I see where you're going, but I think you're a little confused.
It isn't so much that the signal is *slow* like on a dial up - it just isn't there. You cannot buffer what you don't have. Think of it as a corrupted download. No matter if I got it on a dial up or a T-3, the speed isn't the issue. You need all the packets to make the file complete. Same thing here, problem is, it's a one time shot as well. I can always re-download the file but I cannot reacquire the 6:00 newscast that is missing some packets.
The funny thing for me - the HR lady that they hired was all about getting her tech guy from her previous company. She had been there about 6 months, she came over from the same company one of the VP's did (see a pattern). The new tech guy didn't last very long either.
The best part about the whole situation? She got herself jammed up with one of the employees (she was married and had kids but apparently the grass was greener at the office) and got canned herself less than two years later.
It really sucked at the time - I'd never been asked to leave (well technically here I 'resigned') and I was young and a little less experienced in the world of business. Now I look back and think - "Wow, that may have been one of the better things that happened to me in my life!"
They did pull some stunts - getting my co-located box taken off the wire by the ISP they used for their Internet connectivity. That was unprofessional for both them and the ISP. Since they were a local financial institution, they had a little more pull than the recently available tech that had a co-located box with them.:) Again, live and learn.
Kind of makes me wonder if MS is purposely ignoring the "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" ads thinking by acknowledging them they somehow legitimize the Apple ads.
"It's just not working out." I was able to draw unemployment. Wouldn't even let me clean out my desk, I had to come back for my stuff. I held their laptop ransom.:)
I wasn't 'laid off.' Management and I had differing views on how to accomplish some things of a technical nature and the CEO won out (odd huh? The boss winning?).
I did talk to an attorney at the time. Pretty much, since I was an at will employee, I took my lumps and learned that next time keep your mouth shut and let the boss waste the company's money.
A personality test for an IT job does seem very unreasonable.
I had to take a psych test for my part time gig on the Sheriff's Dept., but then again, they're giving me a gun and powers of arrest. Clearly the test fits the needs of the employer. A personality test for an IT job is just not a good idea. Geeks generally don't fit into a normal mold anyway!
You make some excellent points. I recently just took a job with a state agency and they had a written test to weed out the paper toting want-to-be's.
Here is what I've found in the IT world. It may be like this in other fields but in the IT world folks either 'get it' or they don't. You can have a CS degree and be certified all over, yet if you don't 'get it', it's all worthless.
I've done some other things in my life and to various levels I think actually being able to understand the concept of what you're doing and more importantly being able to problem solve your way through an issue is the single most important part of 'getting it' than any certification or training you can get.
As a bonus, if you don't get it, no amount of training is going to help you get it. It is just not going to happen.
I think some folks are going to always be naturally suspicious. In addition to my full time work as a network administrator / engineer for a state agency, I've also worked in the past as a FT Police Officer and now am working as a Reserve Deputy in the county where I reside.
I have always been suspicious. I always notice everything. I enjoyed my FT time as a cop and I enjoy my time on the SO. I enjoy what I do at the state agency I work for. I don't think that my contact with the negative part of society (at the SO) or dealing with idiot users (which sometimes is more difficult that the folks I get to take to jail) spills over into my time away from work.
I think you make your own happiness. I can focus on the negative I do or deal with or when I am away from work or I can find things that I enjoy or relax me. That doesn't mean you're not aware, we all should be aware no matter what we do its more that you don't let the frustrating or negative part of your job overwhelm you. I think that holds true no matter what you do, be it IT, LE, retail, customer service. Every career has negative points in it, it is a matter of what we do in our down time to unwind and blow off steam.
Having said all of that, if you're finding your job is making your personal life unhappy and decompression time / activities are not making that better, you may need to find a different area to work in (not necessarily out of IT, maybe just a different sub-set).
Actually, self regulation, when there is (apparently - I don't live in Canada, so I am just going on what those that live there are stating) no competition does not work. If the consumer had a choice - they'd tell this company to pound sand and switch to a provider that seemed more interested in their customers.
I have always used this analogy regarding the local land line provider but in Canada it apparently applies for the cell companies too:
We don't care, we don't have to. We're the phone company.
On the Sprint Treo - WM version is automatically able to just do it as a DUN connection. The Palm version (my version) does require purchase of a Palm app to make it happen. Either way - Bluetooth or USB is as simple as setting up a DUN connection on Windows (presumable on Linux as well, just never tried it). It's reasonably fast as well. I wouldn't want to stream a torrent but I can download software email, etc like I am on a slow DSL connection. FWIW
Having said that - I still stick to my statement that it should not be the goal of the government to *legislate* trivial things like cell phone use - not when it doesn't involve a safety issue.
