Honestly, I think he's better off doing his volunteer type things while he's working (nights, weekends), and actually take vacation when he's on vacation. I'd much rather sacrifice a few nights a week to doing some charity work than I would sacrifice one of those precious large blocks of down time. Plus, I'm more likely to accomplish good things when I'm in "Work Mode". That's just me though. YMMV.
Here is something I came up with to do when I had a few days off. I was just messing around the house, sorting through some of my older computer junk that I had collected. I was determined to either throw it away or try to sell some of it on Ebay or Craig's List
It dawned on me that I wouldn't get hardly any money for early Pentium 4 desktop system but they did work and seemed like a waste to throw away. I decided that I would start putting them together into working systems and give them to kids with deadbeat parents (My mother goes to Alcoholics Anonymous...I had a ready supply of needy kids as although most of the parents there are relatively sober, they are still irresponsible). I took the rest of my vacation time to myself to have some down time, but when it was back to work I spent nights setting these desktops up, delivering them, and showing kids how to use them. They'll call me for tech support or to learn something new.
The kids are great, they love their computers and treat them with ridiculous amounts of respect (i rarely have to clean off spyware infections), and seem to be quite happy that someone is willing to take time out to sit down with them. I keep tabs on the kids grades and occasionally will give them upgrades (Bigger hard drives, DVD Burners, Web Cams) if they are doing well. Since a few businesses/people ended up tossing me some units they were throwing out, I've managed to get 16 of them out there. It is probably one of the most satisfying things I have done with my life. Certainly more satisfying than tossing money at some random organization or donating my time to building a web site for them. Getting down in the trenches and seeing what some poor kids have to deal with give you a different perspective.
For what it is worth, I had all sorts of problems with the Sonicwall VPN. Make sure you are using the latest "Global VPN Client" and not the normal VPN client. Also, if you are talking about people working from home and not at a hotel, pay attention to what type of router they have. In my experience with Sonicwall, Netgear = Fail. Buffalo and Linksys seem to work the best. Finally, there seems to be a bigger problem with wireless than wired when using their VPN. You can tell the users to plug in as a last resort.
I realize you have another solution in place but I've felt your pain regarding Sonicwall and figured I'd share what I have learned works with their hardware.
I've had US Cellular for something like 9 years now. At the time I picked them because they wanted the smallest deposit on a new phone contract. In my experience, I often will still get a signal in a lot of places where Sprint and AT&T phone users do not. I don't travel all that much but I've been all over the state of Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, Vegas, Phoenix, Miami, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame area, New Orleans, Southern Mississippi, Mexico, Memphis, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Washington DC in the last few years and have never had any problems getting a signal.
I consider their prices to be pretty reasonable. My phone bill is somewhere around $90 a month with two lines, around 1000 minutes (we never really go over that), 750 texts per month, and one phone with Internet service (my wife doesn't really want or need a smart phone). If you don't intend to frequently travel, they offer "Wide Area Plans" instead of "National Plans" which are significantly less expensive.
The downside is that they are a CDMA carrier and have a very limited selection of phones at any given time. Currently they are offering the Blackberry Curve, Pearl, and Tour and on the Windows Mobile they have the HTC Touch Pro 2 and HTC Snap. I personally have an HTC Touch Pro and find it be a pretty nice phone in general, although I am hoping that some droid model makes it to US Cellular.
You are correct, but it just so happens that a pretty large number of actors and actresses also happen to be in the Very Attractive to Smoking Hot range....probably more true for women than it is for men. There may be some exceptions, but I can't think of any films with young women in lead roles who are downright ugly. I think audiences in general have a tendency to like/sympathize a character who is at least marginally attractive.
Perhaps this technology could be used in a way that would give otherwise talented actresses (awesome ability with speaking/perfect mannerisms) that don't have that Hollywood friendly face a chance to go in and make a career of what they do best.
Back when I was in school, we had a "security guard" that was a complete idiot. I stayed after school maybe 30 minutes late to work on an independent study Biology project. As we were leaving, he harassed us making all sorts of threats because he "knew" we had stayed late to "monkey around or steal stuff". Eventually we just left.
