I would agree with others who have said this: sit down with your wife and look at your finances. Consider how to live as frugally as possible to save money to either go back to school to train for another profession or to invest to start another career, or just to save yourself in the recession. OR look to hobbies or outside activities for your joy.
That said, consider changing your perspective. There is a great Jewish joke about a man who complained to his rabbi that his home was too crowded and noisy. The rabbi told him to move his goats INSIDE his house... It is a long joke. Look it up. In the end, when the rabbi told him to take the goats back outside (along with all the OTHER animals he'd taken inside), the man realized how nice and quiet it was in his home!
CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE. Here's something to ponder... It ~could~ be your life in the future (or something like it could happen to you). I sincerely hope not...
I had a job which I loved. I worked in it for about 15 years and found it was starting to become boring as you described. I changed to part-time (2/3) and joined a company doing something else which I loved to do as a hobby. It was great for several years, except I became a workaholic and neglected my family. Not so good...
And then what? My health went to hell. I became disabled. (NOTE: 1/3 people become disabled at least temporarily in their lives.) I lost my job and subsequently lost my marriage. Now I live alone - without a workplace to socialize with people with similar interests and intellectual development. (I've found that just socializing at work was something I look back on fondly. I think many folks underestimate how much it means to them to have colleagues or friends at work...)
So, what next? I worked as a consultant, got a Masters degree in a field that interested me (and then found out my disability limited me too much to really work in the field). Then my kids went off to college and our contact diminished as it should when they leave the nest...
And now? I see a shrink to adjust my antidepressants, which aren't working well enough (obviously). I read a lot. I try to socialize as much as I can. I'm considering volunteering to mentor high school (or younger students) in science (which is greatly needed), and am considering writing an article or book which I wished someone else had written on a topic which interests me greatly.
I am in constant pain. I start every day I gritting my teeth, waiting for the pain to subside so I can do the simplest things, like a load of laundry or shopping for food. (I bet you take those for granted, don't you?) I pace myself, usually doing only one thing each day to minimize the pain... Sounds pathetic, doesn't it?
YET! I enjoy a beautiful sunset, pleasant music, intellectually challenging things I read and other moments in the day. They are only moments, but these are the things that keep me alive. Without those moments I would be dead.
Think about it! What if you lost your vision, the ability to read the code you work with or the code you write. What if you had a brain injury which made it difficult for you to express yourself (such as ideas which you currently put into code). Aren't you glad you HAVE a wife and kids? Aren't you glad you have two legs to walk on or run with your kids?
Take some time to think about how many things you are grateful for!
I want to hire you!! It's too bad I don't run a big company with an IT dept that needs someone like you. It would be refreshing to deal with someone who is straightforward and direct.
This is the most direct, honest approach to tech support I've ever seen. It should be written into a manual somehow - "How to Handle User's from Hell".
At the first link, he puts dye into the water and photographs the striders from below showing the vortices they create when they move. Beautiful! You MUST check them out.
And the vids at the 2nd link are interesting though not quite what I'd hoped for. Still, worth a look.
Do you want ANY entity/company to have access to all the information this system requires? Just think, they want to know:
1 - Your GPS location. From your phone?
2 - Your physical location (apparently you have an RFID implanted somewhere, and you passed by a reader they put up for this purpose)
3 - What ads are put on your phone, PDA or computer. (Apparently they know your IP address.)
4 - ALL your phone calls. To mine whether you called an advertiser.
5 - ALL your "financial transactions" (read credit card transactions). To mine... Yikes! I don't want ANYONE to know all that about me... Do you?
This is the scariest thing I've read for awhile... It is ~almost~ enough to make me get rid of my phone (or remove the GPS ability) and stop using my credit card. JWedg
I installed Spysweeper and thought I should run it BEFORE I did my usual weekly backup. I had been running Spybot S & D, but all the reviews I'd read said you needed two programs to really do a good job of clearing up all spyware.
