I worked my way through college doing tech support for Beagle Bros. If you recognize the reference, then you are a TRUE SLASHDOTTER in my humble opinion.
I've still got the tips poster.
Remember how there was nothing to prevent you putting the cable to the floppy drives off-by-one on the connector pins? Did that a fair number of times; the drive wouldn't work, but that was all.
Anyway, if you had a steady hand and didn't cross the pins, you could insert or remove a disk drive card with the power still on. We used Slot 6, but I'm sure it would have worked in any slot.
Yeah, every so often the card would come loose, and we'd just push it back in. I did fry a drive once doing that, but the Apple worked just fine.
My wife commented that they got rid of the Dr. Janet Frasier (played by Teryl Rothery) to make sure the show wasn't too heavy with women in top positions, that would be threatening.
It was more a case of they wanted to kill off someone that people cared about, but not one of the primary characters. That pretty much limited it to Frasier; I don't think we'd care too much if the guy who says "chevron engaged" bought it.
However, before using the GPS (not the car) you do need to setup a few features before using it. For example, adding the location for your house, the area in which you live or will be searching for addresses to
Huh? It doesn't need the location for my house or the area where I live, and I don't know what you mean by the area I'll be "searching for addresses to" - if I want it to provide directions, I enter an address, and it finds it, regardless of where I am or where the address is. If I don't, it just displays a map, which is useful all by itself - I've detoured around traffic several times just because I could see that the next side street connected to the major street I wanted.
This would be fantastic for when I have to tell my mom how to do stuff on her Mac - she had a stroke recently, and it's affected her ability to relate spoken words to what's on the screen. Before, I could tell her to go to the File menu and she would; now, she can be looking right at it - even read it out loud - and not connect it to what I said.
She has no trouble recognizing a printed word when she sees it somewhere else, so I usually end up pointing my iSight at my screen. But it would save so much time if I could show her what to look at on her screen.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has basically their entire knowledge base since the dawn of Time
Really? Then why do so many of the entries on that webpage say " Note: Microsoft has taken it down. Sorry." or "Note: MS has edited the original. This now links to archive.org."
Lucky you. I did the same - Mom forwarded me something her friend had sent (one of those "police alert" hoaxes). I sent Mom and her friend a pointer to the Snopes page on links. Friend thanked me, saying she'd be sure to check that out before she mailed anything else - then added me to her wide-open cc list for the next hoax she fell for!
I bounced her mail to get off her list (she obviously being too clueless for a simple "don't mail me!" to work) but the damage was done - my guess is she or one of the other people on the list caught a virus which added my address to a spammer's list, because my formerly spam-free account (which has never been posted online or used for any registration) started getting spam.
Let's put this in our terms. Say you're making $50,000 a year and you're due a bonus of $125,000 (I dunno why, but this is what happens) but then your immediate superior says, 'Hey, you can get $1 Million in stock options instead of the bonus.' And seeing as how this is a good bit more than what your bonus would be, you say "Fuck yeah!" and do it, but then the company does something retarded, and your stock option become completely worthless.
Even *before* the dot-com bubble burst, I'd seen enough stock options tank that I would've said "Fuck that!" and taken the cash.
Wise people know that owning a copy protects against censorship. Ten years from now, the owner of some movie might decide he doesn't want anyone to see it because his wife was naked in the film or he no longer likes its politics.
Or because he decides that Han Solo would never shoot first.
I agree with Buffet that options clearly have value-- otherwise employees would not value them as compensation.
I never "valued them as compensation". When Sun's stock price was at $170 and I got options that wouldn't vest for a year, I took it as exactly what it was - a way to look like Sun was including employees in the good times, without actually spending any money. A bonus would have been much more welcome, but there weren't any of those.
By the time the stock vested, it was worth about $17. All those stock options might have made some people feel warm and fuzzy, but it cost Sun absolutely nothing.
Startup options, where you're gambling that the company will take off and it doesn't have any other way to reward you are one thing - options when the company is rolling in money are quite different.
If you do have to put people on hold, one thing i'd really like to see on is some indication of call progression, eg 'You are currently position 7 in our queue. Given our current call rate your call will be answered in 10 minutes'. That way I can make a decision on if I want to hang around or maybe call back later. Market research must indicate that this doesn't encourage people to stay on hold though as I have never encountered it.
I have - but only at one company, and I can't remember who it was.
That all said, nothing is more annoying, once there is interesting hold conent, than to have it interrupted every 15 seconds reminding the caller that "Your call is important to us, stay on the line to keep your position, blah, blah.". Say that at most once up-front and never again.
If that message never changes, yeah, but I once dealt with a company that would break with "you are now Nth in line". Depending on N and how quickly it changed, I knew whether it was worth it to hang on or just leave a message.
Make the Federation the bad guys, throw in a smart-ass computer, and name the series after the captain of the ship - then in season 3, have the captain disappear.
Just don't let the BBC get involved, or the F/X will be crap.
The one consistent thing I have observed in all my bosses who were good to work for, and all those who were dreadful, was that the good ones had children.
