Growth in the stock market is not a good indicator of the health of our economy, much less the health our nation as a whole. Much of the "growth" that people talk about during various points in time is actually just bubbles that eventually burst. All that growth in the stock market during the Clinton presidency? Seems to me that the timeframe correlates pretty closely with something that folks now refer to as the Internet bubble. I'm not blaming Clinton for creating that massive bubble that eventually burst, but by the same token, it's naive to give him credit for the (illusion of) growth that took place during his presidency.
and you have have a Democratic "majority" in congress that can't get a damn thing done.
This is exactly what we want, and why an Obama victory is so dangerous at this point in time.
Every time the government sticks their nose into something, it turns into a steaming pile of shit. We WANT gridlock in Washington. We WANT them to be unable to get much done.
It's simply WAY too fucking dangerous to have the same party in control of both the legislative and executive branches of government, regardless of which party it is. What people complain about as "gridlock" is actually one of the few things that keeps this country from going down the tubes even faster.
Our founding fathers had a different name for it, though. They didn't call it "gridlock". They called it "checks and balances".
So now you're drunk, know it, and have no way to call for a cab or friend to give you a ride home from the bar....
Let's face it, if you're too drunk to place a phone call, your judgment isn't quite what it should be about other things either. A great many people at that point would just say "Fuck it, I'll drive myself home".
When I was young and had just gotten my license, we used to take our cars out onto the frozen lake in town. (Plowing through a 6 foot snow drift at 95 mph is a LOT of fun!)
As reckless and irresponsible as we were being, I did learn an awful lot about how to control a car on pretty much the most slippery surface you'll find.
I used to have a set of those for my 300ZX. Worst possible winter car imaginable. 2 seater, light weight, wide tires, and rear wheel drive.
With those cables on, though, I pulled a couple of stuck SUVs out of snow drifts with it during one particularly bad blizzard.
That said, I'd still rather be driving a 4WD SUV when winter comes around. You just have to be aware of what advantages 4WD *actually* offers, as opposed to what most people seem to *think* it does.
Incompetence is a legally and socially accepted reason to fire somebody up here. I doubt if it is much different in the US.
While that's technically the case in the US, large companies have become so phobic about lawsuits that their own policies make it very difficult for a manager to fire someone for that reason. It usually requires months and months of thorough documentation of multiple incidents. It can be much quicker and easier to get rid of somebody by simply encouraging them to apply for positions in a different area of the company.
Decreasing morale by promoting incompetence is not productive from the managers point of view (of course if most managers where competent than this wouldn't be an issue).
While you and I both know you're right, the sad truth is that there are MANY incompetent, idiotic managers out there who simply lack the necessary common sense to see that.
In the example I was sharing, the manager of the department I was trying to transfer to was a good one. He treated his people just as you describe, and I'd probably still be with that company today had I been able to make the jump.
Unfortunately, the manager I was stuck with, well, I've already described how he approached his job.
Agreed, but irrelevant. If people are going to be promoted then IMHO it would make sense that you should promote somebody who would be intelligent and competent instead of promoting somebody who is incompetent.
No, it's not irrelevant. What is irrelevant is what your "humble opinion" is, and what you think "makes sense".
The fact is that when it comes to tech support, the skilled people get left where they're at, and the incompetent get promoted out. I've seen it happen many times, and been a victim of it once myself.
Look at it from the manager of a support department's point of view. Your job is to run a kick-ass support department, your raises, bonuses, and promotions depend on it. All of a sudden you have an incompetent fool working for you. Firing them is a risky move in today's legal environment. It's much safer to "promote" them to a spot where your customers never have to interact with the fool. In the meantime, you probably have several very skilled people working for you. It's in your best interests to use whatever tools are at your disposal to keep them exactly where they're at. Seeing them get promoted to bigger and better things means you have to take a chance on an unknown new hire to replace someone who has already proven beneficial to your own career.
Happened to me when I worked for a large, well-known.... Oh, fuck it, I'll name them. It happened to me when I worked for Norwest (now known as Wells Fargo). In a department of 11 people, only 2 of us were competent. (I was specifically told by my manager that I was the ONLY person in our department allowed to work on the CEO's laptop, even though, in theory, we should have all been capable.) Me and my one competent coworker did ALL of the work. We did our share of the work in a few hours each morning, and spent (unpaid) overtime helping the idiots with their work. We never got promoted, and only got bare minimum raises. In the meantime, the idiots in the department got regular raises and promotions.
