It's unfortunate that the author, and her husband, seem to think they are trapped in this situation.
There are at least 3 options:
1. Just quit. Get some sleep and find a different job. If you desperately need money, get a stop-gap job while you look for the next one. Even delivering pizzas on double-shifts would be less stressful than the current situation and would probably cover your rent for a month or two.
2. Organize. Whether it's by starting a union, or just getting 10-20 buddies to agree to start clocking in at 8am and clocking out at 5pm, you have power in numbers. Say you need rest an recreation so that your brain will function properly. Stick to your guns. If they threaten to fire you, say you wouldn't feel right not giving them good work, and you can't do good work if you're exhausted. If they fire you, big deal -- go to step one, but you get to file for unemployment!
3. Spin off a new business. Find a few buddies there, you all quit and start a new business. Set your own hours. Write a new game. Advertise it on Slashdot as the game written by EA refugees and you'll sell some just based on solidarity.
This guy got into the games industry because it's fun to write games. But it's not fun now. When it gets to the point you're not having fun, not in any aspect of your life, because you're at work all day every day, LEAVE. Your mental health is more important than the hot-shit programmer paycheck.
Wait a second. If you're in a "minority" -- by which I'm sure you mean a disadvantaged group, since there are more female people in, say, the US, than male people -- then you get a "leg up"?
Give me a break.
Women in the US have only had the right to vote for 82 years. Women in the US earn significantly less than men, on average, even when doing the same jobs with the same qualifications. Women in IT are still running into bozos who say, and believe, things like, "I just don't think women can program". Girls in schools are still encouraged away from going into math and science. A big pile of negatives is not cancelled out by a small positive here and there.
So if someone like Cathy Rogers says, "hey, I'll try to help you if you want to be on the show", she is helping to level the playing field, not giving women better treatment.
I highly doubt that she would sacrifice the quality of the show by putting on teams that were only a 1/2 or a 1/4 as good just to get some boobs on the screen. Sheesh.
MSN is just as bad. I've been trying to cancel my account there for about 5 months.
It all started when I tried to get DSL at my apartment. Qwest and MSN work together (if you call that working, ha ha) to provide DSL service in my area.
After a month of spending lots of time with tech support trying to get the DSL to work, I gave up. Maybe there was something wrong with my phone lines, maybe there was something wrong at the central office, I don't know, but we never got it to connect. It was too much trouble to keep troubleshooting it, plus I had decided that I would move out when my lease was up, anyway. So I cancelled the service. The first rep I talked to assured me that there would be no charges, since the service had never worked. But he could sign me up for MSN dial-up, if I wanted, and the first month would be free! No, thanks, I told him, I already have a dial-up account elsewhere and I don't need another one.
Ever since then, every time I get a phone bill from Qwest, there's that monthly MSN charge. I don't even live there anymore, so now I get the bills at my new place, showing this past-due MSN amount.
Various responses from MSN customer service: -- When they cancelled the Qwest account, they should have also cancelled the MSN account, but they didn't. I'll fix that for you. -- I see you signed up for MSN dial-up. Only the first month was free. Oh, you didn't sign up for it? I'll cancel that. -- It doesn't look like they cancelled your account. I'll cancel that for you. -- They should have sent a refund to Qwest, since you cancelled the account. I'll take care of that for you. -- The credit has been posted, but it will take a couple of months to get to Qwest.
I've been just amazed that it's taken five months to cancel an account that I never even used!
Customer service at ISPs is really deplorable. I suspect that the first company to actually offer good customer service will find itself becoming successful as word of mouth spreads and customers switch over.
I like websites where the content is readable and easy to find. I don't want to look at lots of images or listen to music (or wait for those files to download). I shouldn't have to click through a bunch of pages to find what I'm looking for.
Make the content easy to read, and make it easy for me to navigate to the content I want.
And don't put anything important up in the top inch or so, where banner ads usually are on many sites. I've developed a blind spot there, so I won't see it.
