One thing that my job has taught me is that skillsets have no value once they get past asskissing & denouncing your cow-orkers.
All of these are sadly VERY real.
Give somebody bad marks on a peer review? Get a job in Data Security or other promotion.
Be on the Selection Team that picks a REALLY bad product? Get a job with that company & have glowing reviews from our mgt if you kissed ass.
Have people written up for "unauthorized screen savers"? Go to Data Security.
Kiss bosses ass with lots of pretty charts & graphs when he needs them? You've got a VP job.
Hire people away from vendors and customers? Cause one customer to drop a paying contract because of it? Get over 100k$ a year salary.
Show a "chosen one" to be wrong in private and then prove it at a meeting when the idiot ignored what you told them? You're Fired.
Tell the truth to a division head as why crap software MkII isn't working and locking up systems when asked directly? Be glad they didn't press charges when they fired you.
Try to pull of a company merger with a customer that was hostile to begin with and have them to drop a contract even if they have to pay $500k to terminate early? It's Board of Directors for life for you. With the salary at well over $100k.
As a tech, find a TON of porn, warez & spyware on the boss's son's PC that he divirted staff to fix & then try defend yourself when the kid screws it back up & says it's the tech's fault? BAM!! Instafired.
Be the kid in the above PC show...Get hired as often as you like as an intern in the company.
Spend over $500k to buy new hardware that suddenly falls out of favor due to a software fault and have to sell it back at $50k? Get job as CFO 'cause you kiss ass.
Like my job? No, I don't. Tolerate it because my family needs to eat & have a roof over ther heads? Yes.
Is that all the tales? No, but I'm starting to get sick.
Most of the folks who "gave it all up to be happy" already had the $$$ pile to make sure they were happy.
And this concludes today's round of miserable cynical remarks.
I was actually a tolerant Comcast customer until one of their "upgrades" did in my 3Com OfficeConnect modem.
A week of BS..."it's your garden wall software", "outages in the area", "your account is scheduled to be shut off", "I'm surprised this old modedm still works".
And then by a "miracle", their RCA/Thomson modem works!! It also shows me why they shutdown my "junk" modem. Despite "excellent" signal strenght, the new modem drops connection quite a few times a day. I guess that's Comcrap's little way of making sure I'm not running a server or whatever.
Can you say switching to Verizon DSL? With it's severe limitation of only 768k, I'll be hard pressed to beat Comcrap's superior best sustained showing to date of a touch over 400k. (and save $26 a month too)
Our ISP (tho would could act as our own) has the endearing habit of what I call "dead sunday" every once in a while. Internal LAN/WAN working fine, but nothing past the 1st hop out of the firewall. Webaccess for incoming is gone too.
Now, try to report it to the ISP, I dare ya. Their Email...Yeah right. Phone...Oddly, it rings. And rings and will not be answered even if I throw Procomm in as the dialer x 99.
Weirdly, our internal net folks have managed to totally distance themselves from this one. There's some kind of weird "not my fault" that puts it on the web dev crew. And they don't actually do anything, they just want to be notified if it's > 2 hours down.
And if anyone follows up later in the week, "scheduled maint" covers all the bases.
Given the total refusal of our net admins to fully patch due to "we haven't tested" some of our craptastic apps with all the patches, I expect to see another round of "no problem" here at work come Friday when I'm back.
New worm comes out...few days later we have widespread network problems & a couple of "minor" server "issues" and "resets", but the True Word is "No problem here".
I don't who's dumber, our MS fanboy head net admin, our "restructured" (4th time?)management or ME for staying there. (yes, he has actually said, "According to MicroSoft" on many occasions)
As in failed. As in program specs will not be met.
Not due to any technical issues, pure politics. The booster design did kinda stink, but that was only part of the failure. The initial project plans called for something like a launch every 2 or 3 weeks.
Remember what Nixon did to the space program? I dont think it's ever going to recover from that, let alone the attack of the handwringing "but someone could get hurt" crowd.
And all it will take is 1 accident in the pay-to-fly sector in this country and the whiners & the bad lawyers will finish them off faster than a rocket sled with no brakes.
Or is it just me?
X years ago didn't MS hand Apple a pile (actually smallish) of cash when Apple was about to go >*poof* into the good night business history?
Might that explain something?
(combo of bad memory and apathy, who needs details?)
They've gotta be smarter than some of the things running around now.
Let me get this right now...
Windmills = bad. They kill birdies and block view. Solar = bad. It's bright and shiny, might scare something. Wave energy = bad. Might get a fish wet. Genetic Tech = bad. It's new. Nanotech = bad. We dont know why, somebody said so. But it could be somehow, so let's protest. Meat = bad. Somebody might enjoy it. Space exploration = bad. It's not making more teeming masses. Evolution = bad. It's not in the Booble.