We get out to the parking lot and my friend's car window was smashed, stereo swiped, and steering column ripped apart as if someone was trying to hotwire the car. We started heading back into the school to call the police. We were stopped by the same security guard who greeted us with "The security of these grounds is under my control and you kids will not be entering the school AFTER HOURS to cause mayhem." We tried explaining the situation to him and asked him to come look at our problem but he told us "Haha, You think I am going to fall for that trick? I wasn't born yesterday!" (??WTF??) At that point I became agitated and started swearing at him and telling him we wouldn't be in this situation if he was as fucking vigilant as he claimed and watched the god damned parking lot. We had to leave and walk 9 blocks to someone's house we knew, use the phone to call the cops and a friend that knew something about cars. The police filed their report, our friend put the ignition back together.
The next day, I was served a day of in school suspension for lipping off to the security guard, even after explaining the situation to the principal. He also didn't believe me. For lying I was asked to go out in the parking lot and pick up a pile of shattered glass that the vigilant security guard had discovered that morning.(Banged head on desk)
To be fair to School Administrators, I can't imagine undertaking a project the size of developing a policy manual for what is acceptable in school. It would probably have to be several hundred pages long to cover the multitude of insane/destructive/dangerous schemes kids may come up with. That would likely require school districts to hire expensive lawyers for hours and hours. Every year new laws, new technologies, and new ideas would come into play, requiring the lawyers to be brought in again to revamp the policy. You hand the thing out to the kids and what do you think they are going to do? They are going to pour over the entire thing looking for a loophole to exploit.
It is probably best to lay down rules of what you can do at school or bring to school. If your item isn't listed, assume you can't until you ask someone. Of course, this would work best with a competent staff that is willing to hear the kids out...which probably isn't all that common.
Dude, your first post was very well said but making blanket statements about large groups of people just because they believe differently than you isn't being funny or intelligent, it is outright being a bigot.
I myself am an Atheist and have a hard time believing so many people are so into Religion, but hey, I could be dead wrong. The belief that there is no Supreme Being to worship is a belief and leap of faith in itself. As much as we've progressed with science and logic we have not found that key that says with 100% certainty that there is no such thing as God/Allah/Random Deity.
As far as my faith (or lack thereof) is concerned I have as of late been hanging around with a group of people from Iran and a group of people from Palestine, all followers of the Islamic faith. I'm not sure I've met many people more open minded about my opinions. I treat their religious ideals with respect (Instead of say...telling them that they are idiots) and they do the same for me. That is more than I can say about most Christians (who inform me that I am going to Hell or something) or how most Atheist/Agnostic people treat those involved with religion (who usually are more than willing to tell people how stupid and ignorant they are.
I don't know what you environment is like precisely, but the biggest barrier to switching is if you are using Sharepoint, Outlook Web Access, or any Customer Built Web applications tested only to render properly with Internet Explorer's "Interpretation" of W3C standards. Web Access works in "Lite" mode, meaning not all features are available. Sharepoint is absolutely terrible, and any of those custom built applications could cease to work entirely.
Judging by the fact that you are still using IE 7 and have not been upgraded to IE 8, I'm guessing there are some major internal web apps written that are tailored to work with IE 7 (As working in IE 7 doesn't mean it will work in IE 8 or even IE 8 with compatability mode).
I've been in situation where I tried to have users only use Internet Explorer for Sharepoint and Firefox for browsing the web, but that just seems to confuse them and they end up completely ignoring Firefox. After all, Internet Explorer works for both Sharepoint and all External Web Sites. Firefox doesn't work for Sharepoint. Therefore, IE is better in their eyes.
Right now when I want to call someone I select that person's name and press "call". If I want to IM, mail, or text, I press other buttons.
I can't see why you think email address lists will be any different than the situation most people have right now with their cell phones. Years ago when my friends and I started using cell phones we swapped numbers, dumped them into our contacts list and never really worried about them again. I still know by heart all those peoples' home phone numbers from when we were kids but I don't think I could recite half of their current numbers.
Dude.....Windows XP Home, Windows Vista Home Basic, and Windows Vista Home Premium all come without support for joining domains. So......no. Windows 7 Home is not a downgrade from Vista/XP in terms of that connectivity.
I second the proper 64-bit support thing. The Engineers at the company I work for have started to move towards Solidworks. It is a 3D Cad program that also allows them to do complex simulations. I procured them some Windows XP machines with some pretty nice specs in regards to processor and video card but they still claim it is very slow when doing some things and want more RAM. They already have 3 GB. Not much I can do for them there, except to move to a modern OS that lets me cram more RAM into it. Solidworks doesn't run directly on any *nix so that means Windows Vista or Windows 7.
At that point, I'll be supporting two operating systems. I won't do a full scale rollout of Windows 7 but as old boxes in other departments die, they will be replaced by machines running Windows 7.
