Let's start with the assumption that you don't care if you're on-call, so long as you never get paged to do something during non-business hours.
Speaking as someone who had a real jerk for a boss and was on call for 11 months at one stretch, I don't think that's a valid assumption. While it seems like there's no problem unless you're called, being on call can be a stressful experience. It means you can't go out of town and you have to be aware that any activity you plan may be interrupted. For me, it meant I had a full spring, summer, and fall where I could not go on one single long (20 miles or longer, which put me out of quick "response" range) bike ride, which is something I love to do.
There's another problem with this overall idea, as well. If you move in an unpredictable rotation like this, then you never know if you're going to be on call for an upcoming weekend. It means you basically can't plan on going away for a weekend until Friday. If you have a lot of friends and an active life, that is unacceptable.
Maybe you could work out a schedule based on the calendar year. The current one could seriously frustrate some people if they are on through the entire holiday season. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years could easily come within 6 weeks of each other. It might be entirely possible some people are on through this whole time and others are off that entire time. If it's not balanced off the next year and some of the same people have to stay on call a 2nd year through that time, I would think it could lead to hard feelings.
While the holidays may not effect your business, they do have a storng emotional effect on most staff and it might help to set up the schedule to treat people fairly not just in regular time on/time off, but also in holiday time. For example someone who works Christmas or a 3 day weekend might get an extra week or weekend off some other time.
I've never had to deal with this in the tech field, but when I was in property management, I know anyone on call over holidays always felt at least a little frustrated, but at least they knew they all had to deal with it more or less equally.
Interesting comments. I see what you mean about re-reading the original post. That post implied the purpose of body building was to build self esteem. What you're talking about and describing is an entirely different situation -- one of someone deciding on a goal and working toward it.
You certainly are very self-aware.
My point (or at least most of it) is that doing something to enhance one's self esteem is an indication one has self esteem problems. Finding an external solution to an internal problem (self esteem IS internal) creates a dependency and if anything happens to the external solution, that leaves you right back at the start. If, instead, you deal with the internal problem in the first place, there is no need for external solutions.
It seems like you don't need external solutions -- that they are more part of a challenge or goal for you.
So what you're saying is that your self esteem depends on your muscles and on your ear piercings.
So if you had muscular dystrophy, you'd have no self esteem? Or if your piercings healed over, you wouldn't feel as good about yourself?
That's pretty close to people I have to deal with regularly who feel like something's wrong if they're not in a relationship. If they're "alone" and not part of a couple, they think something is wrong with them and have low self esteem.
Deciding that body building is something to work toward as a challenge or goal is one thing. But when we base even part of our self esteem on external factors (do we have muscles, do we have a cool tattoo, do we have piercings, do we have a sexy boy/girlfriend, are we rich), then we are using external factors to fill in an internal void. Deal with the void. Fill it in and create a complete person out of yourself -- one that doesn't need externals to make you feel complete, or better about yourself. Then, and only then, have you managed to complete yourself and become a well-rounded person. Then your self esteem doesn't depend on your tattoos, muscles, piercings, or other add-ons.
So what about all this means I need therapy? It means that your self image and self esteem is not strong enough to stand on your own. You're substituting externals (including external strength) for internal strength. If your self image and self esteem were strong enough, you wouldn't need muscles or piercing for self esteem purposes.
There are many reasons for body building and piercings. If you want to do it to build your self esteem, that's your choice. It's not a good choice or a bad choice. It's your choice. But, from what you say, if you didn't have those built-up muscles, you would have less self esteem. So, if you are so interested in building self esteem (enough to do regular work outs and to get piercings), why not just see a counselor and find out why your self esteem needed building up in the first place and why you weren't just satisified with who you were before you added these external enhancements.
I know you don't want a lawyer, but face it: lawyers are paid for things like this because they know more ins and outs than you'll ever know.
For example: You want to attach or seize property. Didn't it occur to you to seize their bank account? (I learned this from a lawyer friend.) They've paid you before. Do you remember their bank? You could actually have the funds in their bank account seized. Then you wouldn't have to worry about equipment and selling it to recoup fees.