10 years ago I worked in a mainframe shop that had upgraded from the 4381 to a 9121. Neither system had much "eye candy". That meant that the client didn't have much to show off in the "big window" of the data center when tours/investors were guided thru.
Unless Tex was working.(and thankfully he almost always there). He was the client's rep that ordered paper by the semi for us & was able to bend Standard Register to his will with a mere phone call(one semi load of paper a year will usually do that, we did multiples)
Tex would lead the tour to the window and happily point to the elderly IBM network controller(box was actually blue on the sides, model forgotten) with all its blinking status leds and tell em "there is the computer".
They'd make "pretty lights" noises and continue along, Tex would grin from ear to ear & we'd have to wait till they left before we could run outta air laughing.
Tex dreaded the times anyone talked about network upgrades.
Fell for it, then I read the one keyword "Websense".
We've got the typical windoze shop issues here & they love websense. It "protects" them while they run w/local admin rights & hand out root passwords to the Aix boxes to vendors.
Websense has a history of scare tactics in the past & doubtlessly will continue. It also generates big numbers to beat the peons down with. Every banner & link on a page seems to count as a "webpage" to some websense/"security" admins.
Worked in datacenters w/air & watercooled mainframes. IBM 9121 & 3083, an elderly Tandem NSII, S38's, AS/400's, most of the VAX/Alpha family & assorted blades/pizza boxes.
The water cooled units also sat in cool rooms because they shared them w/their air cooled DASD. The air cooled systems, need the same cool rooms.
My current entrapment has 2x 50kva UPS and 2x BIG Liebert air units in the room w/all the air cooled servers running from a cobwebby PowerStation to a badly configured Alpha cluster & finishing up the the Sharks & the b80 & P-series.
It's 65 degrees F in there & loud. I miss water cooling, it did make things a little less earful.
("Astrophysically it's important and interesting," Weintraub said of the pulsar planet work. "But these planets are irrelevant to questions of life in the universe.")
So, in the 15 or so billion year life of the universe only "now" matters.
Now excuse me while I go look up the list of lifeforms known to live on brown dwarves and gas giants.
Unless it can burn one down from boost phase, all it'll do is make funny fallout patterns from any thing w/a NBC warhead somewhere in friendly(ish)territory.
And if someone's going to be tossing those, I think they'll be able to target the flying radar reflector aka a 747.
Proof of concept is all this thing's really good for unless you're the contractor in need of $$$.
Not only does it get only slightly better mpg than a 1980 VW diesel rabbit, it's slow enough in getting upto highway speed to pose an actual safety threat.
"Only" 50hp and it's that speed impaired? Something is else wrong.
I just dropped SETI about a month ago after 2k workunits and one candidate.
I got tired of the information void that they were presenting on server/app status when rolling out BOINC. They got numerous offers from a range of supportive folks from students to users to faculty at OTHER colleges to keep the web page up to date and ignored them.
The newsgroups that allegedly supported the project looked like text book examples of bad usenet w/the flaming and "screw you, you're a volunteer" msgs. The user/support forums on the website were seemingly user run w/little input from the project as well.
After losing my old my-deja email and credit for those units and all this warm fuzzy support, I decided to take my CPU cycles elsewhere.
(and bask in the glory of being ignored there too no doubt)
Philly already has an impressive track record on city run utilities.
Anyone want to bet that if this ever gets off the ground, it will follow the well worn and clearly marked path so often used in this part of the country?
Or will they go the much simplier 10 years and 300 million $ over budget path?
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like it's a few years old, but still interesting stuff. http://www.surmet.com/docs/ALON%20Press%20Release_ August%202003.pdf/
One thing that my job has taught me is that skillsets have no value once they get past asskissing & denouncing your cow-orkers.
All of these are sadly VERY real.
Give somebody bad marks on a peer review? Get a job in Data Security or other promotion.
Be on the Selection Team that picks a REALLY bad product? Get a job with that company & have glowing reviews from our mgt if you kissed ass.
Have people written up for "unauthorized screen savers"? Go to Data Security.
Kiss bosses ass with lots of pretty charts & graphs when he needs them? You've got a VP job.
Hire people away from vendors and customers? Cause one customer to drop a paying contract because of it? Get over 100k$ a year salary.
Show a "chosen one" to be wrong in private and then prove it at a meeting when the idiot ignored what you told them? You're Fired.
Tell the truth to a division head as why crap software MkII isn't working and locking up systems when asked directly? Be glad they didn't press charges when they fired you.
Try to pull of a company merger with a customer that was hostile to begin with and have them to drop a contract even if they have to pay $500k to terminate early?
