Prices are insane for housing in the greater Boston area. Really, the average price of a house in Mass. is over $350k and I do believe it's $380k. We live in Acton, MA, about 25miles west of Boston, and you can't touch a house for under $400k. These are houses that 10 years ago went for $170k. McMansions are still going up like crazy. I don't know who's buying them. Alot of my friends are out of work too.
I have a wife and kid and she makes more that $35k/yr and we're struggling. We've gone thru our house savings and have dipped into 401k money to make the rent. It's not a cakewalk out there. Childcare is $16k/year (yea, $16k!) so I'm the stay at home Dad till things pick up. Mind you, I love spending time with my son, but we'll never make it if things continue like this.
Yea, a friend and I were talking and he lamented on the fact that he could be spending $30k/yr for a high quality CS education only to be offered $35k/yr after graduation.
In the Boston area, $35k/yr isn't even a living wage. Housing prices in Mass. are $380k/avg.!!
For those out of school, companies want every $7k cert only to be offered $29k/yr! It's time to look for a different line of work.
A typical engineer response. "What the fuck do we need marketing for?"
I used to work in Engineering. I was the sysadmin in the VMS Development Group, amoung other positions. I moved to marketing because I was annoyed with the way things were done.
Needless to say, I found out it was alot more difficult than I thought. It's not a hard/fast science like coding. THAT'S was makes it difficult.
Don't knock someone elses job unless you have walked in their shoes.
FWIW, I've been out of work since Aug 01. I went back to school full-time till my son was born, now I'm a stay at home Dad till things pick up. I used to work as a marketing engineer at Alpha Processor Inc/API NetWorks.
Just hanging out this Christmas. Had a blast with my 5 month old watching his new Wiggles tape. Used my new apple peeler which is just totally cool. (cores, peels, slices!)
Now, I'm watching CNN and drinking some REALLY nice wine and reading Slashdot while my incredibly awesome wife is in her office, surfing the net and xfering her radio show to MP3.
Here's to a safe and happy New Year where I finally find a job! (unemployed since Aug 01)
Oh yea, it's snowing like crazy outside here in Act(i)on, MA., 25 miles west of Boston. Expecting 12-18"!!! May actually start up the snowmobiles tomorrow!!!
I'm the luckiest guy in the world. We've got our health, I've got a GREAT wife and a wonderful kid.
That's a great idea, too bad it'll never happen. DEC found out a number of years ago that MS had co-opted a fair amount of DEC IP. They (Bob Palmer, then CEO of DEC and his happy band of lawyers) worked out a "deal" between Microsoft and DEC. It was called the "Alliance for Enterprise Computing" DEC got "most favoured company status" in return for not suing the pants off of Microsoft. Such a deal!
As you can imagine, with DEC gone, that agreement is null and void.
Oh, and DEC/CPQ/HP will NEVER GPL VMS. It makes too much money.
Everyone is different. In my case, my up close vision (6") is fairly good. Anything closer than that probably has more to do with being 41 than with LASIK. Suffice to say, my normalized vision for ALL situations is MUCH better than pre-LASIK.
Just to be clear on this, you are not losing part of the lens. You are losing a very tiny amount of the corneal tissue when LASIK'd.
I had LASIK in December of 1999. I was 20/400 and 20/200 with quite a bit of astigmatism. I'm nominally about 20/25 with little to no problems. (I wouldn't mind a pair of glasses for driving at night because of the residual astigmatism left over. About.5 diopters)
As far as "the bad place", well, I have no friggin' clue as to what you are talking about. (Is it a Ralph Wiggum reference?)
Going from 20/200 20/400 to 20/25 means my vision got better, not worse.
A friend has set up a VMS system at the end of a DSL line. Its primary purpose is to run "Notes". No, not Lotus Notes, VMSnotes a.k.a. DECnotes.
We all used to "note" at DEC back in the early 80's. It's still active (somewhat) at Compaq and then HP.
There were topics on everything from sex to pistols:). I used to run a Singles notesfile and that got alot of couples hooked up. I had friends that met "over email and notes" and were married in '85.
It only took about 10 minutes for all the keypad commands to come back to me. It's great to have it back and with no HR department to worry about, we can say what we want.
At the risk of losing karma for sounding like a dork, do you have these scripts available? I'd like to do the same for my neices and nephews and my Mom's SO. They don't grok command line.
Steve has a clue. It's called Marketing. In one statement, he's quelled the concerns of the PHB's who hear they "need" Unix/Linux. Apple/Steve just said that he sells more than anyone else, including that "Lie-nix" stuff that someone on his staff told him about.