One of the worst bosses I saw (he wasn't my manager, he managed the QA team for our project) had kids. Everything you listed, he did not do, especiallly:
Will understand if you have to do occasionally weird hours if you have children of your own, without putting you on the no-promotions shit-list.
Despite the fact that he took more child-related time off than anyone else on his team, he got pissy whenever anyone else took time off for their kids. When layoffs happened, the two new moms were first to go, despite them also being the two most experienced (and favorites with the engineers).
Badger, wheedle, cajole, or guilt you into overcommitting yourself because that looks so much better on his Gantt charts.
Or double all your estimates on his Gantt chart, so that when you get stuff done when you said you would, he can take credit for "inspiring" his team to "beat the estimate"
I am waiting for the day when people start sending(read: abusing) these kind of take down notices in order to shut down a site they don't like, or even worse, competition.
No need to wait. The Scientologists have been doing that for years now.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting phrasing in her canned reply - why would we be directing sympathy to Putnam, unless we thought they were in the right?
I've still got the tips poster.
Remember how there was nothing to prevent you putting the cable to the floppy drives off-by-one on the connector pins? Did that a fair number of times; the drive wouldn't work, but that was all.
Anyway, if you had a steady hand and didn't cross the pins, you could insert or remove a disk drive card with the power still on. We used Slot 6, but I'm sure it would have worked in any slot.
Yeah, every so often the card would come loose, and we'd just push it back in. I did fry a drive once doing that, but the Apple worked just fine.
Back in the days of the Apple][, Apple ran an ad showing one that had been melted in a house fire, but still worked.
Don't you mean iRobot?
It was more a case of they wanted to kill off someone that people cared about, but not one of the primary characters. That pretty much limited it to Frasier; I don't think we'd care too much if the guy who says "chevron engaged" bought it.
Huh? It doesn't need the location for my house or the area where I live, and I don't know what you mean by the area I'll be "searching for addresses to" - if I want it to provide directions, I enter an address, and it finds it, regardless of where I am or where the address is. If I don't, it just displays a map, which is useful all by itself - I've detoured around traffic several times just because I could see that the next side street connected to the major street I wanted.
She has no trouble recognizing a printed word when she sees it somewhere else, so I usually end up pointing my iSight at my screen. But it would save so much time if I could show her what to look at on her screen.
And the top dummy number will be "8675309@jenny.com"
Really? Then why do so many of the entries on that webpage say " Note: Microsoft has taken it down. Sorry." or "Note: MS has edited the original. This now links to archive.org."
I bounced her mail to get off her list (she obviously being too clueless for a simple "don't mail me!" to work) but the damage was done - my guess is she or one of the other people on the list caught a virus which added my address to a spammer's list, because my formerly spam-free account (which has never been posted online or used for any registration) started getting spam.
Even *before* the dot-com bubble burst, I'd seen enough stock options tank that I would've said "Fuck that!" and taken the cash.
Or because he decides that Han Solo would never shoot first.
I never "valued them as compensation". When Sun's stock price was at $170 and I got options that wouldn't vest for a year, I took it as exactly what it was - a way to look like Sun was including employees in the good times, without actually spending any money. A bonus would have been much more welcome, but there weren't any of those.
By the time the stock vested, it was worth about $17. All those stock options might have made some people feel warm and fuzzy, but it cost Sun absolutely nothing.
Startup options, where you're gambling that the company will take off and it doesn't have any other way to reward you are one thing - options when the company is rolling in money are quite different.
I have - but only at one company, and I can't remember who it was.
If that message never changes, yeah, but I once dealt with a company that would break with "you are now Nth in line". Depending on N and how quickly it changed, I knew whether it was worth it to hang on or just leave a message.
You laugh, but my Mini Cooper alread has 'em
Just don't let the BBC get involved, or the F/X will be crap.
The only advantage I see with the BMW link is that it shows the song title (if I'm reading the website correctly)
One of the worst bosses I saw (he wasn't my manager, he managed the QA team for our project) had kids. Everything you listed, he did not do, especiallly:
Will understand if you have to do occasionally weird hours if you have children of your own, without putting you on the no-promotions shit-list.
Despite the fact that he took more child-related time off than anyone else on his team, he got pissy whenever anyone else took time off for their kids. When layoffs happened, the two new moms were first to go, despite them also being the two most experienced (and favorites with the engineers).
Or double all your estimates on his Gantt chart, so that when you get stuff done when you said you would, he can take credit for "inspiring" his team to "beat the estimate"
So when my Mac was getting 10bytes/sec at 10PM but decent speed at 1AM, it really was my computer at fault as Comcast claimed?
Somehow, I don't think so.
Not everywhere. Here in Sunnyvale they used to be separate, but when Comcast took over they combined the bills.
No need to wait. The Scientologists have been doing that for years now.
Solaris has a help key. Hit it by mistake in Workshop, and Workshop dies.
More than that - #1 comcast & #3 attbi are the same company now.