Look into schools for "non-traditional students" or "adult students". They are in the business of helping working adults get a degree (for example, University College at Denver University http://www.learning.du.edu/ , or the University of Phoenix http://www.phoenix.edu/ ). They usually have classes during evenings and weekends, and they often give credit for "life experience". Some also issue "certificates" a year or two into the program, documenting that you have demonstrated proficiency in some skills -- this can help you get a better job sooner.
Don't be surprised, though, if you find that there are things they can teach you in college that you haven't learned yet, out in the "real world". It may be that there are indeed classes you need to take, and that you don't know all there is to know about CS yet!
>I don't know how much of what it taught me
>will be relevant in my career.
College is not trade school. If you just want to learn something "relevant in your career", go to a techie trade school. They'll teach you how to code and then you can go get your job.
College is about learning to think, learning to work, learning to interact with people, learning about the depth of things out there in the universe that you may want to find out more about. College is where you can learn that there is more to life than your job. College is a place to gain some maturity and perspective.
In the U.S., a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that college is just a springboard to a career, and then start talking about the return on the tuition investment, etc. That's not what college is for! I paid high tuition at a private liberal arts college for my BA, but the things I learned there were invaluable.
"There is a time and a place for everything, children, and that place is college". -- Chef, South Park
I credit mine! I never heard messages like "girls can't do math" or "girls can't do computers". When I said I wanted to be a mathematician when I grew up, my parents bought be books about how to do it.
When I was 11 or 12, my father taught me how to use the Wyse terminal in the basement to dial up to his office on the acoustic coupler modem, log in, and play adventure and hunt the wumpus. We got a Commodore 64 when they first came out, and Dad taught me how to write programs in basic.
Despite the anecdotal arguments here in this discussion (data is not the plural of anecdote!), there *is* a gender difference in how children are turned away from being geeks. Yes, boys often get beat up for joining the chess club. But they are not bombarded with messages like, "boys won't like you if you're too smart," the way girls are. There is a clear preference for athletics over brains in our school culture, but there is still room for boys to think they'll attract some girls by being the smartest rather than the strongest. However, study after study has shown that girls crash and burn in middle school / junior high. They match the boys score for score in math and science until they get old enough to start thinking about wearing make-up, and then their math and science scores plummet. (And boy, I don't even want to get started on how challenging it is for the kids who are pubescent, geeky, and gay.)
I read the newspaper everyday. There are stories in the paper that are not on slashdot, of course. In addition to international and national news, I get local news, editorial columns, even the comics and Ann Landers. A lot of those things may be available on-line, but in my newspaper, they're in one handy package that gets delivered to my doorstep -- and I can set my lunch on it while I'm reading.
I don't think the web will replace newspapers soon. I'd love to see it chase those insipid "news" shows off of TV, though.
He saw something that needed to be done, something he could help with, and he just went ahead and did it. He helped out MS, even though we all hate them. (joke, geez!) He's been civil about the whole thing. And he's raising a big chunk of change -- which he'll give to charity.
I think it makes sense to include "The Matrix" in a philosophy course. It's basic theme is very similar to Descartes "evil genius" concept, which is tied in with the thought argument that conclues with "I think, therefore I am".
The "evil genius" idea, or as I learned about it in a philosophy class as the "brain in a vat" idea, is that it's hard to tell whether what you experience is reality, or whether it is the result of impulses being fed into your brain somehow.
Both Descartes writings and "The Matrix" make you consider philosophical questions like: -- Can I trust my senses about what reality is? -- If I can't be sure what reality is, what things can I be sure of? Do I exist? Am I the way I think I am? Are people the way I think they are? -- How much does it matter? If I knew for sure that I was a brain in a vat dreaming these things, would I live my life differently?
Try to come up with little things that are fun, inspirational, and don't cost much.
When we used to handle our own software shipping, we had a ship's bell mounted next to the fax machine. When a big order came in, the person who picked up the fax would ring the bell. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it really did make me feel good when the bell rang. We could all look up from our work and say, "yay!", and feel good that the company was doing well.
Shame on ZDNet for this headline. It flashed across my MSNBC breaking news thingy, too.
Lots of people may see this headline, but not read far enough into the article to see it's a thinly-veiled product plug. Now all the newbies have one more reason to think cookies are some evil scam.
