I was out having dim sum with a lot of my friends and I started sneezing.. allergy season. One of my friends made a joke that I must have sars and that maybe the restaurant would clear out so we'd get dim sum faster (the wait time was usually at least an hour or longer). I told her that only the non-Chinese people would be worried that I had sars because all the rest would be smart enough to know that it wasn't so there would be no decrease in wait time for us.
Wrist rests are for resting your wrist on whilst you are not typing!
Actually, I got tendonitis in my upper forearms because I did not have proper arm wrests. when I wanted to rest my arms, there was always a pressure point somewhere along the arm (or worse, at the wrists which would reduce blood flow) rather than the arm able to lay flat. I also code for long periods of time.
The symptoms have reduced in intensity after I got an ergonomic chair where the arm rests were adjustable in height. It was a serious problem that my manager, after being told by ergonomics to get me a chair immediately, didn't get me one until a year later. I could kill him for that and for rating my productivity low while the company doctor restricted my work hours so I wouldn't do myself more injury and my manager couldn't make me wor
I'd rather stand on my own merits and get pay raises dictated by my performance
And if your manager wants to save money, he'll say your performance was poor and you won't get that raise or promotion. And when you ask what it was that caused your bad performance, he can say that you didn't grow or learn enough. Like that can be quantified.
They show movies and whatever else projected on the wall. They'll have special advertised "dinner and a movie" nights so you'll know what they'll be playing. I don't know the name of the place but they're right next door to the Stinking Rose.
I'm hearing a lot of disagreement on slashdot (no, I am not suprised). Unfortunately, I'm not a lawyer type and the ones I know are currently 800 miles away at an unspecified location. I think that it is doable but that you're best covering your butt.
And about some place playing music in between sets, I would think someone could get around this by allowing a "patron" to enjoy listening to whatever music they wanted and it just so happened that the rest of the audience "had" to listen to it.
1 cup = 8 oz. I would go through 3-52 oz containers of diet soda a day at work. 156 oz per 8 hour = almost 2 cups per hour.
Having found that aspartame gives me migranes upon withdrawl, I've since stopped drinking diet soda, replaced it with 3 Liters of water ( 101.4 oz total) and maybe one or two cans of regular soda. Things I've found when I start to drink the first can: * Have to use the restroom within 30 minutes (diuretic properties from suppressing ADH) * Heart rate increases dramatically within first 10 minutes (measured by medical professionals)
I've also found an addiction to it meaning I am sluggish if I do not maintain regular usage, but found that I can slowly reduce consumption and be fine. It is difficult, however to not drink pop at restaurants when I don't drink alcohol and the tap water sucks in Californi
"Acid? From paper? Attacking polycarbonate (see also: "safety glasses") discs? Hilarious."
Do a google search on "acidic paper comic books". The first link to come up to me talks about how even CARDBOARD is acidic. I have a cousin who collects comic books and learned quite a bit about the acidic properties of most paper (and thus the damage that poorly stored comic books endure).
There were also 40 PED related reports collected by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The PED most frequently
suspected as a source of interference was laptop computers, 16 times out of 40 or 40%. The most frequent aircraft system affected by a
suspected PED interference source was navigation, 27 times out of 40 or 68%. In three of these cases, the suspected PED was turned off
to verify that the aircraft system anomaly went away and then turned on to confirm that the PED was actually the source of the
interference.
You can google under "boeing study cell phones planes" and find this
article:
In three studies -- none more recent than 1996 -- aeronautic adviser RTCA concluded portable electronic devices have the potential to
interfere with critical aircraft instruments such as the altimeter. The study also said the likelihood of interference is low.
"We would get a fairly detailed and credible report of an interference event," said John Sheehan, who headed the RTCA's last study and
now owns his own aviation consulting firm. "We would try to replicate that in the same aircraft and same airplane seat and couldn't do it."
"Interference" is not only the garbling of communication. It can include false warnings of unsafe conditions or noise in the flight crew's
headphones. In a recent incident, a Slovenian airplane en route to Sarajevo made an emergency landing after a cell phone accidentally left
on in the luggage compartment triggered an erroneous fire warning aboard the aircraft.
