I've been working from home for the last 13 years and I currently work for a company where everyone works from home. I'm not so sure that you need a door to keep your family out as to help separate your work life from your home life. The hardest thing I deal with is leaving work at the end of the work day. It's far too easy to slip back into the office to take care of that one little thing. This leads to burn out and should be avoided at all cost.
Set a schedule and a routine then keep to them. This should include a dedicated work space that you use for nothing other than work. That seems silly but it really helps maintain discipline. For example, I take my laptop to the couch at the end of the day for personal work and net surfing. I also found that I had to turn my desk away from the beautiful view outside my office to get any work done. I have a fixed schedule and though I need have to, I get approval from both my supervisor and my wife to work outside that schedule.
There is no reason to be in-accessible to your family but at the same time, they need to understand that you're at work. I've been in many meetings where a small voice is heard asking permission to go to a friends house. While this is never a problem, hearing a boisterous family clamoring in the background during a conference call is extremely disruptive. Likewise, slipping up stairs to change the laundry is probably not a problem though slipping out to mow the lawn is. Ask yourself before doing something personal, "Would this pass muster if you were in an office with other co-workers?"
Finally, the most important part of working from home is communication. Get yourself a high quality wireless headset and no-cost/low-cost calling plan. If you're not on the phone for as much as half you day then your out of touch with what's happening in the rest of the company. That voice line can be either POTS or VOIP but it should be dedicated to your work. Trust me on this, you don't want your teen daughter throwing a tantrum on the extension because she can't call her friend while you're in a conference call with a client. I find that a Plantronics Calisto Pro over a Vonage line gives me good quality so long as I'm not presenting. If I am presenting then I'll use my cell phone so VOIP does not compete with the presentation for bandwidth. Speaking of bandwidth, don't skimp here. My only choice is Time Warner which has an unpublished habit of dropping my bandwidth to 128K just when I need it most. When I complain they refer me to their Terms of Service regarding peer to peer file sharing. It's frustrating because none of my network traffic is peer to peer file sharing. I suspect the limit is triggered by upstream bandwidth use exceeding some parameter but can't prove it. Their best idea is to refer me to their "Business Class" service which gets me over priced hosting I don't need.
Instant messaging apps are also a must for the quick questions and should get you immediate access to anyone in your company. Think if it as the equivalent to shouting over the cubicle wall or walking down the hall to poke your head into someone's office. We found that no one IM service worked reliably, not even our own dedicated LINQ or XMPP server proved to be reliable enough. We currently distribute a list of employees and their IM accounts on several well known services. I am accessible on MSN, Skype, and Google Chat while at work. The redundancy means I can still contact someone if one service starts acting up. Unfortunately, it also means I'll have two or three messages waiting when I come back from changing the laundry.
Congress just passed a law making protest in the vicinity of the secret service a criminal act. I expect the law will not pass Constitutional muster. Unfortunately, someone must break that law, get arrested, and sacrifice their career, home, and life savings to bring that obviously unconstitutional law before the Supreme Court.
Apparently our Congressional "Leaders" thinks that OK so long as they don't have to listen to protesters outside their convention. And, they have no complicity in passing this abomination to the Constitution they swore to uphold.
Protest may not require breaking the law but it's more effective when protesters do. It's called Civil Disobedience!
How many "Occupy" protesters are in the SF or NY judicial system because they were protesting? Would we know about their cause if they just stood down the street holding up signs? I would argue, NO!. That level of civil disobedience was required to get media attention. There was no media coverage of the Occupy events for weeks.
How many were jailed while protesting nuclear power plants in their home towns? Many of those arrests resulted in the plant NOT being constructed. All of those arrests resulted in a dramatic reduction in new nuclear power plants in the US. Can you say those arrested protesters were not effective? Only now are we seeing new projects breaking ground and those are being vehemently protested resulting in arrests.
This level of civil disobedience may be required to bring your cause before the courts. Do you disagree? then go back to school and take Civics 101. It's how our system works so stop vilifying protesters.
LulzSec had a specific mission, separate and distinct from Anonymous. It's mission was to point out the incompetency of people we trust to secure our digital society. They did so in an embarrassingly effective way. I believe they all knew the risks involved in what they were doing. I support that belief by pointing out the steps they took to cloak their identity and avoid prosecution for the laws they knew they were breaking. In my mind that makes them patriots willing to suffer persecution for standing up against corruption and incompetence in the very agencies we charge with security. Were I the sentencing judge I would have to give them the recommended minimum sentence but I would also charge the people they exposed with negligence and complicity. If someone breaks in and steals from you, jail them. If someone breaks in then leaves a note behind and tells you how they did it, hire them!