It's Board of Directors for life for you. With the salary at well over $100k.
As a tech, find a TON of porn, warez & spyware on the boss's son's PC that he divirted staff to fix & then try defend yourself when the kid screws it back up & says it's the tech's fault? BAM!! Instafired.
Be the kid in the above PC show...Get hired as often as you like as an intern in the company.
Spend over $500k to buy new hardware that suddenly falls out of favor due to a software fault and have to sell it back at $50k? Get job as CFO 'cause you kiss ass.
Like my job?
No, I don't.
Tolerate it because my family needs to eat & have a roof over ther heads?
Yes.
Is that all the tales?
No, but I'm starting to get sick.
Most of the folks who "gave it all up to be happy" already had the $$$ pile to make sure they were happy.
And this concludes today's round of miserable cynical remarks.
Shades of Comcrap (comcast).
"For only $42 a month".
I was actually a tolerant Comcast customer until one of their "upgrades" did in my 3Com OfficeConnect modem.
A week of BS..."it's your garden wall software", "outages in the area", "your account is scheduled to be shut off", "I'm surprised this old modedm still works".
And then by a "miracle", their RCA/Thomson modem works!! It also shows me why they shutdown my "junk" modem. Despite "excellent" signal strenght, the new modem drops connection quite a few times a day. I guess that's Comcrap's little way of making sure I'm not running a server or whatever.
Can you say switching to Verizon DSL? With it's severe limitation of only 768k, I'll be hard pressed to beat Comcrap's superior best sustained showing to date of a touch over 400k. (and save $26 a month too)
Our ISP (tho would could act as our own) has the endearing habit of what I call "dead sunday" every once in a while. Internal LAN/WAN working fine, but nothing past the 1st hop out of the firewall. Webaccess for incoming is gone too. Now, try to report it to the ISP, I dare ya. Their Email...Yeah right. Phone...Oddly, it rings. And rings and will not be answered even if I throw Procomm in as the dialer x 99. Weirdly, our internal net folks have managed to totally distance themselves from this one. There's some kind of weird "not my fault" that puts it on the web dev crew. And they don't actually do anything, they just want to be notified if it's > 2 hours down. And if anyone follows up later in the week, "scheduled maint" covers all the bases.
Given the total refusal of our net admins to fully patch due to "we haven't tested" some of our craptastic apps with all the patches, I expect to see another round of "no problem" here at work come Friday when I'm back.
New worm comes out...few days later we have widespread network problems & a couple of "minor" server "issues" and "resets", but the True Word is "No problem here".
I don't who's dumber, our MS fanboy head net admin, our "restructured" (4th time?)management or ME for staying there.
(yes, he has actually said, "According to MicroSoft" on many occasions)
Is it time to reapply to Sungard again?
Actually?
The loss of the 1st shuttle doomed the program.
As in failed. As in program specs will not be met.
Not due to any technical issues, pure politics. The booster design did kinda stink, but that was only part of the failure. The initial project plans called for something like a launch every 2 or 3 weeks.
Remember what Nixon did to the space program? I dont think it's ever going to recover from that, let alone the attack of the handwringing "but someone could get hurt" crowd.
And all it will take is 1 accident in the pay-to-fly sector in this country and the whiners & the bad lawyers will finish them off faster than a rocket sled with no brakes.
BTW, if I had the cash, I'd go.
Or is it just me? X years ago didn't MS hand Apple a pile (actually smallish) of cash when Apple was about to go >*poof* into the good night business history? Might that explain something? (combo of bad memory and apathy, who needs details?)
Welcome our Gray Goo Overlords.
They've gotta be smarter than some of the things running around now.
Let me get this right now...
Windmills = bad. They kill birdies and block view.
Solar = bad. It's bright and shiny, might scare something.
Wave energy = bad. Might get a fish wet.
Genetic Tech = bad. It's new.
Nanotech = bad. We dont know why, somebody said so. But it could be somehow, so let's protest.
Meat = bad. Somebody might enjoy it.
Space exploration = bad. It's not making more teeming masses.
Evolution = bad. It's not in the Booble.
Yeah, Gray Goo's gotta be a step up.
Blinky lights~Real Computer
10 years ago I worked in a mainframe shop that had upgraded from the 4381 to a 9121. Neither system had much "eye candy". That meant that the client didn't have much to show off in the "big window" of the data center when tours/investors were guided thru.
Unless Tex was working.(and thankfully he almost always there). He was the client's rep that ordered paper by the semi for us & was able to bend Standard Register to his will with a mere phone call(one semi load of paper a year will usually do that, we did multiples)
Tex would lead the tour to the window and happily point to the elderly IBM network controller(box was actually blue on the sides, model forgotten) with all its blinking status leds and tell em "there is the computer".