Boeing once purchased a passenger's laptop after claims that the computer caused interference during a flight from London to Paris; the
pilot said turning the laptop on and off triggered autopilot error. Boeing then flew that same laptop on the same route in the same seat and
was unable to duplicate the interference.
But it doesn't mean the interference never occurred, Sheehan said. Engineers say replicating interference is tricky because they can't
duplicate the exact environment of the plane, which at the time of the interference could have been bombarded with other microwave
emitters like radio towers and satellite transmissions.
The widest part of an equilateral triangle is at the edge. And the narrowest part is from one tip to the bisecting point on the opposing side. If that width is narrower than the lip of a side of the triangle, then it can fall through.
This is just like an oval can fall through the wide arc by putting it through on its narrow arc.
I would assume he's helping support her financially while she's looking for somewhere to work. You know, the type of thing that you'd do if you care for someone.
I am not familiar with any of the details of the relationship other than what was stated. However, I do not support enabling and at first glance it sounds like he's enabling her to be in debt and rack up bills. Then again, I don't support going into more debt than you have money to begin with. If I cared about someone, I'd allow them to fall (after a warning) so they'd realize that their behavior is destructive.
mod this comment much higher! specifically readers may be interested in going to this link off of the page which discusses what I've been talking about in some of my posts: that it starts earlier with societal conditioning for women not to enter into math and sciences.
My nick on several boards used to be Ada (I was her for Halloween one year even and won 2nd place:) ). She was the first "documented" programmer but she was a mathematician first... And I haven't really heard about any other females in early programming but I certainly hear about modern ones from participating in WITI.
Biology is one of those oddities that I've also seen. I don't particularly know why.
The topic never refered specifically to affirmative action. The topic refered to boosting numbers. This can be through programs like a support group to help them and encourage them to stay with a subject where they may be an oddity and not have many peers like themselves. And there are instances of support groups(such as Women in Science) where they are not closed to men. Obviously there is not a problem with large numbers of men staying in technology.
Affirmative action is intended to prevent possible discrimination. While I want to prevent discrimination myself (having observed a possible instance at work), I do not support affirmative action. I think the point of a program should be to pick the best and the brightest. Do you want your doctor to have gotten into medical school because of their race or because they were the better candidate?
I just don't see the point of going out of one's way to put women in a career that they would not have gone into naturally by themselves.
They wouldn't have naturally gone into it by themselves because women aren't encouraged to be in math and science to begin with. And with women being the minority in CS, then other women have fewer role models to look up to. Women are taught to think things like "math is hard." After all, why would a statement like that get chosen for a girl's doll?
So basically, CS is a bunch of people who already "think" in algorithms and the classes are just a formality.
Now that leads to the question: why are there so few women who already "basically know everything" about computers? Who knows. My guess is that women just don't think that way.
I think in algorithms. Because of it, CS was very much a breeze for me. I have other female friends who also think in algorithms. So obviously, there are some women who "think that way."
Why are there so few who "basically know everything?" Because women are social creatures. Knowing everything about a subject implies long hours of learning it... locked away in your basement or whatever... and not being social. I'd personally be out hanging with my friends than learning everything there is to know about computers. When I have the time (and interest.. after all, I could be reading Feynman, Fermat, or something on the all-pairs closest points problem), I ask my SO to teach me about networking, but I highly doubt I'm ever going to get to the stage of knowing everything.
Oh, and I believe one of my female friends in CS grad school said that the ratio of men to women gets more even up there.
Organizations like Women in Science are great to help get and KEEP women in CS. The problem isn't just with CS; the problem is with MOST sciences. I was a math major. They were dealing with the recruiting problem there.
The solution to getting more women in CS is to look at the problems. I almost didn't go into CS. My mother (who is a software engineer) thought I wasn't taking enough classes at one point and suggested I give CS a try. I took it the same quarter I took a chemistry lab. Suffice it to say, I spent Monday and Tuesday writing my lab papers, Wednesday and Thursday coding my projects, and then crashing on the weekend and sleeping through it. I burned myself out badly that quarter and almost never went back. It was because I didn't get into medical school and needed job skills that I took another course. My math background (and the algorhythmic thinking that supported it to begin with) was why I was able to easily pick it up in a quarter where I wasn't already over taxed. I actually stuck out in the class of 300: the teacher took a liking to me when I picked out a coding error that he'd had on his slides for the past five years so he'd pick on me lots (in a joking manner). I suppose I would have stuck out being that I think I could have counted the other females in the class using both hands. That first class nearly did me in, though.