I hope and expect that these people cited as being "senior leadership" were in fact just inexperienced noobs that got caught. I'm ashamed to say my government has a long history of holding up some patsy as the "Ring Leader" because it makes good press rather than because the assertion has any validity. I see this as another reason to repeal "Qualified Immunity". It made sense 100 year ago but no longer. Today "Qualified Immunity" only creates a group of people "above the law" and empowers them with laziness and incompetence. A public detective can get malpractice insurance the same as a private detective or a doctor or any of a thousand other professions. When will we stop coddling incompetence? When will we stop letting them run amok when someone embarrasses them?
With all the press these little beauties got it's unlikely they're still attached to the original vehicle. Hence the trouble retrieving them. More likely, the "People of Interest" looked under their car and found it long ago. I'd love to hear some of the FBI accounts of where they found their trackers when not still attached to the original vehicle. A neighbor or wife's car is the most obvious but I'd like to think some were more creative. Interstate Bus, Police Car, Live Stock Hauler, Shipping Container,... As fun as those sound, it's most likely they were destroyed or hawked. Go check out your local seedy pawn shop, you might be able to get one cheap.
Not to say I told you so cuz I didn't. but Back in 85 I passed on an opportunity to transfer to the Shuttle Program at Rockwell. A decision I stressed over for a month. It was why I got into aerospace to begin with. My childhood dream was to be an astronaut, or at least part of that community. The problem was that I'd learned that office politics, national politics, and budget are the driving forces that make decisions, not engineering. At the time, and probably still today, management is filled with people promoted by a variation of the Peter Principle; "people are promoted to their highest level of incompetence". Since you can't fire anyone the only way to get rid of dead wood is to promote them out of your department. As a result critical decisions are made by people without the competence to make them. This was the reason I left my child hood dreams of being an astronaut to join the private sector. I could no longer turn a blind eye to the mindlessness about me. Sure, the engineering challenges and creative people that make up the rank and file were great. But, the office politics were deadly!
Beta was superior to VCRs but it didn't catch on either. And Beta wasn't encumbered with frustrating and illconceived DRM "features". I'm in no hurry to run out and spend hard earned money on something that will not work with the rest of my stuff just so some fat cat can get richer.
And I would not go back if you paid me more! Ok, it was kind of forced upon me. I got laid off and the best job I could get as the job market started to tank was a telecommuting job for a company that had no offices. It had to take a $20K salary cut but I was employed when my peers were not and was able to make ends meet. I'm still not back to my former salary but frankly, I'm turning down better offers just because I'd have to commute ~2 hours a day.
What's two hours of your life worth? Aside from day care costs (which I have none), or the cost of commuting, or your pay rate... What is your time worth?
What is your blood pressure worth? Getting in urban traffic and fighting with idiots with licenses to endanger lives is not my idea of a healthy endeavor. Forget about the financial cost of fuel, insurance, payments... driving is stressful!
I could go on and on but then I'd just be a bore. There is certainly a down side that should not be ignored. Telecommuting is not for everyone. It takes more self discipline than most of my former co-workers have (you are the only one keeping you off facebook all day). The hardest discipline is actually ending your work day. When the computer is just around the corner it's all to easy to "Just do that one task that's bothering you". I think the hardest part is a lack of social interaction. Try not talking to anyone at work about non work stuff for the next month (I give most of you a week at best). It's easy and healthy to chat over the cube walls while still tuning an ugly bit of SQL code. you don't get that opportunity when telecommuting. Chatting with your co-workers over IM about last night's game takes your attention away from your task resulting in longer less productive days so you eventually stop doing it (or go looking for a new job). Lately, I've taken to absconding the company conference line when not in use just so we can chat over the virtual cubicle walls. My boss would surely shit if he knew but I see it as a mental health hour.
I've been at the ass end of several transfers where I was told by my client (selling their web site) not to change the contact information since that would hold up the transfer. In all but one of these situations the new owners simple left me as the contact (in violation of ICAN policy). When the domains come up for renewal they will change only the billing contact and leave me as everything else.
I'm not really concerned that LEA is mining social web sites for intelligence.
What's really concerns me here is the lack of accountability for incompetence demonstrated here. Yes, I expect there to be disciplinary action taken but I fear it's no more than a statement in their next performance review. Here on the far side of the pond, if search and rescue is called out for me (even if I'm not lost) I get billed for the event. These bills can be tens of thousands of dollars. Perhaps we should start billing incompetent officers for the cost of their mistakes. Yes there needs to be due process and perhaps officers that get a warrant from the courts before making these raids can be indemnified.
