This is actually something I'll buy once the price settles down. I use an SD card in my Palm (and wife's Pocket PC), but I use a USB thumbdrive on my laptops and desktops (far too many of those). I need to consolidate all my stuff onto one device, so I'm going to go to a Lexmark Jumpdrive Trio, which until Sandisk's new toy was the smallest USB SD card reader. Just a little bigger than a slim thumbdrive, but this new toy means I don't need to carry anything extra.
My daughter had a Mac before she turned 2 and is on her 4th PC (a laptop) now that she's 5. She's a little rough on downloading spyware and junk, but she's as proficient as my boss. She can download a game or put in a CD and install it, send email, send IMs, go to websites that she knows the URL for, knows her email address, types messages in a friend's CaringBridge guestbook, etc.
Start with some simple software. Maisy's Playhouse was the winner for us. The one-button mouse of a Mac is easier on little kids. And give them their own PC to mess up.
Drivers for Wifi SDIO cards on Palms like the Zire 71 are held up because of licensing issues. Translation: they don't want to undercut their expensive models. Ok, I'll buy a Pocket PC then.
As a Floridian, I can tell you that the washed-up dead fish that come a few days after a hurricane will probably overpower any odor from human bodies, sewage, etc. The search-and-rescue dogs have a hard time finding bodies once the fishkill washes in.
One of my college roommates did this years ago. He just cut out and photocopied a bunch of Budweiser barcodes onto sticky labels. Then he'd go to Kroger and stick one on some Heineken and hit some 16 year old cashier for a nice discount. Joe Sixpack could absolutely do this. Anyone with a photocopier, a gluestick, and some balls could.
The Ronald McDonald House in particular is amazing. I followed another young girl with terminal cancer that, when she was discharged from the hospital with a week or two to live, said she'd rather live at the Ronald McDonald House for her last few weeks since she'd spent so much time there.
Position your monitor so that there's a hallway, window, or something behind it other than a cube / office wall. That way you will look up and focus on something in the distance on a regular basis, without any reminder timers.
I contracted for 3 years. I made lots of mistakes, but overall it was good.
The pricing rule of thumb everyone is quoting is pretty close. If you want to make $60k a year, charge $60/hour. But that assumes that you're billing 40 hours a week every week. There were plenty of occasions where I billed 20 and times where I billed as much as 80. I'd take that $60 rate as a base. If a client is going to use you for a steady 40/week or more, give them that rate. If a client is going to trickle work to you at times, charge them $80 or $100.
I actually went three years without health insurance after my COBRA ran out. It isn't a great plan, but if it would cost you $500/month for insurance, sock that money away into a rainy day fund instead, especially if you don't have kids. Maybe find a Blue Cross-ish catastrophic coverage plan and just pay out-of-pocket for most needs.
I didn't incorporate because my primary client insisted on contracting with me personally. Some clients do that. It makes taxes simpler, but costs more.
I fell behind on taxes during lean times. It's easy to do. If your spouse is working a "normal" job, increase their withholding. Learn the tax laws and make your quarterly payments. If you get behind, make some "good faith" payments rather than just skipping them.
I had no deductions. It drove my tax advisor nuts, but I really had no expenses. My travel was maybe 14 miles a week on a busy week. We could have taken a home office deduction, but he felt that opens you up to audits and wasn't worth it. If you can lease a car, lease hardware, etc., you can increase your deductions, but for most software developers, it's hard to find any deductable business expenses.
I didn't take a vacation for 3 years. You really need to take one. You might as well plan to take one around Thanksgiving and Christmas, since your client will probably force you to take those days off, without pay, anyways. Plan for that and go enjoy the days off instead of worrying about the money.
The only way I could get any of my in-laws to run it would be to send it to them in a fake email that says they need to run it to secure their bank account password.
it only intercepted signals off a keyboard cable, not an interstate network
The feds usually argue that just being connected to the internet makes the machine involved in interstate commerce. Or actually they rarely even have to argue this. If they lose this and have to show that interception or fraud involved actual interstate network traffic, a lot of convictions will fall.
It helps to have a thick skin. The only times I've done pair programming we end up making fun of every little mistake the other makes. It's fun and funny with the right person, but with the wrong person this can go too far.