I am 100% with you and many other who talk about how rude people are when they use their cell phones in an manner which is disruptive and loud. Please understand, I am with you all the way. It just becomes a slippery slop.
Maybe I am living in a Ron Paul world - but I just wonder why our tax dollars are being spent on some of these things when clearly they are not part of the constitutional role of government. I could hit a whole bunch of issues that are not the role of the Federal Government yet they have made it as such.
You hit the nail on the head - but they have proven many times that they really don't care about what is really important. They are too worried that someone might be using steroids to hit one more home run.
I am not really sure how things like this cell phone ban, steroid use or a hundred other things I could talk about that they focus on become agenda - it appears to me that the gov't is trying to accomplish two things:
1. Power. The power that congress has has been a little unchecked and is abused for both professional and personal gain tons of time. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
2. Justification. They need to justify why they are there. It is kind of like when the Hollywood types talk about things they have little or no knowledge of. They are trying to justify their position or title.
I don't know what the fix is for the government thing. Unfortunately it is few and far in between folks that actually care. Look at the voting rates. I truly think that we could eliminate a good portion of our deficit spending just by not wasting tax dollars on things like this Cell phone ban.
Just my two cents. Thanks for letting me use my soapbox.:)
jcrouse on google returns my.com webpage as #1 and my.net as #4. The same search on Cuil returns nothing of the sort. Searching my full name returns "we didn't find any results." Doing the same on Google results in my.com getting the #1 pick.
If they're claiming to index "three times as many webpages as google" I would at least expect a result of some sort. I understand their page ranking logic may be different but I would think I would at least appear.
The interface does look nice but so does a supermodel. That doesn't mean they're going to give me intelligent responses that I can use.
I had a job (banking industry) and I was the single IT for the operation.
They decided it was time for me to go and they wouldn't let me go and clean out my desk. I basically told them I would give them their laptop back when I got my stuff.
I ended up getting it later that day. Can they legally do that? I think for security reasons they can for a short time but ultimately they have to return your things. The key is what is 'a reasonable amount of time.'
Funny thing is - this is when banks first started getting connected to the Internet and I had remote access to all sorts of stuff - including their unix box which handled all of their banking. The CEO - after being an ass about everything (and told IT professionals at other companies I worked with professionally that I had to be escorted from the building by the cops (not true)) asked me to "not try and remote connect / do damage to their network."
When I was a cop in Ohio I forgot my gun once (easier to do than you think).
Didn't even realize it until I went to rest my arm on my belt (that's is the most important thing I carried a firearm for, right?) and it didn't quite feel right.
My drive of shame when I had to tell the Sarge, I gotta' go home and get my pistol. Everyone had a good laugh at my expense, but I only did that once.:)
I have never had to reboot my old NetGear (a loooooong time ago when I didn't know any better and used one of those), I've never rebooted my IPCop - infact the before I moved (this less than a week ago) it had something like 160 days uptime and the previous downtime was due to a power outage.
My old Cisco 1601 that used to use to connect my servers to the Internet via a DSL circut had never had to be rebooted.
Wow, that does bring back some memories for me as well.
I remember setting up Lantastic on a couple of machines at home so I could play network games (original Doom if I am not mistaken).
And DESQView! I was trying to remember the name of that software the other day. I used it to run my Multinode WildCat! BBS (two nodes on a 286! Those were the days)
Not long after I too acquired a copy of WfW 3.11 and loved the simplicity of the networking.
But I have to say - Novell has made me a lot of money over the years - I got Novell Certified in the mid-90's and I just accepted a position with the State of FL because of my Novell background - they still haven't made the switch (well this agency at least - most of them have but these folks are still in the process). Novell was a *great* NOS in it's day, but like so many things that have come before, they had their heads in the sand and refused to see the application server wave was upon us...
Sorry if this was a bit redundant - I just had to reminisce for a minute.:) Nice post dada21
God I hope so. Just discussing that with a fellow friend and Sprint user (yes, it was much better than Nextel for high speed Internet and I didn't have to sign another contract).
Last Friday I sat in 95+ heat and 90%+ humidity to watch the Florida State Seminoles in their first game of the College Baseball Regionals.