<RANT> Frankly, I sick of hearing about the increasing cost of incompetence being dismissed as cost of doing law enforcement. I'm sick of off duty cops writing some kid a ticket for spitting on the sidewalk so he can put in for 4 hours of overtime he didn't work ( yes this really happens, ask a retired cop ). I'm sick of the men in blue being more concerned about the image of being right than they are about being correct. Perhaps counting convictions is the wrong performance metric? </RANT>
You should be able to pick up basic components on the cheep or free if you scrounge, I'm talking old can transistors, LEDs and resistors. You may also be able to lay hands on some project boards by asking around for donations.
With this box and some batteries each student should be able to make basic logic circuits. That is, Have them actually make a flip-flop. Have them get together and hook up their individual flip-flop circuits into gates. This gives them an appreciation for what digital logic does and how to combine it to make more complex circuits. You also get an opportunity to discuss state logic and have them make simple state machines other than flip flops. (adder, counter, timer...)
What they're learning for this physics module:
Ohms law (biasing the transistors)
Semi-Conductor materials science
Why different kinds of transistors need to be
hooked up in different ways to do the same thing.
Interface Design (how to make it so their circuits work together)
Digital vs Analog logic (review of pre-digital systems)
It's cool, re-usable, relevant to their world, and you can complete the module in less than a week.
http://www.dnots.com/ - Best $10 spent this year! and I don't even mind that shipping cost more than the media.
While I'm thinking about it... I'll send another letter to my legislature asking why they have not demanded RIAA be investigated by DOJ... Hell, even Uncle Bill had more scruples than those shysters.
I would rather pay this artist $10 for blank media than risk letting one Shekel of my money finding it way in to the greedy hands of those shysters at RIAA or their clients!
A packaged cable from any vendor still has a ~2% failure rate even with the 900% markup. Even a 'perfect' cable installed with incompetence will fail 100% of the time.
If You hired a professional to install your network perhaps you should trust his judgment... You did hire a professional didn't you?
It's not about managing their network infrastructure. Their own numbers show network load is far below capacity. This is about new revenue streams AND strengthening their monopoly on your access to data and services. I'm complaining again to my elected officials as soon as I hit save here.
Cable has far outgrown the need for protection from regulation, Let them pay the same fees to government that coper and fiber carriers do ans see if they're still competitive. If it looks like a public utility and acts like a public utility it should be managed as a public utility! No More Exemption!
Agree with most of what Elvind says. Where he is wrong is that two 15 year olds sleeping with each other IS consent in all US states. For that matter, two 13 year olds sleeping together IS consent. In most states the two participants need to me more than 24 months difference in age for Non Consent laws to apply.
What I want to know is why the over zealous prosecutors are not charged with child abuse for subjecting these kids to this kind of treatment. These cases serve only one purpose. Generating free publicity for the up coming election cycle. I see these cases as sexual exploitation of children for political gain.
Remember District Attorney George Skumanick and vote him out next election. His behavior here is reprehensible.
Here is another example of western mobile carriers stifling innovation. It does not matter if the Dell platform was boring or not. It's up to the market to decide, NOT the carriers. It's time for the carriers to be required (as a Public Utility) to open their access rules. Locked devices and exclusive contracts are creating artificially high prices for wireless and blocking device manufacturers from entering the market on a level playing field. They have no problem operating in other countries that do not allow these practices but decry the fate of their industry when lawmakers suggest they open up here. I say Bull Shit! Let them compete by offering better coverage and services and not on who has the coolest gadget maker locked into an exclusive contract. US falls way behind other countries in wireless quality and diversity.
Young people don't think they can go in the streets and do anything they like because they listen to rap or play violent games. Young people go in the streets and commit violent crime because they feel frustrated and disenfranchised by the actions of the aristocracy and self righteous people like Richard Taylor! It's an act of rebellion against candy coated repression.
If you want to do something about the problem of violent street youth. Open a resource center providing services to homeless and disenfranchised youth. And for God sakes, stop listening to idiots like Richard Taylor.
This year I was able to join the ranks of Yet Another Generator User in my neighborhood. We live in a fairly rural area of Southern Maine so we were black for 8 days this season. As a telecommuter this was particularly painful. While the furnace is 120V the well is 240V and the furnace will not run if there is no water service.
When we were dark last season I found myself whining to my father about no power, heat, water. He informed me that he had an old Chicago Power 40411 portable generator he no longer used because it made so much noise all the other campers kept giving him dirty looks and rude comments whenever he fired it up. A couple weeks later I found box with generator parts in my driveway. It took some fussing but I finally got it running. Cost: three weekends of small engine repair and my pride.