I have spent the last couple weeks sorting out horrible DLL issues for the install of our upcoming software release.
MS makes it almost impossible to find out info about which DLL version you want and where to find it. Just when I thought I had it down, they released VBRun60sp3.exe and we decided to recompile some of the software with VS SP3, so we needed new files. Oy! (Yes, they're most are on the VS SP3 CD, so they're not too hard to find, but you still have to look at all the versions and test the files and such.)
One amusing anecdote: MS has a "Library Update" out right now that is supposed to fix problems that may have been caused by software developers installing DLL files individually, the end result being that they may be out of sync. The kicker: MS won't let developers redistribute this with our software -- they recommend we install the DLLs we need individually!
Anyone who has played around with Windows 2000 knows there's an interesting new DLL feature -- software installations CAN'T update system DLLs. If they do, W2K notices and makes you put the W2K CD in so it can copy the old one back in. Supposedly, this is part of a new direction MS is moving towards, having system DLLs only be updated by MS packages, and never by software installs.
Will this make our lives easier, because we can wash our hands of it (from a tech support standpoint -- "call Microsoft"), or will it just make things worse?
Slashdot Mirror
It's unfortunate that the author, and her husband, seem to think they are trapped in this situation.
There are at least 3 options:
1. Just quit. Get some sleep and find a different job. If you desperately need money, get a stop-gap job while you look for the next one. Even delivering pizzas on double-shifts would be less stressful than the current situation and would probably cover your rent for a month or two.
2. Organize. Whether it's by starting a union, or just getting 10-20 buddies to agree to start clocking in at 8am and clocking out at 5pm, you have power in numbers. Say you need rest an recreation so that your brain will function properly. Stick to your guns. If they threaten to fire you, say you wouldn't feel right not giving them good work, and you can't do good work if you're exhausted. If they fire you, big deal -- go to step one, but you get to file for unemployment!
3. Spin off a new business. Find a few buddies there, you all quit and start a new business. Set your own hours. Write a new game. Advertise it on Slashdot as the game written by EA refugees and you'll sell some just based on solidarity.
This guy got into the games industry because it's fun to write games. But it's not fun now. When it gets to the point you're not having fun, not in any aspect of your life, because you're at work all day every day, LEAVE. Your mental health is more important than the hot-shit programmer paycheck.
Mod the parent up! Let's all send mail to Alan Ralsky.
Wait a second. If you're in a "minority" -- by which I'm sure you mean a disadvantaged group, since there are more female people in, say, the US, than male people -- then you get a "leg up"?
Give me a break.
Women in the US have only had the right to vote for 82 years. Women in the US earn significantly less than men, on average, even when doing the same jobs with the same qualifications. Women in IT are still running into bozos who say, and believe, things like, "I just don't think women can program". Girls in schools are still encouraged away from going into math and science. A big pile of negatives is not cancelled out by a small positive here and there.
So if someone like Cathy Rogers says, "hey, I'll try to help you if you want to be on the show", she is helping to level the playing field, not giving women better treatment.
I highly doubt that she would sacrifice the quality of the show by putting on teams that were only a 1/2 or a 1/4 as good just to get some boobs on the screen. Sheesh.
I've been trying hard to Fight The Man and not use IE, but I am running into more and more sites that Netscape 6 can't decipher.
I plan to take a look at Opera and Mozilla, but if they can't do those sites either, I'll have to go over to the darkside....
Where are the standards? Why aren't web designers following them?
My nightmare continues.
I've now received a collection notice from Qwest for past due amounts from this MSN account that I never had.
I've been on the phone now for about a half an hour trying to straighten this out.
They say they'll escalate it and call me back -- three days or so.
MSN is just as bad. I've been trying to cancel my account there for about 5 months.
It all started when I tried to get DSL at my apartment. Qwest and MSN work together (if you call that working, ha ha) to provide DSL service in my area.
