My attitude was voiced by someone on TV recently. To paraphrase: don't follow the money. Do what you like doing, because you'll take an interest, get good at it and the money will follow.
Please don't take this as a personal insult, but I disagree. You need to find something that you can enjoy to certain aspects of to some degree, otherwise you'll hate what you're doing. You do need to take that interest. But working is about earning. If you're not being paid reasonably well, and you don't have another source of income, you're devaluing yourself by staying in that underpaid job.
When you need to get that home loan, need time and money for medical care, need to feed and educate your children, no one else is going to come to your rescue.
The sad fact is not everything worth doing is valued monetarily by society. Find something you're good at, that you're passionate about to some degree, and that pays decently. Then realize that it is work, and that doing something for 40+ years is going to wear away at that passion.
Manual labourers send their children to school and push them so they can become highly paid respected professionals. Their children feel bound to their highly paid jobs and yearn for a less sedentary lifestyle. Both types of job have their advantages and disadvantages.
Highly paid is only better than low paid if you don't end up spending half your wealth traveling across the city to get to work, and on expensive suites, computer equipment etc., don't end up having a heart attack because you work stupid hours and can't find time to get proper excercise etc. etc.
What you can and can't live with when it comes to work is a very personal thing and looking at someone else's life and wishing it was yours is a stupid morose waste of time.
Life is a tradeoff. People don't pay you for work because it is fulfilling or good for you. You're trading your time and effort for that pay check. If you're in the process of making a choice as to where you're headed spend some time thinking about what you're going to do with 40 years of your life and make sure you can live with it. If you've already made those decisions and aren't happy find a way to change if you can - no one else is going to do it for you. But always realize that no matter what job you have, sometimes it will be WORK.
Whatever you're doing if you truely think its the worst job in the world, go out and find another one (preferably before dumping your current one). Nothing is worth the depression - life's too short, and will only get shorter if you're constantly stressed.
Finally if you can't change what you're doing - either due to circumstance or because you don't have the heart to (because you're making good money or whatever else) find a way to come to terms with that part of your life, and find fulfilment elsewhere.
I'm enduring college level calculus right now, and to think that one man, more or less invented a major area of mathematics that we use in a vast array of situations, is simply, incredible.
That's because they don't teach it the way it was developed. What you learn is a santised version and you learn it in the wrong order (compared to order of discovery and development).
The power from bicycles comes from humans eating food and producing poop. The food production takes an unbelievably large amount of energy intensive fossil fuel burning machinery to produce, and quite a bit of value-add from packaging, marketing, etc. (grin).
You obviously don't understand how bittorrent works.
Everybody downloads from everybody else. You're not using "your" internet connection, you're using an incredibly efficient set of internet peers to transmit to each other.
Actually its called Peer to Peer or P2P for short, and its not unique to bittorrent. If you're going to be condescending, at least don't equate a network topology to a product.
TV broadcasts are for the most part reliable, do not suffer from bandwidth issues the way a P2P network does, and are not new legally ambiguous technology. Why on Earth would you want to take something reliable and rework it over an unsuitable and unreliable framework? What does it offer the end user? At present you don't pay for TV by bandwidth, whereas you do pay for internet access that way. This simply doesn't offer the end user any clear advantages and has a number of disadvantages.
Yes you can use a hammer as a hacksaw, but unless you're desperate it'd be insane. So yes you could use your internet connection in place of TV, but why would you?
Maybe I've just become immune to caffeine, but I do drink a lot of caffeine-containing drinks throughout the day, and I can't say I've ever noticed being hyper from it. More to the point, I've never really noticed anyone else becoming hyper from caffeine either.
Assuming you're a big coffee drinker, try cutting coffee and all caffeine (chocolate, coke, tea = everything) out of your routine for 2 weeks. Pay a little attention and you'll scare yourself. You'll get headaches and the shakes.
My response to caffeine is much more pronounced than 5 years ago. I'll have a restless night if I drink too much coke or eat too much chocolate before bed. That never use to be the case. Of course the answer's simple. Don't have anything with caffeine in it before bed.
There is that danger. Much of it depends on where the compromise falls. A good approach to seeing where you have placed the compromise is to ask yourself what would change if a billion dollars with no strings attached appeared in your bank balance.
A) I don't believe you. I don't believe anyone that says they'd live no differently if they came into a lot of money. That either means they're unimaginative or need to lie to themselves (or others) to get through life.