On the first day of darkness this season my wife asked why I had not actually hooked up that generator so we could have heat and water. Um, so a few hours later and a trip to HD I added a HEMA L14-30 outlet near the cellar window and 20ft of 30A extension cord. Cost: $130 in parts, 5 hours, my manhood.
The key here is that the generator has a 4 connector outlet and is rated at 5.5kW @ 240V. This allows me to run both sides of the circuit breaker panel. So long as I remember to open the main breaker switch. Fortunately my main switch as 3 contact (red, white, black) so when it's open I'm isolated from the grid. I'm told this is not always the case so if you're going to back feed your circuit breaker panel like I did you need to check this or have an electrician install a cross over switch. Cost: ~$300 installed. While I don't need this I'm having my electrician friend come over and help me put it in so I'm code compliant.
I can't stress the safety of this enough. Back feeding a circuit panel is handy but can be dangerous. I put the plug I use on a separate thermal magnetic breaker with ground fault. The generator runs outside, under an awning behind the shed so we don't get exhaust gas back in the cellar. I'm installing a separate cross over switch so I can't get electricity from it unless I'm isolated from the utility grid.
That said, this little puppy has enough umph to run the well and furnace and a few lights. I get about 3 hours per gallon of gas which is less than ideal but this is a backup system that might see 2% usage. Unfortunately the power is not clean enough to run my home office. I have 4 systems on a 2kVA UPS to do Enterprise Software Development. Unfortunately, the UPS didn't like the generator's power and kept shutting off when the well kicked in. I ended up using a little Honda generator to drive my office that week.
Every time I see one of those 22kW propane generators with auto start outside HD my heart skips a beat and my trousers get a little tight but then I look at the price tag and think; Yea, for a few days a year I need this I can live with my hand me down generator a little longer.
My advice. keep an eye on craig's list this summer and pick up a cheap used generator. Get your electrician friend to help you install a cross over switch and the big extension cord. Shove the thing in the back of the garden shed and sleep easier knowing it's there.
It well may be that George W is the first president prosecuted for High Crimes and Misdemeanors after leaving this office of President. At least, I hope so. I must take responsibility for my part in this travesty. I was angry and wished to unleash the dogs well supplied with cans of whoop-ass. I knew GW was a slime ball when I re-elected him but I wanted revenge (not retribution or justice) upon the fears in my mind. Now matters are worse.
I am responsible for cleaning up this mess I helped create with my vote. Fortunately, I have a strong Constitution. It's power lies in it's endurance and slow methodical workings. Our founding father's knew there was no way to prevent whack jobs like GW from taking control of a country. History is re pleat with examples. What they did was prevent them from holding power for long and ensuring that they could not permanently damage "This bold experiment". As these gag orders are lifted we'll learn the extent of the damage caused. Hopefully, our outrage will not be tempered by the fear and grief of September. I for one am demanding accountability for criminal acts.
If you'll excuse me now, I have to write my representatives and light a fire under their collective ass.
I've got three older systems. Still serviceable but under powered for what I do. I'm going to do what you did. Install EdUbuntu and donate them to a local school. I know a few educators and I'll ask them who needs these systems.
We've recently hired a few new programmers. All did well during interviews (Duh!) but not all are working out well. What's struck me most is that none of them lied or misrepresented them self in the interviews. They just can't solve problems.
Soon after I joined the team my boss started calling me for what he calls a "Sanity Check" Basically, a group problem solving / brain storming session. While I thought it odd that he would seek my advice, I found the exercises both educational and gratifying because was able to bring new direction to our product with my ideas. When asked to interview a couple new prospects last week I took advantage of the opportunity to do a sanity check on something I was assigned. I explained the problem concisely and presented alternative solutions I was considering. then I asked the candidate what he thought I should do. These discussions with the candidate told me more about their ability to solve problems and work in a team than the interview and resume ever could. Having a candidate solve a contrived problem gives an impression on their capability but using a current real world problem was much more valuable to the interview.
I've seen several very good books on physical applications of advanced mathematics. I'm guessing queen-of-the-sciences has enough heavy reading to work through. Might I suggest something along the lines of a nice bed time story. Ok, Physics of Supper Heros was written as a text book for kids but I throughly enjoyed reading it. How many physics books can one say that about? It's not a bad introduction to physical concepts. There is a web site that will provide reasonable in site to the depth of the book. Best of all, it's quick reading and available by Inter Library Loan in most areas.
Slashdot Mirror
greedy and selfish legislation has been linked to rioting in the streets
but apparently congress does not see fit to take action on that either.
