I hope that my response didn't come off as looking at someone that didn't know anything about computers. My response was based around some software and, a little more hardware knowledge, but beyond most beginners (ie: CDRom drive with IDE unplugged but still powered up). Everything that I listed would be easily handled by most teenagers these days. Now, if things are obviously too easy, its up to the interviewer to spice things up a bit.
The reason I wrote out an interview process like that is because your response is, effectively, preaching to the choir. My first interview was similar to what I listed. I didn't know crap about how Win95 worked, other than from a little bit of screwing around in it, but I knew Win 3.1 like the back of my hand and they where impressed by the fact that I could hand code (ie: pen/paper) an autoexec.bat file. Now, that may not sound surprising until you find out that I'm a drop out that wasn't challenged in school and was interviewing on my break from an Exon gas station.
I've moved on since then, albeit, very slowly. I've been poor because of an unexpected downsizing, so I don't have any certs. I have no college, but I do have a GED - would you hire me? Most likely, the answer would be "hell no" after seeing that.
The current company I'm working for took a chance and hired me. I now make enough money to get my certs, go to college, pay off all my debt, blah blah blah... All because I have a major programming background in custom content management systems. Now, I'm in charge of the org's Enterprise Content Management plus 5 other servers, including boxes that house major MSSQL and Oracle DBs and am looking to make updates where I see fit (like the Support dept who is currently logging calls on paper).
Again, I'm not insulting the intelligence of anyone - I basically have no right to;-)
This is a good start. Perhaps the following questions together will make up most of the 1st interview on the technical side:
-When was your first experience with a computer - what kind of computer was it? -Whats the most complicated thing you've done on a computer, even if it didn't work? -(as stated above)Describe your home network and computers. -What kind of experience do you think you'll gain and what type of experience do you want to gain from this? -Lets say we work with you and get you a Microsoft Certification, what would you do once you had that certification? (Assuming this is a windows shop)
All that on top of a personality quiz including how they handle stress and repeated questions - maybe even ask them something repeatedly throughout the interview process to see how they handle it. For the second interview of the most likely candidates, like someone else said, computers, computers...
1 computer, in pieces, in a box. Put it together. It can be a junked computer - this just tests their knowledge of computer hardware.
1 computer, connected to a printer and some sort of bad device (cdrom unplugged from IDE, but powers up, ejects, etc...) - have them hook up the printer how your techs would (ie: without the OEM drivers - if you use networked based printers, you can decide how hard you want to be based on the first interview) and then have them find out what device is having problems. Ask them what steps they would take to fix it.
Continue asking that stupid question you keep repeating to see how they react. The first eye roll, sigh, etc should give you a reasonable example of how they'll handle all those stupid questions in the real world. Expect them to look a little confused the first couple of times.
Time both of the computer quizzes and see what you get between each person. Match these up to personalities and scores on the 1st side of the interview. I would also bring in an accomplice to help give a secondary recommendation and have them ask a few of the same stupid questions a few times. At some point, tell these poor people why you've asked the same questions over and over - either at their final interview (just before "we'll call you") or when they react the wrong way.
We currently run RAID1 mirrors on the OS drives, RAID5 on the data drives and the servers are monitored every day for dead drives. We actually had a drive fail on the exchange server and we caught it quick enough to have the rebuild done on the new drive within an hour and a half of the drive failing. Now granted, we just happened to be in the room 3 minutes after the drive failed, but it would have been caught within 3 hours. It also seems that the past admins used drives from the same lot in about 4 of the servers (you know, box shows up and you just plug everything into everywhere you can, all at once) - we've had 4 drives fail on 3 machines within 2 weeks, which is why we're monitoring so much at the moment.
On top of that, we back up between servers and use Veritas to back up to either USB hard drives (don't ask) or Tape drives. I've also been tasked with creating a network status web page to allow us to catch issues before the admins remote into the machine to search for any issues. No clue how I'm going to tackle the issue of failing drives since Windows thinks a RAID array is fine even though 1 drive can be dead...we'll see. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has coded this before.
