You're missing the point. It's not about saying how much smarter he is (though obviously his parents and teachers are already doing that, ad nauseum). It's about not saying obviously patronizing stuff about how everyone else is just as smart as he is.
With all due respect, I think it is you who is missing the point. Why do you perceive his statement as 'patronizing' and not recognize that it is merely humility?
you're telling that couch potato kid that he doesn't have to worry about his place in the world, or fret about personal discipline...Sugarcoating the hard work that's reflected in that academic degree just robs it of meaning...The ones who are still coasting with the inflated sense of self esteem...hose are the people who are hard to get along with, because they're realizing that they aren't who they've been told they are
Geez, Aesop, pass the grapes!! For crying out loud, you've turned a comment from a bright 11 year old into some anecdote which, I assume, must be somewhat autobiographical for you (otherwise, I just can't fathom how you got that from his quote).
I think you're drawing a false parallel between a bright kid being treated as 'normally' as possible and telling the lazy, potato-chip-eating kid that he's a genius too. Personally, I do think that positive reinforcement tends to have more success than trying to subdivide the world into the have's vs have-not's. I agree with you, by the way, that there are certainly the bloated-sense-of-importance types and yes, they're annoying as hell. However, I argue that it's still a parent's job to help your kid(s) find out what they are good at, and help foster that skill(s). There's a world of difference between giving a kid positive reinforcement and convincing them that they're magically gifted.
Certainly men dominate current academia, with 70% of mathematics Ph.D.s going to men; however that figure is down from 95% in the 1950s. Indeed, while there remain gaps in achievement between the genders, the study shows that not only are these gaps closing, but the size of the gap varies over differing cultures and correlates with the general degree of gender inequality in the culture (as defined by World Economic Forum measures).
Of course, the study was done by a team of female mathematicians/statisticians, so we really can't trust the results.
Dude, give it up. You're speaking in some bizarre hyperbole, and imagining as if your perception of how things are trumps the facts (buried 40 feet deep, give me a break, man). I know you'd like to believe that the area surrounding Washington DC is soooo much harder to do this type of work, but it's not. There are plenty of "densely wired" areas in RTP as well as the Charlotte Metro (you know, there are more than a few major financial services, telecom types in this area as well).
Regardless, there are also things like vacuum excavation that can be utilized even in highly sensitive, dense digging environments. You can also hand dig with shovels. My point is, stop defending this as though cutting cables is an inevitability. The real professionals can get it done without an impact, but others like to cut corners, and then cry when they screw up that it's not their fault.
I have to second this comment. Also, to the posters who are bashing this person, and asking him/her to take the issue up with his/her school system, I think you're all overestimating the ability of many school employees as well as the efficiency with which requests get accommodated in many school systems. In my area, the public schools are completely overrun, mismanaged, and underfunded....badly. Now, I'm not advocating that the person asking for suggestions should try to exert some influence over the school system, but to act as though "fixing" the school's "problems" is easy doesn't really help.
Besides, is it really that crazy of an idea for the kid to carry a cell phone (with or without GPS)? Nowhere in the post does it say how old the child is. I think some of the people jumping on this "overprotective parent" bandwagon are thinking this kid is some 12-13 year old kid. They might change their tune if (as the parent post points out) it's a 4 yr old girl/boy.
No argument that it's difficult, but it is definitely do-able. I've actually had properly trained Utility Locators use GPR to locate plastic conduit that was completely empty, and they were able to do it (we were needing to confirm the existence of some "sleeves" on one worksite, as well as confirm that there were no other hazards in the area prior to digging).
Sounds like your contractor had the right idea, but without having been there, it's hard to comment on how they could have cut 2 fiber lines and a 500 pair cable (the latter should have been quite easy to find). Yes, vacuum excavation combined with careful hand digging is called for in situations like this. While it is expensive and time consuming, it's probably cheaper than accidentally cutting a backbone fiber line.
The GPR isn't as effective in our very rocky clay soil as you believe.
Hogwash. I've experienced it firsthand. I know exactly how effective it is, even in rocky clay soil (North Carolina soil to be exact). I have witnessed this technology be able to locate empty plastic conduit (even verifying that the conduit is empty after hand digging it up). Not only were there no tracing wires, but there were no wires at all, and we could still find it.
I do grasp that there is a lot of buried cable/utilities in this and other metropolitan areas, I work in the industry. My point is, this type of work does not have to result in an issue like this, nor is it an excuse that something "wasn't on the drawings". That is an amateur excuse, and not one that is acceptable in most critical environments.
The problem is not that the lines aren't mapped--they ARE mapped just like any other utility.
The real problem is that the maps aren't perfect.
