I'm not going to ask where you lived if you saw alligators wandering around on a regular basis. I lived in such places, but that was more than 20 years ago. I then lost the urge to get a rusty pickup truck, and thankfully never picked up the accent.:)
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, even if that includes getting a few good people to figure out what the design should be. I'm not saying it would be me, even though I have done more than my fair share of figuring out other people's mistakes. A half dozen CCIEs (assuming it's all Cisco equipment) could likely do it in a day, if they had enough information to work with. If there were no network maps, and they only knew the sites where the equipment resided, it could likely take longer.
Well, it's not all that bad. If you're the admin for the company, you can likely buy new certs. It's not like they're all that expensive any more.
Most folks I've known fix their cert so they don't have to type the password every time they reboot the machine. A server should come up into a good running configuration when powered on. It shouldn't require any sort of manual intervention. One place I was at didn't, and it caused all kinds of problems. Just imagine the loving phone calls that were coming in, when the machine was found hung at 6pm, and the guy with the password left at 5:30pm. The next shift reboots the hung machine, the web server didn't come up, and plenty of rather strong language flew around.
If I remembered it right, he left the routers with the config just in memory (like running-config on a Cisco). I'd guess the startup config was enough to bring it online, but not enough for it to do it's job. Sounds like a pain in the ass though, if someone were to accidentally unplug a cable at the datacenter. Not only do they have to wait for it to boot back up, but they also have to wait for him to send up the working configuration.
Ya, it'd be a job of getting into machines and cleaning up, but it's not like it's an impossible job. It wouldn't be a job I'd want, but I'm sure there was someone there who knew enough about the network to make educated guesses at the correct configuration.
You gotta watch what you say on here. I agree, but I've had people go off on me saying it.
Myself, I kinda like the idea of job security, where I lock down the whole network so no one else can manage it. "Nope, you can't fire me, I'm the only one with the passwords."
I've had to do cleanups after those a few times though. No one knew the passwords to a bunch of networking equipment in the datacenters, as well as quite a few servers. Nothing makes me warmer and fuzzier than sitting in a datacenter booting into single user mode to change passwords. It's always nice to tell the bosses "Don't panic, you'll see a lot of machines going down for a few minutes each. I'll bring 'em all back up."
It's so much easier to manage the equipment when you have access to all of it.:)
He whole question sounds like he in 1990 retired and built a time statis chamber and put himself in it for the past 20 years....
I did that once. It was to avoid the great depression. A few of the lab workers and myself were put into stasis, to be awoken after the economy recovered. We had predicted the world would either be a wonderful place or we'd be in the aftermath of complete socioeconomic collapse. Something happened to the lab workers who stayed behind, and it wasn't until the early 1970's that someone found our equipment and released us. We completely missed the 1960's. Dammit. Drugs, free love, and freaky freaky hippie chicks. At least the computers are better now, but all of our social prediction models have shown there won't be another time like that for centuries. We have been monitoring a few extraterrestrial transmissions that seem interesting. We just have to convince the DHS that it's ok for a private company to have large quantities of what they consider to be dangerous materials.
He only indicated that he was approaching 25 years. He didn't actually say (but implied) it was his job.:)
I guess he could have "worked" in it for all that time. During the day, he could be an IT guy. Nights, he could have been playing it clubs. And on weekends he could have been doing landscaping. That doesn't allow for a lot of time for sleep, but hey, who needs sleep.:)
I could say I've been seriously learning music since 1985, starting with middle school band and private lessons. I'm honest with anyone that asks that there's a bit of a gap between the mid 1990's to 2009. I won't go bragging I've been "in music" for 25 years though. With a bit more practice I may sound like I've never stopped playing though.:)
I'm just getting back into music after a long hiatus (almost 20 years). Still, I remember where the keys are, and the difference between the white and black keys.:) My problem has been transposing music between the piano, alto sax and tenor sax. It brings back a lot of memories, and a few headaches.:) At least after an hour or so of playing, I'm remembering most of what I thought I had forgotten. Now if only I could remember the hundreds of pages of music that I've forgotten...
It's inhabitable now. Is it safe? Not really. You won't turn green and melt into a puddle of goo, nor grow extra limb, but there will likely be side effects.
I don't quite agree with the method of "count how many animals there are". That is fine if the effect happens rapidly. If a mating pair of animals are able to grow to maturity and reproduce at least twice, the population will remain constant. If they produce 3 or more, the population will grow. It doesn't necessarily account for animals coming into the area from other areas. Since there are no humans there to disturb them and/or limit the population (hunting, vehicular accidents, and pruning of the population), the population should reach it's natural density based on the available resources (food and water), and be limited by natural predators. At natural densities, the populations will fluctuate. They also cannot observe the entire area. I'm not surprised the numbers would drop. Wild animals tend to not like humans and will stay away.