Another point: In many situations like this, if you hire a lawyer to attach, seize, or garnish their account, THEY can be held responsible for legal fees. Think of it: They don't pay, you sue, they ignore it, you hire a lawyer, the lawyer seizes not only your fee (plus, in VA, you can get upto 9% interest per year), but the lawyer's fee is also seized and deducted from their account.
If this works in your state, then you walk away with your fee and free legal service. They pay your fee and the legal fees for the lawyer that you hired!
I encourage employees to have fun and to take time to enjoy their work. We also have special days for treats for time to time (we won't be able to do this once the stores are up, though). Last year we had St. Tolkein's and St. Roddenberry's day. On St. Roddenberry's day, we shut down the company and I paid for everyone to go see Star Trek: Nemesis (yes, pretty much everyone working for me is a geek and interested in sf/fantasy). Three guesses what we saw on St. Tolkein's day.
There are many ways to have fun and be human without body mods or other features that stand out to make statements like, "I don't care about society's norms."
(Incidently, I don't give a damn about norms myself, I never wear a tie to anything -- for one small example. I do, however, pay attention to how clients and customers act and re-act to different things and make my business decisions based on that.)
Boy, you're pretty good at what psychologists call projection -- accusing others of your own actions and feelings. There's such a thing as over-analyzing -- something people do when they spend too much time thinking their way through life instead of living it.
I didn't take the time to pull out quotations, but there was a reference to "If you need a tattoo." That's where my comment came from.
But, obviously I'm wrong, since you are clearly analyzing this at a MUCH deeper level than I could ever hope to. I'll just go back to my life realizing I'm not as smart as you and you can be much more clever and intelligent than I because you can dig into an endless spiral of analysis.
There's a difference between not doing something that MAY interfere with one's career and doing things that don't have an effect on one's career. If your career is important to you, then it makes sense not to do things which stand a chance of damaging it. That doesn't mean not doing things which don't effect it. (Always gotta be someone who thinks they're being clever by taking things too far.)
As for getting a tat boosting one's self esteem: As someone who spent close to a decade working in residential treatment and other similar settings, I feel safe in saying that anyone who needs a tat or other body mod for self esteem has problems the body mod won't solve. Without malice or nastiness, I would honestly say if you want a body mod for self esteem purposes, then go see a therapist. It may cost more, but it also doesn't need laser surgery to hide it from people if you later decide (like when it fades) it hurts your esteem or is no longer what you want. (And someone with self esteem that needs boosting is likely to either mature or change enough in one direction or another to wish they hadn't gotten a tat, or had a different one.)
There's always got to be someone who insists on taking things too far and pushing everyone and everything else just as far as they can go...
First -- contrary to what some people think, there's no way you can tell someone is a homosexual unless that fact is directly communicated to you (and, since you seem to like to find "loopholes" in what people say, that includes what one may see).
As for drawing the line: If someone has a problem with an employee of mine due to race, gender, religion, handicap, skin discoloration, speech impediment, or even accent I figure it's their (the customer or client's) problem. (Technically, if they have a problem with tats or piercings, that's their problem as well, but I can do something about that by having a uniform set of requirements for front line employees. Same with wild haircuts/dye jobs, tongue splitting, or other body mods.)
If it's a body mod, it was done by choice, and the person is making a deliberate statement of, "I want it to be obvious that I reject what most consider society's norms."
My company provides data for law offices and provides simple digitizing and digital services for people that don't know how to use scanners or to transfer their old family movies to DVD. Soon we'll be expanding into video production (what I REALLY want to be doing!). In the next few years we'll have retail stores/service centers in malls.
Personally, I think putting something on your body that will fade and look ugly in one's later years, or could be something that simply does not fit your personality after you grow or mature (and I'm not saying tats are immature) is, at the least unwise. It makes no sense to me (but neither do piercings -- even pierced ears on women) at all -- and I'm not exactly known as a conservative.
However it's not my job/business to judge your personal life. I want to know if you can do the job I am hiring you for. (And, from what I've seen in talking to other small business people, if you get a boss/interviewer as open minded as me, you're lucky!)
If you come into my office to interview for a "frontline" job where you're dealing with clients (or working in the storefronts when we have them open) and you have visible tats or piercings other than "normal" ear piercings on women, you won't get a job. It doesn't matter what I think. It matters what customers and clients think. I'm not going to take a chance on offending or bothering a lawyer client or a retail customer who may be a fundamentalist or a member of any other group with prejudices against non-conformists. As said elsewhere, it doesn't matter what I think. It matters what others (customers and clients) think. I'm not going to let my business lose money because an employee wants to "express" him or her self.