B) There has to be someone to do the crud work. Not every job is mostly fun and the sort of thing you'd do anyway if you did have money. I dare you to find me a garbage collector who'd not do something else given a chance. (There are many other professions like that). It's like the quote in Office Space. If everyone did what they'd do if they had a million dollars there'd be no one to pick shit.
C) If you're lucky enough that what you're passionate about pays well then its just that. Dumb luck. Be thankful. If you wanted to be an astronomer or an actor or a top athlete - if that was your passion - you'd have much tougher competition to deal with. Supply and demand come into the picture just as much as ability when you are looking at paid work. Be thankful.
Guess what Mr AC. I don't have kids. I don't know if I will ever have kids. It's called making a point. That being I want to live just above the poverty line. There will be other things I do want in life that will require I earn a decent living.
In the real world real people need money to do real things. Try fucking tell me that I don't need lots of money and I or anyone else should be happy working my arse off earning shit wages the next time their son/daughter/husband/wife needs an operation, or when you want to send kids to school. For that matter if you want to own/rent a decent home you can't go to your bank manager and tell him see I'm not a sell out and expect to get what you need in life. See what a difference $100k will make to a kid's education and then tell me to go do something I enjoy for $30k a year.
If you were doing it for fun and didn't care about making money at it, it'd be a hobby. I'm not saying you should go and do something you absolutely hate for an extra $10k/yr. But if you can make a decent living chances are it won't be fulfilling some passion. You might write business software instead of scientific software for example. Basically you do something RELATED to what you enjoy and realise that to some extent you're going to burn that something as a passion/hobby, because after doing it so many hours a day for so many years you might not be as passionate about it.
People who are only passionate about their work are just as bad as if not worse than those who have other interests outside of their work. They get obsessed with their craft and don't see the big picture, and when something goes wrong at work they have nothing else to keep them happy. That's a one way ticket to bad health, both medical and physical. That's the kind of person that gets suicidal when they leave their job.
The phrase "work-life balance" is one that's often paid only lip service when times are good, but it is absolutely crucial.
IMHO most recruiters, employers and HR departments are clueless. I don't know how many fools I've talked to that just go out to find a candidate that will meet some narrow limited criteria. (You know the kind that wants a candidate who's a fool that'll work 80-120 hour weeks and just happens to have experience with the same goddamn J2EE app server the customer is). The same recruiters wonder why these people act like arrogant asses. The ins and outs of a particular piece of technology can be learnt. Its much harder to break the habbit of being too narrow and focused an individual.
I'm currently using cheap Princo 4x media. (Not too nasty so far, no coasters out of about 15 burns, but who knows how long it will last). So far I'm very very happy with the drive, but I'm certainly not pushing it to its limits.
I did see a strange MCI device problem where neither videos or DVDs would play. Reinstalling sound/media drivers didn't help. Nor did uninstalling and reinstalling the drives. What did help strangely enough was disabling the new drive and re-enabling it. Windows XP pro basically got its knickers in a knot registering the devices somehow. That took a couple of hours to sort out. I don't believe it was an issue specific to this drive but I can't be sure. Once i got it working it works very well.
Of course it would be a worry if I had the drive this short a time and had too many issues. Only time will tell how durable it is.
Note the drive is new but its not THAT new. I mean I can get it in Australia so its been out a few weeks.
What if someone shares a file outside of California, or even the US. Are they going to be subject to extradition if the file is available to someone within California?
Go and have a look at some of the images Hubble has become famous for. An instrument in space simply doesn't deal with any atmospheric interference. It doesn't compensate for it - its just not there. You could not capture images such as the Hubble deep fields using an antarctic telescope. Though you could get close I doubt you'd get anything as good as the Eagle Nebula starforming images we've all seen.
Wanting to be working 365 days yearly, 18 hours per day. Daily rate is 200 rupees (about USD4) negotiable. Your patients are being safe in my capable hands as I am being educated in Bangalor Technical Nurse and Healer Institute, and am having much experience with relatives. (Those who survive to this day will be my humble referees). ---------- The above is a SLIGHT exaggeration of the quality of care you can expect out of this no holds barred free market mentality. When will "captialists" learn. Minimum working conditions exist for a reason. Its not good for every business on the planet to put profit above everything else. In the long run it screws us all. I would suggest that for a society to work smoothly there are certain minimum standards of service that need to be guaranteed for its citizens but I'm sure I'll be labelled as a socialist in saying that.
SP2 breaks lots of things, but the one argument for installing it was security. Now that's not a good argument I can simply say no to breaking a bunch of applications and crippling my system, but I can site the same "security reasons" any lame sysadmin may site site. Less admin on my laptops. Yay!