Sure, it would have been much better to watch it on TV with a cold beer in my hand, but there is just something to be said of going out to the actual event and seeing it live.
I dunno, call me crazy, but life is meant to be lived, not watched on TV.
I use ipcop http://www.ipcop.org/ for my home network - it's all of about 40 megs (well it was, I see the new update is quite a bit bigger so I may be low on that figure) and can run on any old pc lying around.
It can do the traffic shaping you're wanting, plus, I found, especially when I am doing p2p downloading or some online gaming, my old netgear (very old) couldn't keep up and would drop packets. I saw my download speeds go up significantly and I have the opportunity to do traffic shaping if needed.
It's free (donation) and very simple to set up. You don't have to be a linux guru to set it up, it has a web based interface for configuration.
I can appreciate your position on not sticking it to your buddies, but they have to also understand that business is business and personal is personal, and hopefully your soon to be former co-workers can appreciate the difference.
Having said that, I would probably take the route of what some have already suggested, see if you can make your departure happen a little more quickly, thereby helping your new employer. Your existing employer has clarified what they want your role to be. It makes sense to me to follow that lead.
Don't lose your integrity, but I am sure there are things you can do to occupy your time in a profitable manner such as reading technical information regarding your area(s) of expertise making sure you're current - that can potentially benefit both your (soon to be) former employer and your upcoming one.
I was surprised it took this many replies for someone to suggest Verizon or Sprint. I love my EVDO sprint connection, it works great - I even tethered my laptop to my Treo on a recent trip and it worked great going down the road (I was a passenger). We even shared my Internet connection and had two laptops (via crossover cable) connected.
Assuming the EVDO svc is available, I think that would be the ideal solution. It is also something they could use while traveling or away from a landline HS connection.
I was watching a news clip this morning on CNN Mobile on my SprintTV enabled Treo about this great new concept - getting live feed TV on my mobile phone.
Oh, wait, I can already do that.
How is this news?
Slashdot Mirror
I see where you're going, but I think you're a little confused.
It isn't so much that the signal is *slow* like on a dial up - it just isn't there. You cannot buffer what you don't have. Think of it as a corrupted download. No matter if I got it on a dial up or a T-3, the speed isn't the issue. You need all the packets to make the file complete. Same thing here, problem is, it's a one time shot as well. I can always re-download the file but I cannot reacquire the 6:00 newscast that is missing some packets.
The funny thing for me - the HR lady that they hired was all about getting her tech guy from her previous company. She had been there about 6 months, she came over from the same company one of the VP's did (see a pattern). The new tech guy didn't last very long either.
:) Again, live and learn.
The best part about the whole situation? She got herself jammed up with one of the employees (she was married and had kids but apparently the grass was greener at the office) and got canned herself less than two years later.
It really sucked at the time - I'd never been asked to leave (well technically here I 'resigned') and I was young and a little less experienced in the world of business. Now I look back and think - "Wow, that may have been one of the better things that happened to me in my life!"
They did pull some stunts - getting my co-located box taken off the wire by the ISP they used for their Internet connectivity. That was unprofessional for both them and the ISP. Since they were a local financial institution, they had a little more pull than the recently available tech that had a co-located box with them.
Kind of makes me wonder if MS is purposely ignoring the "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC" ads thinking by acknowledging them they somehow legitimize the Apple ads.
"It's just not working out." I was able to draw unemployment. Wouldn't even let me clean out my desk, I had to come back for my stuff. I held their laptop ransom. :)
I wasn't 'laid off.' Management and I had differing views on how to accomplish some things of a technical nature and the CEO won out (odd huh? The boss winning?).
I did talk to an attorney at the time. Pretty much, since I was an at will employee, I took my lumps and learned that next time keep your mouth shut and let the boss waste the company's money.
Ohio, Michigan and Florida (all are three states I've lived and worked in) that are 'at will.'
In fact, one of the jobs in one of the states decided they didn't want my employ anymore and 'willed' me out the door.
A personality test for an IT job does seem very unreasonable.
I had to take a psych test for my part time gig on the Sheriff's Dept., but then again, they're giving me a gun and powers of arrest. Clearly the test fits the needs of the employer. A personality test for an IT job is just not a good idea. Geeks generally don't fit into a normal mold anyway!
You make some excellent points. I recently just took a job with a state agency and they had a written test to weed out the paper toting want-to-be's.
Here is what I've found in the IT world. It may be like this in other fields but in the IT world folks either 'get it' or they don't. You can have a CS degree and be certified all over, yet if you don't 'get it', it's all worthless.