Through similar observations, I could come to some wild conclusions. I live in Florida. We have a decent alligator population here. I haven't seen one in the wild in over 20 years. We also have wild coyotes that have been spotted since the 1970's. I've never seen one, but I've heard them howling, and could hear up to three distinct animals at the same time. So I could report that the alligator population has disappeared, and the coyote population is approximately 3. That would be completely wrong though.
Humans (homo sapiens) are easier to account for. They tend to follow common trails for hunting, gathering, and other social interactions. These trails are very obvious in comparison to any other animal. Humans have many pack tendencies. They tend to live with moderate to large numbers in common shelters, natural or otherwise. They tend to leave quite a bit of evidence of where they've been, more so than other animals, as they do not seem to concern themselves with predators. Be concerned if you approach a human or group of humans. They can become very aggressive towards unfamiliar animals, even if they are of the same species. There have been many noted examples where humans of different coloration or decoration can be attacked with little or no provocation.
Through my recent observations, I can number the human population to be not more than a few thousand.
Ya, I didn't go out looking for any samples of his emails to use. I know even as verbose as I usually am, if I'm just sending a note over to HR saying we've hired someone, that could be a one-liner. I don't know how many people he hand picked back in the day, but if I remember their (MS) structure right now, he doesn't even have a hand in that. I suppose it could happen, but it would probably be more of an email to a department manager saying "I want this guy working here. Interview and hire him."
I suspect they'll recycle after a period of inactivity. Either that, or maybe that's why PayPal dropped the program. It was a pretty neat little deal though. I enjoyed it for online purchases. I was buying from a questionable site once. They took my card info, but then didn't allow the transaction to complete (internal error, not a card error). Rather than risking them taking money for a transaction not completed, I canceled the virtual number.
I've been totally satisfied with the Green Dot cards. They're sold under a few names, including the "Walmart Money Card". It's a physical card, so it doesn't totally apply to the question. It costs something like $3 for the card, and you can add cash to it at any Green Dot vendor. (plus a small service fee). Put as much as you're going to spend on it, and use it. If it becomes compromised, cut it up.:)
You get a temporary card in the package. They mail the real card with your name on it within about a week. I bought one to make a road trip with, and used the temporary card at gas stations along the whole trip. You can't refill the temp card though, it only gets the initial balance. So if you get a card and put $200 on it, it costs you $203. When that $200 is gone, the card doesn't work any more. Once you get the real card with your name on it, you can add money as you see fit.
I use mine a lot. There's no overdraft fees, since they simply don't allow it. When it gets down towards $0, it's done. The big problem is when you have like $1.68 on it, you either have to make a small purchase to burn that up, or let it sit. It's not like you can pull $1 out of an ATM, or at least nowhere I've seen.
That's interesting. Most of mine did. I've used various carriers over the years.
I had a case of identity theft years ago, and that's how I found out about detail on two of them. Someone went on a buying spree and purchased phones online from a few different carriers. Once I found out about the first ones, I called all the major cell carriers to find out if "I" had an account. The ones who said "yes", I asked to be immediately transferred to their fraud department. One of them had allowed the purchase, but refused to fulfill it, and marked it as fraud. I told them to keep it that way, since I wasn't a customer. Another one said the attempt was made, but they flagged it as fraud before the transaction was completed.
I didn't live anywhere near where the person doing the fraud was at. Since a couple of them gave me "my" information including the street address where the phones were to be shipped, I considered going there and beating the shit out of the guy who did it. Since they were over 1,000 miles away, I called their local police who were completely disinterested in it. "File it with your local police." My local police were again completely disinterested, since the suspect was so far away. {sigh} I finally got someone to at least write down my complaint and hand me a semi-formal piece of paper saying that I had filed a complaint.
I'm not quite sure what's happened. I do a lot with this machine, as it's my primary machine. I have Windows 7 Home Premium on my laptop. In about 6 months of owning it, it had one similar problem that the repair took care of. For some reason this one took me into checkdisk, found errors, fixed them, and rebooted. It was an endless cycle. S.M.A.R.T. doesn't report any drive errors, and Linux is on another partition on the same drive and doesn't have any problems. The machine is nice and cool and stable.
There was a problem with the nVidia driver for the video card under Windows 7. It's a known bug, with no resolution (unfortunately), which would cause the machine to just hang. Unfortunately, the one game I wanted to play needs the nVidia card. The game has known faults trying to use it on an ATI card. {sigh} I'm guessing it didn't like the spontaneous reboots.