On the other hand, if you're applying for a backline job, like programmer, sys admin, video editor, or even as camera man for our in-house productions, I don't care if you're The Illustrated Man. If you can do the job and interact well with the other employees so then can work with you easily and everyone does a good job, then you're hired.
Just the opinion as a business owner.
As a general person, my thought is tats and piercings may or may not hurt your career, but there's no reason to expect it to help. Why put the effort into doing something that may create problems in the long run?
If you're going to put something on your forehead, especially any letter from any alphabet, why not put an "H" on the center of your forehead and when you get interviewed, tell everyone your name is Rimmer and you can't touch anything because you're a hologram?
These aren't albums, but here's a few single cuts I can recommend, which may be found on several different albums (some are considered some of the best jazz recordings ever).
- Body and Soul, by Coleman Hawkins - Sing, Sing, Sing, by Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall - Someday My Prince Will Come, by Miles Davis - Time Out, by Dave Brubeck - Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, by Cannonball Adderly
The best thing about Public Radio is that they have a good number of jazz shows syndicated nationwide. While some stations don't play them, see if your local one does. They're good at not just playing jazz, but in talking about artists, recordings and history of jazz.
One show I love in particular is Blues Before Sunrise, played nationwide on Saturday night/Sunday morning (on East coast it's from 1 am to 6 am on Sunday). It has a website (either BBS.com or BluesBeforeSunrise.com) which includes info on where you can hear the show streamed over the net every week.
While these aren't recordings, I've found that NPR (and their competition, PRI) are GREAT at educating the listeners about the music they play and guiding people toward good artists and good recordings.
I have to agree with both of these, but I'd add a comment or two on the duets by Ella and Louis on Verve. I bought one CD of their duets and it is perhaps the most played CD in my collection. The two together are fantastic. I'd add a warning: There is one Ella and Louie CD that isn't labeled as Part I or Part II, or as a "Best of" or anything else. Don't buy it (I did). Buy both CDs, Part I and Part II have much more. The single CD has selections from both, so it's a waste if you really want all the duets.
If your work is well written, it'll stand on its own. If it depends heavily on the technology to make it work, then it'll only appeal to techies, which is such a small market (even smaller than science fiction or fantasy), that it likely won't interest any publisher.
If you've worked well within the craft of writing, you'll have a good story and compelling characters and anyone, tech friendly or not, will be interested. If, on the other hand, you've written a story about a lot of cool techno tricks to amaze the reader, they you're basing the story on a gimmick, and it won't be of interest to anyone.
For example, in it's time, Run Silent, Run Deep involved a lot of high tech stuff (it's not high tech anymore, but it was as advanced in its day as movies like Sneakers were). It wasn't the technical details that made the book sell (although they helped a lot with the setting). It was the simple conflict set up between a good submarine captain and a very clever former sub captain who was taking out almost every sub the Allies had in one area. It's true, the tech stuff helped, but it was only added color to help the setting.
If you don't have a good solid story and good characters, and the book depends on the tech stuff and therefore depends on a tech friendly editor, you haven't written a story -- you've written a self-indulgent fantasy.
I truly hope the case is the former, and not the latter. If so, anything you do that gets you out of the slush pile and onto someone's desk -- anyone's desk -- is all you really need.
...who feel everything should be done in code, and anyone who uses a WYSIWYG editor is lame.
It seems every time a new innovation comes out to make it easy for non-programmers or non-techies to actually use a computer as a tool, we hear from a slew of techies about how it's bad because now any "idiot" can do what they've been doing.
I had forgotten about that other problem -- not feeding the sheets through one at a time. Whenever I printed brochures or anything else that used expensive paper, I fed it through one sheet at a time, it was so bad at grabbing multiple sheets.
I also printed my own business cards. It's pretty bad when you have to change the borders and alignment of your business card to adjust for the flaws in your printer!
I think they just got so used being considered the best with their early deskjets that they stopped doing what it was that made them so good. It'll take years of mediocre printers before the buying public realizes their printers are going down the tubes.