We're working on setting up 3 3.5TB SANS in separate locations for cross network backups and restores (we're running a lot of big connectivity between our sites). At this point, we're just waiting on the drives to show up and then we'll deploy. We're also looking to move away from Veritas for various reasons.
On top of all that, we have to....document all of this, including network diagrams (visio) somewhere. Over the past 24 hours of thinking, I think the wiki is the best way to go.
I've thought about this and think the same thing will happen where I am, so... I figure that, once a year, we'll cut'n'paste it into Word/Acrobat and create a "book" that we can place on our SharePoint portal. If they want a physical book, they can print that once a year, poke all the holes in it and mount it into a 3 ring binder and let it collect dust like everything else.
On top of that, every 3 years, we are required to audit our documentation to ensure that it's absolutely up to date and fresh - this'll help.
The only thing I thought would become a pain in the ass would be the updates that we push to each server, but dynamically linking that section to a generic "these have been pushed to each server page", we can get around the individual edits for each server.
This is pretty scary because my org has been attempting to find the best way to document for the last week. With over 700 computers/servers/laptops, all seperated into regions up to 9 hours away, its a little painful. On top of that, we've noticed that the past admins haven't documented anything since 2000...
Sadly, we don't have the time (like you said) to go out and find this stuff and determine the status.
Within the last couple of hours though, I've found Technical Support software (which we need badly), that will scan your network for all kinds of info. I won't list anything specific because we haven't gone with anything yet nor do I want to look like I'm advertising. But, these packages look pretty promising and some offer reporting ability.
Now, the bad part is, we want to create "God Books" for each one of our servers detailing EVERYTHING about it and how to bring it back from the dead, if needed. Talk about a pain in the ass. Although, I never thought of a Wiki. Since we want to stand one up anyway, that would be interesting. I'd be interested in seeing anything like this anyone has created.
Perhaps I should have explained further that it was all setup, but not activated. They just had to login to the router, activate the firewall rule and actually startup VNC and allow it to pass through the extra firewall (zonealarm) I had installed.
As for FF vs IE - they don't use anything special that requires IE. They download their email, check the news and occasionally browse around.
I'm in awe of the whole "I'm leaving!" mentality thats apparently taken slashdot by storm. I'm an American living in Germany due to the military and I get chased by recruiters from the US on a regular basis. In fact, I'm working with one right now for a pretty serious offer. I've gotten recruiters from everywhere from Florida to Las Vegas bugging me on a regular basis and I don't have anything that I would call special other than web coding experience.
What industries are these people in where they think they have to leave to get jobs? Good grief!
When I moved overseas, I explained to my parents that I had installed VNC and setup the router to accept connections from me if something weird happened. Before I even left, they messed up 2 computers with spyware by using IE. I installed FF and told them not to use IE and removed the icons. Well, they went looking for IE anyway and I haven't VNC'd in - ever. They still use IE and their computer is still slow... My mom finally got tired of asking for help because I refused. "Am I going to help you gas up a Pinto? No...." Last time they argued with me, I threatened to show up while they where on vacation and replace their PC's with Macs. Haven't heard a peep since.
Every once in awhile, I blog about someone like this asking for advice. This one, I don't know if I even care to. "How can I make money after mucking around in their code/website?" Give me a break. Either you're in the security industry or you're not. If you're not, tell them about the bug and be done with it. You can tell a security company what you did and what it was later if you want.
This falls on par with the "Should we drive around and hack them and then try to sell them our services?!" gawd
Um, yea... I keep 2 monitors (soon to be 3) and 2 machines running in my office at all times. Occasionally there are 2 other laptops going as well. We literally don't turn on the heat in the office in the winter or you'll roast. I don't turn the heat on in the basement either: 2 Cisco Routers, 1 Cisco switch, 1 UPS and 3 servers...