I've been working from home for the last 13 years and I currently work for a company where everyone works from home. I'm not so sure that you need a door to keep your family out as to help separate your work life from your home life. The hardest thing I deal with is leaving work at the end of the work day. It's far too easy to slip back into the office to take care of that one little thing. This leads to burn out and should be avoided at all cost.
Set a schedule and a routine then keep to them. This should include a dedicated work space that you use for nothing other than work. That seems silly but it really helps maintain discipline. For example, I take my laptop to the couch at the end of the day for personal work and net surfing. I also found that I had to turn my desk away from the beautiful view outside my office to get any work done. I have a fixed schedule and though I need have to, I get approval from both my supervisor and my wife to work outside that schedule.
There is no reason to be in-accessible to your family but at the same time, they need to understand that you're at work. I've been in many meetings where a small voice is heard asking permission to go to a friends house. While this is never a problem, hearing a boisterous family clamoring in the background during a conference call is extremely disruptive. Likewise, slipping up stairs to change the laundry is probably not a problem though slipping out to mow the lawn is. Ask yourself before doing something personal, "Would this pass muster if you were in an office with other co-workers?"
Finally, the most important part of working from home is communication. Get yourself a high quality wireless headset and no-cost/low-cost calling plan. If you're not on the phone for as much as half you day then your out of touch with what's happening in the rest of the company. That voice line can be either POTS or VOIP but it should be dedicated to your work. Trust me on this, you don't want your teen daughter throwing a tantrum on the extension because she can't call her friend while you're in a conference call with a client. I find that a Plantronics Calisto Pro over a Vonage line gives me good quality so long as I'm not presenting. If I am presenting then I'll use my cell phone so VOIP does not compete with the presentation for bandwidth. Speaking of bandwidth, don't skimp here. My only choice is Time Warner which has an unpublished habit of dropping my bandwidth to 128K just when I need it most. When I complain they refer me to their Terms of Service regarding peer to peer file sharing. It's frustrating because none of my network traffic is peer to peer file sharing. I suspect the limit is triggered by upstream bandwidth use exceeding some parameter but can't prove it. Their best idea is to refer me to their "Business Class" service which gets me over priced hosting I don't need.
Instant messaging apps are also a must for the quick questions and should get you immediate access to anyone in your company. Think if it as the equivalent to shouting over the cubicle wall or walking down the hall to poke your head into someone's office. We found that no one IM service worked reliably, not even our own dedicated LINQ or XMPP server proved to be reliable enough. We currently distribute a list of employees and their IM accounts on several well known services. I am accessible on MSN, Skype, and Google Chat while at work. The redundancy means I can still contact someone if one service starts acting up. Unfortunately, it also means I'll have two or three messages waiting when I come back from changing the laundry.
One more thought.
Congress just passed a law making protest in the vicinity of the secret service a criminal act. I expect the law will not pass Constitutional muster. Unfortunately, someone must break that law, get arrested, and sacrifice their career, home, and life savings to bring that obviously unconstitutional law before the Supreme Court.
Apparently our Congressional "Leaders" thinks that OK so long as they don't have to listen to protesters outside their convention. And, they have no complicity in passing this abomination to the Constitution they swore to uphold.
Just something to remember...
in November.
Protest may not require breaking the law but it's more effective when protesters do. It's called Civil Disobedience!
How many "Occupy" protesters are in the SF or NY judicial system because they were protesting? Would we know about their cause if they just stood down the street holding up signs? I would argue, NO!. That level of civil disobedience was required to get media attention. There was no media coverage of the Occupy events for weeks.
How many were jailed while protesting nuclear power plants in their home towns? Many of those arrests resulted in the plant NOT being constructed. All of those arrests resulted in a dramatic reduction in new nuclear power plants in the US. Can you say those arrested protesters were not effective? Only now are we seeing new projects breaking ground and those are being vehemently protested resulting in arrests.
This level of civil disobedience may be required to bring your cause before the courts. Do you disagree? then go back to school and take Civics 101. It's how our system works so stop vilifying protesters.
LulzSec had a specific mission, separate and distinct from Anonymous. It's mission was to point out the incompetency of people we trust to secure our digital society. They did so in an embarrassingly effective way. I believe they all knew the risks involved in what they were doing. I support that belief by pointing out the steps they took to cloak their identity and avoid prosecution for the laws they knew they were breaking. In my mind that makes them patriots willing to suffer persecution for standing up against corruption and incompetence in the very agencies we charge with security. Were I the sentencing judge I would have to give them the recommended minimum sentence but I would also charge the people they exposed with negligence and complicity. If someone breaks in and steals from you, jail them. If someone breaks in then leaves a note behind and tells you how they did it, hire them!
