There may be some misconceptions about what military benefits are available to veterans depending on the circumstances of their separation (talking about anything other than dishonorable discharge). Disclaimer: I'm an Army brat running down some seriously second-hand and peripheral knowledge of the subject. But as I understand it, VA benefits are applied to all veterans -- which generally requires you to go to a VA hospital for treatment; and there are other restrictions and constant eligibility reviews. If you SEPARATE from active duty, this is what you get.
If you RETIRE (20+ years service), you are eligible for TRICARE coverage and VA benefits. This is what I'm more familiar with as a dependent. Coverage tends to be pretty good; you can utilize military and civilian facilities.
Another family member who is a veteran of the USMC and not a retiree is in the VA system. I'm not intimately acquainted with the details but it seems he has to jump through way more hoops to get care.
Basically, military medical benefits != VA benefits. A lot of it depends on length of service and other factors. Clarification/correction/refutation from active duty, vets and retirees welcomed.
the days of decades-long careers in corporate environments dwindling for many IT pros
Those days never existed. Hiring and layoffs have always been based on skills needed this year.
You could potentially stay with a company for a while if you demonstrated the ability shift roles and learn new technologies as they emerge. The death knell for any IT worker is when they proclaim "I only do [this speciality]!" Work on your IT jeet kun do and you are likely to preserve your longevity with a company that keeps in-house IT. I'll admit to having worked in non-traditional technical roles at non-traditional companies, so YMMV.
I've had the same type of failures happen to wired network gear. A 5-port 10/100 switch would start malfunctioning when it had more than three live network cables attached to it. I suspected the switch until the same symptoms happened while using a different, known working switch with the same old power supply. Also had a fibre to copper transceiver act up similarly until I replaced the power supply.
Whouda thunk that a stable power source was essential?
If they are passionate about it it is a fun and rewarding career, with lot's of job opportunities.
They won't get outside much, they will need to stay active after work to not get fat, and that programmer != sys admin.
I'd especially tell them what it ISN'T. There are a lot of misconceptions about what computer science actually is and a lot of is perpetrated by well-meaning adults who tell kids "go learn about technology" and glom computer science into that extremely broad category of "tech".
I work for a youth organization, and I always have kids watching what I do and going "Cool, can you teach me how to hack?" Invariably, they get disappointed when I show them how to ssh into a remote machine and recompile the kernel instead of breaking into a DoD mainframe and launch missiles at China or something. And anytime I do try and generate interest in actual programming, it is hard to get past the "How do you program games?" point. Let's work past printf and scanf first, junior.
It's a toughie. IANACS, but I've taken programming and numerical theory classes and it can be tedious and detail oriented. It's hard to put that up against a generation who has a lot of instant gratification when it comes to their experience with anything technology related.
My only complaint about the Tactile Pro (at least the ones I used that came with the PowerMac G4) was that it collected all manner of human detritus and served as a DISPLAY CASE for it. Gross.
Pagers also fare better than cell phones when thrown against walls or malfunctioning equipment. NEC pagers are very sturdy -- much better than Motorolas for impact resistance.
We use pagers at work (still). My only complaint about them is the surprise factor. Is this call going to be "I need a new mouse" or will it be "all our network volumes have disappeared"?
Are we talking about stretching out the aging process ad infinitum or improving the quality of life over a longer period?
Honestly, if I were given the choice of living for 500 years, but with a congruent rate of decline as a normal lifespan, then no way. I would much rather live a meager 75 years with the vitality of a 27 year old and the kick the bucket at the end. Sort of like a replicant ala Blade Runner, but no Deckard chasing after me.
"Survival of the Sickest" by Dr. Sharon Moalem covered a bit of why we need disease and why we need to die. I thought it interesting.
Love the Steelcase Leap as well. I have one generously purchased for (er, handed down to) me for work.