Tell me exactly how these systems allow you to replace the fresh air and sunshine? Turning your home into something less healthy than your office is not a clever plan. If you just want picture displays, you're after a virtual frame rather than a virtual window. If a view of what's going on outside is your cup of tea, a security system fits the bill better. Virtual "windows" just look tacky IMHO.
If your neighbourhood has turned into a sewer, putting up sewerage barrackades is only a temporary solution.
The whole world is turning into a sewer... Moving somewhere else IS the temporary solution.
Well then move to the area with the highest crime rate and lowest standard of living. (Lots of 3rd world slums to choose from). When you or your loved ones are the victims of crime, and can't get a job, send me a post card and tell me about your ideal world....if you're still alive and can still afford to. (BTW this is exactly what missionary volunteers do, with some religious nuttery added to the mix unfortunately. Of course most don't do this and try to have a family - celebacy *shudder*).
Would be wonderful to fix the world, but start off by making sure you and yours are taken care of (without trampling anyone else's well being). That's a hard enough goal, and a better approach. Any energy you have left can go into making the world a better place, so that in the long run its easier to for everyone to look after themselves and theirs.
Seriously. The problem doesn't sound like its going to be fixed by arming yourself to the teeth. If your neighbourhood has turned into a sewer, putting up sewerage barrackades is only a temporary solution.
Excerpt: 'A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised.'"
Um no. That's only a nerd's greatest fear. Most of us are more afraid of significant things that can cause death or harm those we care about (eg being stared down by a bear, or being in a plane/car accident). Fears that can be cured with a little research or a call to the help desk (or unofficial helpdesk of your friendly computer nut) are a little less signifcant.
...estimate various numeric values which they may or may not have knowledge of...
Strangely I find my estimates are much more accurate when I have fore knowledge. Either I've discovered something truely revolutionary and new that the "UK blogger" did not know, or this just means the whole quiz/survey is about as scientifically valid as a women's magazine love survey, or a mens magazine article.
Slashdot Mirror
My attitude was voiced by someone on TV recently. To paraphrase: don't follow the money. Do what you like doing, because you'll take an interest, get good at it and the money will follow.
Please don't take this as a personal insult, but I disagree. You need to find something that you can enjoy to certain aspects of to some degree, otherwise you'll hate what you're doing. You do need to take that interest. But working is about earning. If you're not being paid reasonably well, and you don't have another source of income, you're devaluing yourself by staying in that underpaid job.
When you need to get that home loan, need time and money for medical care, need to feed and educate your children, no one else is going to come to your rescue.
The sad fact is not everything worth doing is valued monetarily by society. Find something you're good at, that you're passionate about to some degree, and that pays decently. Then realize that it is work, and that doing something for 40+ years is going to wear away at that passion.
Manual labourers send their children to school and push them so they can become highly paid respected professionals. Their children feel bound to their highly paid jobs and yearn for a less sedentary lifestyle. Both types of job have their advantages and disadvantages.
Highly paid is only better than low paid if you don't end up spending half your wealth traveling across the city to get to work, and on expensive suites, computer equipment etc., don't end up having a heart attack because you work stupid hours and can't find time to get proper excercise etc. etc.
What you can and can't live with when it comes to work is a very personal thing and looking at someone else's life and wishing it was yours is a stupid morose waste of time.
Life is a tradeoff. People don't pay you for work because it is fulfilling or good for you. You're trading your time and effort for that pay check. If you're in the process of making a choice as to where you're headed spend some time thinking about what you're going to do with 40 years of your life and make sure you can live with it. If you've already made those decisions and aren't happy find a way to change if you can - no one else is going to do it for you. But always realize that no matter what job you have, sometimes it will be WORK.
Whatever you're doing if you truely think its the worst job in the world, go out and find another one (preferably before dumping your current one). Nothing is worth the depression - life's too short, and will only get shorter if you're constantly stressed.
Finally if you can't change what you're doing - either due to circumstance or because you don't have the heart to (because you're making good money or whatever else) find a way to come to terms with that part of your life, and find fulfilment elsewhere.
Oh yeah...and go watch Office Space.
I'm enduring college level calculus right now, and to think that one man, more or less invented a major area of mathematics that we use in a vast array of situations, is simply, incredible.
That's because they don't teach it the way it was developed. What you learn is a santised version and you learn it in the wrong order (compared to order of discovery and development).
The power from bicycles comes from humans eating food and producing poop. The food production takes an unbelievably large amount of energy intensive fossil fuel burning machinery to produce, and quite a bit of value-add from packaging, marketing, etc. (grin).