The first class did my sister in. She had a crap teacher. When I tried to tutor her (I suck as a tutor), I found out that the teacher was just *not* teaching certain concepts to the class (my sister is an honors student and it was known that the entire class was having trouble due to this instructor).
I was never intimidated by the guys in the class. Hell, I actually got hit on more in my physics class than I did in CS. Maybe I intimidated the guys;)
So going back to the problems: Organizations like WIT (women in technology) and WIS really help women. It gives them a place to go in a non-threatening environment where they can often get tutoring and not give up on a subject. As I mentioned in another post, WIT has events where they urge junior high school women to stay with math and science. It's those fundamentals that come before CS classes that will definitely make a difference.
As for discrimination: I had a male friend who was actually part of the campus WIS group. It was targeted at women, but men were not excluded. To the person who wants to start a Men in CS group: go for it, but you've already met your objective (to get a significant amount of men in CS) so what's your point?
the real problem is that most CS guys know little else. They want some women to come to their level so they can communicate, when it is they who need to branch out and explore other areas of society.
Um, you're very wrong. I happen to know several CS guys who know lots about other things: motorcycles, classical music, biology, irish dancing.. you name it.
And it isn't just guys who want women in CS. I particpate in Women in Science through IBM and one of the projects is once a year, we give a presentation at a local junior high school to women to try to interest them in science. Why? Because the majority of women don't stay in math and science (because our culture supports other fields.. boy do I want a barbie that says "let's go kill something" and a GI joe that says "math is hard" in a girlie voice) and are not able to get IT jobs in the future. I stayed with math because I was good at it. I was good at it because I had a teacher who let me work ahead as far as I wanted in the book.
I'm very luck to be at IBM. Not just because I'm employed, but because my particular group has a MAJORITY of women in it. In my team at some times, there has only been one guy on it (I want to say we had an all girls team at one point but I can't remember the time). I know that there are few other places that have that kind of percentage.
Oh, and to cover my legal butt, my statements are my own and I do not speak for or on IBM's behalf
Why are you paying for your girlfriend's credit card minimums? I wouldn't date someone who doesn't always pay their credit card bills. What other things do they intend to "worry about later" or be irresponsible with?
about 18% gets taken out for federal taxes. 6% goes into my employee stock purchase plan 10% goes to my 401k I forgot how much goes into state taxes.
out of my take home: 25% is my rent. 10% is utilities 6% is dinner out (enjoy life now) 10% is groceries 20% is car insurance, gas, maintenance (I'm lucky I'm female or my insurance would kick this up 9 % more) 10% is clothing and/or "toys" and/or other entertainment. 6% is medical bills The rest goes into savings and IRA which would tell too much about my salary.
These are estimates, but I keep a rather close eye on my finances also. You should perhaps use some software (or spreadsheet) to keep track of your finances so you can find out where the money is going.
If you have to go read up on a movie, then the trailor has FAILED.
I completely agree with this statement. So what is the point then of releasing them? I assume there has to be some point. Terminator 3 and Pirates of the Carabean both had completely pointless trailers at first (seeing 3 arc welded out of metal for t3 and seeing flashing swords and only swords "artistically" flying across the screen and and *one* cgi foot for PotC) but I have seen their most recent trailers and they certainly promise more.
Warning, the above poster gave a lot of bad advice. Not all of it was bad, but some of it.
I think that this is a result of my not defining my terms and not being the best (or good at all;) ) in explaining things. I'm a mathematician.. I'm supposed to be confusing, right? In any case, I appreciate your ability to come across clearly.
Risk is defined as the odds that your money will grow any given year.... The only risk is that the company might to bankrupt.
