And I'm on the verge of exceeding my income from the Help Desk job I lost a year ago.
No one's blamed me for anything that's gone bad; in fact the word of mouth business I've generated has been outstanding.
Yes, there are times when I'm called back to the same house umpteen times and I don't charge. Yes, there are times when people are sticker-shocked and haggle me down.
But by and large I love being totally independent, not having a boss or partner (save myself and the government, respectively), and being able to make my own hours.
Why have things worked out so well for me? I wonder about that, and I think there are several answers:
1. I have a very professional, yet friendly and approchable attitude.
2. I'm polite in people's homes and I don't fit the stereotypical "geek" profile people are expecting.
3. The clientele I serve are in a densely populated, tightly knit and affluent part of the country. Word of mouth spreads quickly, and these people are willing to pay. They have multiple computers, so they want DSL/cable hooked up and shared. And even when their Dells need fixing and are within warranty, they are so frustrated by hold times and first-level overseas tech that aren't trained - just reading from a troubleshooting script - that they're willing to pay someone to make a housecall
4. I'm willing to come over as early or as late as they want me, weekends included. Too many people think of their freelance business as a nine to five job, instead of a business.
All in all, it's been a great development in my life, but I hope not too many people read that article in my area and get the same idea!
One technique I've used when a drive is unbootable but still readable is to put a fresh drive in as the main one, install the OS.
Connect the second one to the other channel.
When you need drivers, simply browse to (drive letter)\windows\inf and it should pick up on the right inf file and start coping the vxd and dll files.
"Unprecedented" my butt. Hey, at least you can still get a lolly pop at the bank drive-in.
Wow, what a comeback!
Can you come up with more of those gems?
Does this mean that you're not at all upset
at the increasing insulation of our political
leaders from the citizenry?
It starts with when we go to the polls. Just stop voting for Democrats or Republicans. Both parties have created an entrenched power structure that needs to be replaced.
Vote for third-party candidates, especially Greens and Libertarians. If enough of them trickle into the State legislatures and Congress, things will start to change.
I'm increasingly appalled at how inaccessible our leaders are - we can't even tour the White House as individuals anymore - something that I believe is unprecedented. I'm sure the few groups that are permitted to visit are screened rigorously - why can't individuals be screened and brought around in groups as they form up at the Visitors Center?
Only prevent digital copies to and from digital media, right?
At least with audio, all you have to do is output to analog, and capture from analog to make a pretty decent copy, right?
Re:Economic Benefits of Accelerated Healing
on
Weapon-X Mice
·
· Score: 1
Yep... I sure am. And at the same time, I also thought about how disappointed SARS didn't "decrease the surplus population" in time for Christmas...
Economic Benefits of Accelerated Healing
on
Weapon-X Mice
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've been thinking of bottlenecks in the national economy.
One of them is injuries and healing.
It occurred to me that if someone could translate a growth factor like this to human usage, and get people with injuries healed and back to work faster, it could save billions in health care costs and lost productivity.
And the weird part is how much I feel like I'm living in a business simulation. I invest in some things (equipment, advertising), make some profits, which I can allocate to whatever I want, including more adversiting, equipment, etc.
Abstracting life like a game can actually be helpful, since trying to distill the "rules" and come up with ways to cheat them, circumvent them or efficiently obey them can be a fun and rewarding challenge.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are watching the stars."
I think he was referring to sentiments such as this.
Yes, a lot of government money is misallocated while basic needs are not met.
But any civilization can't claim to really advance when it's "stuck in the gutter" worrying only about the basics when it lets the arts and sciences lie fallow.
After being in business for myself for awhile, it's dawned on me how similar a lot of strategic management games are like running a business in real life.
The best of such games taught me to watch expenditures, invest in productive items, make more money which gets invested in other productive items and services.
Sometimes I feel like I'm actually in a game, but with a system of much more interesting and gratifying rewards.
Is still too high compared to a good monochrome laser.
Perhaps science fiction's most important invention
on
Science Faction
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Is the almighty "plot device." The "plot device" is basically any fanciful piece of equipment that is used, altered or modified in the service of resolving story points that actually require some real human problem solving. Many Star Trek TV episodes feature this piece of technology. Independence Day and countless other blockbuster films do, too.
The Plot Device has a real world counterpart. It's embodied in all of our technology, and all of our faith in technology to solve the problems of Nature's and Man's making.
I, for one, can't wait to see the end of that story...