To a PHB, Linux could be an OS, a company, or a dessert topping. Steve just said he does Unix better and sells more than anyone else.
I'm stuck with ME on my Dell Latitude LS because I have an old DEC Roamabout (Wavelan) pre-802.11 wireless setup. There's no Win2k drivers. And I'm STILL out of a job and can't afford to get an access point and 802.11x card. Sigh.. I wish I had a Mac.
If people wanted a clean architecture, they would have bought Alpha's. The thing is, the vast majority don't give a rats ass about computer architectures. They only want to know one thing:
Does it run my application?
x86-64 does, without re-compiling. People can move at their own pace, when they want to move. IA-64 is making the mistake of Alpha. Few apps, high price, force people to change to get on board.
Speaking as a former jet mechanic in the Air Force (NH Air Guard) on KC-135A and E models, I have to assume you haven't read a thing about jet engine development in the past 20 years.
Todays engines are extremely powerful, quiet, and fuel efficient. The GE engines on a 777 are AMAZING!
I don't understand what you mean about all this "friction". Even jet engines designed in the early 50's (The J57's on the KC-135A) didn't have a hell of alot of "friction". Oh, they burned fuel like crazy and were extremely noisy, but friction wasn't the cause of inefficency and noise. It was the design of the blades and airflow thru the engine that caused noise and affected efficiency. I've been *under* a J57 at idle and I can attest to their noise! (I was adjusting the fuel control)
The engines on the 777 put out about 100,000lbs of thrust EACH. I'll assume the BWB will have engines that put out AT LEAST that much, while running on less fuel and running quieter than anything else in the air.
Slashdot Mirror
Prices are insane for housing in the greater Boston area. Really, the average price of a house in Mass. is over $350k and I do believe it's $380k. We live in Acton, MA, about 25miles west of Boston, and you can't touch a house for under $400k. These are houses that 10 years ago went for $170k. McMansions are still going up like crazy. I don't know who's buying them. Alot of my friends are out of work too.
I have a wife and kid and she makes more that $35k/yr and we're struggling. We've gone thru our house savings and have dipped into 401k money to make the rent. It's not a cakewalk out there. Childcare is $16k/year (yea, $16k!) so I'm the stay at home Dad till things pick up. Mind you, I love spending time with my son, but we'll never make it if things continue like this.
Yes, we're looking to relocate.
No, you don't think it's hard because it's not "technical".
Many would argue that running Enron into the ground didn't take alot of brains, but many made a shitload of money doing it.
Value is a weird thing. As more and more programming jobs are going to India, the value of programmers is decreasing. It's all relative.
I never said she was WORTH $100k. I was just defending the point that one should walk in anothers shoes before judging if the job is difficult.
You MIGHT want to learn how to spell college first.
Yea, a friend and I were talking and he lamented on the fact that he could be spending $30k/yr for a high quality CS education only to be offered $35k/yr after graduation.
In the Boston area, $35k/yr isn't even a living wage. Housing prices in Mass. are $380k/avg.!!
For those out of school, companies want every $7k cert only to be offered $29k/yr! It's time to look for a different line of work.
A typical engineer response. "What the fuck do we need marketing for?"
I used to work in Engineering. I was the sysadmin in the VMS Development Group, amoung other positions. I moved to marketing because I was annoyed with the way things were done.
Needless to say, I found out it was alot more difficult than I thought. It's not a hard/fast science like coding. THAT'S was makes it difficult.
Don't knock someone elses job unless you have walked in their shoes.
FWIW, I've been out of work since Aug 01. I went back to school full-time till my son was born, now I'm a stay at home Dad till things pick up.
I used to work as a marketing engineer at Alpha Processor Inc/API NetWorks.
It'll be interesting to see how much the Asian community gives back. I'm betting on a "Use someone elses work and make money" policy.
Just hanging out this Christmas. Had a blast with my 5 month old watching his new Wiggles tape. Used my new apple peeler which is just totally cool. (cores, peels, slices!)
Now, I'm watching CNN and drinking some REALLY nice wine and reading Slashdot while my incredibly awesome wife is in her office, surfing the net and xfering her radio show to MP3.
Here's to a safe and happy New Year where I finally find a job! (unemployed since Aug 01)
Oh yea, it's snowing like crazy outside here in Act(i)on, MA., 25 miles west of Boston. Expecting 12-18"!!! May actually start up the snowmobiles tomorrow!!!
I'm the luckiest guy in the world. We've got our health, I've got a GREAT wife and a wonderful kid.
I like Mozilla, but at the moment, this version is hanging on startup on Win2k. Sigh.
Let me chime in with "Knoppix is great!" I used it just the other day to get info off a scrozzed WindowsME system before I wiped it.