I hope and expect that these people cited as being "senior leadership" were in fact just inexperienced noobs that got caught. I'm ashamed to say my government has a long history of holding up some patsy as the "Ring Leader" because it makes good press rather than because the assertion has any validity. I see this as another reason to repeal "Qualified Immunity". It made sense 100 year ago but no longer. Today "Qualified Immunity" only creates a group of people "above the law" and empowers them with laziness and incompetence. A public detective can get malpractice insurance the same as a private detective or a doctor or any of a thousand other professions. When will we stop coddling incompetence? When will we stop letting them run amok when someone embarrasses them?
Yet another reason we need to repeal "sovereign immunity". Let them get Malpractice Insurance like the rest of us!
Hear, Hear!
With all the press these little beauties got it's unlikely they're still attached to the original vehicle. Hence the trouble retrieving them.
More likely, the "People of Interest" looked under their car and found it long ago. I'd love to hear some of the FBI accounts of where they found their trackers when not still attached to the original vehicle. A neighbor or wife's car is the most obvious but I'd like to think some were more creative. Interstate Bus, Police Car, Live Stock Hauler, Shipping Container,... As fun as those sound, it's most likely they were destroyed or hawked. Go check out your local seedy pawn shop, you might be able to get one cheap.
Not to say I told you so cuz I didn't.
but
Back in 85 I passed on an opportunity to transfer to the Shuttle Program at Rockwell. A decision I stressed over for a month. It was why I got into aerospace to begin with. My childhood dream was to be an astronaut, or at least part of that community. The problem was that I'd learned that office politics, national politics, and budget are the driving forces that make decisions, not engineering. At the time, and probably still today, management is filled with people promoted by a variation of the Peter Principle; "people are promoted to their highest level of incompetence". Since you can't fire anyone the only way to get rid of dead wood is to promote them out of your department. As a result critical decisions are made by people without the competence to make them. This was the reason I left my child hood dreams of being an astronaut to join the private sector. I could no longer turn a blind eye to the mindlessness about me. Sure, the engineering challenges and creative people that make up the rank and file were great. But, the office politics were deadly!
Beta was superior to VCRs but it didn't catch on either. And Beta wasn't encumbered with frustrating and illconceived DRM "features". I'm in no hurry to run out and spend hard earned money on something that will not work with the rest of my stuff just so some fat cat can get richer.
And I would not go back if you paid me more!
Ok, it was kind of forced upon me. I got laid off and the best job I could get as the job market started to tank was a telecommuting job for a company that had no offices. It had to take a $20K salary cut but I was employed when my peers were not and was able to make ends meet. I'm still not back to my former salary but frankly, I'm turning down better offers just because I'd have to commute ~2 hours a day.
What's two hours of your life worth?
Aside from day care costs (which I have none), or the cost of commuting, or your pay rate... What is your time worth?
What is your blood pressure worth?
Getting in urban traffic and fighting with idiots with licenses to endanger lives is not my idea of a healthy endeavor. Forget about the financial cost of fuel, insurance, payments... driving is stressful!
I could go on and on but then I'd just be a bore. There is certainly a down side that should not be ignored. Telecommuting is not for everyone. It takes more self discipline than most of my former co-workers have (you are the only one keeping you off facebook all day). The hardest discipline is actually ending your work day. When the computer is just around the corner it's all to easy to "Just do that one task that's bothering you". I think the hardest part is a lack of social interaction. Try not talking to anyone at work about non work stuff for the next month (I give most of you a week at best). It's easy and healthy to chat over the cube walls while still tuning an ugly bit of SQL code. you don't get that opportunity when telecommuting. Chatting with your co-workers over IM about last night's game takes your attention away from your task resulting in longer less productive days so you eventually stop doing it (or go looking for a new job). Lately, I've taken to absconding the company conference line when not in use just so we can chat over the virtual cubicle walls. My boss would surely shit if he knew but I see it as a mental health hour.
I've been at the ass end of several transfers where I was told by my client (selling their web site) not to change the contact information since that would hold up the transfer. In all but one of these situations the new owners simple left me as the contact (in violation of ICAN policy). When the domains come up for renewal they will change only the billing contact and leave me as everything else.
I'm not really concerned that LEA is mining social web sites for intelligence.
What's really concerns me here is the lack of accountability for incompetence demonstrated here. Yes, I expect there to be disciplinary action taken but I fear it's no more than a statement in their next performance review. Here on the far side of the pond, if search and rescue is called out for me (even if I'm not lost) I get billed for the event. These bills can be tens of thousands of dollars. Perhaps we should start billing incompetent officers for the cost of their mistakes. Yes there needs to be due process and perhaps officers that get a warrant from the courts before making these raids can be indemnified.