As for the story parent, my current "window state": 3 Open Office Documents 1 Konqueror (Browsing/home/) 1 Firefox with 10 tabs (low for me) 3 shells open 1 Konqueror with 3 tabs (browser on another screen) amarok (mp3s) Thunderbird with 1 message window as well
Hitting on the Organic comment: Thats the only thing I could think about when looking over this. While neat, the thing is going to rot at an accelerated pace due to the heat inside of it.
Unfortunately, you're completely correct. You could call this situation a Shifting Baseline [Syndrome] in the computer world. Everyone accepts and uses the software, but in the business world, things where better.
Now, I was a wee munchkin (my first computer memory was when I was...7-8) back when computers started to take a run in the early 80's, but I don't seem to remember the original DOS crashing too much. (again, I was young and ignorant so it might have)
But I've seen servers that have uptimes over a year old and I've seen windows blue screen every 3-4 days. When I was in Cubeville doing support, when we came across weird problems, we'd force people to shutdown before doing anything else. We even had one lady that said she hadn't shutdown her Mac in a year or so. After she shut it down, she replied "You killed it.... It has a bomb on it. I'm going to sue you all!" To this day, I still don't know how that thing lasted a year without crashing.
At this point, even my wife gets onto me about my computer. I'll complain that something crashed or I have something weird going on and her first response is "just restart it". She doesn't understand that you very rarely need to restart when using Linux/Unix. Of course, she gets mad when a Windows update comes through and she needs to restart and she watches when I do a Kernel or security update, I just keep on truckin.
Unfortunately, I'm whipped and will need to shut down in the next few days to replace a fan in a drive rack (el cheapo thats making my silent case sound like an old computer. Note: If I would have spent the extra money to get hot swappable drive racks, I wouldn't need to shut down...grrr) and to kill the LEDs since my wife can't stand getting up at night and having the whole house lit up. I got hit when I replied that I thought the soft glow of LEDs was romantic....
Oh, and since I forgot the obligatory uname (and my other computer) in my previous post: j@host [/home/j]# uptime {server}
03:39:51 up 73 days, 17:12, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.10, 0.08 j@host [/home/j]# uname -a Linux host 2.6****-enterprise #1 SMP Thu Jun 8 12:38:51 MSD 2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
Tweek:/home/justin # uptime {home}
9:53am up 29 days 1:52, 2 users, load average: 0.83, 0.46, 0.23 Tweek:/home/justin # uname -a Linux Tweek 2.6.11.4-21.14-default #1 Thu Aug 24 09:51:41 UTC 2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
Actually, I was amazed when I saw this type of thing in 1998 working at an ISP. I finally decided to ditch my Win2k box this time last year and haven't looked back. I have a copy of XP Home to play games on and I don't even do that often.
justin@Tweek:~> uptime
11:27pm up 28 days 15:25, 2 users, load average: 0.04, 0.19, 0.14
Last reboot was to clean the fans and such... I have 2 FreeBSD boxes downstairs that ran for 5 months solid before I had to shut them down due to construction work kicking up too much dust for me to feel comfortable. I'll probably never go back to windows, Vista or not. I don't play games enough anymore to warrant the switch or the money required for such an endeavour.
After learning about that, I haven't installed software either. Since working for Technical Support, I used DUN in Windows and recently have been using a router due to the amount of computer I use.
Unfortunately, most companies hide the malware in their opening terms and conditions.
When I worked for an ISP, every once in awhile, we would get someone that actually read the agreement and called in right at that screen to ask that the "spyware" (before it had a name) was installed. They usually got very upset when we made them install the software then dug down and unchecked 1 checkbox.
My wife is from Portland Oregon and she gets mad when I say there are 2 seasons: Winter and Almost Winter and that "winter" is just a drizzle for 6 months. She's the only person I know who gets happy when it rains.