Spysweeper informed me it found two rootkit-hidden directories, so I told it to quarantee them. Upon reboot it told me (within a DOS text) it listed all the things it was removing. When I got to the Windows login screen (XP, SP2+) when I touched the KB, it froze. I could not get into Safe Mode because it required a login too!
After hundreds of dollars and days lost, I gave up and reinstalled Windows, losing ALL my settings and the stuff hidden within all those Windows directories, such as my email.
And this was not the time to learn that while I had backups, I could not access them. For some reason after the Windows XP reinstall, that computer would not recognize my backup HD. So, I copied files from the BU to another machine, made CDs and copied them to my primary machine.
Then, as a developer, I had to spend days reinstalling the 10-20 apps that I use all the time. Sheesh... and I had a deadline coming up soon.
Needless to say, I was seriously P.O.-ed at these people for making software that could do such a thing.
So, I will return to Spybot S & D and leave it at that and pray that it won't miss malware.
Be warned - backup BEFORE you install any of these. Then if it works, and you remove malware, do another backup.
I just wish I had done daily backups on a USB drive or something trivial like that. Be assured, I will be doing that from now on.
I don't work for Spybot S & D, and I don't think Spysweeper is the only anti-malware program that has the potential to screw up systems like this. So, beware of any of these.
Why hasn't some white-hat hacker written similar bots that put up a pop-up with a message saying something like:
"This is a message from the 'Computer Protection Advisory Group.' Your computer has a security hole that can be used by hackers to take control of your computer. THAT IS HOW THIS MESSAGE WAS ABLE TO BE SHOWN! Go to Microsoft Windows and run their 'Windows Update'. This is the URL to type in (do not click): http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/def ault.aspx
Also, please be sure to turn Windows Auto-Update on!"
Or something similar. (Of course the white-hat bot checks which OS is being used and posts the correct URL for that OS.) The message needs to be something that is not scarey, is clear about the message that the user must do something, and has a URL to help them solve the problem. Note: I added that they should turn Auto-Update on, because I am assuming that they are new to Windows. I know that Slashdotters will argue that turning this on might be a mistake. Let's not rehash that here. Focus on the idea of a white-hat botnet to fix the darn problems.
Any thoughts? It seems that white-hats could run bot-nets that spread benign information just as easily as black-hats could spread adware/spyware. When ever I see Windows machines that are not being updated, this questions comes to mind... Why not?
There is a lot of venom towards telemarketers in this thread.
I'm a retired MD, and I had many young, relatively healthy people ask me to put them on disability. I saw a quadraplegic, who could barely move his neck and one arm, and could move nothing else. He told me he lived independently and his income wasn't from disability. (Yes, I know he had lots of other governmental support available to him, but he didn't receive disability _income_.)
He did it by working as a telemarketer. His brain and his voice worked, and that was the only kind of work he could find. Seeing him changed my idea of what it meant to be disabled.
So, remember some of those on the phone are doing it because they truly can do nothing else. Ever since I met this young man, I answer politely and ask to be put on the DNC list. It takes 10 seconds. Even if it happened three times a day, that is less than a minute. Don't you have one minute to be polite to another human being?
The serious lists of things needed on a tech bench that have been suggested are amazing! People differ significantly, but the overlap and original ideas for what makes it work for each individual should be saved... I write software, but occassionally have to tinker with hardware, and I expect to return to this list a number of times...
My primary peeve with any Windows interface is when I ask the Taskbar to hide I have no ability to change the delay which makes it reappear.
I'd love to have it on the side of the desktop but when I do, it reappears all the time when I am sliding to the File menu or to the Close box.
Heck, the same thing happens on the bottom or top of the screen - if I hide it at bottom of the screen and I slide the cursor down to the lower edge of a window to make it smaller... the darn Taskbar appears!
If I could set the Taskbar reappearance to occur only after a delay of.5-1.0 seconds, it would make me a happy guy. But since I can't, I put it at the bottom and leave it un-hid.
Slashdot Mirror
I would agree with others who have said this: sit down with your wife and look at your finances. Consider how to live as frugally as possible to save money to either go back to school to train for another profession or to invest to start another career, or just to save yourself in the recession. OR look to hobbies or outside activities for your joy.