/home, etc...
Something I'd like to see:
. Self-customizing: Run a script that saves all settings and then generates an custom Knoppix ISO.
. Using the custom ISO, you could boot, automatically mount samba/nfs shares, load up favorites, mount
That's a great idea, too bad it'll never happen. DEC found out a number of years ago that MS had co-opted a fair amount of DEC IP. They (Bob Palmer, then CEO of DEC and his happy band of lawyers) worked out a "deal" between Microsoft and DEC. It was called the "Alliance for Enterprise Computing" DEC got "most favoured company status" in return for not suing the pants off of Microsoft. Such a deal!
As you can imagine, with DEC gone, that agreement is null and void.
Oh, and DEC/CPQ/HP will NEVER GPL VMS. It makes too much money.
Former VMS Development Group system manager,
Thanks for your comments Mr. President
Everyone is different. In my case, my up close vision (6") is fairly good. Anything closer than that probably has more to do with being 41 than with LASIK. Suffice to say, my normalized vision for ALL situations is MUCH better than pre-LASIK.
It's a personal choice, bottom line.
Just to be clear on this, you are not losing part of the lens. You are losing a very tiny amount of the corneal tissue when LASIK'd.
.5 diopters)
I had LASIK in December of 1999. I was 20/400 and 20/200 with quite a bit of astigmatism. I'm nominally about 20/25 with little to no problems.
(I wouldn't mind a pair of glasses for driving at night because of the residual astigmatism left over. About
As far as "the bad place", well, I have no friggin' clue as to what you are talking about. (Is it a Ralph Wiggum reference?)
Going from 20/200 20/400 to 20/25 means my vision got better, not worse.
Using that logic, we'd all be running on Alpha's.
You're gonna have a hell of a time when you start meeting girls.
Thanks for your comments Linus..
Former system admin in the VMS Group
A friend has set up a VMS system at the end of a DSL line. Its primary purpose is to run "Notes". No, not Lotus Notes, VMSnotes a.k.a. DECnotes.
:). I used to run a Singles notesfile and that got alot of couples hooked up. I had friends that met "over email and notes" and were married in '85.
We all used to "note" at DEC back in the early 80's. It's still active (somewhat) at Compaq and then HP.
There were topics on everything from sex to pistols
It only took about 10 minutes for all the keypad commands to come back to me. It's great to have it back and with no HR department to worry about, we can say what we want.
Did they really say Fuck that many times?
At the risk of losing karma for sounding like a dork, do you have these scripts available? I'd like to do the same for my neices and nephews and my Mom's SO. They don't grok command line.
thanks,
Steve has a clue. It's called Marketing. In one statement, he's quelled the concerns of the PHB's who hear they "need" Unix/Linux. Apple/Steve just said that he sells more than anyone else, including that "Lie-nix" stuff that someone on his staff told him about.
To a PHB, Linux could be an OS, a company, or a dessert topping. Steve just said he does Unix better and sells more than anyone else.
It's marketing.
I'm stuck with ME on my Dell Latitude LS because I have an old DEC Roamabout (Wavelan) pre-802.11 wireless setup. There's no Win2k drivers. And I'm STILL out of a job and can't afford to get an access point and 802.11x card. Sigh.. I wish I had a Mac.
If people wanted a clean architecture, they would have bought Alpha's. The thing is, the vast majority don't give a rats ass about computer architectures. They only want to know one thing:
Does it run my application?
x86-64 does, without re-compiling. People can move at their own pace, when they want to move. IA-64 is making the mistake of Alpha. Few apps, high price, force people to change to get on board.
Insightful??
Speaking as a former jet mechanic in the Air Force (NH Air Guard) on KC-135A and E models, I have to assume you haven't read a thing about jet engine development in the past 20 years.
Todays engines are extremely powerful, quiet, and fuel efficient. The GE engines on a 777 are AMAZING!
I don't understand what you mean about all this "friction". Even jet engines designed in the early 50's (The J57's on the KC-135A) didn't have a hell of alot of "friction". Oh, they burned fuel like crazy and were extremely noisy, but friction wasn't the cause of inefficency and noise. It was the design of the blades and airflow thru the engine that caused noise and affected efficiency. I've been *under* a J57 at idle and I can attest to their noise! (I was adjusting the fuel control)
The engines on the 777 put out about 100,000lbs of thrust EACH. I'll assume the BWB will have engines that put out AT LEAST that much, while running on less fuel and running quieter than anything else in the air.
their, their
FWIW, Transmeta licensed AMD's x86-64 designs and could probably morph it without much of a problem.
Remember, the Crusoe is "different". Rules apply diferently.