Both are something I am seriously worried about (and intended to refer to). I felt the later was definitely a possibility with all the dot bombs (and some good companies I know that are being destroyed by management from the inside out). Being a software engineer in the current economy is not a safe place to be for high risks (IMO). I may need a guaranteed return just in case I lose my job. A loss for a year won't be weathered if I have to take the money out to feed myself and pay rent after my liquid funds are gone.
Please don't pay too much attention to short-term trends (anything less than 10-20 years). The immediate past is a poor predicter of future returns. It's impossible to routinely predict the direction of the market.
Actually, I'm paying attention to the long term trends. If you look at the past 10 years, there is a significant peak of overinflated values just as there has been over the past 100 years at times. And on those previous overinflated times, the market has seriously corrected itself to underinflated values. I haven't seen the bottom of the underinflated yet. While large corporations like big blue have corrected (swung from 120 down to below 60 and now is batting predictably), I feel that a lot haven't. If I was a good girl, I'd have put a link here to one of those 100 year stock trend charts from some large financial company.
I'm not a big person to be in the stock market anyways. I'm an echo of an echo of the great depression. My grandparents grew up in times where you wasted nothing and always finished all the food on your plate because you didn't know when there was going to be more. My father was brought up in that fashion and I happened to inherit it along with my Chinese mother's heritage of saving money. This translates to that I am not a person to take risk. I like predictable fixed return instead of fluctuation with half of my savings. I do understand that I have to take some risks and investments to stay ahead of inflation.
I don't mind losing some of my investment from time to time for an overall long-term gain of ~10%. 3.75% may look nice in the current market, but over a few decades, it's not much to write home about.
I suppose I should explain more. Yes, it is good in the current market. And when the market improves, CD percentage rates will go up. It used to be that two years ago, my *savings* account was at 4% and CDs were higher than the current variable return cap on my AmEx fund. The smart thing to do 2 years ago would again, be to invest in my credit union's CDs rather than invest in the fund because I would not only get a higher fixed return, but it was guaranteed.
You have a better tolerance for short-term risk to gain a more predictable long-term return. Risk != being careless and brash.
I agree completely. The situation was that my financial advisor asked me what my comfort level was in investing (to which I was moderate) and informed me about risk tolerance to which I said I was not comfortable with higher levels, and then changed my profile behind my back. When I told him that he clearly marked it wrong, he tried to reason it away, but the fact was that he changed my profile and that I was not comfortable with it and had not okayed it.
Once you start needing your invested money within 5-10 years, that tolerance drops, and you should move more of your funds to investments with reduced short-term risk
In this economy, I would definitely say I would need my invested money within 5-10 years. This is something my planner should take into account. I would also like to get a house which I listed as one of my financial goals. Again, this is a within 5-10 years purchase that wasn't taken into account.
Maybe I just had a really bad experience. I admit it started out bad when he decided to charge me $75 more because he thought I had a smaller discount and just upped his asking price when he found out I had a larger. I will say that having the layout of my finances helped me start investing in IRAs and 401ks (I was very hesitant to invest in anything and that turned out for the better over the past couple years). But the manager is currently not actively doing his job (which is walking me through my investments, how they're going and how they'll affect me) after I started to do investments through other methods (IE: through my company offered discounted channels instead of purchasing his AmEx funds).
Define "stable." You might have a job that you know you will be in for life (you'll know if this is you) but around you the world is going to hell in a handbasket. In Silicon Valley, there was a report on the radio about how 12,500 people left the area just last year. That speaks of a reduction in the housing market (not that I can see yet). So your investment may not be so good in a house if the prices are going to go lower. Then again, interest rates are at an incredible low.
Don't let them run you over with what they think is best and don't let them cower you into it (I guess this is more for people who feel very uncertain about what type of investment they should do). I used American Express and what they had me do was layout what I wanted as a goal for a flat fee. They would then offer "services" which are sold hard to help me attain that goal. I haven't heard from my manager in months. I haven't had the time and was wise enough not to give them too much money to "play" with.
They did *not* take a good look at my investment comfortability nor did they take a good look at my interest rates in current investments. They also wanted me to give them authorization to my bank accounts (and were very pushy about it). I'm not that stupid, especially with the paypal stories going around. I told them in no uncertain terms were they, or anyone going to have access because it allowed unmonitored transactions and everyone knows it is harder to get cash back than giving it.