Now, I just don't try to play. I don't need any game that bad.:) Maybe someday I'll play it again, when nVidia finally figures out their bug. It seems silly to have two different 1GB DDR3 PCI-E cards here, and can only use one. Eventually the nVidia card will find it's way into a new machine, and I'm running happily on the ATI card under Linux.:)
Yup, my pre-existing condition isn't something I try to hide. If I were to ever file a workers comp claim, I know their insurance minions would be all over my history, checking every database in existence. It's not hard. My auto and health insurance both show it. The doctors records show it. My prescription history at the pharmacy shows it. Regardless of how protected HIPAA data is suppose to be, folks seem to get a hold of it somehow.
My injuries are well documented, so it's not hard to compare a pre-existing condition to a new one. I can't be denied work because of it, because it's protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I did hurt myself at work a couple years ago. They had me unbox a 150 pound server by myself to get a serial number off it. I told them "I have back problems, I need a hand lifting it." Since they'd seen me lift plenty of stuff, they just blew it off assuming I didn't want to do it. I knew from the way it was boxed, there was no comfortable way for me to lift it. Being told "do it or else", I did it. I hurt myself. I got myself back to my chair very slowly, and asked someone to go to my car for my drugs (muscle relaxers and pain killers). Pretty much, when I do something I shouldn't, it causes muscle spasms around the areas of existing damage, which can result in me laying on the floor rather quickly. The solution is the drugs. I avoid them at work, even though they don't impair my judgment or work ability. I just don't want questions about "why are you taking drugs at work?", and get sent off for a urinalysis, and then provide a doctors note saying that they're prescribed for "as needed" use.
Normally it's not a problem. I know my body, and what it can do. I can toss 1u servers around like they're nothing, as long as I lift properly. We all should, so we don't damage ourselves. When it's a 6u machine loaded with drives and a 75 pound chassis, I ask for help, just like anyone should. I've done big racking projects. Sure, I'm sore afterwords, but anyone would be.
The next day after the above mentioned incident, one of our VP's saw me attempting to walk through the office. I had one hand on my back, and the other on the wall, and I was moving very slowly. She spoke kindly, but all her works could roughly translate to "please don't file a workers comp claim". I told her, "Let me sit comfortably in my chair and not move, and I'll be fine. There won't be a workers comp claim." For about 3 days, I got to work, sat in my chair, and moved as little as possible. I do SysAdmin work, so I can remain pretty much immobile other than my hands, and get just about everything done.
I've never filed a workers comp claim. Unless there's some gross negligence by some future employer, I won't either. I've hurt myself at work, and being a normal guy I suck it up. Once my right hand got slashed open bad enough where pressure and a paper towel wouldn't stop the bleeding. The only thing I asked was for the on-site medic to patch it so I could stop bleeding all over the place. They did a horrible job. I had to redo it with my left hand (I'm right handed), and said "that's how you properly clean and dress a wound". It was like I was teaching a child how to do it. {sigh} She was probably paid good money to do that job, and couldn't even clean and dress a wound. My training over the years was good for something.:) And if you're wondering, at that time I was working night shift QA for a Walmart distribution center. I saw a guy on the loading dock break a finger and not report it, so he wouldn't get in trouble. Pretty much, if he reported it they'd suspend him for a few weeks, and then cut his hours substantially for months after. He just used packing tape to secure the finger to the adjoining finger, and kept working. He was in a lot of pain, but it was the only job he had, and he had a family to support. Getting no paycheck was not an acceptable solution for him.
That works on the assumption that he's been to the local hospital. I haven't been to a hospital as a patient in about 10 years. That was for a car accident (that I still hurt from). Even knowing that, and the city I live in, there are about a dozen hospitals that I could have gone to. But the general idea would work, it just needs some tuning. A (fake) common billing provider for the local hospitals may work. It doesn't have to be the real billing provider. Most of us don't know who uses what providers.
Not to give any extra hints for the contestants though. Hmmm, this whole conversation would seem to be a great place to get new ideas for methods.:)
There are a lot of limits, including the human factor. Photography is one, but try target shooting (like, with a gun). You'll never see someone who can put 10 shots at 100 feet into the same hole. If they get two, it's dumb luck.
For cameras, sometimes there are extreme examples. I put my Nikon D90 onto my telescope (Newtonian). I was shooting using a USB cable to my laptop, so I could use the laptop as a remote trigger, and set the camera to lift the mirror, so it wouldn't shake. When looking at the moon, I could only see about a quarter of it. Due to the movement of the earth and moon, along with the long exposure, and a little motion in the telescope from lifting the mirror, they turned out blurry. This is my first moon shoot. I know there's ways to do it better, this was just my first attempt. I had a clear night, with a bright moon, and some spare time on my hands.:)
You gotta love how they can take a single pixel, and come out with whatever they need. "If we [tap][tap][tap] zoom in on the reflection in the eye of the victim in the photo, we'll notice [tap][tap][tap] there is a mirror. In the reflection in the mirror is [tap][tap][tap] Oh, its a clear face which [tap][tap][tap] matches the DMV database in Austria for [tap][tap][tap] this bad guy!" Not bad for a shot accidentally taken from a camera phone as the victim was being murdered.