Anyway, as much dislike the rain, the Northwest is a great area...
And for the Story parent - accept the offer from Google but request to work in the facility you want.
Yup, I've suffered from this as well. Sad part is, I was dumb enough to do it after I laughed at other people doing it [worse].
I once heard a lady wanting a website so she could get rich (dotcom). Didn't know what she wanted the website to say or what to sell, but she figured begging Technical Support to build her one since she didn't know how to program would make her millions (real story). I laughed my butt off for weeks.
Then, being young and stupid, I built a web design company. I picked up 1 client and made a decent amount of money quickly. I wrapped my car in advertising and sat back and waited for the money to roll in. It never did and I eventually shut the business down...
I wouldn't mind taking a hit on pay if I could live comfortably and have an office environment with a lot less stress than what I currently put up with. Sure, money is nice, but its not everything.
Whats funny is that a few of the rules are broken in almost every piece of software for Windows. Its really funny how they recomend tone and such for software. "Don't do it this way...do it like this - it's much friendlier."
I agree, I don't think it will work either. If I remember right, Lowes or Home Depot tried the same thing back in 2003/2004 with their suppliers and most of them are doing ecommerce right now as well.
I supported Satellite for a few years and heard nothing but complaints about it from gamers. For surfing, its fine most of the time, but gaming - no way. Its picky, especially when it snows, wind, etc. Kind of like some of those anti-satellite commercials you see every once in awhile.
Yea, the government uses a drill press with their standard hard drives (ie: no secret stuff on them). I believe they drill 5 holes in the drive them chuck it.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope that my response didn't come off as looking at someone that didn't know anything about computers. My response was based around some software and, a little more hardware knowledge, but beyond most beginners (ie: CDRom drive with IDE unplugged but still powered up). Everything that I listed would be easily handled by most teenagers these days. Now, if things are obviously too easy, its up to the interviewer to spice things up a bit.
;-)
The reason I wrote out an interview process like that is because your response is, effectively, preaching to the choir. My first interview was similar to what I listed. I didn't know crap about how Win95 worked, other than from a little bit of screwing around in it, but I knew Win 3.1 like the back of my hand and they where impressed by the fact that I could hand code (ie: pen/paper) an autoexec.bat file. Now, that may not sound surprising until you find out that I'm a drop out that wasn't challenged in school and was interviewing on my break from an Exon gas station.
I've moved on since then, albeit, very slowly. I've been poor because of an unexpected downsizing, so I don't have any certs. I have no college, but I do have a GED - would you hire me? Most likely, the answer would be "hell no" after seeing that.
The current company I'm working for took a chance and hired me. I now make enough money to get my certs, go to college, pay off all my debt, blah blah blah... All because I have a major programming background in custom content management systems. Now, I'm in charge of the org's Enterprise Content Management plus 5 other servers, including boxes that house major MSSQL and Oracle DBs and am looking to make updates where I see fit (like the Support dept who is currently logging calls on paper).
Again, I'm not insulting the intelligence of anyone - I basically have no right to
This is a good start. Perhaps the following questions together will make up most of the 1st interview on the technical side:
-When was your first experience with a computer - what kind of computer was it?
-Whats the most complicated thing you've done on a computer, even if it didn't work?
-(as stated above)Describe your home network and computers.
-What kind of experience do you think you'll gain and what type of experience do you want to gain from this?
-Lets say we work with you and get you a Microsoft Certification, what would you do once you had that certification? (Assuming this is a windows shop)
All that on top of a personality quiz including how they handle stress and repeated questions - maybe even ask them something repeatedly throughout the interview process to see how they handle it. For the second interview of the most likely candidates, like someone else said, computers, computers...
1 computer, in pieces, in a box. Put it together. It can be a junked computer - this just tests their knowledge of computer hardware.