After a month of spending lots of time with tech support trying to get the DSL to work, I gave up. Maybe there was something wrong with my phone lines, maybe there was something wrong at the central office, I don't know, but we never got it to connect. It was too much trouble to keep troubleshooting it, plus I had decided that I would move out when my lease was up, anyway. So I cancelled the service. The first rep I talked to assured me that there would be no charges, since the service had never worked. But he could sign me up for MSN dial-up, if I wanted, and the first month would be free! No, thanks, I told him, I already have a dial-up account elsewhere and I don't need another one.
Ever since then, every time I get a phone bill from Qwest, there's that monthly MSN charge. I don't even live there anymore, so now I get the bills at my new place, showing this past-due MSN amount.
Various responses from MSN customer service:
-- When they cancelled the Qwest account, they should have also cancelled the MSN account, but they didn't. I'll fix that for you.
-- I see you signed up for MSN dial-up. Only the first month was free. Oh, you didn't sign up for it? I'll cancel that.
-- It doesn't look like they cancelled your account. I'll cancel that for you.
-- They should have sent a refund to Qwest, since you cancelled the account. I'll take care of that for you.
-- The credit has been posted, but it will take a couple of months to get to Qwest.
I've been just amazed that it's taken five months to cancel an account that I never even used!
Customer service at ISPs is really deplorable. I suspect that the first company to actually offer good customer service will find itself becoming successful as word of mouth spreads and customers switch over.
-- Cara
I like websites where the content is readable and easy to find. I don't want to look at lots of images or listen to music (or wait for those files to download). I shouldn't have to click through a bunch of pages to find what I'm looking for.
Make the content easy to read, and make it easy for me to navigate to the content I want.
And don't put anything important up in the top inch or so, where banner ads usually are on many sites. I've developed a blind spot there, so I won't see it.
Geek romance is so cool.
/. really cheered me up.
:) Cara
I'm having a crummy V-day this year, and seeing this proposal on
I wish you lifelong love and happiness!
Look into schools for "non-traditional students" or "adult students". They are in the business of helping working adults get a degree (for example, University College at Denver University http://www.learning.du.edu/ , or the University of Phoenix http://www.phoenix.edu/ ). They usually have classes during evenings and weekends, and they often give credit for "life experience". Some also issue "certificates" a year or two into the program, documenting that you have demonstrated proficiency in some skills -- this can help you get a better job sooner.
Don't be surprised, though, if you find that there are things they can teach you in college that you haven't learned yet, out in the "real world". It may be that there are indeed classes you need to take, and that you don't know all there is to know about CS yet!
yeah, and the F/M ratio on most campuses is > 50%.
Ya wanna meet women, ya gotta go to where they are....
>I don't know how much of what it taught me
>will be relevant in my career.
College is not trade school. If you just want to learn something "relevant in your career", go to a techie trade school. They'll teach you how to code and then you can go get your job.
College is about learning to think, learning to work, learning to interact with people, learning about the depth of things out there in the universe that you may want to find out more about. College is where you can learn that there is more to life than your job. College is a place to gain some maturity and perspective.
In the U.S., a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that college is just a springboard to a career, and then start talking about the return on the tuition investment, etc. That's not what college is for! I paid high tuition at a private liberal arts college for my BA, but the things I learned there were invaluable.
"There is a time and a place for everything, children, and that place is college". -- Chef, South Park
>I accuse my parents...
I credit mine! I never heard messages like "girls can't do math" or "girls can't do computers". When I said I wanted to be a mathematician when I grew up, my parents bought be books about how to do it.
When I was 11 or 12, my father taught me how to use the Wyse terminal in the basement to dial up to his office on the acoustic coupler modem, log in, and play adventure and hunt the wumpus. We got a Commodore 64 when they first came out, and Dad taught me how to write programs in basic.
Despite the anecdotal arguments here in this discussion (data is not the plural of anecdote!), there *is* a gender difference in how children are turned away from being geeks. Yes, boys often get beat up for joining the chess club. But they are not bombarded with messages like, "boys won't like you if you're too smart," the way girls are. There is a clear preference for athletics over brains in our school culture, but there is still room for boys to think they'll attract some girls by being the smartest rather than the strongest. However, study after study has shown that girls crash and burn in middle school / junior high. They match the boys score for score in math and science until they get old enough to start thinking about wearing make-up, and then their math and science scores plummet. (And boy, I don't even want to get started on how challenging it is for the kids who are pubescent, geeky, and gay.)