You're so full of shit!
You obviously don't understand how bittorrent works.
Everybody downloads from everybody else. You're not using "your" internet connection, you're using an incredibly efficient set of internet peers to transmit to each other.
Actually its called Peer to Peer or P2P for short, and its not unique to bittorrent. If you're going to be condescending, at least don't equate a network topology to a product.
TV broadcasts are for the most part reliable, do not suffer from bandwidth issues the way a P2P network does, and are not new legally ambiguous technology. Why on Earth would you want to take something reliable and rework it over an unsuitable and unreliable framework? What does it offer the end user? At present you don't pay for TV by bandwidth, whereas you do pay for internet access that way. This simply doesn't offer the end user any clear advantages and has a number of disadvantages.
Yes you can use a hammer as a hacksaw, but unless you're desperate it'd be insane. So yes you could use your internet connection in place of TV, but why would you?
Shhhhhh! Don't tell them where the airports are!
Maybe I've just become immune to caffeine, but I do drink a lot of caffeine-containing drinks throughout the day, and I can't say I've ever noticed being hyper from it. More to the point, I've never really noticed anyone else becoming hyper from caffeine either.
Assuming you're a big coffee drinker, try cutting coffee and all caffeine (chocolate, coke, tea = everything) out of your routine for 2 weeks. Pay a little attention and you'll scare yourself. You'll get headaches and the shakes.
My response to caffeine is much more pronounced than 5 years ago. I'll have a restless night if I drink too much coke or eat too much chocolate before bed. That never use to be the case. Of course the answer's simple. Don't have anything with caffeine in it before bed.
There is that danger. Much of it depends on where the compromise falls. A good approach to seeing where you have placed the compromise is to ask yourself what would change if a billion dollars with no strings attached appeared in your bank balance.
A) I don't believe you. I don't believe anyone that says they'd live no differently if they came into a lot of money. That either means they're unimaginative or need to lie to themselves (or others) to get through life.
B) There has to be someone to do the crud work. Not every job is mostly fun and the sort of thing you'd do anyway if you did have money. I dare you to find me a garbage collector who'd not do something else given a chance. (There are many other professions like that). It's like the quote in Office Space. If everyone did what they'd do if they had a million dollars there'd be no one to pick shit.
C) If you're lucky enough that what you're passionate about pays well then its just that. Dumb luck. Be thankful. If you wanted to be an astronomer or an actor or a top athlete - if that was your passion - you'd have much tougher competition to deal with. Supply and demand come into the picture just as much as ability when you are looking at paid work. Be thankful.
I meant mental and physical. I wrote the post in a bit of a rush. So sue me.
Guess what Mr AC. I don't have kids. I don't know if I will ever have kids. It's called making a point. That being I want to live just above the poverty line. There will be other things I do want in life that will require I earn a decent living.
Oh get a clue.
In the real world real people need money to do real things. Try fucking tell me that I don't need lots of money and I or anyone else should be happy working my arse off earning shit wages the next time their son/daughter/husband/wife needs an operation, or when you want to send kids to school. For that matter if you want to own/rent a decent home you can't go to your bank manager and tell him see I'm not a sell out and expect to get what you need in life. See what a difference $100k will make to a kid's education and then tell me to go do something I enjoy for $30k a year.
If you were doing it for fun and didn't care about making money at it, it'd be a hobby. I'm not saying you should go and do something you absolutely hate for an extra $10k/yr. But if you can make a decent living chances are it won't be fulfilling some passion. You might write business software instead of scientific software for example. Basically you do something RELATED to what you enjoy and realise that to some extent you're going to burn that something as a passion/hobby, because after doing it so many hours a day for so many years you might not be as passionate about it.
People who are only passionate about their work are just as bad as if not worse than those who have other interests outside of their work. They get obsessed with their craft and don't see the big picture, and when something goes wrong at work they have nothing else to keep them happy. That's a one way ticket to bad health, both medical and physical. That's the kind of person that gets suicidal when they leave their job.
The phrase "work-life balance" is one that's often paid only lip service when times are good, but it is absolutely crucial.
IMHO most recruiters, employers and HR departments are clueless. I don't know how many fools I've talked to that just go out to find a candidate that will meet some narrow limited criteria. (You know the kind that wants a candidate who's a fool that'll work 80-120 hour weeks and just happens to have experience with the same goddamn J2EE app server the customer is). The same recruiters wonder why these people act like arrogant asses. The ins and outs of a particular piece of technology can be learnt. Its much harder to break the habbit of being too narrow and focused an individual.