Personally, the advantages for me over the Aeron are that is NOT a mesh, so it keeps my bottom warm in our mostly cold-ish office. The Aeron provides no buffer in that respect...:)
Our facility is mostly (100+) production Macintosh workstations thrown in with some XP workstations (for the business/admin arm of the company), using mostly Windows servers in the backend. We use Thursby's ADmitMac to authenticate to the domain and access remote user folders (yes, the Desktop is hosted on a Windows machine), as well as for printer and file sharing. It works very well; much better than Apple's own AD plugin. All our users love being able to roam from workstation to workstation and keep their preferences and personal files/media.
The only problem is that some apps on the Macintosh want to see a local user with admin rights. And some goofy stuff with being able to change passwords through the ADmitMac interface. But all in all, integration with Active Directory is pretty tight.
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Another family member who is a veteran of the USMC and not a retiree is in the VA system. I'm not intimately acquainted with the details but it seems he has to jump through way more hoops to get care.
Basically, military medical benefits != VA benefits. A lot of it depends on length of service and other factors. Clarification/correction/refutation from active duty, vets and retirees welcomed.
This article explains some of the difference:
http://www.npr.org/sections/he...
Now we know why.
the days of decades-long careers in corporate environments dwindling for many IT pros
Those days never existed. Hiring and layoffs have always been based on skills needed this year.
You could potentially stay with a company for a while if you demonstrated the ability shift roles and learn new technologies as they emerge. The death knell for any IT worker is when they proclaim "I only do [this speciality]!" Work on your IT jeet kun do and you are likely to preserve your longevity with a company that keeps in-house IT. I'll admit to having worked in non-traditional technical roles at non-traditional companies, so YMMV.
I've had the same type of failures happen to wired network gear. A 5-port 10/100 switch would start malfunctioning when it had more than three live network cables attached to it. I suspected the switch until the same symptoms happened while using a different, known working switch with the same old power supply. Also had a fibre to copper transceiver act up similarly until I replaced the power supply. Whouda thunk that a stable power source was essential?
If they are passionate about it it is a fun and rewarding career, with lot's of job opportunities.
They won't get outside much, they will need to stay active after work to not get fat, and that programmer != sys admin.
I'd especially tell them what it ISN'T. There are a lot of misconceptions about what computer science actually is and a lot of is perpetrated by well-meaning adults who tell kids "go learn about technology" and glom computer science into that extremely broad category of "tech".
I work for a youth organization, and I always have kids watching what I do and going "Cool, can you teach me how to hack?" Invariably, they get disappointed when I show them how to ssh into a remote machine and recompile the kernel instead of breaking into a DoD mainframe and launch missiles at China or something. And anytime I do try and generate interest in actual programming, it is hard to get past the "How do you program games?" point. Let's work past printf and scanf first, junior.
It's a toughie. IANACS, but I've taken programming and numerical theory classes and it can be tedious and detail oriented. It's hard to put that up against a generation who has a lot of instant gratification when it comes to their experience with anything technology related.
My only complaint about the Tactile Pro (at least the ones I used that came with the PowerMac G4) was that it collected all manner of human detritus and served as a DISPLAY CASE for it. Gross.
Pagers also fare better than cell phones when thrown against walls or malfunctioning equipment. NEC pagers are very sturdy -- much better than Motorolas for impact resistance. We use pagers at work (still). My only complaint about them is the surprise factor. Is this call going to be "I need a new mouse" or will it be "all our network volumes have disappeared"?
Are we talking about stretching out the aging process ad infinitum or improving the quality of life over a longer period? Honestly, if I were given the choice of living for 500 years, but with a congruent rate of decline as a normal lifespan, then no way. I would much rather live a meager 75 years with the vitality of a 27 year old and the kick the bucket at the end. Sort of like a replicant ala Blade Runner, but no Deckard chasing after me.
"Survival of the Sickest" by Dr. Sharon Moalem covered a bit of why we need disease and why we need to die. I thought it interesting.
Love the Steelcase Leap as well. I have one generously purchased for (er, handed down to) me for work. Personally, the advantages for me over the Aeron are that is NOT a mesh, so it keeps my bottom warm in our mostly cold-ish office. The Aeron provides no buffer in that respect... :)
The only problem is that some apps on the Macintosh want to see a local user with admin rights. And some goofy stuff with being able to change passwords through the ADmitMac interface. But all in all, integration with Active Directory is pretty tight.