I've done some other things in my life and to various levels I think actually being able to understand the concept of what you're doing and more importantly being able to problem solve your way through an issue is the single most important part of 'getting it' than any certification or training you can get.
As a bonus, if you don't get it, no amount of training is going to help you get it. It is just not going to happen.
I think some folks are going to always be naturally suspicious. In addition to my full time work as a network administrator / engineer for a state agency, I've also worked in the past as a FT Police Officer and now am working as a Reserve Deputy in the county where I reside.
I have always been suspicious. I always notice everything. I enjoyed my FT time as a cop and I enjoy my time on the SO. I enjoy what I do at the state agency I work for. I don't think that my contact with the negative part of society (at the SO) or dealing with idiot users (which sometimes is more difficult that the folks I get to take to jail) spills over into my time away from work.
I think you make your own happiness. I can focus on the negative I do or deal with or when I am away from work or I can find things that I enjoy or relax me. That doesn't mean you're not aware, we all should be aware no matter what we do its more that you don't let the frustrating or negative part of your job overwhelm you. I think that holds true no matter what you do, be it IT, LE, retail, customer service. Every career has negative points in it, it is a matter of what we do in our down time to unwind and blow off steam.
Having said all of that, if you're finding your job is making your personal life unhappy and decompression time / activities are not making that better, you may need to find a different area to work in (not necessarily out of IT, maybe just a different sub-set).
Just my thoughts.
Actually, self regulation, when there is (apparently - I don't live in Canada, so I am just going on what those that live there are stating) no competition does not work. If the consumer had a choice - they'd tell this company to pound sand and switch to a provider that seemed more interested in their customers.
I have always used this analogy regarding the local land line provider but in Canada it apparently applies for the cell companies too:
We don't care, we don't have to. We're the phone company.
On the Sprint Treo - WM version is automatically able to just do it as a DUN connection. The Palm version (my version) does require purchase of a Palm app to make it happen. Either way - Bluetooth or USB is as simple as setting up a DUN connection on Windows (presumable on Linux as well, just never tried it). It's reasonably fast as well. I wouldn't want to stream a torrent but I can download software email, etc like I am on a slow DSL connection. FWIW
Feel free to burn the soapbox. :)
:)
Having said that - I still stick to my statement that it should not be the goal of the government to *legislate* trivial things like cell phone use - not when it doesn't involve a safety issue.
I am 100% with you and many other who talk about how rude people are when they use their cell phones in an manner which is disruptive and loud. Please understand, I am with you all the way. It just becomes a slippery slop.
Maybe I am living in a Ron Paul world - but I just wonder why our tax dollars are being spent on some of these things when clearly they are not part of the constitutional role of government. I could hit a whole bunch of issues that are not the role of the Federal Government yet they have made it as such.
That makes it 4 cents.
You hit the nail on the head - but they have proven many times that they really don't care about what is really important. They are too worried that someone might be using steroids to hit one more home run.
:)
I am not really sure how things like this cell phone ban, steroid use or a hundred other things I could talk about that they focus on become agenda - it appears to me that the gov't is trying to accomplish two things:
1. Power. The power that congress has has been a little unchecked and is abused for both professional and personal gain tons of time. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
2. Justification. They need to justify why they are there. It is kind of like when the Hollywood types talk about things they have little or no knowledge of. They are trying to justify their position or title.
I don't know what the fix is for the government thing. Unfortunately it is few and far in between folks that actually care. Look at the voting rates. I truly think that we could eliminate a good portion of our deficit spending just by not wasting tax dollars on things like this Cell phone ban.
Just my two cents. Thanks for letting me use my soapbox.
jcrouse on google returns my .com webpage as #1 and my .net as #4. The same search on Cuil returns nothing of the sort. Searching my full name returns "we didn't find any results." Doing the same on Google results in my .com getting the #1 pick.
If they're claiming to index "three times as many webpages as google" I would at least expect a result of some sort. I understand their page ranking logic may be different but I would think I would at least appear.
The interface does look nice but so does a supermodel. That doesn't mean they're going to give me intelligent responses that I can use.
I had a job (banking industry) and I was the single IT for the operation.
They decided it was time for me to go and they wouldn't let me go and clean out my desk. I basically told them I would give them their laptop back when I got my stuff.
I ended up getting it later that day. Can they legally do that? I think for security reasons they can for a short time but ultimately they have to return your things. The key is what is 'a reasonable amount of time.'