Then there was our manager's "silver bullet". There were several mission critical functions that we were required to perform. There were documented procedures for these things, but we were under strict orders to do them "his way" instead. When I got a chance to move into a much better position in a different department, I got written up for not following the documented procedure. Due to the writeup, company policy dictated that I couldn't switch departments for at least 6 month.
Needless to say, I gave him my resignation on the spot. And I was moving into my new office at a new job before the week was out. The manager of the department I was trying to move to kept in contact with me for over a year, trying to get me to come to work for him, but my sanity is too valuable to go back to a company that allows that sort of environment.
I wanted to upgrade my camper to something with more room. The 6 litre has the engine power to pull it, but the suspension on that vehicle wasn't built for that task. The 5 litre, interestingly, has the suspension to handle it, but not the horsepower.
My solution is going to be buying a dedicated towing vehicle. I'm just starting to look into it, so I'm not sure what I'm going to end up with, but I suspect that it will end up being something in the 7.5 litre range, and capable of towing a fully loaded semi trailer. (which is pretty much on par with the camper I want to upgrade to....)
do it Cheap! You'll make up the profit through volume, (Economics 101)
Did you drop out of Econ 101 halfway through the semester?
"Well, boss, unfortunately we're losing $1.00 on every unit we sell. Don't worry, though, we'll make it up on volume!"
There are limits on how cheaply any given product can be put to market. Many times this limit is well above what most people would classify as "cheap".
And then I thought about carrying backups off-site, or automating backups to a box at someone else's house.
YMMV.
My backup solution for my home email server is to simply have a seperate gmail account set up that pulls mail in from my home server at frequent intervals.
Obviously not appropriate in every situation, but since this is a low volume server, it's good enough for me.
Personally, I don't think those situations would warrant the "shoot to kill" approach.
I do, however, firmly believe that we should bring back the days of loading shotgun shells with rock salt to drive away trespassing kids.
And I say this as a former trespassing kid who did once get a backside full of rock salt. Believe me, it taught me a great deal about respecting other peoples property.
You have a great point. Yet, it doesn't matter at all.
You're making the same error that I see many, many people (especially young ones) make. You're living your life according to how the world *should be*.
Succesful people live there lives according to the way the world *is*.
And if you include, on your resume, the URL of pictures of yourself passed out at a frat party, I'll toss your resume in the trash and hire someone with more common sense.
Believe it or not, some people actually do that.
Now, if I had to go googling for those pictures, the I, personally, wouldn't hold them against you. Many places would, though.
In the end it all boils down to this: How careful you need to be depends on the types of jobs you're hoping to get, either now or 20 years down the road. Once a picture is out there on the Internet, it will probably end up in some search engine cache that you can't really predict how long it will stick around.
Also worth considering is that your goals and ambitions will almost certainly be VERY different when you're 40 years old, with a family of 4, than when you're 22 and fresh out of college.
When applying for a job and getting a rejection letter, how often does it say more than "Thanks for your time, but unfortunately we've chosen a more qualified candidate"?
I know that's all that our rejection letters say. There's no information on who the successful candidate was, or what qualifications they had that were superior.
But behind the scenes, especially for the front desk position (which a retarded chimp could do around here), it's quite likely that "bigger tits" or "nicer ass" were the superior qualifications.
If we were to start googling into people's personal lives, that information wouldn't get passed along to the candidates, either.
Slashdot Mirror
I have sleep apnea. I'm also very thin. The doctors are always riding my ass to GAIN some weight.
But, yes, you're right. Being overweight is one of the major causes. It's just not the only one.
Oh, I have no doubt that things will be different now.
I just don't think that it's going to be the type of different that everyone was hoping for.
This is a sad, sad day for our country.
Let's give the guy some room to see what a Democratic president with Democratic congress can do for four years.
I can think of very few things that frighten me more.
Where have you been the past 8 years?
You think things were bad under Bush?
You ain't seen nothing yet.