I learned a good while back (I think as long as 7-8 years ago) NOT to stockpile HP printer ink cartriges. I used to buy 1 color and 1 black cart at a time, but I found that the carts I bought and let sit on the shelf until I needed them often would not work if they had been on the shelf for a few months or so.
I appreciate HP's support of Linux and would like to support them, but I stopped buying their printers a few years ago. There's just too many little quirks. The last one I had ran the paper through at a slight angle. I don't think I've seen an HP printer I felt I really trusted since the original Deskjet and Deskjet 500.
Hal
Killer App? Just How Much Does This Matter?
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No Abiword For Mac?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
From the cited post: "I had no reason to be a loyal customer (sort of like I was until 1988) and offer them what could *possibly* be a killer app on MacOS X"
I should point out that AbiWord was a VERY integral part of the software system that got my business going. I can't say that the overall system, and therefore my company, would never have gotten off the ground without AbiWord, but the open document format and load of command line options/commands made it possible for me to save months of work by just dropping in command line uses of AbiWord in Perl scripts. The AbiWord programmers are great to work with and have been very kind and helpful to me.
However, I recently changed the entire system over to OpenOffice.org. While AbiWord has some wonderful features, OOo has a fully documented programming language and API. It's a full blown office suite -- if, by chance, anyone didn't know.
While AbiWord was very important to me and I have nothing but the utmost respect for the programmers and people behind the project, I cannot see anyone realistically seeing it as a "killer app."
To be honest, while I love choice and all the options in OSS, I think Linux in particular and OSS in particular, would be much more widely adopted (and would be much more of a competitor to Micro$oft) if, instead of having so many OSS word processors and spreadsheets, all that effort had been focused on creating one kick-ass office suite. Once done, different groups could take the code from that suite and customize it to their hearts' content, much like what's happened with Mozilla -- one browser, but many groups have taken the source code and created their own versions (like Galeon and Konqueror).
While no AbiWord on OSX is not good news, I think the actual number of users (in proportion to the total number of Mac users) who will be effected by this is very low. I'm sure most people that spend the extra money on a Mac tend to either buy their own word processor, or use OOo, since it is almost out of beta for OSX.
While AbiWord is a great program, it is hardly a killer app.
It's All Just Cost Of Doing Business
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FTC vs Spammers
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· Score: 5, Insightful
We've seen info on some spammers with their mansions and high priced lifestyles paid for by spam revenues here on/.
As long as they are hit with simple fines or only shut down temporarily, or only forced to change their tactics, they'll keep going. They make too much money to stop.
They'll only stop when sending spam costs more than their rewards. When they are fined enough or sued for enough that they lose their expensive new houses and other trappings of luxery, then they'll think about it.
In the meantime, don't expect the FTC or anyone from the Bush administration to do anything more than slap the hand of anyone making a good deal of money.
Let me get this right: So this counts only on probability. Because space is big enough, whatever can possibly happen will happen?
Does that mean if I'm sweeping up a lab after a particularly unsuccessful party and I hook up a improbability generator to a strong brownian motion producer, like, say, a really hot cup of tea, then will I get a really neat spaceship that's shaped like a tennis shoe and piloted by a man with two heads and three arms and has a paranoid android abord with a shooting pain in all the diodes down his left side?
I haven't done any programming in over a decade. I recently had to start learning a lot of new information and bought several stacks of books. I found the O'Reilly books to be VERY helpful. In the past I always found Sam's to be informative and helpful as well, but I found Sam's MySQL in 24 Hours to be rather frustrating because of little errors here and there.
Above and beyond the errors, I don't know if it's because the book is a "in 21 Days" format or not, but I've found it rather frustrating and useless in the long run because it does not work well as a reference book and it seems there is A LOT that has been left out.
I will not likely buy another book in any "in 21 Days" or "in 24 Hours" or any similar format again. While they may provide a quick intro, it seems to be a week format if you plan to continue in the subject.
Not to be snitty or totally un-geek like, but, other than Myst and its sequals, I've never really gotten into computer games. I really prefer playing with/against a human. The social element is a major part of it for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's start with the assumption that you don't care if you're on-call, so long as you never get paged to do something during non-business hours.