First off, they explained that because I am "young" I can "risk" more and not be dead in the water because I can always "make it up later". I think this is a crappy approach to investment.
Second, they wanted me to invest money in the stock market indexes when I was clearly observing a downward trend. I only gave them the first thousand because I wanted to see where it went. It was guaranteed not to lose money, but had a cap at 6% return. So far, it has not made a dime while my fixed interest CDs are rocking away at 3.75 %. My financial advisor did not seem happy that I had given my credit union 3K for a fixed return and has probably not called me because of it.
Which brings me to my third: find a credit union. They are usually nicer and have higher interest rate return than banks. And if the people from AmEx had actually taken a *look* at my financial data, they would have seen that their "locked, harder to access money, must pay fee to do so quickly" 3rd tier account gave a *lower* percent interest than my savings account which is accessible 24/7.
The Vegas Star Trek experience is INCREDIBLE. Perhaps I exagerate, but I really enjoyed it. It's one thing to watch the set of the enterprise on your television, but another to actually suspend disbelief and feel that you're *on* it. I just don't really like Paul Allen (having been a Washington native for my first 24 years) and hope he doesn't screw it up like a lot of his other pet projects.
Slashdot Mirror
I was out having dim sum with a lot of my friends and I started sneezing.. allergy season. One of my friends made a joke that I must have sars and that maybe the restaurant would clear out so we'd get dim sum faster (the wait time was usually at least an hour or longer). I told her that only the non-Chinese people would be worried that I had sars because all the rest would be smart enough to know that it wasn't so there would be no decrease in wait time for us.
Actually, I got tendonitis in my upper forearms because I did not have proper arm wrests. when I wanted to rest my arms, there was always a pressure point somewhere along the arm (or worse, at the wrists which would reduce blood flow) rather than the arm able to lay flat. I also code for long periods of time.
The symptoms have reduced in intensity after I got an ergonomic chair where the arm rests were adjustable in height. It was a serious problem that my manager, after being told by ergonomics to get me a chair immediately, didn't get me one until a year later. I could kill him for that and for rating my productivity low while the company doctor restricted my work hours so I wouldn't do myself more injury and my manager couldn't make me wor
And if your manager wants to save money, he'll say your performance was poor and you won't get that raise or promotion. And when you ask what it was that caused your bad performance, he can say that you didn't grow or learn enough. Like that can be quantified.
They show movies and whatever else projected on the wall. They'll have special advertised "dinner and a movie" nights so you'll know what they'll be playing. I don't know the name of the place but they're right next door to the Stinking Rose.
I'm hearing a lot of disagreement on slashdot (no, I am not suprised). Unfortunately, I'm not a lawyer type and the ones I know are currently 800 miles away at an unspecified location. I think that it is doable but that you're best covering your butt.
And about some place playing music in between sets, I would think someone could get around this by allowing a "patron" to enjoy listening to whatever music they wanted and it just so happened that the rest of the audience "had" to listen to it.
1 cup = 8 oz.
I would go through 3-52 oz containers of diet soda a day at work.
156 oz per 8 hour = almost 2 cups per hour.
Having found that aspartame gives me migranes upon withdrawl, I've since stopped drinking diet soda, replaced it with 3 Liters of water ( 101.4 oz total) and maybe one or two cans of regular soda. Things I've found when I start to drink the first can:
* Have to use the restroom within 30 minutes (diuretic properties from suppressing ADH)
* Heart rate increases dramatically within first 10 minutes (measured by medical professionals)
I've also found an addiction to it meaning I am sluggish if I do not maintain regular usage, but found that I can slowly reduce consumption and be fine. It is difficult, however to not drink pop at restaurants when I don't drink alcohol and the tap water sucks in Californi
Do a google search on "acidic paper comic books". The first link to come up to me talks about how even CARDBOARD is acidic. I have a cousin who collects comic books and learned quite a bit about the acidic properties of most paper (and thus the damage that poorly stored comic books endure).
The widest part of an equilateral triangle is at the edge. And the narrowest part is from one tip to the bisecting point on the opposing side. If that width is narrower than the lip of a side of the triangle, then it can fall through.