1 computer, connected to a printer and some sort of bad device (cdrom unplugged from IDE, but powers up, ejects, etc...) - have them hook up the printer how your techs would (ie: without the OEM drivers - if you use networked based printers, you can decide how hard you want to be based on the first interview) and then have them find out what device is having problems. Ask them what steps they would take to fix it.
Continue asking that stupid question you keep repeating to see how they react. The first eye roll, sigh, etc should give you a reasonable example of how they'll handle all those stupid questions in the real world. Expect them to look a little confused the first couple of times.
Time both of the computer quizzes and see what you get between each person. Match these up to personalities and scores on the 1st side of the interview. I would also bring in an accomplice to help give a secondary recommendation and have them ask a few of the same stupid questions a few times. At some point, tell these poor people why you've asked the same questions over and over - either at their final interview (just before "we'll call you") or when they react the wrong way.
We currently run RAID1 mirrors on the OS drives, RAID5 on the data drives and the servers are monitored every day for dead drives. We actually had a drive fail on the exchange server and we caught it quick enough to have the rebuild done on the new drive within an hour and a half of the drive failing. Now granted, we just happened to be in the room 3 minutes after the drive failed, but it would have been caught within 3 hours. It also seems that the past admins used drives from the same lot in about 4 of the servers (you know, box shows up and you just plug everything into everywhere you can, all at once) - we've had 4 drives fail on 3 machines within 2 weeks, which is why we're monitoring so much at the moment.
On top of that, we back up between servers and use Veritas to back up to either USB hard drives (don't ask) or Tape drives. I've also been tasked with creating a network status web page to allow us to catch issues before the admins remote into the machine to search for any issues. No clue how I'm going to tackle the issue of failing drives since Windows thinks a RAID array is fine even though 1 drive can be dead...we'll see. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has coded this before.
We're working on setting up 3 3.5TB SANS in separate locations for cross network backups and restores (we're running a lot of big connectivity between our sites). At this point, we're just waiting on the drives to show up and then we'll deploy. We're also looking to move away from Veritas for various reasons.
On top of all that, we have to....document all of this, including network diagrams (visio) somewhere. Over the past 24 hours of thinking, I think the wiki is the best way to go.
I've thought about this and think the same thing will happen where I am, so... I figure that, once a year, we'll cut'n'paste it into Word/Acrobat and create a "book" that we can place on our SharePoint portal. If they want a physical book, they can print that once a year, poke all the holes in it and mount it into a 3 ring binder and let it collect dust like everything else.
On top of that, every 3 years, we are required to audit our documentation to ensure that it's absolutely up to date and fresh - this'll help.
The only thing I thought would become a pain in the ass would be the updates that we push to each server, but dynamically linking that section to a generic "these have been pushed to each server page", we can get around the individual edits for each server.
This is pretty scary because my org has been attempting to find the best way to document for the last week. With over 700 computers/servers/laptops, all seperated into regions up to 9 hours away, its a little painful. On top of that, we've noticed that the past admins haven't documented anything since 2000...
Sadly, we don't have the time (like you said) to go out and find this stuff and determine the status.
Within the last couple of hours though, I've found Technical Support software (which we need badly), that will scan your network for all kinds of info. I won't list anything specific because we haven't gone with anything yet nor do I want to look like I'm advertising. But, these packages look pretty promising and some offer reporting ability.
Now, the bad part is, we want to create "God Books" for each one of our servers detailing EVERYTHING about it and how to bring it back from the dead, if needed. Talk about a pain in the ass. Although, I never thought of a Wiki. Since we want to stand one up anyway, that would be interesting. I'd be interested in seeing anything like this anyone has created.
Unfortunately, this is the exact setup in the HBO Special where they proved Diebold machines can be hacked...
Perhaps I should have explained further that it was all setup, but not activated. They just had to login to the router, activate the firewall rule and actually startup VNC and allow it to pass through the extra firewall (zonealarm) I had installed.