Speaking as someone who had a real jerk for a boss and was on call for 11 months at one stretch, I don't think that's a valid assumption. While it seems like there's no problem unless you're called, being on call can be a stressful experience. It means you can't go out of town and you have to be aware that any activity you plan may be interrupted. For me, it meant I had a full spring, summer, and fall where I could not go on one single long (20 miles or longer, which put me out of quick "response" range) bike ride, which is something I love to do.
There's another problem with this overall idea, as well. If you move in an unpredictable rotation like this, then you never know if you're going to be on call for an upcoming weekend. It means you basically can't plan on going away for a weekend until Friday. If you have a lot of friends and an active life, that is unacceptable.
Maybe you could work out a schedule based on the calendar year. The current one could seriously frustrate some people if they are on through the entire holiday season. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years could easily come within 6 weeks of each other. It might be entirely possible some people are on through this whole time and others are off that entire time. If it's not balanced off the next year and some of the same people have to stay on call a 2nd year through that time, I would think it could lead to hard feelings.
While the holidays may not effect your business, they do have a storng emotional effect on most staff and it might help to set up the schedule to treat people fairly not just in regular time on/time off, but also in holiday time. For example someone who works Christmas or a 3 day weekend might get an extra week or weekend off some other time.
I've never had to deal with this in the tech field, but when I was in property management, I know anyone on call over holidays always felt at least a little frustrated, but at least they knew they all had to deal with it more or less equally.
Interesting comments. I see what you mean about re-reading the original post. That post implied the purpose of body building was to build self esteem. What you're talking about and describing is an entirely different situation -- one of someone deciding on a goal and working toward it.
You certainly are very self-aware.
My point (or at least most of it) is that doing something to enhance one's self esteem is an indication one has self esteem problems. Finding an external solution to an internal problem (self esteem IS internal) creates a dependency and if anything happens to the external solution, that leaves you right back at the start. If, instead, you deal with the internal problem in the first place, there is no need for external solutions.
It seems like you don't need external solutions -- that they are more part of a challenge or goal for you.
So what you're saying is that your self esteem depends on your muscles and on your ear piercings.
So if you had muscular dystrophy, you'd have no self esteem? Or if your piercings healed over, you wouldn't feel as good about yourself?
That's pretty close to people I have to deal with regularly who feel like something's wrong if they're not in a relationship. If they're "alone" and not part of a couple, they think something is wrong with them and have low self esteem.
Deciding that body building is something to work toward as a challenge or goal is one thing. But when we base even part of our self esteem on external factors (do we have muscles, do we have a cool tattoo, do we have piercings, do we have a sexy boy/girlfriend, are we rich), then we are using external factors to fill in an internal void. Deal with the void. Fill it in and create a complete person out of yourself -- one that doesn't need externals to make you feel complete, or better about yourself. Then, and only then, have you managed to complete yourself and become a well-rounded person. Then your self esteem doesn't depend on your tattoos, muscles, piercings, or other add-ons.
So what about all this means I need therapy?
It means that your self image and self esteem is not strong enough to stand on your own. You're substituting externals (including external strength) for internal strength. If your self image and self esteem were strong enough, you wouldn't need muscles or piercing for self esteem purposes.
There are many reasons for body building and piercings. If you want to do it to build your self esteem, that's your choice. It's not a good choice or a bad choice. It's your choice. But, from what you say, if you didn't have those built-up muscles, you would have less self esteem. So, if you are so interested in building self esteem (enough to do regular work outs and to get piercings), why not just see a counselor and find out why your self esteem needed building up in the first place and why you weren't just satisified with who you were before you added these external enhancements.
I know you don't want a lawyer, but face it: lawyers are paid for things like this because they know more ins and outs than you'll ever know.
For example: You want to attach or seize property. Didn't it occur to you to seize their bank account? (I learned this from a lawyer friend.) They've paid you before. Do you remember their bank? You could actually have the funds in their bank account seized. Then you wouldn't have to worry about equipment and selling it to recoup fees.
Another point: In many situations like this, if you hire a lawyer to attach, seize, or garnish their account, THEY can be held responsible for legal fees. Think of it: They don't pay, you sue, they ignore it, you hire a lawyer, the lawyer seizes not only your fee (plus, in VA, you can get upto 9% interest per year), but the lawyer's fee is also seized and deducted from their account.