I have to say for the most part, it is quite easy but I have run into a problem lately. My laptop is part of a domain at work. I take it home and log on "To this computer" only with a local account. When I go to try to map a network drive to my NAS device, it displays a user name box, a password box, and under it the name of the domain I am joined to. No option to change that...just the name of the domain. I select "Log On as different user" and yet the domain information stays.
So it is constantly trying to log in as mydomain\ajlisows. As my NAS isn't part of the domain it doesn't allow me to log in. Really, really annoying. Let ME tell the device if I want to login using a domain account. I didn't have that problem with any XP boxes.
Howdy Neighbor! Are you running one of them newfangled wireless internet thingys?
Yes. Why? Were you thinking about setting one up? Mine works really well.
It seems like the normal sort of "Neighbor" question that a neophyte might ask if he was on the fence about getting high speed internet with a wireless setup. I'm sure if it did go down this way the neighbor wasn't thinking this guy would flip out on him.
Hey! A lot of those movies are newer. With a UID like yours I would have expected Several Charlie Chaplin silent films and that newfangled "Gone with the Wind" movie.
You make some valid points about depression rates and the like. I am inclined to disagree with some of them though.
First, regarding opportunity, most people are going to have more opportunity than their grandparents did as most people are not white and male. Blacks and females didn't have anywhere near the opportunity that they enjoy now. It seems absurd that around 50 years ago people of African American descent were second class citizens that weren't allowed to share facilities with white people. Women of all colors typically couldn't get a better job than secretary or waitress. So much for the slew of opportunities.
Next, there is the issue of depression. I think a lot of depression stems from people having a lot of leisure time to sit around and think of how they should have studied harder in school, how they shouldn't have gotten married so young, how they should have treated their significant other that just dumped them...whatever. They can basically sleepwalk through their day, get a paycheck, live in comfort, and have some cool stuff.
Compare this to my grandfather's youth. He grew up in a family of 10 with an unemployed alcoholic of a father who beat their mother. It also happened to be that period of time known as "The Great Depression". They had nothing. The kids had little leisure time as they would go to school and immediately go out trying to make money/find food/find clothing. Most of the other families in the town he lived in were also poor as dirt. He didn't have time to sit down and think about how terrible his life actually was. He didn't have a Television or Radio to see/hear about how good some of the richer people had it. He was completely ignorant of the fact that life could actually be GOOD. Nowadays, unless you are growing up in a Mississippi swamp you are likely very aware of how much different your life is than the lives of others. Being aware of the fact that you did not succeed to the degree your peers did is one thing that seems to bother a lot of people.
I can understand your point that he probably does not have nearly as much knowledge as the incumbent admin, but that doesn't mean he couldn't do a better job. It is a computer lab, not the central Network facilities for the college. The computer lab person is pretty much there first to make sure people don't destroy the computers or do anything illegal and second to make sure to help the people in the lab. The guy currently in the position sounds like he doesn't really want to help the "lusers" so he locks everything down and browses the internet all day. The college kid apparently does want to help. That is half the battle in some of these situations. A position where you are helping people do (mostly) basic things with computers is going to benefit from a person with drive more than a person with experience.
I have a shitload of food allergies. Mostly all nuts and all raw fruits and vegetables with the exception of Oranges, Tomatoes, Bananas, Watermelon, possibly celery which I hate anyway, and oddly enough...peanuts. Most of them just cause mild discomfort (the entire inside of my mouth turning red and swelling up if I eat them) but some cause my throat to start closing (Real cherries, for one), and some cause me to break out in full body hives from eating or sometimes just touching them (Chick Peas seeming to be the worst). It really sucks.
I just try to avoid eating these things. It is a bummer because I really have to keep up with Vitamins in other ways and trying a new dish at a restaurant is always a gamble.
I am probably irritating in other ways but I am a smoker. Maybe if I could eat a god damned apple I wouldn't smoke so much.;)
I work at a smaller business.....maybe 300 people total and I only have to be in house 4 days a week, 6 hours a day...and unless there is a catastrophe I can waltz in at 10-11 instead of 7-8. The rest of the time I work from home when I feel like it. I could probably do less than that even but I think it is good to be there to get a feel for the people and how the place operates. Management treats me better than I could ever ask for, letting me make IT decisions and listening to my input on non-IT topics. It allows me to feel almost like my job is a pet project. This leads to me working harder and for more hours than I have at typical 9-5 gigs.