Growth in the stock market is not a good indicator of the health of our economy, much less the health our nation as a whole. Much of the "growth" that people talk about during various points in time is actually just bubbles that eventually burst. All that growth in the stock market during the Clinton presidency? Seems to me that the timeframe correlates pretty closely with something that folks now refer to as the Internet bubble. I'm not blaming Clinton for creating that massive bubble that eventually burst, but by the same token, it's naive to give him credit for the (illusion of) growth that took place during his presidency.
and you have have a Democratic "majority" in congress that can't get a damn thing done.
This is exactly what we want, and why an Obama victory is so dangerous at this point in time.
Every time the government sticks their nose into something, it turns into a steaming pile of shit. We WANT gridlock in Washington. We WANT them to be unable to get much done.
It's simply WAY too fucking dangerous to have the same party in control of both the legislative and executive branches of government, regardless of which party it is. What people complain about as "gridlock" is actually one of the few things that keeps this country from going down the tubes even faster.
Our founding fathers had a different name for it, though. They didn't call it "gridlock". They called it "checks and balances".
So now you're drunk, know it, and have no way to call for a cab or friend to give you a ride home from the bar....
Let's face it, if you're too drunk to place a phone call, your judgment isn't quite what it should be about other things either. A great many people at that point would just say "Fuck it, I'll drive myself home".
When I was young and had just gotten my license, we used to take our cars out onto the frozen lake in town. (Plowing through a 6 foot snow drift at 95 mph is a LOT of fun!)
As reckless and irresponsible as we were being, I did learn an awful lot about how to control a car on pretty much the most slippery surface you'll find.
I used to have a set of those for my 300ZX. Worst possible winter car imaginable. 2 seater, light weight, wide tires, and rear wheel drive.
With those cables on, though, I pulled a couple of stuck SUVs out of snow drifts with it during one particularly bad blizzard.
That said, I'd still rather be driving a 4WD SUV when winter comes around. You just have to be aware of what advantages 4WD *actually* offers, as opposed to what most people seem to *think* it does.
Incompetence is a legally and socially accepted reason to fire somebody up here. I doubt if it is much different in the US.
While that's technically the case in the US, large companies have become so phobic about lawsuits that their own policies make it very difficult for a manager to fire someone for that reason. It usually requires months and months of thorough documentation of multiple incidents. It can be much quicker and easier to get rid of somebody by simply encouraging them to apply for positions in a different area of the company.
Decreasing morale by promoting incompetence is not productive from the managers point of view (of course if most managers where competent than this wouldn't be an issue).
While you and I both know you're right, the sad truth is that there are MANY incompetent, idiotic managers out there who simply lack the necessary common sense to see that.
In the example I was sharing, the manager of the department I was trying to transfer to was a good one. He treated his people just as you describe, and I'd probably still be with that company today had I been able to make the jump.
Unfortunately, the manager I was stuck with, well, I've already described how he approached his job.
Agreed, but irrelevant. If people are going to be promoted then IMHO it would make sense that you should promote somebody who would be intelligent and competent instead of promoting somebody who is incompetent.
No, it's not irrelevant. What is irrelevant is what your "humble opinion" is, and what you think "makes sense".
The fact is that when it comes to tech support, the skilled people get left where they're at, and the incompetent get promoted out. I've seen it happen many times, and been a victim of it once myself.
Look at it from the manager of a support department's point of view. Your job is to run a kick-ass support department, your raises, bonuses, and promotions depend on it. All of a sudden you have an incompetent fool working for you. Firing them is a risky move in today's legal environment. It's much safer to "promote" them to a spot where your customers never have to interact with the fool. In the meantime, you probably have several very skilled people working for you. It's in your best interests to use whatever tools are at your disposal to keep them exactly where they're at. Seeing them get promoted to bigger and better things means you have to take a chance on an unknown new hire to replace someone who has already proven beneficial to your own career.
Happened to me when I worked for a large, well-known.... Oh, fuck it, I'll name them. It happened to me when I worked for Norwest (now known as Wells Fargo). In a department of 11 people, only 2 of us were competent. (I was specifically told by my manager that I was the ONLY person in our department allowed to work on the CEO's laptop, even though, in theory, we should have all been capable.) Me and my one competent coworker did ALL of the work. We did our share of the work in a few hours each morning, and spent (unpaid) overtime helping the idiots with their work. We never got promoted, and only got bare minimum raises. In the meantime, the idiots in the department got regular raises and promotions.
