Can anyone provide 'wish-I-would-have-known' issues regarding the politics, expectations, and monetary realities of working for a major department within a large University?"
As in any job, there are good environments and not so good ones. I'm biased, of course. I retired early because of getting stressed out after moving from private sector to direct employment. Stress was a management tool: assign a task to two people, don't tell them, stomp on the one that came in second. Many universities have no concept of management, even in business schools. That is partly because the business model is unclear, success is ill defined, and no one quite knows just who is the customer. Politics are ridiculous with huge egos overlaying most other factors.
That said, pay was mid-level, retirement was good (but that is changing), there was often lots of autonomy, I got to be creative. The retirement system is paying for health care, which helps with the consequences of working there. I don't recommend giving away product, because it will be lapped up without having much effect on future jobs.
I worked for 30 years as a contractor/consultant and trouble shooter without a problem. The U-job, in 11 years, trumped all that. Be careful.
Hmmm. Only.1% of the people in the US are affected (negatively?) by the USA Patriot Act. How trivial. Only 300,000 people. That must be insignificant. Or is it?
A lot of people in Alaska speak highly of Monitor heaters. You can run them on oil, kerosene, natural gas, propane, or whatever. I think they are also popular in New England and probably Canada.
As an aside, the power company in Fairbanks, Alaska, built the largest battery in the world (claimed). It floats on line and will run the CITY AND SURROUNDING AREA through general power outages. Alaska is not on the national grid. Fairbanks receives power only from local generators and some plants to the south of us. The battery (called BESS) took two years to build and cost a bunch, but it seems to work.
Terrorists kill people. They don't bomb bridges, bust dams and destroy communications networks. They kill people, as many and as violently and as publicly as possible. The purpose is to create fear and publicitity. Actual military-strategic damage is far less important.
I just can't agree with that comment. IMHO, terrorists cause disruption. A thousand sick people overwhelming public health and hospitals might well be more disruptive than a thousand deaths.
Killing people at random is just one way to cause disruption and fear. If the terrorists kill a lot of people, they make a terrible scene, generate a lot of fear and anger, and disrupt a local area. But if they kill just a few major switching centers, they might well disrupt the whole nation, along with a goodly part of the world. Just look what a single point disruption to a power line did to the northeastern US and Canada, and that was, we are told, an accident.
That doesn't mean I agree with hiding telecommunications outages. I don't quite see the point. I just don't think that killing people is the ultimate purpose of those who spread terror.
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Hmmm. Only .1% of the people in the US are affected (negatively?) by the USA Patriot Act. How trivial. Only 300,000 people. That must be insignificant. Or is it?
A lot of people in Alaska speak highly of Monitor heaters. You can run them on oil, kerosene, natural gas, propane, or whatever. I think they are also popular in New England and probably Canada. As an aside, the power company in Fairbanks, Alaska, built the largest battery in the world (claimed). It floats on line and will run the CITY AND SURROUNDING AREA through general power outages. Alaska is not on the national grid. Fairbanks receives power only from local generators and some plants to the south of us. The battery (called BESS) took two years to build and cost a bunch, but it seems to work.