As for FF vs IE - they don't use anything special that requires IE. They download their email, check the news and occasionally browse around.
I'm in awe of the whole "I'm leaving!" mentality thats apparently taken slashdot by storm. I'm an American living in Germany due to the military and I get chased by recruiters from the US on a regular basis. In fact, I'm working with one right now for a pretty serious offer. I've gotten recruiters from everywhere from Florida to Las Vegas bugging me on a regular basis and I don't have anything that I would call special other than web coding experience.
What industries are these people in where they think they have to leave to get jobs? Good grief!
When I moved overseas, I explained to my parents that I had installed VNC and setup the router to accept connections from me if something weird happened. Before I even left, they messed up 2 computers with spyware by using IE. I installed FF and told them not to use IE and removed the icons. Well, they went looking for IE anyway and I haven't VNC'd in - ever. They still use IE and their computer is still slow... My mom finally got tired of asking for help because I refused. "Am I going to help you gas up a Pinto? No...." Last time they argued with me, I threatened to show up while they where on vacation and replace their PC's with Macs. Haven't heard a peep since.
Every once in awhile, I blog about someone like this asking for advice. This one, I don't know if I even care to. "How can I make money after mucking around in their code/website?" Give me a break. Either you're in the security industry or you're not. If you're not, tell them about the bug and be done with it. You can tell a security company what you did and what it was later if you want.
This falls on par with the "Should we drive around and hack them and then try to sell them our services?!" gawd
Um, yea... I keep 2 monitors (soon to be 3) and 2 machines running in my office at all times. Occasionally there are 2 other laptops going as well. We literally don't turn on the heat in the office in the winter or you'll roast. I don't turn the heat on in the basement either: 2 Cisco Routers, 1 Cisco switch, 1 UPS and 3 servers...
/home/)
As for the story parent, my current "window state":
3 Open Office Documents
1 Konqueror (Browsing
1 Firefox with 10 tabs (low for me)
3 shells open
1 Konqueror with 3 tabs (browser on another screen)
amarok (mp3s)
Thunderbird with 1 message window as well
stats:
top - 12:02:01 up 30 days, 4:00, 5 users, load average: 0.05, 0.25, 0.53
Tasks: 101 total, 1 running, 100 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 6.3% us, 0.7% sy, 0.0% ni, 89.7% id, 2.7% wa, 0.7% hi, 0.0% si
Tweek:/home/justin # uname -a
Linux Tweek 2.6.11.4-21.14-default #1 Thu Aug 24 09:51:41 UTC 2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
Hitting on the Organic comment: Thats the only thing I could think about when looking over this. While neat, the thing is going to rot at an accelerated pace due to the heat inside of it.
Unfortunately, you're completely correct. You could call this situation a Shifting Baseline [Syndrome] in the computer world. Everyone accepts and uses the software, but in the business world, things where better.
Now, I was a wee munchkin (my first computer memory was when I was...7-8) back when computers started to take a run in the early 80's, but I don't seem to remember the original DOS crashing too much. (again, I was young and ignorant so it might have)
But I've seen servers that have uptimes over a year old and I've seen windows blue screen every 3-4 days. When I was in Cubeville doing support, when we came across weird problems, we'd force people to shutdown before doing anything else. We even had one lady that said she hadn't shutdown her Mac in a year or so. After she shut it down, she replied "You killed it.... It has a bomb on it. I'm going to sue you all!" To this day, I still don't know how that thing lasted a year without crashing.
At this point, even my wife gets onto me about my computer. I'll complain that something crashed or I have something weird going on and her first response is "just restart it". She doesn't understand that you very rarely need to restart when using Linux/Unix. Of course, she gets mad when a Windows update comes through and she needs to restart and she watches when I do a Kernel or security update, I just keep on truckin.