I think the general idea is that the 4 day work week would breed resentment amongst those that have to be there, in the office, 5 days. Customer Service, most shop employees in a factory, possibly some others. When I started my currently flexibly scheduled job there were some people who were pretty openly jealous about my schedule. After a few disasters where I worked tons and tons of hours in a week, the same people say "I wouldn't want your job". Of course, if I had to put in several 16 hour days every week (or even every month) I wouldn't want it either, but I can put up with periods of intense work to have the schedule and freedom that I have.
You know....a company can have completely legitimate reasons for turning off your GMAIL/Slashdot or busting your balls about travel costs. I've seen people soaking up a paycheck while browsing the web for six hours a day. I've seen people go on the road and rent a fucking Corvette convertible when sent out of town to do some work. One person sees another doing it...they start doing it. Finally a company has had enough and say "To heck with it, no more Internet Access, no more abuse." and "We're going to look at these ridiculous travel costs."
Sure, a lot of the time a corporation goes out of their way to screw employees but conversely a lot of the time employees will try to screw Employees. Which reminds me.... The company I work for had the attitude that if an employee needed a short cigarette break to calm down and clear their head, they can take it. You just had to go outside and deposit your cigarette stub in one of the plentiful "butt-boxes".
As time passed there were people going out and throwing their butts on the ground. It was an absolute disaster area. We were warned several times until they said "Screw it, you have to go to one of two designated locations to localize the mess." Of course, this made it easier to see who went out and how often. We had guys going out every 30-45 minutes. The company said the breaks were excessive and would have to ban smoking on the property if people kept at it, which of course they did. Luckily, the company was kind enough to not ban it and just have one designated smoking area and designated break times at 10 AM, during lunch, and 2 PM. Now, a handful of people are still abusing that system. I'm going to be really pissed when they have no choice but to ban smoking anywhere on company property because people feel entitled to their "once-an-hour" break.
Honestly, that is my first thought. If they are going to provide work appropriate clothing for you to wear at no cost to yourself, heck yeah. If they are going to make you pay for 5 shirts at $30 each and 5 pairs of pants at $50 each that display the company logo (making them useless to you at your next gig) I would be annoyed by it.
I'd imagine the stories are bad. I know a few people that have some prescription drug addiction problems (the reason that I am reasonably informed when it comes to drug scheduling and such) and I know some of the crazy stuff they have done/tried at pharmacies so I can't imagine what some other people have done.
Good luck as a med student. I'm sure you understand the medical industry better than I do, but let me tell you what I have experienced going to the doctor. I look in my little HMO packet and am told to go to one of the doctors on the list. I had a doctor I liked that would spend time with me but alas, he was not on the list.
I tried about three doctors and it was all pretty much like...they weighed me (really...I pay attention to my weight. If I dropped a bunch of weight when not trying to I'd discuss it. Same with gaining a bunch of weight). Then they would take my blood pressure. Again...I take my own blood pressure frequently at Walgreens. If I noticed a trend upwards or downwards I would discuss it. At that point....he'd ask me why I was there, I'd tell him, he'd take a look if it was visible (I had a rash on my arm once that showed up for three months a year for about 6 years.) and just think for awhile if it was not visible. Then he would take a stab in the dark..tell me to stretch, tell me to change my diet a little, or give me some medication. All that usually took me 20 minutes to drive there, 30 minutes waiting in the waiting room, 15 minutes waiting in the patient room for him to show up, 10 minutes to see him, 20 minutes to drive back. At least an hour and a half for something that could have been done easily over the internet.
Another time it was early Monday morning. I have some serious food allergies and had hives all over my body. I didn't want to have to go to the ER so I phoned the doctor. "The Doctor can see you next Monday." Seriously? I called a different doctor. "You have not been seen here and the next appointment is in three weeks." This wasn't the first time I had hives. I needed a dose of steroids. They wouldn't give them over the phone...so it cost me an ER visit, a $150 co-pay and 10% of the ER costs.
Especially for things like the full body hives that I have a history of...I don't NEED to be seen by a doctor. I know precisely what treatment I need. A quick web cam meeting would pretty much confirm that I did in fact have hives. I Would LOVE a virtual doctors visit for such cases. If something a bit more extreme was wrong with me (but not ER worthy) a quick consultation and a reference for a Specialist is what the regular doctor would do. I think that could be done online as well.