Irrelevant. As I explained here, there are very effective methods of locating utilities (quite accurately I might add) that are either missing from a map, or are incorrectly drawn on the map. I do agree that this story seems to be quite sensationalized, and still maintain that the contractor did not do his/her due diligence prior to digging.
Then when someone dials the call-before-you-dig hotline, they're told there's two communications links and a 36 inch gas pipeline buried there. Guaranteed the contractor will be more concerned about hitting the pipeline than any cables buried right next to it, and stay far away from it.
I blame the contractor on this one. Just because a utility was not listed on whatever plans he/she was reading, doesn't excuse making no real effort to detect that utility in the first place. In truth, many Private Locating Companies use Ground Penetrating Radar which is fully capable of finding just about anything underground. These aren't your usual "ULOCO" guys, and yes, they're more expensive. However, if the alternative is accidentally hitting an expensive/secret/critical comm. line, I'd rather put the money in the budget to begin with (especially if I know I'm working in an area where this type of thing happens frequently).
Theorists have been working on materials that bend sound waves backward for several years.
So you mean, if this technology moves forward, and ends up getting incorporated into conventional home/portable audio systems, we may be able to settle once and for all whether or not Paul is dead?
Believe it or not, NC is already home to many tech companies (Dell, HP, Google, IBM, etc). Also, don't forget about other industries that are located here that have significant data center presence (Bank of America, Wells Fargo/Wachovia, AT&T, etc). A lot of the more rural areas of NC do fit the stereotype of the 'old south', no argument there. However, the major metropolitan areas (Charlotte Metro, RTP) have a pretty robust technology sector.
All this, plus $0.055/KWH for electricity, and you can understand why some of these deals get made.
I dunno, sounds Irish to me (and I'm of Irish descent, we can smell our own). After all, they say that the reason they invented beer was to prevent the Irish from taking over the world.
I've actually tried looping a WAV file of pink noise [wikipedia.org] (easier on the ears than white noise)
I have a suggestion to this end. I had a similar problem where several offices were consolidated into my office, so I went from having an office with a door, to a shared workspace with 6 cubes. I couldn't concentrate on complex procedures with 5 other people talking, phones ringing etc, so I started Googling for white noise generators and found iSerenity.com.
It sounded like a silly idea at first, but I have to tell you, you'd be surprised how your ears get "trained" on the various sounds and you'll be able to ignore the other noises. Once you get used to one sound, it might not work as well, so just pick another 'environment' from the site, worked for me.
1. I used to work in residential property management. We had a "skip", where someone behind on their rent just moves out in the middle of the night and you have no idea they're gone until you show up with the Sheriff to boot them out/change the locks. Upon entering this one apartment, it was obvious the power had been off for quite a while. Yours truly was the lucky guy to open the fridge. Not only was it full of food, but in the freezer was what used to be at least a 15 lb turkey. Needless to say, it was more than aromatic. After several attempts to fumigate/disinfect/deodorize, we had to dispose of the fridge altogether and buy a new one.
2. The worst one was, in my early 20's my roommate (at the time) and I lived in a rather seedy section of town in a cheap apartment. The laundry room at the bottom of our common hallway flooded and mildewed the carpets, which began to smell pretty bad. After the smells got unusually overwhelming and after many many many complaints, management entered the unit down one floor and across the hall from our place (the one we walked past to get into our place every night). Turns out our neighbor had been stabbed, and died while trying to crawl for his front door. His body was literally melting into the carpet on the other side of the door. My poor roommate happened to be walking by the door while the homicide cops were there. The body had been removed, but he later said that it looked like someone had dropped a Jello mold on the carpet. **shudder** I will never forget that smell.
"Let's say I'm a student named Mary Kay Rudolph and I have a Yahoo account", said Mary Kay Rudolph, vice president of academic affairs. "But, instead of asking to be mkrudolph@yahoo.com I am mksrjc@yahoo.com. Or, I am santarosajuniorcollege2@yahoo.com. Those are both illegal".
What an utter moron. Must be a lot of fun to work for this woman. I think our nationwide unemployment rate is about to go up by 1.
I tried dialing the Skype test call, but I only caught every other word. So much for my dreams of in-flight video conferencing while yelling over the din of jet engines.
Oh god, I hope you, nor anyone else, ever gets this to work.
Police then discovered Lutes' car, with a computer repair sticker on the door, was seen parked in front of the office on the night of the break-in.
Reminds me of that fantastic Christopher Walken quote from True Romance.
Cocotti: They snatched my narcotics, and high-tailed it outta there. They would've got away with it, but your son, f**khead that he is, left HIS DRIVER'S LICENSE in the dead guy's hand.
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing the point. It's not about saying how much smarter he is (though obviously his parents and teachers are already doing that, ad nauseum). It's about not saying obviously patronizing stuff about how everyone else is just as smart as he is.