If this works in your state, then you walk away with your fee and free legal service. They pay your fee and the legal fees for the lawyer that you hired!
I encourage employees to have fun and to take time to enjoy their work. We also have special days for treats for time to time (we won't be able to do this once the stores are up, though). Last year we had St. Tolkein's and St. Roddenberry's day. On St. Roddenberry's day, we shut down the company and I paid for everyone to go see Star Trek: Nemesis (yes, pretty much everyone working for me is a geek and interested in sf/fantasy). Three guesses what we saw on St. Tolkein's day.
There are many ways to have fun and be human without body mods or other features that stand out to make statements like, "I don't care about society's norms."
(Incidently, I don't give a damn about norms myself, I never wear a tie to anything -- for one small example. I do, however, pay attention to how clients and customers act and re-act to different things and make my business decisions based on that.)
Boy, you're pretty good at what psychologists call projection -- accusing others of your own actions and feelings. There's such a thing as over-analyzing -- something people do when they spend too much time thinking their way through life instead of living it.
I didn't take the time to pull out quotations, but there was a reference to "If you need a tattoo." That's where my comment came from.
But, obviously I'm wrong, since you are clearly analyzing this at a MUCH deeper level than I could ever hope to. I'll just go back to my life realizing I'm not as smart as you and you can be much more clever and intelligent than I because you can dig into an endless spiral of analysis.
There's a difference between not doing something that MAY interfere with one's career and doing things that don't have an effect on one's career. If your career is important to you, then it makes sense not to do things which stand a chance of damaging it. That doesn't mean not doing things which don't effect it. (Always gotta be someone who thinks they're being clever by taking things too far.)
As for getting a tat boosting one's self esteem: As someone who spent close to a decade working in residential treatment and other similar settings, I feel safe in saying that anyone who needs a tat or other body mod for self esteem has problems the body mod won't solve. Without malice or nastiness, I would honestly say if you want a body mod for self esteem purposes, then go see a therapist. It may cost more, but it also doesn't need laser surgery to hide it from people if you later decide (like when it fades) it hurts your esteem or is no longer what you want. (And someone with self esteem that needs boosting is likely to either mature or change enough in one direction or another to wish they hadn't gotten a tat, or had a different one.)
There's always got to be someone who insists on taking things too far and pushing everyone and everything else just as far as they can go...
First -- contrary to what some people think, there's no way you can tell someone is a homosexual unless that fact is directly communicated to you (and, since you seem to like to find "loopholes" in what people say, that includes what one may see).
As for drawing the line: If someone has a problem with an employee of mine due to race, gender, religion, handicap, skin discoloration, speech impediment, or even accent I figure it's their (the customer or client's) problem. (Technically, if they have a problem with tats or piercings, that's their problem as well, but I can do something about that by having a uniform set of requirements for front line employees. Same with wild haircuts/dye jobs, tongue splitting, or other body mods.)
If it's a body mod, it was done by choice, and the person is making a deliberate statement of, "I want it to be obvious that I reject what most consider society's norms."
My company provides data for law offices and provides simple digitizing and digital services for people that don't know how to use scanners or to transfer their old family movies to DVD. Soon we'll be expanding into video production (what I REALLY want to be doing!). In the next few years we'll have retail stores/service centers in malls.
Personally, I think putting something on your body that will fade and look ugly in one's later years, or could be something that simply does not fit your personality after you grow or mature (and I'm not saying tats are immature) is, at the least unwise. It makes no sense to me (but neither do piercings -- even pierced ears on women) at all -- and I'm not exactly known as a conservative.
However it's not my job/business to judge your personal life. I want to know if you can do the job I am hiring you for. (And, from what I've seen in talking to other small business people, if you get a boss/interviewer as open minded as me, you're lucky!)
If you come into my office to interview for a "frontline" job where you're dealing with clients (or working in the storefronts when we have them open) and you have visible tats or piercings other than "normal" ear piercings on women, you won't get a job. It doesn't matter what I think. It matters what customers and clients think. I'm not going to take a chance on offending or bothering a lawyer client or a retail customer who may be a fundamentalist or a member of any other group with prejudices against non-conformists. As said elsewhere, it doesn't matter what I think. It matters what others (customers and clients) think. I'm not going to let my business lose money because an employee wants to "express" him or her self.