Funny thing is - this is when banks first started getting connected to the Internet and I had remote access to all sorts of stuff - including their unix box which handled all of their banking. The CEO - after being an ass about everything (and told IT professionals at other companies I worked with professionally that I had to be escorted from the building by the cops (not true)) asked me to "not try and remote connect / do damage to their network."
I didn't, only because I have integrity.
When I was a cop in Ohio I forgot my gun once (easier to do than you think).
:)
Didn't even realize it until I went to rest my arm on my belt (that's is the most important thing I carried a firearm for, right?) and it didn't quite feel right.
My drive of shame when I had to tell the Sarge, I gotta' go home and get my pistol. Everyone had a good laugh at my expense, but I only did that once.
I have never had to reboot my old NetGear (a loooooong time ago when I didn't know any better and used one of those), I've never rebooted my IPCop - infact the before I moved (this less than a week ago) it had something like 160 days uptime and the previous downtime was due to a power outage.
My old Cisco 1601 that used to use to connect my servers to the Internet via a DSL circut had never had to be rebooted.
You've got something wrong I suspect.
Wow, that does bring back some memories for me as well.
:) Nice post dada21
I remember setting up Lantastic on a couple of machines at home so I could play network games (original Doom if I am not mistaken).
And DESQView! I was trying to remember the name of that software the other day. I used it to run my Multinode WildCat! BBS (two nodes on a 286! Those were the days)
Not long after I too acquired a copy of WfW 3.11 and loved the simplicity of the networking.
But I have to say - Novell has made me a lot of money over the years - I got Novell Certified in the mid-90's and I just accepted a position with the State of FL because of my Novell background - they still haven't made the switch (well this agency at least - most of them have but these folks are still in the process). Novell was a *great* NOS in it's day, but like so many things that have come before, they had their heads in the sand and refused to see the application server wave was upon us...
Sorry if this was a bit redundant - I just had to reminisce for a minute.
Normally its $5/month for unlimited on my sprint plan but somehow I qualified for a $2/month unlimited.
If you're using TM much, the previous poster is correct - get a plan.
God I hope so. Just discussing that with a fellow friend and Sprint user (yes, it was much better than Nextel for high speed Internet and I didn't have to sign another contract).
Good Riddance!
I think it's all about the 'experience.'
:)
Last Friday I sat in 95+ heat and 90%+ humidity to watch the Florida State Seminoles in their first game of the College Baseball Regionals.
Sure, it would have been much better to watch it on TV with a cold beer in my hand, but there is just something to be said of going out to the actual event and seeing it live.
I dunno, call me crazy, but life is meant to be lived, not watched on TV.
Just my 2cents.
I use ipcop http://www.ipcop.org/ for my home network - it's all of about 40 megs (well it was, I see the new update is quite a bit bigger so I may be low on that figure) and can run on any old pc lying around.
It can do the traffic shaping you're wanting, plus, I found, especially when I am doing p2p downloading or some online gaming, my old netgear (very old) couldn't keep up and would drop packets. I saw my download speeds go up significantly and I have the opportunity to do traffic shaping if needed.
It's free (donation) and very simple to set up. You don't have to be a linux guru to set it up, it has a web based interface for configuration.
It works great for me.
I can appreciate your position on not sticking it to your buddies, but they have to also understand that business is business and personal is personal, and hopefully your soon to be former co-workers can appreciate the difference.
Having said that, I would probably take the route of what some have already suggested, see if you can make your departure happen a little more quickly, thereby helping your new employer. Your existing employer has clarified what they want your role to be. It makes sense to me to follow that lead.
Don't lose your integrity, but I am sure there are things you can do to occupy your time in a profitable manner such as reading technical information regarding your area(s) of expertise making sure you're current - that can potentially benefit both your (soon to be) former employer and your upcoming one.
I was surprised it took this many replies for someone to suggest Verizon or Sprint. I love my EVDO sprint connection, it works great - I even tethered my laptop to my Treo on a recent trip and it worked great going down the road (I was a passenger). We even shared my Internet connection and had two laptops (via crossover cable) connected. Assuming the EVDO svc is available, I think that would be the ideal solution. It is also something they could use while traveling or away from a landline HS connection.
I was watching a news clip this morning on CNN Mobile on my SprintTV enabled Treo about this great new concept - getting live feed TV on my mobile phone. Oh, wait, I can already do that. How is this news?