I've been gouged by a certain geek for over 11 years straight now. Every year or so he recommends that I buy an entirely new computer, because the previous one isn't fast enough, or the RAM that I got for my computer last year won't work in the new computer that I *clearly* need this year.
I have accepted that I'll never get all my money back.
I'd like to fire him, but I'm married to him.
I'll pay for this comment sooner or later, since we're both/.-ers.
I've had a Honda Civic Hybrid for 2.5 years now. I admit that I bought it in a fit of pique at the then-exhorbitant price for a gallon of gas--$2.20! We sold a car which had a V6, took only premium, and delivered 18mpg on a good day.
My not-too-long commute is currently 20 miles one way. If I've done the calculations correctly, I've saved a lot more(over the old car) than the extra cost for the hybrid technology.
11000 miles/year at 18mpg at $3.50/gallon => $2139/year. 11000 miles/year at 55mpg at $3.30/gallon => $660/year.
If we'd purchased a regular Civic, and been getting 40mpg, that would work out to $907/year. Figuring in the tax break that we got, the difference in cost between the HCH and the regular Civic will have been made up for in about 6 years. Financially, it's debatable whether that's really worth it.
For me, though, the knowledge that I'm using fewer resources and creating less pollution is worth the extra money.
The worst development job I ever had was at a chip-design and fab company. I was hired to install all their to-be-ordered Solaris boxen to replace their legacy Apollo boxen. One week after I hired on, the whole project was cancelled. I had no Apollo experience, other than using them as room heaters five years previously in college. So I was tasked with converting their scripts for chip testing, written in Aegis, to "Unix". Only at the time DomainOS was out, Unix was a Pretty Neat Toy, and these boxen ran some smallish version of Unix, consisting of cobbled- together BSD 4.2 and SysVR3.
So, I got to 1) learn Aegis 2) figure out which commands I would NORMALLY use on a NORMAL Unix box 3) figure out which command from which version of Unix on this box would fit my need.
I became the tester for these scripts, despite the fact that I was not a chip designer or tester, and had no idea what a "bad" result looked like.
So I tested as well as I could, then started putting smallish scripts out into production. A few of them worked, a few broke, and the manager decided that conversion was just Too Dangerous. So I was told to stop.
So, for the next two months, I sat in a nice office with a window, by myself, surfing the web, until I found a job that didn't use boxen that were so obsolete that HP offered no training for them.
IANALBMFUTDO (I am not a lawyer but my father used to date one), and she said
that the reason that people will sue for an
amount less than $10,000 is that they're counting
on the defendant to settle. According to her,
it costs more than that to defend yourself, so
it's cheaper to settle.
I know this is offtopic, but here goes nothing...
My father worked on the Space Shuttle program,
and one of his tasks was converting a program
from PL/1 to F77. That program calculated how
much fuel was needed based upon the planned
flight path. He couldn't tell me much else
he worked on, 'cause he'd have to kill me.:)
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If my cat pees on the carpet one more time, I WILL have a heart attack.
I've been gouged by a certain geek for over 11 years straight now. Every year or so he recommends that I buy an entirely new computer, because the previous one isn't fast enough, or the RAM that I got for my computer last year won't work in the new computer that I *clearly* need this year. I have accepted that I'll never get all my money back. I'd like to fire him, but I'm married to him. I'll pay for this comment sooner or later, since we're both /.-ers.
I've had a Honda Civic Hybrid for 2.5 years now. I admit that I bought it in a fit of pique at the then-exhorbitant price for a gallon of gas--$2.20! We sold a car which had a V6, took only premium, and delivered 18mpg on a good day.
My not-too-long commute is currently 20 miles one way. If I've done the calculations correctly, I've saved a lot more(over the old car) than the extra cost for the hybrid technology.
11000 miles/year at 18mpg at $3.50/gallon => $2139/year.
11000 miles/year at 55mpg at $3.30/gallon => $660/year.
If we'd purchased a regular Civic, and been getting 40mpg, that would work out to $907/year. Figuring in the tax break that we got, the difference in cost between the HCH and the regular Civic will have been made up for in about 6 years. Financially, it's debatable whether that's really worth it.
For me, though, the knowledge that I'm using fewer resources and creating less pollution is worth the extra money.
The worst development job I ever had was at a chip-design and fab company. I was hired to
install all their to-be-ordered Solaris boxen to replace their legacy Apollo boxen. One week
after I hired on, the whole project was cancelled. I had no Apollo experience, other than using
them as room heaters five years previously in college. So I was tasked with converting their
scripts for chip testing, written in Aegis, to "Unix". Only at the time DomainOS was out, Unix
was a Pretty Neat Toy, and these boxen ran some smallish version of Unix, consisting of cobbled-
together BSD 4.2 and SysVR3.
So, I got to
1) learn Aegis
2) figure out which commands I would NORMALLY use on a NORMAL Unix box
3) figure out which command from which version of Unix on this box would fit my need.
I became the tester for these scripts, despite the fact that I was not a chip designer or
tester, and had no idea what a "bad" result looked like.
So I tested as well as I could, then started putting smallish scripts out into production.
A few of them worked, a few broke, and the manager decided that conversion was just
Too Dangerous. So I was told to stop.
So, for the next two months, I sat in a nice office with a window, by myself, surfing the
web, until I found a job that didn't use boxen that were so obsolete that HP offered
no training for them.
Sweet Jesus. I thought that was a Mickey Mouse shadow starting to cover the Earth. Damn my former job at Disneyland!
So I guess my favorite news group, alt.bestiality.sco, will go away too??? Damn.
Double negatives are a no-no.
IANALBMFUTDO (I am not a lawyer but my father used to date one), and she said that the reason that people will sue for an amount less than $10,000 is that they're counting on the defendant to settle. According to her, it costs more than that to defend yourself, so it's cheaper to settle.
Geez, I can't tell you how tired I got of hearing guys ask if I wanted to check out their thermodynamics...
Heh, being a woman, and being a Physics major, I can honestly agree that the dating situation was indeed grim.
I know this is offtopic, but here goes nothing... My father worked on the Space Shuttle program, and one of his tasks was converting a program from PL/1 to F77. That program calculated how much fuel was needed based upon the planned flight path. He couldn't tell me much else he worked on, 'cause he'd have to kill me. :)
Well, I think strangling Apollo did us all a favor...