A lot of people translate the fight for affordable health insurance to a fight for government handouts. It's not. Let me walk you through a semi-theoretical case with somewhat made up numbers:
I worked for a company with 500 employees. Four years ago to cover a family, it cost (employer and employee) $400 a month. Ignoring the rising costs, four years later the company is down to 100 employees. Now it costs $800 a month to cover a family. But 100 of the people that left now work for a huge company with 10000 employees. They pay $200 a month to cover their families.
Same people. Same health problems. So why does it cost astronomically more to cover people just because they work for a smaller company? Why? Because it can. That's part of what needs fixing.
Oh, we have a tradition all right. We all make fun of the new boss that's trying to introduce team-building rah-rah events and "make the workplace fun." That's the tradition here. So maybe there is already a tradition at your company and you don't know about it.
I've had this bit of text sitting around for years but never bothered to try it (bought some KVMs instead). Buyer beware.
Most systems detect a keyboard connection by monitoring the current flow
through the connector. To trick it, simple wire a 10K ohm resistor
between GND (pin 4) and +5V (pin 5). This is on a standard PC/AT style
connector (the larger 5 pin one). If you have a PS/2 keyboard, you can
either use an adapter to change it to an AT connector, or use the
resistor between pins 3 and 4 of the PS/2 adapter. Note that the
pinout isn't simply clockwise or counter clockwise:
PC/AT: n 1 3 4 5 2
PS/2: n 5 6 3 4 1 2
as viewed looking into the connector on the keyboard, not the PC.
where 'n' is the notch in the shield.
My guess, and this is only a guess, is that Mr. Smathers was almost certainly confronted by HR or security...
I didn't read through the whole thing, but my guess is that an informant approached the secret service and the case began outside of AOL. AOL really has no interest in this case being prosecuted. The bad publicity will cost them much much more than any restitution they'll get out of an unemployable 24 year old.
I ran into a similar case where a free (called shareware, but like the shareware of old, fully functional and not a demo) driver for Palm keyboards. It's much faster than vendor drivers. It can be done
My 10 year old laser printer is sitting right here, chugging along fine on an i860. I remember when I got it that it was the fastest processor I owned. And had more memory than my desktop.
Yeah. We didn't have MIT's rules of ethics down south. We'd tape the peephole, set up a leaner, then fire a live firecracker under the door for a rapid wakeup. That way you could hear your results from the stairwell without waiting long. Of course, that was reserved for the RA downstairs.
Or unscrew the peephole from the outside and empty a hot-pinned can of shaving cream into it. Much quicker than the old bag of shaving cream under the door.
Slashdot Mirror
This is actually something I'll buy once the price settles down. I use an SD card in my Palm (and wife's Pocket PC), but I use a USB thumbdrive on my laptops and desktops (far too many of those). I need to consolidate all my stuff onto one device, so I'm going to go to a Lexmark Jumpdrive Trio, which until Sandisk's new toy was the smallest USB SD card reader. Just a little bigger than a slim thumbdrive, but this new toy means I don't need to carry anything extra.
My daughter had a Mac before she turned 2 and is on her 4th PC (a laptop) now that she's 5. She's a little rough on downloading spyware and junk, but she's as proficient as my boss. She can download a game or put in a CD and install it, send email, send IMs, go to websites that she knows the URL for, knows her email address, types messages in a friend's CaringBridge guestbook, etc.
Start with some simple software. Maisy's Playhouse was the winner for us. The one-button mouse of a Mac is easier on little kids. And give them their own PC to mess up.
Ditto. And me without my mod points.
I've read a few things about the laser he was reading, which seem to contradict themselves.
First I read that he said it was a piece of test equipment for fiber optic cables (and he used it for his job). Sounds like it could be powerful?
Then I read it was a green laser and he ordered it for $100 from a website. (Thinkgeek?) That doesn't sound that powerful then.
Drivers for Wifi SDIO cards on Palms like the Zire 71 are held up because of licensing issues. Translation: they don't want to undercut their expensive models. Ok, I'll buy a Pocket PC then.
As a Floridian, I can tell you that the washed-up dead fish that come a few days after a hurricane will probably overpower any odor from human bodies, sewage, etc. The search-and-rescue dogs have a hard time finding bodies once the fishkill washes in.
One of my college roommates did this years ago. He just cut out and photocopied a bunch of Budweiser barcodes onto sticky labels. Then he'd go to Kroger and stick one on some Heineken and hit some 16 year old cashier for a nice discount. Joe Sixpack could absolutely do this. Anyone with a photocopier, a gluestick, and some balls could.