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Honestly, I think he's better off doing his volunteer type things while he's working (nights, weekends), and actually take vacation when he's on vacation. I'd much rather sacrifice a few nights a week to doing some charity work than I would sacrifice one of those precious large blocks of down time. Plus, I'm more likely to accomplish good things when I'm in "Work Mode". That's just me though. YMMV.
Here is something I came up with to do when I had a few days off. I was just messing around the house, sorting through some of my older computer junk that I had collected. I was determined to either throw it away or try to sell some of it on Ebay or Craig's List
It dawned on me that I wouldn't get hardly any money for early Pentium 4 desktop system but they did work and seemed like a waste to throw away. I decided that I would start putting them together into working systems and give them to kids with deadbeat parents (My mother goes to Alcoholics Anonymous...I had a ready supply of needy kids as although most of the parents there are relatively sober, they are still irresponsible). I took the rest of my vacation time to myself to have some down time, but when it was back to work I spent nights setting these desktops up, delivering them, and showing kids how to use them. They'll call me for tech support or to learn something new.
The kids are great, they love their computers and treat them with ridiculous amounts of respect (i rarely have to clean off spyware infections), and seem to be quite happy that someone is willing to take time out to sit down with them. I keep tabs on the kids grades and occasionally will give them upgrades (Bigger hard drives, DVD Burners, Web Cams) if they are doing well. Since a few businesses/people ended up tossing me some units they were throwing out, I've managed to get 16 of them out there. It is probably one of the most satisfying things I have done with my life. Certainly more satisfying than tossing money at some random organization or donating my time to building a web site for them. Getting down in the trenches and seeing what some poor kids have to deal with give you a different perspective.
For what it is worth, I had all sorts of problems with the Sonicwall VPN. Make sure you are using the latest "Global VPN Client" and not the normal VPN client. Also, if you are talking about people working from home and not at a hotel, pay attention to what type of router they have. In my experience with Sonicwall, Netgear = Fail. Buffalo and Linksys seem to work the best. Finally, there seems to be a bigger problem with wireless than wired when using their VPN. You can tell the users to plug in as a last resort.
I realize you have another solution in place but I've felt your pain regarding Sonicwall and figured I'd share what I have learned works with their hardware.
Seriously, I love Firefox and use it almost exclusively, but I'm pretty sure Firefox has more major memory leak problems than IE 8
I've had US Cellular for something like 9 years now. At the time I picked them because they wanted the smallest deposit on a new phone contract. In my experience, I often will still get a signal in a lot of places where Sprint and AT&T phone users do not. I don't travel all that much but I've been all over the state of Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, Vegas, Phoenix, Miami, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame area, New Orleans, Southern Mississippi, Mexico, Memphis, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Washington DC in the last few years and have never had any problems getting a signal.
I consider their prices to be pretty reasonable. My phone bill is somewhere around $90 a month with two lines, around 1000 minutes (we never really go over that), 750 texts per month, and one phone with Internet service (my wife doesn't really want or need a smart phone). If you don't intend to frequently travel, they offer "Wide Area Plans" instead of "National Plans" which are significantly less expensive.
The downside is that they are a CDMA carrier and have a very limited selection of phones at any given time. Currently they are offering the Blackberry Curve, Pearl, and Tour and on the Windows Mobile they have the HTC Touch Pro 2 and HTC Snap. I personally have an HTC Touch Pro and find it be a pretty nice phone in general, although I am hoping that some droid model makes it to US Cellular.
You are correct, but it just so happens that a pretty large number of actors and actresses also happen to be in the Very Attractive to Smoking Hot range....probably more true for women than it is for men. There may be some exceptions, but I can't think of any films with young women in lead roles who are downright ugly. I think audiences in general have a tendency to like/sympathize a character who is at least marginally attractive.
Perhaps this technology could be used in a way that would give otherwise talented actresses (awesome ability with speaking/perfect mannerisms) that don't have that Hollywood friendly face a chance to go in and make a career of what they do best.
Back when I was in school, we had a "security guard" that was a complete idiot. I stayed after school maybe 30 minutes late to work on an independent study Biology project. As we were leaving, he harassed us making all sorts of threats because he "knew" we had stayed late to "monkey around or steal stuff". Eventually we just left.