I can't open the Einstein files.
Have we Slashdotted the FBI???
Now we'll all get our own files, for sure....
I read the newspaper everyday. There are stories in the paper that are not on slashdot, of course. In addition to international and national news, I get local news, editorial columns, even the comics and Ann Landers. A lot of those things may be available on-line, but in my newspaper, they're in one handy package that gets delivered to my doorstep -- and I can set my lunch on it while I'm reading.
I don't think the web will replace newspapers soon. I'd love to see it chase those insipid "news" shows off of TV, though.
The money will be donated to the charity of the high bidder's choice.
(He originally stipulated that it would go to his local foodbank if the bidding didn't top $500, but it is up over $2000 now.)
No, it's not squatting -- he doesn't own the name just because he paid the bill.
As he says on his site, "if I went down to the bank and paid your mortgage, would I own your house?"
This story just makes me smile.
He saw something that needed to be done, something he could help with, and he just went ahead and did it. He helped out MS, even though we all hate them. (joke, geez!) He's been civil about the whole thing. And he's raising a big chunk of change -- which he'll give to charity.
He sounds like a cool guy.
I was hoping to vote for the little penguins in the "most deserving of $2000" category.
I think it makes sense to include "The Matrix" in a philosophy course. It's basic theme is very similar to Descartes "evil genius" concept, which is tied in with the thought argument that conclues with "I think, therefore I am".
The "evil genius" idea, or as I learned about it in a philosophy class as the "brain in a vat" idea, is that it's hard to tell whether what you experience is reality, or whether it is the result of impulses being fed into your brain somehow.
Both Descartes writings and "The Matrix" make you consider philosophical questions like:
-- Can I trust my senses about what reality is?
-- If I can't be sure what reality is, what things can I be sure of? Do I exist? Am I the way I think I am? Are people the way I think they are?
-- How much does it matter? If I knew for sure that I was a brain in a vat dreaming these things, would I live my life differently?
Now how do I get a clear case for my Palm III?
Try to come up with little things that are fun, inspirational, and don't cost much.
When we used to handle our own software shipping, we had a ship's bell mounted next to the fax machine. When a big order came in, the person who picked up the fax would ring the bell. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it really did make me feel good when the bell rang. We could all look up from our work and say, "yay!", and feel good that the company was doing well.
Good luck!
Shame on ZDNet for this headline. It flashed across my MSNBC breaking news thingy, too.
Lots of people may see this headline, but not read far enough into the article to see it's a thinly-veiled product plug. Now all the newbies have one more reason to think cookies are some evil scam.
Grrrrrr.
-- Cara
I've been to a talk or two given by these folks.
They seem smart and thorough.
I have spent the last couple weeks sorting out horrible DLL issues for the install of our upcoming software release.
MS makes it almost impossible to find out info about which DLL version you want and where to find it. Just when I thought I had it down, they released VBRun60sp3.exe and we decided to recompile some of the software with VS SP3, so we needed new files. Oy! (Yes, they're most are on the VS SP3 CD, so they're not too hard to find, but you still have to look at all the versions and test the files and such.)
One amusing anecdote: MS has a "Library Update" out right now that is supposed to fix problems that may have been caused by software developers installing DLL files individually, the end result being that they may be out of sync. The kicker: MS won't let developers redistribute this with our software -- they recommend we install the DLLs we need individually!
Anyone who has played around with Windows 2000 knows there's an interesting new DLL feature -- software installations CAN'T update system DLLs. If they do, W2K notices and makes you put the W2K CD in so it can copy the old one back in. Supposedly, this is part of a new direction MS is moving towards, having system DLLs only be updated by MS packages, and never by software installs.
Will this make our lives easier, because we can wash our hands of it (from a tech support standpoint -- "call Microsoft"), or will it just make things worse?
Weighing yourself everyday is a quick ticket to eating disorders.
Eat healthy and exercise -- your body will come to equilibrium around the right weight for you.
-- chart