With all due respect, I think it is you who is missing the point. Why do you perceive his statement as 'patronizing' and not recognize that it is merely humility?
you're telling that couch potato kid that he doesn't have to worry about his place in the world, or fret about personal discipline...Sugarcoating the hard work that's reflected in that academic degree just robs it of meaning...The ones who are still coasting with the inflated sense of self esteem...hose are the people who are hard to get along with, because they're realizing that they aren't who they've been told they are
Geez, Aesop, pass the grapes!! For crying out loud, you've turned a comment from a bright 11 year old into some anecdote which, I assume, must be somewhat autobiographical for you (otherwise, I just can't fathom how you got that from his quote).
I think you're drawing a false parallel between a bright kid being treated as 'normally' as possible and telling the lazy, potato-chip-eating kid that he's a genius too. Personally, I do think that positive reinforcement tends to have more success than trying to subdivide the world into the have's vs have-not's. I agree with you, by the way, that there are certainly the bloated-sense-of-importance types and yes, they're annoying as hell. However, I argue that it's still a parent's job to help your kid(s) find out what they are good at, and help foster that skill(s). There's a world of difference between giving a kid positive reinforcement and convincing them that they're magically gifted.
20% per year is not outrageously high
No?
Looks pretty good to me.
Certainly men dominate current academia, with 70% of mathematics Ph.D.s going to men; however that figure is down from 95% in the 1950s. Indeed, while there remain gaps in achievement between the genders, the study shows that not only are these gaps closing, but the size of the gap varies over differing cultures and correlates with the general degree of gender inequality in the culture (as defined by World Economic Forum measures).
Of course, the study was done by a team of female mathematicians/statisticians, so we really can't trust the results.
I'm kidding, don't flame me.
*sigh*
Dude, give it up. You're speaking in some bizarre hyperbole, and imagining as if your perception of how things are trumps the facts (buried 40 feet deep, give me a break, man). I know you'd like to believe that the area surrounding Washington DC is soooo much harder to do this type of work, but it's not. There are plenty of "densely wired" areas in RTP as well as the Charlotte Metro (you know, there are more than a few major financial services, telecom types in this area as well).
Regardless, there are also things like vacuum excavation that can be utilized even in highly sensitive, dense digging environments. You can also hand dig with shovels. My point is, stop defending this as though cutting cables is an inevitability. The real professionals can get it done without an impact, but others like to cut corners, and then cry when they screw up that it's not their fault.
I have to second this comment. Also, to the posters who are bashing this person, and asking him/her to take the issue up with his/her school system, I think you're all overestimating the ability of many school employees as well as the efficiency with which requests get accommodated in many school systems. In my area, the public schools are completely overrun, mismanaged, and underfunded....badly. Now, I'm not advocating that the person asking for suggestions should try to exert some influence over the school system, but to act as though "fixing" the school's "problems" is easy doesn't really help.
Besides, is it really that crazy of an idea for the kid to carry a cell phone (with or without GPS)? Nowhere in the post does it say how old the child is. I think some of the people jumping on this "overprotective parent" bandwagon are thinking this kid is some 12-13 year old kid. They might change their tune if (as the parent post points out) it's a 4 yr old girl/boy.
No argument that it's difficult, but it is definitely do-able. I've actually had properly trained Utility Locators use GPR to locate plastic conduit that was completely empty, and they were able to do it (we were needing to confirm the existence of some "sleeves" on one worksite, as well as confirm that there were no other hazards in the area prior to digging).
Sounds like your contractor had the right idea, but without having been there, it's hard to comment on how they could have cut 2 fiber lines and a 500 pair cable (the latter should have been quite easy to find). Yes, vacuum excavation combined with careful hand digging is called for in situations like this. While it is expensive and time consuming, it's probably cheaper than accidentally cutting a backbone fiber line.
The GPR isn't as effective in our very rocky clay soil as you believe.
Hogwash. I've experienced it firsthand. I know exactly how effective it is, even in rocky clay soil (North Carolina soil to be exact). I have witnessed this technology be able to locate empty plastic conduit (even verifying that the conduit is empty after hand digging it up). Not only were there no tracing wires, but there were no wires at all, and we could still find it.
I do grasp that there is a lot of buried cable/utilities in this and other metropolitan areas, I work in the industry. My point is, this type of work does not have to result in an issue like this, nor is it an excuse that something "wasn't on the drawings". That is an amateur excuse, and not one that is acceptable in most critical environments.
Your response is silly.
The problem is not that the lines aren't mapped--they ARE mapped just like any other utility. The real problem is that the maps aren't perfect.