<RANT>
Frankly, I sick of hearing about the increasing cost of incompetence being dismissed as cost of doing law enforcement. I'm sick of off duty cops writing some kid a ticket for spitting on the sidewalk so he can put in for 4 hours of overtime he didn't work ( yes this really happens, ask a retired cop ). I'm sick of the men in blue being more concerned about the image of being right than they are about being correct. Perhaps counting convictions is the wrong performance metric?
</RANT>
You should be able to pick up basic components on the cheep or free if you scrounge, I'm talking old can transistors, LEDs and resistors. You may also be able to lay hands on some project boards by asking around for donations.
With this box and some batteries each student should be able to make basic logic circuits. That is, Have them actually make a flip-flop. Have them get together and hook up their individual flip-flop circuits into gates. This gives them an appreciation for what digital logic does and how to combine it to make more complex circuits. You also get an opportunity to discuss state logic and have them make simple state machines other than flip flops. (adder, counter, timer...)
What they're learning for this physics module:
Ohms law (biasing the transistors)
Semi-Conductor materials science
Why different kinds of transistors need to be
hooked up in different ways to do the same thing.
Interface Design (how to make it so their circuits work together)
Digital vs Analog logic (review of pre-digital systems)
It's cool, re-usable, relevant to their world, and you can complete the module in less than a week.
http://www.dnots.com/ - Best $10 spent this year!
and I don't even mind that shipping cost more than the media.
While I'm thinking about it...
I'll send another letter to my legislature asking why they have not demanded RIAA be investigated by DOJ...
Hell, even Uncle Bill had more scruples than those shysters.
I would rather pay this artist $10 for blank media than risk letting one Shekel of my money finding it way in to the greedy hands of those shysters at RIAA or their clients!
JMB 'Executive' Summary
A packaged cable from any vendor still has a ~2% failure rate even with the 900% markup.
Even a 'perfect' cable installed with incompetence will fail 100% of the time.
If You hired a professional to install your network perhaps you should trust his judgment...
You did hire a professional didn't you?
BINGO!
It's not about managing their network infrastructure. Their own numbers show network load is far below capacity. This is about new revenue streams AND strengthening their monopoly on your access to data and services. I'm complaining again to my elected officials as soon as I hit save here.
Cable has far outgrown the need for protection from regulation, Let them pay the same fees to government that coper and fiber carriers do ans see if they're still competitive. If it looks like a public utility and acts like a public utility it should be managed as a public utility! No More Exemption!
Agree with most of what Elvind says. Where he is wrong is that two 15 year olds sleeping with each other IS consent in all US states. For that matter, two 13 year olds sleeping together IS consent. In most states the two participants need to me more than 24 months difference in age for Non Consent laws to apply.
What I want to know is why the over zealous prosecutors are not charged with child abuse for subjecting these kids to this kind of treatment. These cases serve only one purpose. Generating free publicity for the up coming election cycle. I see these cases as sexual exploitation of children for political gain.
Remember District Attorney George Skumanick and vote him out next election. His behavior here is reprehensible.
Here is another example of western mobile carriers stifling innovation. It does not matter if the Dell platform was boring or not. It's up to the market to decide, NOT the carriers. It's time for the carriers to be required (as a Public Utility) to open their access rules. Locked devices and exclusive contracts are creating artificially high prices for wireless and blocking device manufacturers from entering the market on a level playing field. They have no problem operating in other countries that do not allow these practices but decry the fate of their industry when lawmakers suggest they open up here. I say Bull Shit! Let them compete by offering better coverage and services and not on who has the coolest gadget maker locked into an exclusive contract. US falls way behind other countries in wireless quality and diversity.
Young people don't think they can go in the streets and do anything they like because they listen to rap or play violent games. Young people go in the streets and commit violent crime because they feel frustrated and disenfranchised by the actions of the aristocracy and self righteous people like Richard Taylor! It's an act of rebellion against candy coated repression.
If you want to do something about the problem of violent street youth. Open a resource center providing services to homeless and disenfranchised youth. And for God sakes, stop listening to idiots like Richard Taylor.
This year I was able to join the ranks of Yet Another Generator User in my neighborhood. We live in a fairly rural area of Southern Maine so we were black for 8 days this season. As a telecommuter this was particularly painful. While the furnace is 120V the well is 240V and the furnace will not run if there is no water service.