We get out to the parking lot and my friend's car window was smashed, stereo swiped, and steering column ripped apart as if someone was trying to hotwire the car. We started heading back into the school to call the police. We were stopped by the same security guard who greeted us with "The security of these grounds is under my control and you kids will not be entering the school AFTER HOURS to cause mayhem." We tried explaining the situation to him and asked him to come look at our problem but he told us "Haha, You think I am going to fall for that trick? I wasn't born yesterday!" (??WTF??) At that point I became agitated and started swearing at him and telling him we wouldn't be in this situation if he was as fucking vigilant as he claimed and watched the god damned parking lot. We had to leave and walk 9 blocks to someone's house we knew, use the phone to call the cops and a friend that knew something about cars. The police filed their report, our friend put the ignition back together.
The next day, I was served a day of in school suspension for lipping off to the security guard, even after explaining the situation to the principal. He also didn't believe me. For lying I was asked to go out in the parking lot and pick up a pile of shattered glass that the vigilant security guard had discovered that morning.(Banged head on desk)
To be fair to School Administrators, I can't imagine undertaking a project the size of developing a policy manual for what is acceptable in school. It would probably have to be several hundred pages long to cover the multitude of insane/destructive/dangerous schemes kids may come up with. That would likely require school districts to hire expensive lawyers for hours and hours. Every year new laws, new technologies, and new ideas would come into play, requiring the lawyers to be brought in again to revamp the policy. You hand the thing out to the kids and what do you think they are going to do? They are going to pour over the entire thing looking for a loophole to exploit.
It is probably best to lay down rules of what you can do at school or bring to school. If your item isn't listed, assume you can't until you ask someone. Of course, this would work best with a competent staff that is willing to hear the kids out...which probably isn't all that common.
Dude, your first post was very well said but making blanket statements about large groups of people just because they believe differently than you isn't being funny or intelligent, it is outright being a bigot.
I myself am an Atheist and have a hard time believing so many people are so into Religion, but hey, I could be dead wrong. The belief that there is no Supreme Being to worship is a belief and leap of faith in itself. As much as we've progressed with science and logic we have not found that key that says with 100% certainty that there is no such thing as God/Allah/Random Deity.
As far as my faith (or lack thereof) is concerned I have as of late been hanging around with a group of people from Iran and a group of people from Palestine, all followers of the Islamic faith. I'm not sure I've met many people more open minded about my opinions. I treat their religious ideals with respect (Instead of say...telling them that they are idiots) and they do the same for me. That is more than I can say about most Christians (who inform me that I am going to Hell or something) or how most Atheist/Agnostic people treat those involved with religion (who usually are more than willing to tell people how stupid and ignorant they are.
I don't know what you environment is like precisely, but the biggest barrier to switching is if you are using Sharepoint, Outlook Web Access, or any Customer Built Web applications tested only to render properly with Internet Explorer's "Interpretation" of W3C standards. Web Access works in "Lite" mode, meaning not all features are available. Sharepoint is absolutely terrible, and any of those custom built applications could cease to work entirely.
Judging by the fact that you are still using IE 7 and have not been upgraded to IE 8, I'm guessing there are some major internal web apps written that are tailored to work with IE 7 (As working in IE 7 doesn't mean it will work in IE 8 or even IE 8 with compatability mode).
I've been in situation where I tried to have users only use Internet Explorer for Sharepoint and Firefox for browsing the web, but that just seems to confuse them and they end up completely ignoring Firefox. After all, Internet Explorer works for both Sharepoint and all External Web Sites. Firefox doesn't work for Sharepoint. Therefore, IE is better in their eyes.
Right now when I want to call someone I select that person's name and press "call". If I want to IM, mail, or text, I press other buttons.
I can't see why you think email address lists will be any different than the situation most people have right now with their cell phones. Years ago when my friends and I started using cell phones we swapped numbers, dumped them into our contacts list and never really worried about them again. I still know by heart all those peoples' home phone numbers from when we were kids but I don't think I could recite half of their current numbers.
Dude.....Windows XP Home, Windows Vista Home Basic, and Windows Vista Home Premium all come without support for joining domains. So......no. Windows 7 Home is not a downgrade from Vista/XP in terms of that connectivity.
I second the proper 64-bit support thing. The Engineers at the company I work for have started to move towards Solidworks. It is a 3D Cad program that also allows them to do complex simulations. I procured them some Windows XP machines with some pretty nice specs in regards to processor and video card but they still claim it is very slow when doing some things and want more RAM. They already have 3 GB. Not much I can do for them there, except to move to a modern OS that lets me cram more RAM into it. Solidworks doesn't run directly on any *nix so that means Windows Vista or Windows 7.
At that point, I'll be supporting two operating systems. I won't do a full scale rollout of Windows 7 but as old boxes in other departments die, they will be replaced by machines running Windows 7.