Irrelevant. As I explained here, there are very effective methods of locating utilities (quite accurately I might add) that are either missing from a map, or are incorrectly drawn on the map. I do agree that this story seems to be quite sensationalized, and still maintain that the contractor did not do his/her due diligence prior to digging.
Then when someone dials the call-before-you-dig hotline, they're told there's two communications links and a 36 inch gas pipeline buried there. Guaranteed the contractor will be more concerned about hitting the pipeline than any cables buried right next to it, and stay far away from it.
I blame the contractor on this one. Just because a utility was not listed on whatever plans he/she was reading, doesn't excuse making no real effort to detect that utility in the first place. In truth, many Private Locating Companies use Ground Penetrating Radar which is fully capable of finding just about anything underground. These aren't your usual "ULOCO" guys, and yes, they're more expensive. However, if the alternative is accidentally hitting an expensive/secret/critical comm. line, I'd rather put the money in the budget to begin with (especially if I know I'm working in an area where this type of thing happens frequently).
Just my 2 cents.
Theorists have been working on materials that bend sound waves backward for several years.
So you mean, if this technology moves forward, and ends up getting incorporated into conventional home/portable audio systems, we may be able to settle once and for all whether or not Paul is dead?
Believe it or not, NC is already home to many tech companies (Dell, HP, Google, IBM, etc). Also, don't forget about other industries that are located here that have significant data center presence (Bank of America, Wells Fargo/Wachovia, AT&T, etc). A lot of the more rural areas of NC do fit the stereotype of the 'old south', no argument there. However, the major metropolitan areas (Charlotte Metro, RTP) have a pretty robust technology sector.
All this, plus $0.055/KWH for electricity, and you can understand why some of these deals get made.
Well, all I can say is 'cheers, brother'!
They should make one that is bluetooth enabled. It would make those hour and a half conference calls much more interesting.
I dunno, sounds Irish to me (and I'm of Irish descent, we can smell our own). After all, they say that the reason they invented beer was to prevent the Irish from taking over the world.
I have issues with anyone who treats faith as a burden instead of a blessing. You people don't celebrate your faith; you mourn it.
a supreme being waving his finger at us from 2000 years ago saying "Do it and I'll spank you!"
You should at least cite the source of your dogma.
*by the way, I'm not trolling you, I love that flick too.
Don't forget about Baba Booey!
(of course, he still can't pitch)
Of course they did, we like the moon.
I've actually tried looping a WAV file of pink noise [wikipedia.org] (easier on the ears than white noise)
I have a suggestion to this end. I had a similar problem where several offices were consolidated into my office, so I went from having an office with a door, to a shared workspace with 6 cubes. I couldn't concentrate on complex procedures with 5 other people talking, phones ringing etc, so I started Googling for white noise generators and found iSerenity.com.
It sounded like a silly idea at first, but I have to tell you, you'd be surprised how your ears get "trained" on the various sounds and you'll be able to ignore the other noises. Once you get used to one sound, it might not work as well, so just pick another 'environment' from the site, worked for me.
Sounds like someone's got a case of the 'Mondays'.
I have 2 comparable, horrible life experiences:
1. I used to work in residential property management. We had a "skip", where someone behind on their rent just moves out in the middle of the night and you have no idea they're gone until you show up with the Sheriff to boot them out/change the locks. Upon entering this one apartment, it was obvious the power had been off for quite a while. Yours truly was the lucky guy to open the fridge. Not only was it full of food, but in the freezer was what used to be at least a 15 lb turkey. Needless to say, it was more than aromatic. After several attempts to fumigate/disinfect/deodorize, we had to dispose of the fridge altogether and buy a new one.
2. The worst one was, in my early 20's my roommate (at the time) and I lived in a rather seedy section of town in a cheap apartment. The laundry room at the bottom of our common hallway flooded and mildewed the carpets, which began to smell pretty bad. After the smells got unusually overwhelming and after many many many complaints, management entered the unit down one floor and across the hall from our place (the one we walked past to get into our place every night). Turns out our neighbor had been stabbed, and died while trying to crawl for his front door. His body was literally melting into the carpet on the other side of the door. My poor roommate happened to be walking by the door while the homicide cops were there. The body had been removed, but he later said that it looked like someone had dropped a Jello mold on the carpet. **shudder** I will never forget that smell.
have you ever seen an apartment that accepts online payments
Yes
What an utter moron. Must be a lot of fun to work for this woman. I think our nationwide unemployment rate is about to go up by 1.
I tried dialing the Skype test call, but I only caught every other word. So much for my dreams of in-flight video conferencing while yelling over the din of jet engines.
Oh god, I hope you, nor anyone else, ever gets this to work.
Police then discovered Lutes' car, with a computer repair sticker on the door, was seen parked in front of the office on the night of the break-in.
Reminds me of that fantastic Christopher Walken quote from True Romance.