I usually like that feature. I had to turn it off on my video camera when I was doing a shoot a couple weeks ago. My hands aren't always steady, so it's nice having it fix that automagically. I set up for a tripod shot (filming a stage). It detected the motion on the stage as the still part, so the stage itself must have been moving, so it looked like I was unsteady. With the steady shot turned off, it came out perfectly. Well, until someone bumped my tripod, but there isn't much we can do about that other than beat down idiots who bump into your equipment.
I swear, tripods must have a neon sign for dumb people that says "come trip on me!" I don't see it, but regardless of how well you guard your stuff, someone will take the first opportunity to trip on it.
I only run into the occasional problem with GIMP. They really have come a long way.
I switched from Photoshop to GIMP years ago. Photoshop kept crashing on my machine, and GIMP didn't. Then I found there were more things I could do with GIMP, so I stayed. Once in a while I try out Photoshop again, but I stay with GIMP. A few times, Photoshop folks have run into problems, so I tell them to just send me their file, and I fix it in GIMP and send it back.:)
But hey, it's a holy war. Sides have been drawn, and there are zealots on both sides who trash talk each other. Don't ever try to convince someone that the other is better, because it'll just be an argument. I don't play holy wars. I try both sides, and use what works best.
On the computer I'm using right now, it's a dual boot Windows 7 and Slackware64 machine. Windows 7 crashed yet again, with the only solution being "format and reinstall". Bah, I just did that a month before. Instead, I'm staying booted up in Slack64, and am very happy. My other copy of Windows is sitting in a VirutalBox window, which I only bring up for the odd occasions that I need to run a Windows only app. Will I convince a Windows user to switch to Linux? Probably not. Am I perfectly content? Yes.
If you would be so kind, please do an Internet search for "Proper indentation of paragraphs". As I was taught in grade school, which in subsequent searches have shown, indenting of the all paragraphs including the first is the normal American style of writing. The exception to this is business letters which use no indentation.
Normally, I would use the tab key to set this indentation, but since this is a web based interface, the tab key would take me to the next form element, which is unfortunately "No Karma Bonus" on the form provided to me. That hinders my ability to use the tab functionality, so I manually space my paragraphs. This has become a habit in all of my writing.
If you were taught a different style, or you are from another area which this style of indention is not normal, my apologies. As I am an American, and learned to write and type in America, and write to primarily an American audience, I indent as I was taught.
Machines make perfect replications. They can play the composure exactly as written. Unfortunately, that's a beginners mistake. When you play from the sheet music, you can tell the people who are beginners. They can play the written music technically perfect, but they can't put any feeling into it. An excellent musician will play a song where you'll feel it. It's that little something extra that we put in, so you know there's something special to it.
I guess in an orchestral setting, you want that technical perfection. Every element of a section must play just like the rest of the elements, or something will sound wrong.
What they're headed towards is technical perfection of the piece. It doesn't take a bunch of machines playing the part. They could do a lot better with a good recording of the orchestra. By recreating parts of the orchestra with machines, all they're doing is making themselves feel all warm and fuzzy because they spent a lot of money doing it. Wheee, you've reinvented MIDI.
People usually show up to live shows to see the live show. If they want a recording, they can rent the video.
I go out to see live bands. If I wanted to hear the jukebox, I'd just go where there is no live band. There's a difference, no matter how well it was recorded.
had set everything up to be just about idiot proof. Makes me think I did my job too well but its the only way I know how to do things.
That's the best way to do it. It makes your job easier while you're there. As we've learned, there is no company loyalty. They expect us (the employees) to be loyal to the company, but when the time comes to save money, they aren't loyal to us.
Don't worry, I'm sure he took your nicely configured system, and managed to mangle it in horrendous ways.
The last real big place that I worked, I had everything running like clockwork. It looked like it was easy, because I did it so well. Within a month of them letting me go ungracefully, people started dropping me emails saying there were problems. They weren't related to the company, they just knew I ran everything. My only answer for them was "They fired me. I don't care. If they want me to fix it, I'd only go back with a huge raise and a bulletproof contract on my terms." They fixed problems. They made worse problems. Still, a few years later, I get the occasional email "their site is down.", which always gets the same response, "I don't care.":) The day they stopped paying me was the day I stopped caring. I do miss that job though. There's a certain feeling of accomplishment to have a well tuned machine running like clockwork.
The thing in both of our cases is, we know they cut us loose because someone else said they could do it for a fraction of our price. And for that, we know they got someone with a fraction of our ability.