What movie studios spend on making filmed entertainment is truly no one's business but theirs - it's all private money.
Don't confuse private and public functions.
In addition, people have the power to
end bad movies and bad political decisions
- the former by voting with their feet and
not seeing them, the latter by voting.
>Meanwhile, we're spending a quarter of a million >bucks a minute to keep American troops and >Iraqis killing each other, Osama bin Laden is >sniggering in his cave, opium is flooding out of >Afghanistan, we are building death chambers in >Guantanemo Bay in preparation for executing >political prisoners on the basis of confessions >tortured out of them, and we sit here discussing >whether there might be too much action and not >enough plot in Terminator 3.
I think not. T2 had a far more
refined and polished look.
The first two were also had better
dialogue and a greater sense of urgency.
Jonathan Mostow is a fine director,
but not in James Cameron's league.
Real estate is more expensive than
computers. And getting more expensive.
Computers get less expensive, at least
expressed as computing power and features
for a given amount of dollars.
Businesses want cubicles to stay small
(or get smaller) and people with home offices
want to make maximum use of that space.
It makes perfect sense on that basis.
However, I think there a lot of downsides
to laptops that overzealous desktop replacers don't see, including proprietary components,
vulnerability to physical damage and theft,
and relative difficulty of backing up whole
hard drives.
From the story:
"electrify the nation and show the world that India is capable of taking up complex projects at the cutting edge of space research"
Cutting edge for 1959, the year the Soviets
landed a lunar impactor.
Interesting that among all of the film and or TV series with a really devoted following - (The Matrix, Star Wars, Star Trek, LOTR to name a few) the Alien films have slipped under the radar for media attention.
You just never hear or see anything in the mainstream media about Alien film fans, but there they are, writing fan fiction, constructing webrings, and undertaking interesting projects like this case mod.
The attention to detail given by fans often outstrips that by show creators and filmmakers, but I'd argue that the Alien series is an exception.
An MTA surcharge -Mass Transit Authority.
What the bloody hell does telecommunications
have to do with mass transit? I work
in the suburbs - why do I have to
subsidizie the MTA, and through a phone
levy, no less!
Slashdot Mirror
And I'm on the verge of exceeding my income from the Help Desk job I lost a year ago. No one's blamed me for anything that's gone bad; in fact the word of mouth business I've generated has been outstanding. Yes, there are times when I'm called back to the same house umpteen times and I don't charge. Yes, there are times when people are sticker-shocked and haggle me down. But by and large I love being totally independent, not having a boss or partner (save myself and the government, respectively), and being able to make my own hours. Why have things worked out so well for me? I wonder about that, and I think there are several answers: 1. I have a very professional, yet friendly and approchable attitude. 2. I'm polite in people's homes and I don't fit the stereotypical "geek" profile people are expecting. 3. The clientele I serve are in a densely populated, tightly knit and affluent part of the country. Word of mouth spreads quickly, and these people are willing to pay. They have multiple computers, so they want DSL/cable hooked up and shared. And even when their Dells need fixing and are within warranty, they are so frustrated by hold times and first-level overseas tech that aren't trained - just reading from a troubleshooting script - that they're willing to pay someone to make a housecall 4. I'm willing to come over as early or as late as they want me, weekends included. Too many people think of their freelance business as a nine to five job, instead of a business. All in all, it's been a great development in my life, but I hope not too many people read that article in my area and get the same idea!
'cuz we all know T3 won't be nearly as good.
One technique I've used when a drive is unbootable but still readable is to put a fresh drive in as the main one, install the OS.
Connect the second one to the other channel.
When you need drivers, simply browse to (drive letter)\windows\inf and it should pick up on the right inf file and start coping the vxd and dll files.
"Unprecedented" my butt. Hey, at least you can still get a lolly pop at the bank drive-in. Wow, what a comeback! Can you come up with more of those gems? Does this mean that you're not at all upset at the increasing insulation of our political leaders from the citizenry?
It starts with when we go to the polls. Just stop voting for Democrats or Republicans. Both parties have created an entrenched power structure that needs to be replaced. Vote for third-party candidates, especially Greens and Libertarians. If enough of them trickle into the State legislatures and Congress, things will start to change. I'm increasingly appalled at how inaccessible our leaders are - we can't even tour the White House as individuals anymore - something that I believe is unprecedented. I'm sure the few groups that are permitted to visit are screened rigorously - why can't individuals be screened and brought around in groups as they form up at the Visitors Center?