On the other hand, if you're applying for a backline job, like programmer, sys admin, video editor, or even as camera man for our in-house productions, I don't care if you're The Illustrated Man. If you can do the job and interact well with the other employees so then can work with you easily and everyone does a good job, then you're hired.
Just the opinion as a business owner.
As a general person, my thought is tats and piercings may or may not hurt your career, but there's no reason to expect it to help. Why put the effort into doing something that may create problems in the long run?
Facial tattoos are only for those who really, really don't mind standing out and making compromises due to people's narrow viewpoints.
Or for first officers on starships lost in the Delta Quadrant.
Just put a pi on your forehead.
If you're going to put something on your forehead, especially any letter from any alphabet, why not put an "H" on the center of your forehead and when you get interviewed, tell everyone your name is Rimmer and you can't touch anything because you're a hologram?
These aren't albums, but here's a few single cuts I can recommend, which may be found on several different albums (some are considered some of the best jazz recordings ever).
- Body and Soul, by Coleman Hawkins
- Sing, Sing, Sing, by Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall
- Someday My Prince Will Come, by Miles Davis
- Time Out, by Dave Brubeck
- Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, by Cannonball Adderly
Just my $.02 worth.
The best thing about Public Radio is that they have a good number of jazz shows syndicated nationwide. While some stations don't play them, see if your local one does. They're good at not just playing jazz, but in talking about artists, recordings and history of jazz.
One show I love in particular is Blues Before Sunrise, played nationwide on Saturday night/Sunday morning (on East coast it's from 1 am to 6 am on Sunday). It has a website (either BBS.com or BluesBeforeSunrise.com) which includes info on where you can hear the show streamed over the net every week.
While these aren't recordings, I've found that NPR (and their competition, PRI) are GREAT at educating the listeners about the music they play and guiding people toward good artists and good recordings.
I have to agree with both of these, but I'd add a comment or two on the duets by Ella and Louis on Verve. I bought one CD of their duets and it is perhaps the most played CD in my collection. The two together are fantastic. I'd add a warning: There is one Ella and Louie CD that isn't labeled as Part I or Part II, or as a "Best of" or anything else. Don't buy it (I did). Buy both CDs, Part I and Part II have much more. The single CD has selections from both, so it's a waste if you really want all the duets.
If your work is well written, it'll stand on its own. If it depends heavily on the technology to make it work, then it'll only appeal to techies, which is such a small market (even smaller than science fiction or fantasy), that it likely won't interest any publisher.
If you've worked well within the craft of writing, you'll have a good story and compelling characters and anyone, tech friendly or not, will be interested. If, on the other hand, you've written a story about a lot of cool techno tricks to amaze the reader, they you're basing the story on a gimmick, and it won't be of interest to anyone.
For example, in it's time, Run Silent, Run Deep involved a lot of high tech stuff (it's not high tech anymore, but it was as advanced in its day as movies like Sneakers were). It wasn't the technical details that made the book sell (although they helped a lot with the setting). It was the simple conflict set up between a good submarine captain and a very clever former sub captain who was taking out almost every sub the Allies had in one area. It's true, the tech stuff helped, but it was only added color to help the setting.
If you don't have a good solid story and good characters, and the book depends on the tech stuff and therefore depends on a tech friendly editor, you haven't written a story -- you've written a self-indulgent fantasy.
I truly hope the case is the former, and not the latter. If so, anything you do that gets you out of the slush pile and onto someone's desk -- anyone's desk -- is all you really need.
...who feel everything should be done in code, and anyone who uses a WYSIWYG editor is lame.
It seems every time a new innovation comes out to make it easy for non-programmers or non-techies to actually use a computer as a tool, we hear from a slew of techies about how it's bad because now any "idiot" can do what they've been doing.
What you fail to realize is that the Matrix is actually coded in BASIC.
Microsoft VBASIC.
(That would explain a lot -- like why Deja Vu is a glitch in the Matrix.)
I had forgotten about that other problem -- not feeding the sheets through one at a time. Whenever I printed brochures or anything else that used expensive paper, I fed it through one sheet at a time, it was so bad at grabbing multiple sheets.