Unfortunately, I'm whipped and will need to shut down in the next few days to replace a fan in a drive rack (el cheapo thats making my silent case sound like an old computer. Note: If I would have spent the extra money to get hot swappable drive racks, I wouldn't need to shut down...grrr) and to kill the LEDs since my wife can't stand getting up at night and having the whole house lit up. I got hit when I replied that I thought the soft glow of LEDs was romantic....
Oh, and since I forgot the obligatory uname (and my other computer) in my previous post:
j@host [/home/j]# uptime {server}
03:39:51 up 73 days, 17:12, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.10, 0.08
j@host [/home/j]# uname -a
Linux host 2.6****-enterprise #1 SMP Thu Jun 8 12:38:51 MSD 2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
Tweek:/home/justin # uptime {home}
9:53am up 29 days 1:52, 2 users, load average: 0.83, 0.46, 0.23
Tweek:/home/justin # uname -a
Linux Tweek 2.6.11.4-21.14-default #1 Thu Aug 24 09:51:41 UTC 2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
Actually, I was amazed when I saw this type of thing in 1998 working at an ISP. I finally decided to ditch my Win2k box this time last year and haven't looked back. I have a copy of XP Home to play games on and I don't even do that often.
justin@Tweek:~> uptime
11:27pm up 28 days 15:25, 2 users, load average: 0.04, 0.19, 0.14
Last reboot was to clean the fans and such... I have 2 FreeBSD boxes downstairs that ran for 5 months solid before I had to shut them down due to construction work kicking up too much dust for me to feel comfortable. I'll probably never go back to windows, Vista or not. I don't play games enough anymore to warrant the switch or the money required for such an endeavour.
After learning about that, I haven't installed software either. Since working for Technical Support, I used DUN in Windows and recently have been using a router due to the amount of computer I use.
Unfortunately, most companies hide the malware in their opening terms and conditions.
When I worked for an ISP, every once in awhile, we would get someone that actually read the agreement and called in right at that screen to ask that the "spyware" (before it had a name) was installed. They usually got very upset when we made them install the software then dug down and unchecked 1 checkbox.
My wife is from Portland Oregon and she gets mad when I say there are 2 seasons: Winter and Almost Winter and that "winter" is just a drizzle for 6 months. She's the only person I know who gets happy when it rains.
Anyway, as much dislike the rain, the Northwest is a great area...
And for the Story parent - accept the offer from Google but request to work in the facility you want.
Using FF 1.5.0.7 on SUSE and its fine for me.
#2 - If you build it they will come.
Yup, I've suffered from this as well. Sad part is, I was dumb enough to do it after I laughed at other people doing it [worse].
I once heard a lady wanting a website so she could get rich (dotcom). Didn't know what she wanted the website to say or what to sell, but she figured begging Technical Support to build her one since she didn't know how to program would make her millions (real story). I laughed my butt off for weeks.
Then, being young and stupid, I built a web design company. I picked up 1 client and made a decent amount of money quickly. I wrapped my car in advertising and sat back and waited for the money to roll in. It never did and I eventually shut the business down...
I wouldn't mind taking a hit on pay if I could live comfortably and have an office environment with a lot less stress than what I currently put up with. Sure, money is nice, but its not everything.
Whats funny is that a few of the rules are broken in almost every piece of software for Windows. Its really funny how they recomend tone and such for software. "Don't do it this way...do it like this - it's much friendlier."
I agree, I don't think it will work either. If I remember right, Lowes or Home Depot tried the same thing back in 2003/2004 with their suppliers and most of them are doing ecommerce right now as well.
Ah, I see you've done network contracting too... Its amazing what some people will draw up as their network map.
I supported Satellite for a few years and heard nothing but complaints about it from gamers. For surfing, its fine most of the time, but gaming - no way. Its picky, especially when it snows, wind, etc. Kind of like some of those anti-satellite commercials you see every once in awhile.
Yea, the government uses a drill press with their standard hard drives (ie: no secret stuff on them). I believe they drill 5 holes in the drive them chuck it.