Only prevent digital copies to and from digital media, right?
At least with audio, all you have to do is output to analog, and capture from analog to make a pretty decent copy, right?
Yep... I sure am. And at the same time, I also thought about how disappointed SARS didn't "decrease the surplus population" in time for Christmas...
I've been thinking of bottlenecks in the national economy. One of them is injuries and healing. It occurred to me that if someone could translate a growth factor like this to human usage, and get people with injuries healed and back to work faster, it could save billions in health care costs and lost productivity.
And the weird part is how much I feel like I'm living in a business simulation. I invest in some things (equipment, advertising), make some profits, which I can allocate to whatever I want, including more adversiting, equipment, etc.
Abstracting life like a game can actually be helpful, since trying to distill the "rules" and come up with ways to cheat them, circumvent them or efficiently obey them can be a fun and rewarding challenge.
Am I nitpicking, or is the term "Augmented Reality" a bit of a misnomer. Reality is reality, what we augment is our perception of reality.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are watching the stars."
I think he was referring to sentiments such as this.
Yes, a lot of government money is misallocated while basic needs are not met.
But any civilization can't claim to really advance when it's "stuck in the gutter" worrying only about the basics when it lets the arts and sciences lie fallow.
After being in business for myself for awhile, it's dawned on me how similar a lot of strategic management games are like running a business in real life.
The best of such games taught me to watch expenditures, invest in productive items, make more money which gets invested in other productive items and services.
Sometimes I feel like I'm actually in a game,
but with a system of much more interesting and
gratifying rewards.
Is still too high compared to a good monochrome laser.
Is the almighty "plot device." The "plot device" is basically any fanciful piece of equipment that is used, altered or modified
in the service of resolving story points
that actually require some real
human problem solving. Many Star Trek
TV episodes feature this piece of technology.
Independence Day and countless other blockbuster
films do, too.
The Plot Device has a real world counterpart.
It's embodied in all of our technology,
and all of our faith in technology to solve
the problems of Nature's and Man's making.
I, for one, can't wait to see the end
of that story...
What movie studios spend on making filmed entertainment is truly no one's business but theirs - it's all private money. Don't confuse private and public functions. In addition, people have the power to end bad movies and bad political decisions - the former by voting with their feet and not seeing them, the latter by voting. >Meanwhile, we're spending a quarter of a million >bucks a minute to keep American troops and >Iraqis killing each other, Osama bin Laden is >sniggering in his cave, opium is flooding out of >Afghanistan, we are building death chambers in >Guantanemo Bay in preparation for executing >political prisoners on the basis of confessions >tortured out of them, and we sit here discussing >whether there might be too much action and not >enough plot in Terminator 3.
I think not. T2 had a far more
refined and polished look.
The first two were also had better
dialogue and a greater sense of urgency.
Jonathan Mostow is a fine director,
but not in James Cameron's league.
Real estate is more expensive than
computers. And getting more expensive.
Computers get less expensive, at least
expressed as computing power and features
for a given amount of dollars.
Businesses want cubicles to stay small
(or get smaller) and people with home offices
want to make maximum use of that space.
It makes perfect sense on that basis.
However, I think there a lot of downsides
to laptops that overzealous desktop replacers don't see, including proprietary components,
vulnerability to physical damage and theft,
and relative difficulty of backing up whole
hard drives.
Well, since 1997 Han Solo has been prohibited from "shooting first" so anyone could get the drop on him.
From the story: "electrify the nation and show the world that India is capable of taking up complex projects at the cutting edge of space research" Cutting edge for 1959, the year the Soviets landed a lunar impactor.
Tan he may be, but the poor guy may suffer from sterilization - all that radiation!
NASA will study this, and probably shelve it due to its excessive simplicity.
Only it isn't
Interesting that among all of the film and or TV series with a really devoted following - (The Matrix, Star Wars, Star Trek, LOTR to name a few) the Alien films have slipped under the radar for media attention. You just never hear or see anything in the mainstream media about Alien film fans, but there they are, writing fan fiction, constructing webrings, and undertaking interesting projects like this case mod. The attention to detail given by fans often outstrips that by show creators and filmmakers, but I'd argue that the Alien series is an exception.
An MTA surcharge -Mass Transit Authority. What the bloody hell does telecommunications have to do with mass transit? I work in the suburbs - why do I have to subsidizie the MTA, and through a phone levy, no less!
Watching Godzilla and driving my El Camino.