I also printed my own business cards. It's pretty bad when you have to change the borders and alignment of your business card to adjust for the flaws in your printer!
I think they just got so used being considered the best with their early deskjets that they stopped doing what it was that made them so good. It'll take years of mediocre printers before the buying public realizes their printers are going down the tubes.
I learned a good while back (I think as long as 7-8 years ago) NOT to stockpile HP printer ink cartriges. I used to buy 1 color and 1 black cart at a time, but I found that the carts I bought and let sit on the shelf until I needed them often would not work if they had been on the shelf for a few months or so.
I appreciate HP's support of Linux and would like to support them, but I stopped buying their printers a few years ago. There's just too many little quirks. The last one I had ran the paper through at a slight angle. I don't think I've seen an HP printer I felt I really trusted since the original Deskjet and Deskjet 500.
Hal
From the cited post: "I had no reason to be a loyal customer (sort of like I was until 1988) and offer them what could *possibly* be a killer app on
MacOS X"
I should point out that AbiWord was a VERY integral part of the software system that got my business going. I can't say that the overall system, and therefore my company, would never have gotten off the ground without AbiWord, but the open document format and load of command line options/commands made it possible for me to save months of work by just dropping in command line uses of AbiWord in Perl scripts. The AbiWord programmers are great to work with and have been very kind and helpful to me.
However, I recently changed the entire system over to OpenOffice.org. While AbiWord has some wonderful features, OOo has a fully documented programming language and API. It's a full blown office suite -- if, by chance, anyone didn't know.
While AbiWord was very important to me and I have nothing but the utmost respect for the programmers and people behind the project, I cannot see anyone realistically seeing it as a "killer app."
To be honest, while I love choice and all the options in OSS, I think Linux in particular and OSS in particular, would be much more widely adopted (and would be much more of a competitor to Micro$oft) if, instead of having so many OSS word processors and spreadsheets, all that effort had been focused on creating one kick-ass office suite. Once done, different groups could take the code from that suite and customize it to their hearts' content, much like what's happened with Mozilla -- one browser, but many groups have taken the source code and created their own versions (like Galeon and Konqueror).
While no AbiWord on OSX is not good news, I think the actual number of users (in proportion to the total number of Mac users) who will be effected by this is very low. I'm sure most people that spend the extra money on a Mac tend to either buy their own word processor, or use OOo, since it is almost out of beta for OSX.
While AbiWord is a great program, it is hardly a killer app.
We've seen info on some spammers with their mansions and high priced lifestyles paid for by spam revenues here on /.
As long as they are hit with simple fines or only shut down temporarily, or only forced to change their tactics, they'll keep going. They make too much money to stop.
They'll only stop when sending spam costs more than their rewards. When they are fined enough or sued for enough that they lose their expensive new houses and other trappings of luxery, then they'll think about it.
In the meantime, don't expect the FTC or anyone from the Bush administration to do anything more than slap the hand of anyone making a good deal of money.
Let me get this right: So this counts only on probability. Because space is big enough, whatever can possibly happen will happen?
Does that mean if I'm sweeping up a lab after a particularly unsuccessful party and I hook up a improbability generator to a strong brownian motion producer, like, say, a really hot cup of tea, then will I get a really neat spaceship that's shaped like a tennis shoe and piloted by a man with two heads and three arms and has a paranoid android abord with a shooting pain in all the diodes down his left side?
Here's to improbability!
I haven't done any programming in over a decade. I recently had to start learning a lot of new information and bought several stacks of books. I found the O'Reilly books to be VERY helpful. In the past I always found Sam's to be informative and helpful as well, but I found Sam's MySQL in 24 Hours to be rather frustrating because of little errors here and there.
Above and beyond the errors, I don't know if it's because the book is a "in 21 Days" format or not, but I've found it rather frustrating and useless in the long run because it does not work well as a reference book and it seems there is A LOT that has been left out.
I will not likely buy another book in any "in 21 Days" or "in 24 Hours" or any similar format again. While they may provide a quick intro, it seems to be a week format if you plan to continue in the subject.
Not to be snitty or totally un-geek like, but, other than Myst and its sequals, I've never really gotten into computer games. I really prefer playing with/against a human. The social element is a major part of it for me.