This is just like an oval can fall through the wide arc by putting it through on its narrow arc.
I am not familiar with any of the details of the relationship other than what was stated. However, I do not support enabling and at first glance it sounds like he's enabling her to be in debt and rack up bills. Then again, I don't support going into more debt than you have money to begin with. If I cared about someone, I'd allow them to fall (after a warning) so they'd realize that their behavior is destructive.
mod this comment much higher! specifically readers may be interested in going to this link off of the page which discusses what I've been talking about in some of my posts: that it starts earlier with societal conditioning for women not to enter into math and sciences.
My nick on several boards used to be Ada (I was her for Halloween one year even and won 2nd place :) ). She was the first "documented" programmer but she was a mathematician first... And I haven't really heard about any other females in early programming but I certainly hear about modern ones from participating in WITI.
:)
Biology is one of those oddities that I've also seen. I don't particularly know why.
I still want the dolls.
The topic never refered specifically to affirmative action. The topic refered to boosting numbers. This can be through programs like a support group to help them and encourage them to stay with a subject where they may be an oddity and not have many peers like themselves. And there are instances of support groups(such as Women in Science) where they are not closed to men. Obviously there is not a problem with large numbers of men staying in technology.
Affirmative action is intended to prevent possible discrimination. While I want to prevent discrimination myself (having observed a possible instance at work), I do not support affirmative action. I think the point of a program should be to pick the best and the brightest. Do you want your doctor to have gotten into medical school because of their race or because they were the better candidate?
They wouldn't have naturally gone into it by themselves because women aren't encouraged to be in math and science to begin with. And with women being the minority in CS, then other women have fewer role models to look up to. Women are taught to think things like "math is hard." After all, why would a statement like that get chosen for a girl's doll?
Now that leads to the question: why are there so few women who already "basically know everything" about computers? Who knows. My guess is that women just don't think that way.
I think in algorithms. Because of it, CS was very much a breeze for me. I have other female friends who also think in algorithms. So obviously, there are some women who "think that way."
Why are there so few who "basically know everything?" Because women are social creatures. Knowing everything about a subject implies long hours of learning it... locked away in your basement or whatever... and not being social. I'd personally be out hanging with my friends than learning everything there is to know about computers. When I have the time (and interest.. after all, I could be reading Feynman, Fermat, or something on the all-pairs closest points problem), I ask my SO to teach me about networking, but I highly doubt I'm ever going to get to the stage of knowing everything.
Oh, and I believe one of my female friends in CS grad school said that the ratio of men to women gets more even up there.
Organizations like Women in Science are great to help get and KEEP women in CS. The problem isn't just with CS; the problem is with MOST sciences. I was a math major. They were dealing with the recruiting problem there.
;)
The solution to getting more women in CS is to look at the problems. I almost didn't go into CS. My mother (who is a software engineer) thought I wasn't taking enough classes at one point and suggested I give CS a try. I took it the same quarter I took a chemistry lab. Suffice it to say, I spent Monday and Tuesday writing my lab papers, Wednesday and Thursday coding my projects, and then crashing on the weekend and sleeping through it. I burned myself out badly that quarter and almost never went back. It was because I didn't get into medical school and needed job skills that I took another course. My math background (and the algorhythmic thinking that supported it to begin with) was why I was able to easily pick it up in a quarter where I wasn't already over taxed. I actually stuck out in the class of 300: the teacher took a liking to me when I picked out a coding error that he'd had on his slides for the past five years so he'd pick on me lots (in a joking manner). I suppose I would have stuck out being that I think I could have counted the other females in the class using both hands. That first class nearly did me in, though.
The first class did my sister in. She had a crap teacher. When I tried to tutor her (I suck as a tutor), I found out that the teacher was just *not* teaching certain concepts to the class (my sister is an honors student and it was known that the entire class was having trouble due to this instructor).
I was never intimidated by the guys in the class. Hell, I actually got hit on more in my physics class than I did in CS. Maybe I intimidated the guys
So going back to the problems: Organizations like WIT (women in technology) and WIS really help women. It gives them a place to go in a non-threatening environment where they can often get tutoring and not give up on a subject. As I mentioned in another post, WIT has events where they urge junior high school women to stay with math and science. It's those fundamentals that come before CS classes that will definitely make a difference.