That said, consider changing your perspective. There is a great Jewish joke about a man who complained to his rabbi that his home was too crowded and noisy. The rabbi told him to move his goats INSIDE his house... It is a long joke. Look it up. In the end, when the rabbi told him to take the goats back outside (along with all the OTHER animals he'd taken inside), the man realized how nice and quiet it was in his home!
CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE. Here's something to ponder... It ~could~ be your life in the future (or something like it could happen to you). I sincerely hope not...
I had a job which I loved. I worked in it for about 15 years and found it was starting to become boring as you described. I changed to part-time (2/3) and joined a company doing something else which I loved to do as a hobby. It was great for several years, except I became a workaholic and neglected my family. Not so good...
And then what? My health went to hell. I became disabled. (NOTE: 1/3 people become disabled at least temporarily in their lives.) I lost my job and subsequently lost my marriage. Now I live alone - without a workplace to socialize with people with similar interests and intellectual development. (I've found that just socializing at work was something I look back on fondly. I think many folks underestimate how much it means to them to have colleagues or friends at work...)
So, what next? I worked as a consultant, got a Masters degree in a field that interested me (and then found out my disability limited me too much to really work in the field). Then my kids went off to college and our contact diminished as it should when they leave the nest...
And now? I see a shrink to adjust my antidepressants, which aren't working well enough (obviously). I read a lot. I try to socialize as much as I can. I'm considering volunteering to mentor high school (or younger students) in science (which is greatly needed), and am considering writing an article or book which I wished someone else had written on a topic which interests me greatly.
I am in constant pain. I start every day I gritting my teeth, waiting for the pain to subside so I can do the simplest things, like a load of laundry or shopping for food. (I bet you take those for granted, don't you?) I pace myself, usually doing only one thing each day to minimize the pain... Sounds pathetic, doesn't it?
YET! I enjoy a beautiful sunset, pleasant music, intellectually challenging things I read and other moments in the day. They are only moments, but these are the things that keep me alive. Without those moments I would be dead.
Think about it! What if you lost your vision, the ability to read the code you work with or the code you write. What if you had a brain injury which made it difficult for you to express yourself (such as ideas which you currently put into code). Aren't you glad you HAVE a wife and kids? Aren't you glad you have two legs to walk on or run with your kids?
Take some time to think about how many things you are grateful for!
Good luck and hang in there!
I want to hire you!! It's too bad I don't run a big company with an IT dept that needs someone like you. It would be refreshing to deal with someone who is straightforward and direct.
This is the most direct, honest approach to tech support I've ever seen. It should be written into a manual somehow - "How to Handle User's from Hell".
At the first link, he puts dye into the water and photographs the striders from below showing the vortices they create when they move. Beautiful! You MUST check them out. And the vids at the 2nd link are interesting though not quite what I'd hoped for. Still, worth a look.
Holy Sh** Batman!
Do you want ANY entity/company to have access to all the information this system requires?
Just think, they want to know:
1 - Your GPS location. From your phone?
2 - Your physical location (apparently you have an RFID implanted somewhere, and you passed by a reader they put up for this purpose)
3 - What ads are put on your phone, PDA or computer. (Apparently they know your IP address.)
4 - ALL your phone calls. To mine whether you called an advertiser.
5 - ALL your "financial transactions" (read credit card transactions). To mine...
Yikes! I don't want ANYONE to know all that about me... Do you?
This is the scariest thing I've read for awhile...
It is ~almost~ enough to make me get rid of my phone (or remove the GPS ability) and stop using my credit card.
JWedg
I installed Spysweeper and thought I should run it BEFORE I did my usual weekly backup. I had been running Spybot S & D, but all the reviews I'd read said you needed two programs to really do a good job of clearing up all spyware.
Spysweeper informed me it found two rootkit-hidden directories, so I told it to quarantee them. Upon reboot it told me (within a DOS text) it listed all the things it was removing. When I got to the Windows login screen (XP, SP2+) when I touched the KB, it froze. I could not get into Safe Mode because it required a login too!
