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User: bladesjester

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  1. Re:Suddenly... on Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow? · · Score: 1

    Is there something wrong with owning, and knowing how to use, weapons?

  2. Re:Good time to start pumping out bullets then! on Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow? · · Score: 1

    I know you were going for funny and got the mod to match, but sadly the reality of that particular situation was anything but humorous. It's not something I'd care to do again (not that I wanted to do it in the first place).

    I'm just glad I kept myself together long enough to deal with things. That is one thing that the training was certainly good for. Ironically, keeping myself together and being "too calm" (in the sheriff's opinion) helped me save the life of someone I loved very much but ended up making me a suspect for something I didn't do.

  3. Re:Suddenly... on Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow? · · Score: 1

    No, he was saying that he could trade food and supplies for guns and ammo.

    I pointed out that, in a situation like that, the holders of the guns are more likely to shoot (or better yet, enslave and force them to continue food production) the holder of the food than trade with them if the food holder is defenseless.

  4. Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! on Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it's been kind of a weird trip partially due to exposure to things growing up and partially because of personal curiosity.

    I grew up spending a lot of time on my family's farm, so I have the experience in planting, maintaining and harvesting crops as well as raising animals.

    I also grew up training in martial arts which, after a while, typically includes some medical training (along the way I've ended up helping to treat everything up to and including a gunshot wound).

    I've built several buildings and done other types of woodworking with my father over the years.

    I studied blacksmithing for a while on my own just because I wanted to and I had the opportunity.

    Then you start getting into the basic survival stuff that I learned growing up, so I'm actually pretty adaptable if it comes right down to it. =]

  5. Re:Suddenly... on Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, because the people with guns and ammo would be inclined to shoot you and take the precious things from you because you were defenseless.

    You have entirely too much faith in the good nature of your fellow man during times of great turmoil.

  6. Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! on Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow? · · Score: 1

    Carpenters, farmers, doctors and paramedics are some of the people I would want to see survive, raising the odds for the species a bit.

    The sad thing is that the first thought I had was along the lines of my being all set considering that I have some skill in farming, hunting, carpentry, blacksmithing, and a few other things.

  7. Re:This just in.. on As Christmas Bonus, Google Hands Out "Dogfood" · · Score: 1

    That's odd...

    Last night, the article also had a link to here which has that information. I wonder why that was changed.

  8. Re:eBay? Nope. Google management forbids it! on As Christmas Bonus, Google Hands Out "Dogfood" · · Score: 1

    That this e-mail is now public makes me weep for my species. Google's famous tight-lippedness to outsiders is a direct consequence of its slightly less famous wide-openness to employees, which is a critical part of Google's internal culture.

    I strongly disagree. As a former prospective google employee, I am *very* glad this sort of thing gets leaked, because it shows us what the company's culture is really like. Honestly, the more I see of the "insider" view of the place, the happier I am that I told them I wasn't interested the second (and I believe third) time.

    Their spiel about the phone being a gift (and the employee being taxed for it), but that they're not supposed to sell it is very telling. Among other things, it tells me just how out of touch with reality Google is.

    Sorry, but if you give me a bonus and I have to pay taxes on it, it is mine to do with as I please, just as the money from my paycheck is because that's all it is - a physical good in place of a portion of pay (in this case as a holiday bonus).

  9. Re:This just in.. on As Christmas Bonus, Google Hands Out "Dogfood" · · Score: 3, Informative

    From TFA:

    Q: Are there tax implications to this?
    Google is covering the taxes for this gift; there will be an extra payroll run before the end of the year to cover the taxes. If you have further payroll or HR-related questions about this gift please e-mail [address removed].

  10. Re:What the hell? on Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination · · Score: 1

    Religious discrimination isn't prohibited, per se. Try applying for a job at your local Catholic church if you're an atheist and see what I mean.

    Amusingly, a pagan friend of mine used to provide security for the bishop at the local arch-diocese. Go figure.

  11. Re:Judging by some red-neck rants on Christian blo on Barack Obama Is One Step Closer To Being President · · Score: 1

    Can we wait until after somebody claiming to be a religious person actually takes a shot at the president-elect before we condemn an entire ethnic group (rednecks) for cultivating an environment which produces our fictional assassin?

    I hate to break it to you, but you only have to come to where I currently am to find a fairly large group of people who claim to be religious who would love to take a shot at Obama. I see them pretty much every day here and they aren't exactly quiet about their desires.

  12. Re:I read her entire email on Student Faces Suspension For Spamming Profs · · Score: 1

    Big bad IT manager gets whinged because student figures out how to send email to people without needing to go through the 'offical' listserv

    That's the thing I find so strange about this. That would never have been an issue at my alma mater since the professors were all listed in the campus directory (both dead tree and online) - office phone, uni email, and office address. Completely searchable and viewable to the public.