The Ronald McDonald House in particular is amazing. I followed another young girl with terminal cancer that, when she was discharged from the hospital with a week or two to live, said she'd rather live at the Ronald McDonald House for her last few weeks since she'd spent so much time there.
Position your monitor so that there's a hallway, window, or something behind it other than a cube / office wall. That way you will look up and focus on something in the distance on a regular basis, without any reminder timers.
I contracted for 3 years. I made lots of mistakes, but overall it was good.
The pricing rule of thumb everyone is quoting is pretty close. If you want to make $60k a year, charge $60/hour. But that assumes that you're billing 40 hours a week every week. There were plenty of occasions where I billed 20 and times where I billed as much as 80. I'd take that $60 rate as a base. If a client is going to use you for a steady 40/week or more, give them that rate. If a client is going to trickle work to you at times, charge them $80 or $100.
I actually went three years without health insurance after my COBRA ran out. It isn't a great plan, but if it would cost you $500/month for insurance, sock that money away into a rainy day fund instead, especially if you don't have kids. Maybe find a Blue Cross-ish catastrophic coverage plan and just pay out-of-pocket for most needs.
I didn't incorporate because my primary client insisted on contracting with me personally. Some clients do that. It makes taxes simpler, but costs more.
I fell behind on taxes during lean times. It's easy to do. If your spouse is working a "normal" job, increase their withholding. Learn the tax laws and make your quarterly payments. If you get behind, make some "good faith" payments rather than just skipping them.
I had no deductions. It drove my tax advisor nuts, but I really had no expenses. My travel was maybe 14 miles a week on a busy week. We could have taken a home office deduction, but he felt that opens you up to audits and wasn't worth it. If you can lease a car, lease hardware, etc., you can increase your deductions, but for most software developers, it's hard to find any deductable business expenses.
I didn't take a vacation for 3 years. You really need to take one. You might as well plan to take one around Thanksgiving and Christmas, since your client will probably force you to take those days off, without pay, anyways. Plan for that and go enjoy the days off instead of worrying about the money.
The only way I could get any of my in-laws to run it would be to send it to them in a fake email that says they need to run it to secure their bank account password.
The feds usually argue that just being connected to the internet makes the machine involved in interstate commerce. Or actually they rarely even have to argue this. If they lose this and have to show that interception or fraud involved actual interstate network traffic, a lot of convictions will fall.
It helps to have a thick skin. The only times I've done pair programming we end up making fun of every little mistake the other makes. It's fun and funny with the right person, but with the wrong person this can go too far.
I worked for a company with 500 employees. Four years ago to cover a family, it cost (employer and employee) $400 a month. Ignoring the rising costs, four years later the company is down to 100 employees. Now it costs $800 a month to cover a family. But 100 of the people that left now work for a huge company with 10000 employees. They pay $200 a month to cover their families.
Same people. Same health problems. So why does it cost astronomically more to cover people just because they work for a smaller company? Why? Because it can. That's part of what needs fixing.
Oh, we have a tradition all right. We all make fun of the new boss that's trying to introduce team-building rah-rah events and "make the workplace fun." That's the tradition here. So maybe there is already a tradition at your company and you don't know about it.
Any of those thumbwheel combination locks take me about a minute in good light. I can't quite do them by feel, but I can imagine that you could.
Kids around here use a jack stolen from a car.
Naps. Ping-pong. Slashdot. Ebay.
Now can someone point me to an article that will make Firefox 0.9 render Slashdot properly?
Me neither. Firefox 0.9 with nothing very special as far as configuration.
I didn't read through the whole thing, but my guess is that an informant approached the secret service and the case began outside of AOL. AOL really has no interest in this case being prosecuted. The bad publicity will cost them much much more than any restitution they'll get out of an unemployable 24 year old.
I ran into a similar case where a free (called shareware, but like the shareware of old, fully functional and not a demo) driver for Palm keyboards. It's much faster than vendor drivers. It can be done
My 10 year old laser printer is sitting right here, chugging along fine on an i860. I remember when I got it that it was the fastest processor I owned. And had more memory than my desktop.
Yeah. We didn't have MIT's rules of ethics down south. We'd tape the peephole, set up a leaner, then fire a live firecracker under the door for a rapid wakeup. That way you could hear your results from the stairwell without waiting long. Of course, that was reserved for the RA downstairs.
Or unscrew the peephole from the outside and empty a hot-pinned can of shaving cream into it. Much quicker than the old bag of shaving cream under the door.