I have to say for the most part, it is quite easy but I have run into a problem lately. My laptop is part of a domain at work. I take it home and log on "To this computer" only with a local account. When I go to try to map a network drive to my NAS device, it displays a user name box, a password box, and under it the name of the domain I am joined to. No option to change that...just the name of the domain. I select "Log On as different user" and yet the domain information stays.
So it is constantly trying to log in as mydomain\ajlisows. As my NAS isn't part of the domain it doesn't allow me to log in. Really, really annoying. Let ME tell the device if I want to login using a domain account. I didn't have that problem with any XP boxes.
Falling asleep on the keyboard at only 2 AM? Time to turn in your geek badge.
Well, he could have simply asked him.
Howdy Neighbor! Are you running one of them newfangled wireless internet thingys?
Yes. Why? Were you thinking about setting one up? Mine works really well.
It seems like the normal sort of "Neighbor" question that a neophyte might ask if he was on the fence about getting high speed internet with a wireless setup. I'm sure if it did go down this way the neighbor wasn't thinking this guy would flip out on him.
Hey! A lot of those movies are newer. With a UID like yours I would have expected Several Charlie Chaplin silent films and that newfangled "Gone with the Wind" movie.
You make some valid points about depression rates and the like. I am inclined to disagree with some of them though.
First, regarding opportunity, most people are going to have more opportunity than their grandparents did as most people are not white and male. Blacks and females didn't have anywhere near the opportunity that they enjoy now. It seems absurd that around 50 years ago people of African American descent were second class citizens that weren't allowed to share facilities with white people. Women of all colors typically couldn't get a better job than secretary or waitress. So much for the slew of opportunities.
Next, there is the issue of depression. I think a lot of depression stems from people having a lot of leisure time to sit around and think of how they should have studied harder in school, how they shouldn't have gotten married so young, how they should have treated their significant other that just dumped them...whatever. They can basically sleepwalk through their day, get a paycheck, live in comfort, and have some cool stuff.
Compare this to my grandfather's youth. He grew up in a family of 10 with an unemployed alcoholic of a father who beat their mother. It also happened to be that period of time known as "The Great Depression". They had nothing. The kids had little leisure time as they would go to school and immediately go out trying to make money/find food/find clothing. Most of the other families in the town he lived in were also poor as dirt. He didn't have time to sit down and think about how terrible his life actually was. He didn't have a Television or Radio to see/hear about how good some of the richer people had it. He was completely ignorant of the fact that life could actually be GOOD. Nowadays, unless you are growing up in a Mississippi swamp you are likely very aware of how much different your life is than the lives of others. Being aware of the fact that you did not succeed to the degree your peers did is one thing that seems to bother a lot of people.
I can understand your point that he probably does not have nearly as much knowledge as the incumbent admin, but that doesn't mean he couldn't do a better job. It is a computer lab, not the central Network facilities for the college. The computer lab person is pretty much there first to make sure people don't destroy the computers or do anything illegal and second to make sure to help the people in the lab. The guy currently in the position sounds like he doesn't really want to help the "lusers" so he locks everything down and browses the internet all day. The college kid apparently does want to help. That is half the battle in some of these situations. A position where you are helping people do (mostly) basic things with computers is going to benefit from a person with drive more than a person with experience.
I have a shitload of food allergies. Mostly all nuts and all raw fruits and vegetables with the exception of Oranges, Tomatoes, Bananas, Watermelon, possibly celery which I hate anyway, and oddly enough...peanuts. Most of them just cause mild discomfort (the entire inside of my mouth turning red and swelling up if I eat them) but some cause my throat to start closing (Real cherries, for one), and some cause me to break out in full body hives from eating or sometimes just touching them (Chick Peas seeming to be the worst). It really sucks.
I just try to avoid eating these things. It is a bummer because I really have to keep up with Vitamins in other ways and trying a new dish at a restaurant is always a gamble.
I am probably irritating in other ways but I am a smoker. Maybe if I could eat a god damned apple I wouldn't smoke so much. ;)
I work at a smaller business.....maybe 300 people total and I only have to be in house 4 days a week, 6 hours a day...and unless there is a catastrophe I can waltz in at 10-11 instead of 7-8. The rest of the time I work from home when I feel like it. I could probably do less than that even but I think it is good to be there to get a feel for the people and how the place operates. Management treats me better than I could ever ask for, letting me make IT decisions and listening to my input on non-IT topics. It allows me to feel almost like my job is a pet project. This leads to me working harder and for more hours than I have at typical 9-5 gigs.