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I'm not going to ask where you lived if you saw alligators wandering around on a regular basis. I lived in such places, but that was more than 20 years ago. I then lost the urge to get a rusty pickup truck, and thankfully never picked up the accent. :)
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, even if that includes getting a few good people to figure out what the design should be. I'm not saying it would be me, even though I have done more than my fair share of figuring out other people's mistakes. A half dozen CCIEs (assuming it's all Cisco equipment) could likely do it in a day, if they had enough information to work with. If there were no network maps, and they only knew the sites where the equipment resided, it could likely take longer.
Well, it's not all that bad. If you're the admin for the company, you can likely buy new certs. It's not like they're all that expensive any more.
Most folks I've known fix their cert so they don't have to type the password every time they reboot the machine. A server should come up into a good running configuration when powered on. It shouldn't require any sort of manual intervention. One place I was at didn't, and it caused all kinds of problems. Just imagine the loving phone calls that were coming in, when the machine was found hung at 6pm, and the guy with the password left at 5:30pm. The next shift reboots the hung machine, the web server didn't come up, and plenty of rather strong language flew around.
If I remembered it right, he left the routers with the config just in memory (like running-config on a Cisco). I'd guess the startup config was enough to bring it online, but not enough for it to do it's job. Sounds like a pain in the ass though, if someone were to accidentally unplug a cable at the datacenter. Not only do they have to wait for it to boot back up, but they also have to wait for him to send up the working configuration.
Ya, it'd be a job of getting into machines and cleaning up, but it's not like it's an impossible job. It wouldn't be a job I'd want, but I'm sure there was someone there who knew enough about the network to make educated guesses at the correct configuration.
You gotta watch what you say on here. I agree, but I've had people go off on me saying it.
Myself, I kinda like the idea of job security, where I lock down the whole network so no one else can manage it. "Nope, you can't fire me, I'm the only one with the passwords."
I've had to do cleanups after those a few times though. No one knew the passwords to a bunch of networking equipment in the datacenters, as well as quite a few servers. Nothing makes me warmer and fuzzier than sitting in a datacenter booting into single user mode to change passwords. It's always nice to tell the bosses "Don't panic, you'll see a lot of machines going down for a few minutes each. I'll bring 'em all back up."
It's so much easier to manage the equipment when you have access to all of it. :)
I did that once. It was to avoid the great depression. A few of the lab workers and myself were put into stasis, to be awoken after the economy recovered. We had predicted the world would either be a wonderful place or we'd be in the aftermath of complete socioeconomic collapse. Something happened to the lab workers who stayed behind, and it wasn't until the early 1970's that someone found our equipment and released us. We completely missed the 1960's. Dammit. Drugs, free love, and freaky freaky hippie chicks. At least the computers are better now, but all of our social prediction models have shown there won't be another time like that for centuries. We have been monitoring a few extraterrestrial transmissions that seem interesting. We just have to convince the DHS that it's ok for a private company to have large quantities of what they consider to be dangerous materials.
He only indicated that he was approaching 25 years. He didn't actually say (but implied) it was his job. :)
I guess he could have "worked" in it for all that time. During the day, he could be an IT guy. Nights, he could have been playing it clubs. And on weekends he could have been doing landscaping. That doesn't allow for a lot of time for sleep, but hey, who needs sleep. :)
I could say I've been seriously learning music since 1985, starting with middle school band and private lessons. I'm honest with anyone that asks that there's a bit of a gap between the mid 1990's to 2009. I won't go bragging I've been "in music" for 25 years though. With a bit more practice I may sound like I've never stopped playing though. :)
That's what I was thinking.
I'm just getting back into music after a long hiatus (almost 20 years). Still, I remember where the keys are, and the difference between the white and black keys. :) My problem has been transposing music between the piano, alto sax and tenor sax. It brings back a lot of memories, and a few headaches. :) At least after an hour or so of playing, I'm remembering most of what I thought I had forgotten. Now if only I could remember the hundreds of pages of music that I've forgotten...
It's inhabitable now. Is it safe? Not really. You won't turn green and melt into a puddle of goo, nor grow extra limb, but there will likely be side effects.
I don't quite agree with the method of "count how many animals there are". That is fine if the effect happens rapidly. If a mating pair of animals are able to grow to maturity and reproduce at least twice, the population will remain constant. If they produce 3 or more, the population will grow. It doesn't necessarily account for animals coming into the area from other areas. Since there are no humans there to disturb them and/or limit the population (hunting, vehicular accidents, and pruning of the population), the population should reach it's natural density based on the available resources (food and water), and be limited by natural predators. At natural densities, the populations will fluctuate. They also cannot observe the entire area. I'm not surprised the numbers would drop. Wild animals tend to not like humans and will stay away.