After hundreds of dollars and days lost, I gave up and reinstalled Windows, losing ALL my settings and the stuff hidden within all those Windows directories, such as my email.
And this was not the time to learn that while I had backups, I could not access them. For some reason after the Windows XP reinstall, that computer would not recognize my backup HD. So, I copied files from the BU to another machine, made CDs and copied them to my primary machine.
Then, as a developer, I had to spend days reinstalling the 10-20 apps that I use all the time. Sheesh... and I had a deadline coming up soon.
Needless to say, I was seriously P.O.-ed at these people for making software that could do such a thing.
So, I will return to Spybot S & D and leave it at that and pray that it won't miss malware.
Be warned - backup BEFORE you install any of these. Then if it works, and you remove malware, do another backup.
I just wish I had done daily backups on a USB drive or something trivial like that. Be assured, I will be doing that from now on.
I don't work for Spybot S & D, and I don't think Spysweeper is the only anti-malware program that has the potential to screw up systems like this. So, beware of any of these.
Good luck!
It is sad that well-intentioned assistance is lumped in the same category as malevalent abuse.
Naive wasn't the right word, perhaps I was just too optimistic about social interactions.
Thanks for telling about your experience.
JWedg
Why hasn't some white-hat hacker written similar bots that put up a pop-up with a message saying something like:
f ault.aspx
"This is a message from the 'Computer Protection Advisory Group.'
Your computer has a security hole that can be used by hackers to take control of your computer.
THAT IS HOW THIS MESSAGE WAS ABLE TO BE SHOWN!
Go to Microsoft Windows and run their 'Windows Update'.
This is the URL to type in (do not click):
http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/de
Also, please be sure to turn Windows Auto-Update on!"
Or something similar. (Of course the white-hat bot checks which OS is being used and posts the correct URL for that OS.) The message needs to be something that is not scarey, is clear about the message that the user must do something, and has a URL to help them solve the problem. Note: I added that they should turn Auto-Update on, because I am assuming that they are new to Windows. I know that Slashdotters will argue that turning this on might be a mistake. Let's not rehash that here. Focus on the idea of a white-hat botnet to fix the darn problems.
Any thoughts? It seems that white-hats could run bot-nets that spread benign information just as easily as black-hats could spread adware/spyware. When ever I see Windows machines that are not being updated, this questions comes to mind... Why not?
Or am I just too naive?
JWedg
There is a lot of venom towards telemarketers in this thread.
I'm a retired MD, and I had many young, relatively healthy people ask me to put them on disability. I saw a quadraplegic, who could barely move his neck and one arm, and could move nothing else. He told me he lived independently and his income wasn't from disability. (Yes, I know he had lots of other governmental support available to him, but he didn't receive disability _income_.)
He did it by working as a telemarketer. His brain and his voice worked, and that was the only kind of work he could find. Seeing him changed my idea of what it meant to be disabled.
So, remember some of those on the phone are doing it because they truly can do nothing else. Ever since I met this young man, I answer politely and ask to be put on the DNC list. It takes 10 seconds. Even if it happened three times a day, that is less than a minute. Don't you have one minute to be polite to another human being?
The serious lists of things needed on a tech bench that have been suggested are amazing!
/. archives last forever.
People differ significantly, but the overlap and original ideas for what makes it work for each individual should be saved...
I write software, but occassionally have to tinker with hardware, and I expect to return to this list a number of times...
I hope the
Thanks guys.
My primary peeve with any Windows interface is when I ask the Taskbar to hide I have no ability to change the delay which makes it reappear.
.5-1.0 seconds, it would make me a happy guy. But since I can't, I put it at the bottom and leave it un-hid.
I'd love to have it on the side of the desktop but when I do, it reappears all the time when I am sliding to the File menu or to the Close box.
Heck, the same thing happens on the bottom or top of the screen - if I hide it at bottom of the screen and I slide the cursor down to the lower edge of a window to make it smaller... the darn Taskbar appears!
If I could set the Taskbar reappearance to occur only after a delay of