with my ex due to her apparent inability to think ahead, plan, or really act rationally. She's going to have a lot of pain ahead due to her selfish choices.
But at the same time, she's still their mother. I don't want to deprive them of her; if she is anything, it's a caring parent who does do right by the kids, at least directly. It's the indirect consequences I'm worried about, compounded by her increasing inability to deal with what she's brought upon herself.
I see you probably haven't been divorced, then.
What we have today is a system where it is entirely possible for a cheating, non-working spouse with no degree or visible aspirations to walk away from a devoted, loving, work-their-fingers-to-the-bone spouse with half the accumulated wealth of the marriage, alimony, and (if there are children) a significant chunk of money in child support (even with 50/50 custody). How is that even right? I've seen it happen repeatedly.
There absolutely needs to be some 'moral garbage', and honestly, I think it would be best if all marriages had to have a prenuptial agreement covering crucial things like eg. child support and division of assets, just like your will would need to should you pass away.
Honestly, more often than not, the current system for divorce works out to the financial benefit of women, not against them. "But their lifetime income diminishes!" Well, yeah, it does, but only if you consider that many of them don't work while married and then have to find a job. Why not consider their pre-marriage income while determining said figures? After 'spousal support' and the like, I'm pretty sure you'll find that divorce is very much a money making game for women.
Go back and read my first paragraph again. What if the departing spouse was male? What if the departing spouse was female? How would the system (and society) treat things differently? (The irony here is that most divorces are initiated and caused by women, statistically, and that a huge percentage of those divorces completely blindside their husbands.)
Who, me? Bitter? Noooo...
Quality of Apple products?
Maybe it's because other products are so much cheaper than Apple's, or maybe it's because Apple's products are still significantly more useful than their competition, but I have only ever seen iPhones with significantly cracked and broken screens. Hell, even my HTC Sensation, which is fairly slimsy and receives a lot of abuse (it's in my pocket all the time, including during brutal SD winters (2 so far), climbing in engine bays and under vehicles, dropped on the ground multiple times, etc.) and still doesn't have a cracked screen.
Or, maybe it's just because the iPhone is designed to break easily.
You might be keen to realize that those who were less worse than Christians probably didn't survive long enough to reproduce for more than a couple generations. Christianity, then, appears to be a fairly resilient evolutionary belief system.
I'm not saying you're wrong in the general sentiment of your statement (racism is wrong), but: what is intrinsically wrong with saying races/ethnicities are different? We know that they are - it's intellectually dishonest to say otherwise. Different genes are present, and different genes express more strongly in different races. How, and why, is it wrong to say "sickle cell anemia is bad" or "red hair is bad"?
I'd love to get ahold of one of those. If indeed it's what you say it is (source?), that's one hell of a computer. I wonder how long until someone's ported linux to it...