Through similar observations, I could come to some wild conclusions. I live in Florida. We have a decent alligator population here. I haven't seen one in the wild in over 20 years. We also have wild coyotes that have been spotted since the 1970's. I've never seen one, but I've heard them howling, and could hear up to three distinct animals at the same time. So I could report that the alligator population has disappeared, and the coyote population is approximately 3. That would be completely wrong though.
Humans (homo sapiens) are easier to account for. They tend to follow common trails for hunting, gathering, and other social interactions. These trails are very obvious in comparison to any other animal. Humans have many pack tendencies. They tend to live with moderate to large numbers in common shelters, natural or otherwise. They tend to leave quite a bit of evidence of where they've been, more so than other animals, as they do not seem to concern themselves with predators. Be concerned if you approach a human or group of humans. They can become very aggressive towards unfamiliar animals, even if they are of the same species. There have been many noted examples where humans of different coloration or decoration can be attacked with little or no provocation.
Through my recent observations, I can number the human population to be not more than a few thousand.
Ya, I didn't go out looking for any samples of his emails to use. I know even as verbose as I usually am, if I'm just sending a note over to HR saying we've hired someone, that could be a one-liner. I don't know how many people he hand picked back in the day, but if I remember their (MS) structure right now, he doesn't even have a hand in that. I suppose it could happen, but it would probably be more of an email to a department manager saying "I want this guy working here. Interview and hire him."
I suspect they'll recycle after a period of inactivity. Either that, or maybe that's why PayPal dropped the program. It was a pretty neat little deal though. I enjoyed it for online purchases. I was buying from a questionable site once. They took my card info, but then didn't allow the transaction to complete (internal error, not a card error). Rather than risking them taking money for a transaction not completed, I canceled the virtual number.
I've been totally satisfied with the Green Dot cards. They're sold under a few names, including the "Walmart Money Card". It's a physical card, so it doesn't totally apply to the question. It costs something like $3 for the card, and you can add cash to it at any Green Dot vendor. (plus a small service fee). Put as much as you're going to spend on it, and use it. If it becomes compromised, cut it up. :)
You get a temporary card in the package. They mail the real card with your name on it within about a week. I bought one to make a road trip with, and used the temporary card at gas stations along the whole trip. You can't refill the temp card though, it only gets the initial balance. So if you get a card and put $200 on it, it costs you $203. When that $200 is gone, the card doesn't work any more. Once you get the real card with your name on it, you can add money as you see fit.
I use mine a lot. There's no overdraft fees, since they simply don't allow it. When it gets down towards $0, it's done. The big problem is when you have like $1.68 on it, you either have to make a small purchase to burn that up, or let it sit. It's not like you can pull $1 out of an ATM, or at least nowhere I've seen.
That's interesting. Most of mine did. I've used various carriers over the years.
I had a case of identity theft years ago, and that's how I found out about detail on two of them. Someone went on a buying spree and purchased phones online from a few different carriers. Once I found out about the first ones, I called all the major cell carriers to find out if "I" had an account. The ones who said "yes", I asked to be immediately transferred to their fraud department. One of them had allowed the purchase, but refused to fulfill it, and marked it as fraud. I told them to keep it that way, since I wasn't a customer. Another one said the attempt was made, but they flagged it as fraud before the transaction was completed.
I didn't live anywhere near where the person doing the fraud was at. Since a couple of them gave me "my" information including the street address where the phones were to be shipped, I considered going there and beating the shit out of the guy who did it. Since they were over 1,000 miles away, I called their local police who were completely disinterested in it. "File it with your local police." My local police were again completely disinterested, since the suspect was so far away. {sigh} I finally got someone to at least write down my complaint and hand me a semi-formal piece of paper saying that I had filed a complaint.
Yup. Media hype based on nerds mental masturbation. Just like most of the tech news that makes it to the mainstream media. :)
I'm not quite sure what's happened. I do a lot with this machine, as it's my primary machine. I have Windows 7 Home Premium on my laptop. In about 6 months of owning it, it had one similar problem that the repair took care of. For some reason this one took me into checkdisk, found errors, fixed them, and rebooted. It was an endless cycle. S.M.A.R.T. doesn't report any drive errors, and Linux is on another partition on the same drive and doesn't have any problems. The machine is nice and cool and stable.
There was a problem with the nVidia driver for the video card under Windows 7. It's a known bug, with no resolution (unfortunately), which would cause the machine to just hang. Unfortunately, the one game I wanted to play needs the nVidia card. The game has known faults trying to use it on an ATI card. {sigh} I'm guessing it didn't like the spontaneous reboots.