They'd make "pretty lights" noises and continue along, Tex would grin from ear to ear & we'd have to wait till they left before we could run outta air laughing.
Tex dreaded the times anyone talked about network upgrades.
Mouse is wearing his tinfoil hat. He is safe.
You'd that that with all the time & $ invested, they'd at least show 'em off with active cooling a bit more advanced than the BIG sink/BIG fan combo.
An alpha teaser I wonder, or a bit of intended misdirection?
Anyone remember the hissy fits Lotus used to have over "Look and Feel" for 123?
Given their amazingly quick response to market changes at the time, I can understand why M$ would adopt their business model. (can you say ouch?)
Prob the biggest boost Linux has gotten to date via M$.
Fell for it, then I read the one keyword "Websense".
We've got the typical windoze shop issues here & they love websense. It "protects" them while they run w/local admin rights & hand out root passwords to the Aix boxes to vendors.
Websense has a history of scare tactics in the past & doubtlessly will continue. It also generates big numbers to beat the peons down with. Every banner & link on a page seems to count as a "webpage" to some websense/"security" admins.
Worked in datacenters w/air & watercooled mainframes. IBM 9121 & 3083, an elderly Tandem NSII, S38's, AS/400's, most of the VAX/Alpha family & assorted blades/pizza boxes.
The water cooled units also sat in cool rooms because they shared them w/their air cooled DASD. The air cooled systems, need the same cool rooms.
My current entrapment has 2x 50kva UPS and 2x BIG Liebert air units in the room w/all the air cooled servers running from a cobwebby PowerStation to a badly configured Alpha cluster & finishing up the the Sharks & the b80 & P-series.
It's 65 degrees F in there & loud. I miss water cooling, it did make things a little less earful.
That even when a totally non-CO2 emitting, non-radioactive power source is found we still get the "OMG!! It's could cause xxx", uproar.
Living here in the post-industrial wonderland of NJ, I find this amusing in a bad way.
The other thing that shocked me was the supposedly "higher" costs for "green" energy. Bad news folks, it's lower than what I pay to Conectiv/Pepco.
And now back to our regular insomnia...
("Astrophysically it's important and interesting," Weintraub said of the pulsar planet work. "But these planets are irrelevant to questions of life in the universe.")
So, in the 15 or so billion year life of the universe only "now" matters.
Now excuse me while I go look up the list of lifeforms known to live on brown dwarves and gas giants.
It could deal with MeetingMaker 6.0.5 files and such.
Something about having to recreate an 89meg schedule for a data center by hand seems to be putting me off switching to anything even vaguely current.
And as any EQ player can say "Working as intended".
Sony/Verant/SOE - no surprise
So it wasn't just me remembering the "high end" BBS's that had those "special" non-publicly advertised numbers.
And Trade Wars, Legend Of the Red Dragon and the turn based "space war" with the asterisk stars.
And the flame wars that still carry on via usenet now instead of RIME or Fido.
Any idiot can make craters given a large enough budget.
Now, put it in a Earth capture orbit, and I'll be impressed.
Unless it can burn one down from boost phase, all it'll do is make funny fallout patterns from any thing w/a NBC warhead somewhere in friendly(ish)territory.
And if someone's going to be tossing those, I think they'll be able to target the flying radar reflector aka a 747.
Proof of concept is all this thing's really good for unless you're the contractor in need of $$$.
Not only does it get only slightly better mpg than a 1980 VW diesel rabbit, it's slow enough in getting upto highway speed to pose an actual safety threat.
"Only" 50hp and it's that speed impaired? Something is else wrong.
For me to actually win a game again then?
(it is possible to forget enough basic chess to lose to most any program, let alone human. it just takes 20 years of neglect)
I wonder if AE DT'ing pawns are considered tasteless? (obEQ)
I just dropped SETI about a month ago after 2k workunits and one candidate.
I got tired of the information void that they were presenting on server/app status when rolling out BOINC. They got numerous offers from a range of supportive folks from students to users to faculty at OTHER colleges to keep the web page up to date and ignored them.
The newsgroups that allegedly supported the project looked like text book examples of bad usenet w/the flaming and "screw you, you're a volunteer" msgs. The user/support forums on the website were seemingly user run w/little input from the project as well.
After losing my old my-deja email and credit for those units and all this warm fuzzy support, I decided to take my CPU cycles elsewhere.
(and bask in the glory of being ignored there too no doubt)
Philly already has an impressive track record on city run utilities. Anyone want to bet that if this ever gets off the ground, it will follow the well worn and clearly marked path so often used in this part of the country? Or will they go the much simplier 10 years and 300 million $ over budget path?