When we were dark last season I found myself whining to my father about no power, heat, water. He informed me that he had an old Chicago Power 40411 portable generator he no longer used because it made so much noise all the other campers kept giving him dirty looks and rude comments whenever he fired it up. A couple weeks later I found box with generator parts in my driveway. It took some fussing but I finally got it running. Cost: three weekends of small engine repair and my pride.
On the first day of darkness this season my wife asked why I had not actually hooked up that generator so we could have heat and water. Um, so a few hours later and a trip to HD I added a HEMA L14-30 outlet near the cellar window and 20ft of 30A extension cord. Cost: $130 in parts, 5 hours, my manhood.
The key here is that the generator has a 4 connector outlet and is rated at 5.5kW @ 240V. This allows me to run both sides of the circuit breaker panel. So long as I remember to open the main breaker switch. Fortunately my main switch as 3 contact (red, white, black) so when it's open I'm isolated from the grid. I'm told this is not always the case so if you're going to back feed your circuit breaker panel like I did you need to check this or have an electrician install a cross over switch. Cost: ~$300 installed. While I don't need this I'm having my electrician friend come over and help me put it in so I'm code compliant.
I can't stress the safety of this enough. Back feeding a circuit panel is handy but can be dangerous. I put the plug I use on a separate thermal magnetic breaker with ground fault. The generator runs outside, under an awning behind the shed so we don't get exhaust gas back in the cellar. I'm installing a separate cross over switch so I can't get electricity from it unless I'm isolated from the utility grid.
That said, this little puppy has enough umph to run the well and furnace and a few lights. I get about 3 hours per gallon of gas which is less than ideal but this is a backup system that might see 2% usage. Unfortunately the power is not clean enough to run my home office. I have 4 systems on a 2kVA UPS to do Enterprise Software Development. Unfortunately, the UPS didn't like the generator's power and kept shutting off when the well kicked in. I ended up using a little Honda generator to drive my office that week.
Every time I see one of those 22kW propane generators with auto start outside HD my heart skips a beat and my trousers get a little tight but then I look at the price tag and think; Yea, for a few days a year I need this I can live with my hand me down generator a little longer.
My advice. keep an eye on craig's list this summer and pick up a cheap used generator. Get your electrician friend to help you install a cross over switch and the big extension cord. Shove the thing in the back of the garden shed and sleep easier knowing it's there.
It well may be that George W is the first president prosecuted for High Crimes and Misdemeanors after leaving this office of President. At least, I hope so.
I must take responsibility for my part in this travesty. I was angry and wished to unleash the dogs well supplied with cans of whoop-ass. I knew GW was a slime ball when I re-elected him but I wanted revenge (not retribution or justice) upon the fears in my mind. Now matters are worse.
I am responsible for cleaning up this mess I helped create with my vote. Fortunately, I have a strong Constitution. It's power lies in it's endurance and slow methodical workings. Our founding father's knew there was no way to prevent whack jobs like GW from taking control of a country. History is re pleat with examples. What they did was prevent them from holding power for long and ensuring that they could not permanently damage "This bold experiment". As these gag orders are lifted we'll learn the extent of the damage caused. Hopefully, our outrage will not be tempered by the fear and grief of September. I for one am demanding accountability for criminal acts.
If you'll excuse me now, I have to write my representatives and light a fire under their collective ass.
I've got three older systems. Still serviceable but under powered for what I do. I'm going to do what you did. Install EdUbuntu and donate them to a local school. I know a few educators and I'll ask them who needs these systems.
We've recently hired a few new programmers. All did well during interviews (Duh!) but not all are working out well. What's struck me most is that none of them lied or misrepresented them self in the interviews. They just can't solve problems.
Soon after I joined the team my boss started calling me for what he calls a "Sanity Check" Basically, a group problem solving / brain storming session. While I thought it odd that he would seek my advice, I found the exercises both educational and gratifying because was able to bring new direction to our product with my ideas. When asked to interview a couple new prospects last week I took advantage of the opportunity to do a sanity check on something I was assigned. I explained the problem concisely and presented alternative solutions I was considering. then I asked the candidate what he thought I should do. These discussions with the candidate told me more about their ability to solve problems and work in a team than the interview and resume ever could. Having a candidate solve a contrived problem gives an impression on their capability but using a current real world problem was much more valuable to the interview.
I've seen several very good books on physical applications of advanced mathematics. I'm guessing queen-of-the-sciences has enough heavy reading to work through. Might I suggest something along the lines of a nice bed time story. Ok, Physics of Supper Heros was written as a text book for kids but I throughly enjoyed reading it. How many physics books can one say that about? It's not a bad introduction to physical concepts. There is a web site that will provide reasonable in site to the depth of the book. Best of all, it's quick reading and available by Inter Library Loan in most areas.