Now, I just don't try to play. I don't need any game that bad. :) Maybe someday I'll play it again, when nVidia finally figures out their bug. It seems silly to have two different 1GB DDR3 PCI-E cards here, and can only use one. Eventually the nVidia card will find it's way into a new machine, and I'm running happily on the ATI card under Linux. :)
Yup, my pre-existing condition isn't something I try to hide. If I were to ever file a workers comp claim, I know their insurance minions would be all over my history, checking every database in existence. It's not hard. My auto and health insurance both show it. The doctors records show it. My prescription history at the pharmacy shows it. Regardless of how protected HIPAA data is suppose to be, folks seem to get a hold of it somehow.
My injuries are well documented, so it's not hard to compare a pre-existing condition to a new one. I can't be denied work because of it, because it's protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I did hurt myself at work a couple years ago. They had me unbox a 150 pound server by myself to get a serial number off it. I told them "I have back problems, I need a hand lifting it." Since they'd seen me lift plenty of stuff, they just blew it off assuming I didn't want to do it. I knew from the way it was boxed, there was no comfortable way for me to lift it. Being told "do it or else", I did it. I hurt myself. I got myself back to my chair very slowly, and asked someone to go to my car for my drugs (muscle relaxers and pain killers). Pretty much, when I do something I shouldn't, it causes muscle spasms around the areas of existing damage, which can result in me laying on the floor rather quickly. The solution is the drugs. I avoid them at work, even though they don't impair my judgment or work ability. I just don't want questions about "why are you taking drugs at work?", and get sent off for a urinalysis, and then provide a doctors note saying that they're prescribed for "as needed" use.
Normally it's not a problem. I know my body, and what it can do. I can toss 1u servers around like they're nothing, as long as I lift properly. We all should, so we don't damage ourselves. When it's a 6u machine loaded with drives and a 75 pound chassis, I ask for help, just like anyone should. I've done big racking projects. Sure, I'm sore afterwords, but anyone would be.
The next day after the above mentioned incident, one of our VP's saw me attempting to walk through the office. I had one hand on my back, and the other on the wall, and I was moving very slowly. She spoke kindly, but all her works could roughly translate to "please don't file a workers comp claim". I told her, "Let me sit comfortably in my chair and not move, and I'll be fine. There won't be a workers comp claim." For about 3 days, I got to work, sat in my chair, and moved as little as possible. I do SysAdmin work, so I can remain pretty much immobile other than my hands, and get just about everything done.
I've never filed a workers comp claim. Unless there's some gross negligence by some future employer, I won't either. I've hurt myself at work, and being a normal guy I suck it up. Once my right hand got slashed open bad enough where pressure and a paper towel wouldn't stop the bleeding. The only thing I asked was for the on-site medic to patch it so I could stop bleeding all over the place. They did a horrible job. I had to redo it with my left hand (I'm right handed), and said "that's how you properly clean and dress a wound". It was like I was teaching a child how to do it. {sigh} She was probably paid good money to do that job, and couldn't even clean and dress a wound. My training over the years was good for something. :) And if you're wondering, at that time I was working night shift QA for a Walmart distribution center. I saw a guy on the loading dock break a finger and not report it, so he wouldn't get in trouble. Pretty much, if he reported it they'd suspend him for a few weeks, and then cut his hours substantially for months after. He just used packing tape to secure the finger to the adjoining finger, and kept working. He was in a lot of pain, but it was the only job he had, and he had a family to support. Getting no paycheck was not an acceptable solution for him.
That works on the assumption that he's been to the local hospital. I haven't been to a hospital as a patient in about 10 years. That was for a car accident (that I still hurt from). Even knowing that, and the city I live in, there are about a dozen hospitals that I could have gone to. But the general idea would work, it just needs some tuning. A (fake) common billing provider for the local hospitals may work. It doesn't have to be the real billing provider. Most of us don't know who uses what providers.
Not to give any extra hints for the contestants though. Hmmm, this whole conversation would seem to be a great place to get new ideas for methods. :)
There are a lot of limits, including the human factor. Photography is one, but try target shooting (like, with a gun). You'll never see someone who can put 10 shots at 100 feet into the same hole. If they get two, it's dumb luck.
For cameras, sometimes there are extreme examples. I put my Nikon D90 onto my telescope (Newtonian). I was shooting using a USB cable to my laptop, so I could use the laptop as a remote trigger, and set the camera to lift the mirror, so it wouldn't shake. When looking at the moon, I could only see about a quarter of it. Due to the movement of the earth and moon, along with the long exposure, and a little motion in the telescope from lifting the mirror, they turned out blurry. This is my first moon shoot. I know there's ways to do it better, this was just my first attempt. I had a clear night, with a bright moon, and some spare time on my hands. :)
You gotta love how they can take a single pixel, and come out with whatever they need. "If we [tap][tap][tap] zoom in on the reflection in the eye of the victim in the photo, we'll notice [tap][tap][tap] there is a mirror. In the reflection in the mirror is [tap][tap][tap] Oh, its a clear face which [tap][tap][tap] matches the DMV database in Austria for [tap][tap][tap] this bad guy!" Not bad for a shot accidentally taken from a camera phone as the victim was being murdered.