As for discrimination: I had a male friend who was actually part of the campus WIS group. It was targeted at women, but men were not excluded. To the person who wants to start a Men in CS group: go for it, but you've already met your objective (to get a significant amount of men in CS) so what's your point?
Um, you're very wrong. I happen to know several CS guys who know lots about other things: motorcycles, classical music, biology, irish dancing.. you name it.
And it isn't just guys who want women in CS. I particpate in Women in Science through IBM and one of the projects is once a year, we give a presentation at a local junior high school to women to try to interest them in science. Why? Because the majority of women don't stay in math and science (because our culture supports other fields.. boy do I want a barbie that says "let's go kill something" and a GI joe that says "math is hard" in a girlie voice) and are not able to get IT jobs in the future. I stayed with math because I was good at it. I was good at it because I had a teacher who let me work ahead as far as I wanted in the book.
I'm very luck to be at IBM. Not just because I'm employed, but because my particular group has a MAJORITY of women in it. In my team at some times, there has only been one guy on it (I want to say we had an all girls team at one point but I can't remember the time). I know that there are few other places that have that kind of percentage.
Oh, and to cover my legal butt, my statements are my own and I do not speak for or on IBM's behalf
Why are you paying for your girlfriend's credit card minimums? I wouldn't date someone who doesn't always pay their credit card bills. What other things do they intend to "worry about later" or be irresponsible with?
about 18% gets taken out for federal taxes.
6% goes into my employee stock purchase plan
10% goes to my 401k
I forgot how much goes into state taxes.
out of my take home:
25% is my rent.
10% is utilities
6% is dinner out (enjoy life now)
10% is groceries
20% is car insurance, gas, maintenance (I'm lucky I'm female or my insurance would kick this up 9 % more)
10% is clothing and/or "toys" and/or other entertainment.
6% is medical bills
The rest goes into savings and IRA which would tell too much about my salary.
These are estimates, but I keep a rather close eye on my finances also. You should perhaps use some software (or spreadsheet) to keep track of your finances so you can find out where the money is going.
I completely agree with this statement. So what is the point then of releasing them? I assume there has to be some point. Terminator 3 and Pirates of the Carabean both had completely pointless trailers at first (seeing 3 arc welded out of metal for t3 and seeing flashing swords and only swords "artistically" flying across the screen and and *one* cgi foot for PotC) but I have seen their most recent trailers and they certainly promise more.
I think that this is a result of my not defining my terms and not being the best (or good at all ;) ) in explaining things. I'm a mathematician.. I'm supposed to be confusing, right? In any case, I appreciate your ability to come across clearly.
Risk is defined as the odds that your money will grow any given year. ... The only risk is that the company might to bankrupt.
Both are something I am seriously worried about (and intended to refer to). I felt the later was definitely a possibility with all the dot bombs (and some good companies I know that are being destroyed by management from the inside out). Being a software engineer in the current economy is not a safe place to be for high risks (IMO). I may need a guaranteed return just in case I lose my job. A loss for a year won't be weathered if I have to take the money out to feed myself and pay rent after my liquid funds are gone.
Actually, I'm paying attention to the long term trends. If you look at the past 10 years, there is a significant peak of overinflated values just as there has been over the past 100 years at times. And on those previous overinflated times, the market has seriously corrected itself to underinflated values. I haven't seen the bottom of the underinflated yet. While large corporations like big blue have corrected (swung from 120 down to below 60 and now is batting predictably), I feel that a lot haven't. If I was a good girl, I'd have put a link here to one of those 100 year stock trend charts from some large financial company.
I'm not a big person to be in the stock market anyways. I'm an echo of an echo of the great depression. My grandparents grew up in times where you wasted nothing and always finished all the food on your plate because you didn't know when there was going to be more. My father was brought up in that fashion and I happened to inherit it along with my Chinese mother's heritage of saving money. This translates to that I am not a person to take risk. I like predictable fixed return instead of fluctuation with half of my savings. I do understand that I have to take some risks and investments to stay ahead of inflation.