    Students, I believe, generally had the same listing, though they could request to have their address unlisted as well as their phone (if it was an off campus number). Their email was searchable, though.

  13. Re:Could be worse on Teacher Sells Ads On Tests · · Score: 1

    Not all professors are tenured. Additionally, a lot of the instructors in charge of labs are, in my experience, frequently not professors but rather instructors. The students just tend to assume they're professors.

  14. Re:Could be worse on Teacher Sells Ads On Tests · · Score: 1

    I'm hoping you took it up with the department chair or other appropriate university office...

    If he actually did that, the man deserves to be fired.

  15. Re:Free internet? on FCC Considering Free Internet For USA · · Score: 1

    My neighbor's teenage daughter will talk on the phone with her friend that literally lives across the street. It's insane.

  16. Re:Free internet? on FCC Considering Free Internet For USA · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can't use your home phone to talk 24/7

    You have clearly never seen a house full of teenage girls. lol

  17. Re:My Easter Eggs are comments and error messages. on Would You Add Easter Eggs To Software Produced At Work? · · Score: 1

    When was the last time that you tracked down a bug in your software to the About box?

    A couple of years ago, actually. It was late one night while I was working on something and accidentally set the X button at the top of the box so that it closed the whole app if you clicked on the X in the About box instead of just killing that box.

    Thankfully I caught it in the morning when I was doing tests, but still.

  18. Re:Windows. on Practical Reasons To Choose Git Or Subversion? · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'd just like to say that I *love* tortoise.

    I work primarily in Windows now, but I grew up using the command line and have a number of years of experience in unix and linux. Setting things up for subversion using the command line always saw me digging back through docs to remember how to do it because I don't have to do it every day.

    With Tortoise, a couple of clicks and it's done. It saves me time and sanity.

  19. Re:Scariest here... on 10 Percent of Colleges Check Applicants' Social Profiles · · Score: 1

    Perhaps, in this case it means Denial of School? =]

  20. Re:common place on Tech Vs. Business? · · Score: 1

    In a place I used to work, the capacitor in one of the lab machines exploded while the lab was full. Everybody sitting at the desks hit the floor because they thought they were being shot at. lol

    Before that, I came into the building one day in the middle of February only to find all of the windows open because one of the machines had caught fire. Not the PSU, the actual machine. Apparently something shorted out on the motherboard because it was completely charred over half of its surface area.

  21. Re:FizzBuzz on Testing IT Professionals On Job Interviews? · · Score: 1

    fizzbuzz the lolcats edition. That's hilarious lol

    You, sir, win.

  22. Re:No, it is not reasonable. on Testing IT Professionals On Job Interviews? · · Score: 1

    OTOH something like software development... "arbitrary" pieces of information like the C++ call sequence when instantiating a class are things you should probably know in order to do your job correctly

    I'd generally agree with you on this point. However, I've had some interviews where they were asking for specific, arcane crap that almost nobody would know off of the top of their head and were expecting everything to be perfect without the use of a compiler or docs.

    I swear that I think some of them just flip to a random page of a nearby book and base the question off of something they find there.

  23. Re:Interview process improvement on One In Five Employers Scan Applicants' Web Lives · · Score: 1

    I'm too tired to kill anyone at the moment. It's been one of those days. =]

  24. Re:Interview process improvement on One In Five Employers Scan Applicants' Web Lives · · Score: 2, Informative

    They -absolutely- can refuse to hire you based on your political beliefs.

    Incorrect. From http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html

    The CSRA prohibits any employee who has authority to take certain personnel actions from discriminating for or against employees or applicants for employment on the bases of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age or disability. It also provides that certain personnel actions can not be based on attributes or conduct that do not adversely affect employee performance, such as marital status and political affiliation.

  25. Re:Silly people on One In Five Employers Scan Applicants' Web Lives · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's the employer's right to use all available and legal means to determine which employee is best for the job. Being disqualified for having a facebook album dedicated to killing puppies or binge drinking is much more preferable to being disqualified for, say, not being a minority.

    That's just it. Not all employers who dig into someone being mentioned online will stick with throwing out candidates for binge drinking, setting puppies on fire, and the like.

    Some of them will do things like disqualify people because of political affiliation, religion, etc. We all know that it's illegal to do that in the United States, but it does happen, and it's pretty much impossible to prove if it's a result of digging done online.

    Granted, I've gotten more than a few interview requests because of people finding my page, articles, etc, but I've always wondered how many of them were turned off because of associations I have/had with Tibetan monks, Native American medicine societies, and other "strange" groups.

    It's especially troubling here in the Bible Belt, where a lot of employers basically expect everyone working for them to be Christian.