I usually like that feature. I had to turn it off on my video camera when I was doing a shoot a couple weeks ago. My hands aren't always steady, so it's nice having it fix that automagically. I set up for a tripod shot (filming a stage). It detected the motion on the stage as the still part, so the stage itself must have been moving, so it looked like I was unsteady. With the steady shot turned off, it came out perfectly. Well, until someone bumped my tripod, but there isn't much we can do about that other than beat down idiots who bump into your equipment.
I swear, tripods must have a neon sign for dumb people that says "come trip on me!" I don't see it, but regardless of how well you guard your stuff, someone will take the first opportunity to trip on it.
I only run into the occasional problem with GIMP. They really have come a long way.
I switched from Photoshop to GIMP years ago. Photoshop kept crashing on my machine, and GIMP didn't. Then I found there were more things I could do with GIMP, so I stayed. Once in a while I try out Photoshop again, but I stay with GIMP. A few times, Photoshop folks have run into problems, so I tell them to just send me their file, and I fix it in GIMP and send it back. :)
But hey, it's a holy war. Sides have been drawn, and there are zealots on both sides who trash talk each other. Don't ever try to convince someone that the other is better, because it'll just be an argument. I don't play holy wars. I try both sides, and use what works best.
On the computer I'm using right now, it's a dual boot Windows 7 and Slackware64 machine. Windows 7 crashed yet again, with the only solution being "format and reinstall". Bah, I just did that a month before. Instead, I'm staying booted up in Slack64, and am very happy. My other copy of Windows is sitting in a VirutalBox window, which I only bring up for the odd occasions that I need to run a Windows only app. Will I convince a Windows user to switch to Linux? Probably not. Am I perfectly content? Yes.
Dear Anonymous Coward,
If you would be so kind, please do an Internet search for "Proper indentation of paragraphs". As I was taught in grade school, which in subsequent searches have shown, indenting of the all paragraphs including the first is the normal American style of writing. The exception to this is business letters which use no indentation.
Normally, I would use the tab key to set this indentation, but since this is a web based interface, the tab key would take me to the next form element, which is unfortunately "No Karma Bonus" on the form provided to me. That hinders my ability to use the tab functionality, so I manually space my paragraphs. This has become a habit in all of my writing.
If you were taught a different style, or you are from another area which this style of indention is not normal, my apologies. As I am an American, and learned to write and type in America, and write to primarily an American audience, I indent as I was taught.
Sincerely,
JWSmythe
Machines make perfect replications. They can play the composure exactly as written. Unfortunately, that's a beginners mistake. When you play from the sheet music, you can tell the people who are beginners. They can play the written music technically perfect, but they can't put any feeling into it. An excellent musician will play a song where you'll feel it. It's that little something extra that we put in, so you know there's something special to it.
I guess in an orchestral setting, you want that technical perfection. Every element of a section must play just like the rest of the elements, or something will sound wrong.
What they're headed towards is technical perfection of the piece. It doesn't take a bunch of machines playing the part. They could do a lot better with a good recording of the orchestra. By recreating parts of the orchestra with machines, all they're doing is making themselves feel all warm and fuzzy because they spent a lot of money doing it. Wheee, you've reinvented MIDI.
People usually show up to live shows to see the live show. If they want a recording, they can rent the video.
I go out to see live bands. If I wanted to hear the jukebox, I'd just go where there is no live band. There's a difference, no matter how well it was recorded.
That's the best way to do it. It makes your job easier while you're there. As we've learned, there is no company loyalty. They expect us (the employees) to be loyal to the company, but when the time comes to save money, they aren't loyal to us.
Don't worry, I'm sure he took your nicely configured system, and managed to mangle it in horrendous ways.
The last real big place that I worked, I had everything running like clockwork. It looked like it was easy, because I did it so well. Within a month of them letting me go ungracefully, people started dropping me emails saying there were problems. They weren't related to the company, they just knew I ran everything. My only answer for them was "They fired me. I don't care. If they want me to fix it, I'd only go back with a huge raise and a bulletproof contract on my terms." They fixed problems. They made worse problems. Still, a few years later, I get the occasional email "their site is down.", which always gets the same response, "I don't care." :) The day they stopped paying me was the day I stopped caring. I do miss that job though. There's a certain feeling of accomplishment to have a well tuned machine running like clockwork.
The thing in both of our cases is, we know they cut us loose because someone else said they could do it for a fraction of our price. And for that, we know they got someone with a fraction of our ability.
Yup, the real secret is to become a bank, and then take gov't money for your bank.