Then there was our manager's "silver bullet". There were several mission critical functions that we were required to perform. There were documented procedures for these things, but we were under strict orders to do them "his way" instead. When I got a chance to move into a much better position in a different department, I got written up for not following the documented procedure. Due to the writeup, company policy dictated that I couldn't switch departments for at least 6 month.
Needless to say, I gave him my resignation on the spot. And I was moving into my new office at a new job before the week was out. The manager of the department I was trying to move to kept in contact with me for over a year, trying to get me to come to work for him, but my sanity is too valuable to go back to a company that allows that sort of environment.
OK...
I wanted to upgrade my camper to something with more room. The 6 litre has the engine power to pull it, but the suspension on that vehicle wasn't built for that task. The 5 litre, interestingly, has the suspension to handle it, but not the horsepower.
My solution is going to be buying a dedicated towing vehicle. I'm just starting to look into it, so I'm not sure what I'm going to end up with, but I suspect that it will end up being something in the 7.5 litre range, and capable of towing a fully loaded semi trailer. (which is pretty much on par with the camper I want to upgrade to....)
do it Cheap! You'll make up the profit through volume, (Economics 101)
Did you drop out of Econ 101 halfway through the semester?
"Well, boss, unfortunately we're losing $1.00 on every unit we sell. Don't worry, though, we'll make it up on volume!"
There are limits on how cheaply any given product can be put to market. Many times this limit is well above what most people would classify as "cheap".
the 1.8 litre's you'd call economy we'd call excess,
Wow. In my driveway I have two vehicles. One with a 5 litre engine, and one with a 6.
What's more, the 5 litre is actually underpowered for what I'd like to use it for.
Whoosh......
Yep.
I don't even hold it against him that he mistook "average" for "median".
And then I thought about carrying backups off-site, or automating backups to a box at someone else's house.
YMMV.
My backup solution for my home email server is to simply have a seperate gmail account set up that pulls mail in from my home server at frequent intervals.
Obviously not appropriate in every situation, but since this is a low volume server, it's good enough for me.
Understood.
The tricky part is typing the results in over your telnet connection.
(Yes, I can think of several ways to avoid having to do that, but it makes my already poor attempt at a joke even less funny, so.....)
Of course, things get a little trickier if you need to attach a binary file to the message.
That's awesome! Just imagine all the penis enlargement pills you'll be able to order now!
Of course I would.
Personally, I don't think those situations would warrant the "shoot to kill" approach.
I do, however, firmly believe that we should bring back the days of loading shotgun shells with rock salt to drive away trespassing kids.
And I say this as a former trespassing kid who did once get a backside full of rock salt. Believe me, it taught me a great deal about respecting other peoples property.
You have a great point. Yet, it doesn't matter at all.
You're making the same error that I see many, many people (especially young ones) make. You're living your life according to how the world *should be*.
Succesful people live there lives according to the way the world *is*.
And if you include, on your resume, the URL of pictures of yourself passed out at a frat party, I'll toss your resume in the trash and hire someone with more common sense.
Believe it or not, some people actually do that.
Now, if I had to go googling for those pictures, the I, personally, wouldn't hold them against you. Many places would, though.
In the end it all boils down to this: How careful you need to be depends on the types of jobs you're hoping to get, either now or 20 years down the road. Once a picture is out there on the Internet, it will probably end up in some search engine cache that you can't really predict how long it will stick around.
Also worth considering is that your goals and ambitions will almost certainly be VERY different when you're 40 years old, with a family of 4, than when you're 22 and fresh out of college.
Best to err on the side of caution, IMHO.
Exactly.
When applying for a job and getting a rejection letter, how often does it say more than "Thanks for your time, but unfortunately we've chosen a more qualified candidate"?
I know that's all that our rejection letters say. There's no information on who the successful candidate was, or what qualifications they had that were superior.
But behind the scenes, especially for the front desk position (which a retarded chimp could do around here), it's quite likely that "bigger tits" or "nicer ass" were the superior qualifications.
If we were to start googling into people's personal lives, that information wouldn't get passed along to the candidates, either.