I think the general idea is that the 4 day work week would breed resentment amongst those that have to be there, in the office, 5 days. Customer Service, most shop employees in a factory, possibly some others. When I started my currently flexibly scheduled job there were some people who were pretty openly jealous about my schedule. After a few disasters where I worked tons and tons of hours in a week, the same people say "I wouldn't want your job". Of course, if I had to put in several 16 hour days every week (or even every month) I wouldn't want it either, but I can put up with periods of intense work to have the schedule and freedom that I have.
You know....a company can have completely legitimate reasons for turning off your GMAIL/Slashdot or busting your balls about travel costs. I've seen people soaking up a paycheck while browsing the web for six hours a day. I've seen people go on the road and rent a fucking Corvette convertible when sent out of town to do some work. One person sees another doing it...they start doing it. Finally a company has had enough and say "To heck with it, no more Internet Access, no more abuse." and "We're going to look at these ridiculous travel costs."
Sure, a lot of the time a corporation goes out of their way to screw employees but conversely a lot of the time employees will try to screw Employees. Which reminds me.... The company I work for had the attitude that if an employee needed a short cigarette break to calm down and clear their head, they can take it. You just had to go outside and deposit your cigarette stub in one of the plentiful "butt-boxes".
As time passed there were people going out and throwing their butts on the ground. It was an absolute disaster area. We were warned several times until they said "Screw it, you have to go to one of two designated locations to localize the mess." Of course, this made it easier to see who went out and how often. We had guys going out every 30-45 minutes. The company said the breaks were excessive and would have to ban smoking on the property if people kept at it, which of course they did. Luckily, the company was kind enough to not ban it and just have one designated smoking area and designated break times at 10 AM, during lunch, and 2 PM. Now, a handful of people are still abusing that system. I'm going to be really pissed when they have no choice but to ban smoking anywhere on company property because people feel entitled to their "once-an-hour" break.
Honestly, that is my first thought. If they are going to provide work appropriate clothing for you to wear at no cost to yourself, heck yeah. If they are going to make you pay for 5 shirts at $30 each and 5 pairs of pants at $50 each that display the company logo (making them useless to you at your next gig) I would be annoyed by it.
I'd imagine the stories are bad. I know a few people that have some prescription drug addiction problems (the reason that I am reasonably informed when it comes to drug scheduling and such) and I know some of the crazy stuff they have done/tried at pharmacies so I can't imagine what some other people have done.
Good luck as a med student. I'm sure you understand the medical industry better than I do, but let me tell you what I have experienced going to the doctor. I look in my little HMO packet and am told to go to one of the doctors on the list. I had a doctor I liked that would spend time with me but alas, he was not on the list.
I tried about three doctors and it was all pretty much like...they weighed me (really...I pay attention to my weight. If I dropped a bunch of weight when not trying to I'd discuss it. Same with gaining a bunch of weight). Then they would take my blood pressure. Again...I take my own blood pressure frequently at Walgreens. If I noticed a trend upwards or downwards I would discuss it. At that point....he'd ask me why I was there, I'd tell him, he'd take a look if it was visible (I had a rash on my arm once that showed up for three months a year for about 6 years.) and just think for awhile if it was not visible. Then he would take a stab in the dark..tell me to stretch, tell me to change my diet a little, or give me some medication. All that usually took me 20 minutes to drive there, 30 minutes waiting in the waiting room, 15 minutes waiting in the patient room for him to show up, 10 minutes to see him, 20 minutes to drive back. At least an hour and a half for something that could have been done easily over the internet.
Another time it was early Monday morning. I have some serious food allergies and had hives all over my body. I didn't want to have to go to the ER so I phoned the doctor. "The Doctor can see you next Monday." Seriously? I called a different doctor. "You have not been seen here and the next appointment is in three weeks." This wasn't the first time I had hives. I needed a dose of steroids. They wouldn't give them over the phone...so it cost me an ER visit, a $150 co-pay and 10% of the ER costs.
Especially for things like the full body hives that I have a history of...I don't NEED to be seen by a doctor. I know precisely what treatment I need. A quick web cam meeting would pretty much confirm that I did in fact have hives. I Would LOVE a virtual doctors visit for such cases. If something a bit more extreme was wrong with me (but not ER worthy) a quick consultation and a reference for a Specialist is what the regular doctor would do. I think that could be done online as well.