I don't mind losing some of my investment from time to time for an overall long-term gain of ~10%. 3.75% may look nice in the current market, but over a few decades, it's not much to write home about.
I suppose I should explain more. Yes, it is good in the current market. And when the market improves, CD percentage rates will go up. It used to be that two years ago, my *savings* account was at 4% and CDs were higher than the current variable return cap on my AmEx fund. The smart thing to do 2 years ago would again, be to invest in my credit union's CDs rather than invest in the fund because I would not only get a higher fixed return, but it was guaranteed.
You have a better tolerance for short-term risk to gain a more predictable long-term return. Risk != being careless and brash.
I agree completely. The situation was that my financial advisor asked me what my comfort level was in investing (to which I was moderate) and informed me about risk tolerance to which I said I was not comfortable with higher levels, and then changed my profile behind my back. When I told him that he clearly marked it wrong, he tried to reason it away, but the fact was that he changed my profile and that I was not comfortable with it and had not okayed it.
Once you start needing your invested money within 5-10 years, that tolerance drops, and you should move more of your funds to investments with reduced short-term risk
In this economy, I would definitely say I would need my invested money within 5-10 years. This is something my planner should take into account. I would also like to get a house which I listed as one of my financial goals. Again, this is a within 5-10 years purchase that wasn't taken into account.
Maybe I just had a really bad experience. I admit it started out bad when he decided to charge me $75 more because he thought I had a smaller discount and just upped his asking price when he found out I had a larger. I will say that having the layout of my finances helped me start investing in IRAs and 401ks (I was very hesitant to invest in anything and that turned out for the better over the past couple years). But the manager is currently not actively doing his job (which is walking me through my investments, how they're going and how they'll affect me) after I started to do investments through other methods (IE: through my company offered discounted channels instead of purchasing his AmEx funds).
Define "stable." You might have a job that you know you will be in for life (you'll know if this is you) but around you the world is going to hell in a handbasket. In Silicon Valley, there was a report on the radio about how 12,500 people left the area just last year. That speaks of a reduction in the housing market (not that I can see yet). So your investment may not be so good in a house if the prices are going to go lower. Then again, interest rates are at an incredible low.
Two more words: be assertive.
Don't let them run you over with what they think is best and don't let them cower you into it (I guess this is more for people who feel very uncertain about what type of investment they should do). I used American Express and what they had me do was layout what I wanted as a goal for a flat fee. They would then offer "services" which are sold hard to help me attain that goal. I haven't heard from my manager in months. I haven't had the time and was wise enough not to give them too much money to "play" with.
They did *not* take a good look at my investment comfortability nor did they take a good look at my interest rates in current investments. They also wanted me to give them authorization to my bank accounts (and were very pushy about it). I'm not that stupid, especially with the paypal stories going around. I told them in no uncertain terms were they, or anyone going to have access because it allowed unmonitored transactions and everyone knows it is harder to get cash back than giving it.
First off, they explained that because I am "young" I can "risk" more and not be dead in the water because I can always "make it up later". I think this is a crappy approach to investment.
Second, they wanted me to invest money in the stock market indexes when I was clearly observing a downward trend. I only gave them the first thousand because I wanted to see where it went. It was guaranteed not to lose money, but had a cap at 6% return. So far, it has not made a dime while my fixed interest CDs are rocking away at 3.75 %. My financial advisor did not seem happy that I had given my credit union 3K for a fixed return and has probably not called me because of it.
Which brings me to my third: find a credit union. They are usually nicer and have higher interest rate return than banks. And if the people from AmEx had actually taken a *look* at my financial data, they would have seen that their "locked, harder to access money, must pay fee to do so quickly" 3rd tier account gave a *lower* percent interest than my savings account which is accessible 24/7.
The Vegas Star Trek experience is INCREDIBLE. Perhaps I exagerate, but I really enjoyed it. It's one thing to watch the set of the enterprise on your television, but another to actually suspend disbelief and feel that you're *on* it. I just don't really like Paul Allen (having been a Washington native for my first 24 years) and hope he doesn't screw it up like a lot of his other pet projects.