I'm currently using cheap Princo 4x media. (Not too nasty so far, no coasters out of about 15 burns, but who knows how long it will last). So far I'm very very happy with the drive, but I'm certainly not pushing it to its limits.
I did see a strange MCI device problem where neither videos or DVDs would play. Reinstalling sound/media drivers didn't help. Nor did uninstalling and reinstalling the drives. What did help strangely enough was disabling the new drive and re-enabling it. Windows XP pro basically got its knickers in a knot registering the devices somehow. That took a couple of hours to sort out. I don't believe it was an issue specific to this drive but I can't be sure. Once i got it working it works very well.
Of course it would be a worry if I had the drive this short a time and had too many issues. Only time will tell how durable it is.
Note the drive is new but its not THAT new. I mean I can get it in Australia so its been out a few weeks.
What if someone shares a file outside of California, or even the US. Are they going to be subject to extradition if the file is available to someone within California?
Go and have a look at some of the images Hubble has become famous for. An instrument in space simply doesn't deal with any atmospheric interference. It doesn't compensate for it - its just not there. You could not capture images such as the Hubble deep fields using an antarctic telescope. Though you could get close I doubt you'd get anything as good as the Eagle Nebula starforming images we've all seen.
Wanting to be working 365 days yearly, 18 hours per day. Daily rate is 200 rupees (about USD4) negotiable. Your patients are being safe in my capable hands as I am being educated in Bangalor Technical Nurse and Healer Institute, and am having much experience with relatives. (Those who survive to this day will be my humble referees).
----------
The above is a SLIGHT exaggeration of the quality of care you can expect out of this no holds barred free market mentality. When will "captialists" learn. Minimum working conditions exist for a reason. Its not good for every business on the planet to put profit above everything else. In the long run it screws us all. I would suggest that for a society to work smoothly there are certain minimum standards of service that need to be guaranteed for its citizens but I'm sure I'll be labelled as a socialist in saying that.
SP2 breaks lots of things, but the one argument for installing it was security. Now that's not a good argument I can simply say no to breaking a bunch of applications and crippling my system, but I can site the same "security reasons" any lame sysadmin may site site. Less admin on my laptops. Yay!
Instead of talking to a hairy man named Bubba with a put on voice, dirty old men will be talking to a computer. Yay! No need to pay Bubba any more!
Tell me exactly how these systems allow you to replace the fresh air and sunshine? Turning your home into something less healthy than your office is not a clever plan. If you just want picture displays, you're after a virtual frame rather than a virtual window. If a view of what's going on outside is your cup of tea, a security system fits the bill better. Virtual "windows" just look tacky IMHO.
You need Girlfriend 1.0. A word of warning though. Upgrading to Wife 1.0 is a very expensive decision.
If your neighbourhood has turned into a sewer, putting up sewerage barrackades is only a temporary solution.
The whole world is turning into a sewer... Moving somewhere else IS the temporary solution.
Well then move to the area with the highest crime rate and lowest standard of living. (Lots of 3rd world slums to choose from). When you or your loved ones are the victims of crime, and can't get a job, send me a post card and tell me about your ideal world....if you're still alive and can still afford to. (BTW this is exactly what missionary volunteers do, with some religious nuttery added to the mix unfortunately. Of course most don't do this and try to have a family - celebacy *shudder*).
Would be wonderful to fix the world, but start off by making sure you and yours are taken care of (without trampling anyone else's well being). That's a hard enough goal, and a better approach. Any energy you have left can go into making the world a better place, so that in the long run its easier to for everyone to look after themselves and theirs.
Seriously. The problem doesn't sound like its going to be fixed by arming yourself to the teeth. If your neighbourhood has turned into a sewer, putting up sewerage barrackades is only a temporary solution.
Excerpt: 'A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised.'"
Um no. That's only a nerd's greatest fear. Most of us are more afraid of significant things that can cause death or harm those we care about (eg being stared down by a bear, or being in a plane/car accident). Fears that can be cured with a little research or a call to the help desk (or unofficial helpdesk of your friendly computer nut) are a little less signifcant.
...estimate various numeric values which they may or may not have knowledge of...
Strangely I find my estimates are much more accurate when I have fore knowledge. Either I've discovered something truely revolutionary and new that the "UK blogger" did not know, or this just means the whole quiz/survey is about as scientifically valid as a women's magazine love survey, or a mens magazine article.
Dear playboy/penthouse,
I never thought it would happen to me, but...
Dude! Where's my car?!?!?