Kevguy

NextDoor used to be bad about that, but they are now much more careful to remove it quickly if anyone does post racist crap. Now it seems to be 50% paid ads, 30% lost/found pets, 10% unpaid ads, and 10% everything else. Worth checking to find the owner of a stray dog or cat, but not much else.

1. Thanks for the nuanced view. I agree that zero charity care doesn't necessarily mean greedy execs.

2. In my mind keeping costs lower is a form of charity. Especially with something as frequently difficult to understand as health care costs.

3. Executives do deserve to make a fair amount for their skills and effort. I'm not sure myself what salary I consider it fair pay vs taking greedy advantage of not-for-profit status.

But also be aware that non-profit does not mean non-profit-oriented. Just that any profit goes to executives [1] instead of toward community/charity services [2].

[1] https://paddockpost.com/2021/06/10/executive-compensation-at... [2] https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2022.01542

Zenni is a good choice _if you know your PD_ (pupillary distance) - the distance from nose to center of pupil. 1 mm off will turn your glasses into headache machines. And the phone apps that purport to measure this are universally bad. Get it professionally done at a place that will give you the value. Costco will do so.

If you don't want to purchase online Costco is decent price - $180ish for the progressives lenses I just purchased vs $400+ from LensCrafters. Downside of Costco is a limited selection of frames, but worth a look. Also heard good things about Warby Parker but have not purchased lenses from them.

Oh, Zenni's progressive lenses have a much narrower distance vision section in the lens than Costco's. So I get progressive glasses at Costco then single reading and computer glasses (for < $40 each) at Zenni.

If it is a good course on business communication they _should_ be doing it - in class. And getting feedback and suggestions on improving with every attempt. Internships are a wonderful thing but many people don't realize how they are coming across so don't look to improve. There is some learning by osmosis, but mostly people keep doing what they have always done because it works (as far as they can tell).

Guess I never paid enough attention to the return policy. That does make me less likely to shop there.

Who do you recommend for electronics?

Newegg does at least have a 'Newegg only' checkbox so you can avoid the outside sellers. I will still buy electronics from Newegg for that reason. No longer trust Amazon for those.

It is possible to install the Google App Store on a Fire, and does not require rooting it, but it is a pain and most people wouldn't bother. I agree that they really are just to lock people into the Amazon ecosystem.

I know the standard talking point is that easily available student loans is the only cause of tuition increasing so much over the years. But this ignores the massive drop of state funding that used to go to most colleges, and (IMO even more important) demand vs supply. It used to be that college was one of several valid options after high school, but now everyone is supposed to go to college and there is a lot of societal pressure to go, without regard to what a person wants to do with their life. This allows colleges to keep increasing tuition almost without limit, because you _have_ to get a degree so cost doesn't stop people from going.

A salaried person working 13 hours a day with no extra compensation is not breaking the law in the United States. I have never heard of a lawsuit about that that succeeded.

Good companies do realize that making people work overtime consistently without reward is a bad idea, if for no other reason than the selfish one: your good employees will leave.

I know a lot of companies that do it anyway because they either don't care or don't accept people are leaving because of the constant overtime.

I also know people who have stayed at bad companies either because they don't want to let their team down or they just got used to the constant overtime and didn't realize how bad it was until they left. Or the simple fact that many people do not like change, and prefer the overtime they know rather than jumping to the unknown new job.

Just because someone is working overtime without compensation doesn't mean they don't have dignity. There are many reasons to stay at a crap job (for a while, if you have to). Please don't insult others just because their life is worse than you have allowed your life to get.

That being said, I agree with a few other posters - if you are consistently working 13 hour days, start looking for a new job. My rule of thumb is to spend one hour job hunting for every hour of required/expected overtime.

There's always time to find another job. For every hour of overtime you have to do, spend an hour looking for a better job.

Yes, it is exhausting, but your future self will thank you.

I will add Finance and Insurance as two more industries where older developers (who keep their skills up to date!) are welcome.

Yes, COBOL is still being used at many of these companies, but other departments are using up-to-date .NET or Java and don't ever look at COBOL.

Aside from sleepiness for a few days and a (lack of) caffeine headache for a day, what are the strong withdrawal symptoms? I honestly don't think there are any and have never figured out why some people are so against coffee. If I'm wrong, please tell me what I am missing. Thanks.

I agree the sugar and milk/creamer add a fair amount of calories to your diet.

If it was related to higher age, wouldn't blood donations from older males also be problematic?

I may be misremembering since it has been a long time since I've used it, but I thought at one point Python treated one tab as equivalent to eight spaces.

In my experience working at a community college 20-25 years ago, no one got a pension, so no long-term liability. This may be different at universities.

> One year at GenCon (even better than "at Band Camp") a cop at my table mentioned that criminal behavior for games was almost unmeasurable compared to the general population.

Unclear probably because I'm tired - Do you mean the criminal behavior of gamers when they are not playing games? As opposed to their (imaginary) criminal acts in the game?

Except you can't turn off internet access on a per-app basis...

My library systems lets you check them out and download them completely online. Never need to leave the house.

To me, the book wouldn't be ruined if it got wet. It would get wrinkled and a little harder to read, but still useable. I believe the Kindle would actually stop working if dropped in the water. To be fair, I've never tried it to know for sure...

I've always used https://www.charitywatch.org.

Both Charity Navigator and Charity Watch give the Red Cross a good rating. The NPR article doesn't seem to agree...

I definitely _have_ gone "wtf" when dealing with some long functions. A 380 line switch/case comes to mind. I have also had to deal with the 5 level deep inheritance that was equally difficult in its own way. Figuring out where to balance between length and depth is one of the more difficult parts of programming in my opinion.

After many years maintaining my and other people's code, I do tend toward shorter methods. On the other hand, splitting up a method into several methods just to keep under a hard line limit causes more problems than it solves.

Worked for about 7 years at a smaller (50-100 people) satellite office of a large corporation that mostly ignored us.

+ Small enough IT department so I got to wear many hats and learn a lot.

+ I wasn't the _only_ IT person, so there were others I could bounce ideas off of.

+ Boss was supportive when I wanted to go from sysadmin to developer.

- Wasn't enough development work available at the office to do full time.

- Corporate remembered us and started to order layoffs. Eventually every other member of my team was gone.

The economy went into the trash right as I decided it was time to leave, so I stayed a few years longer than I wanted to.

More money wouldn't have kept me there any longer.

Two cups of coffee would be closer to 200 - 300mg of caffeine. (source: google and http://www.cspinet.org/new/cafchart.htm for more details).

I have a cheap Samsung Chromebook ($250 in 2013). I've never had a problem browsing with 10+ tabs open and watching hulu at the same time.

It is not going to run Visual Studio of course, but it is quite capable for browsing/videos/word processing/etc.

Most hospitals(1) require all their employees to get yearly flu vaccinations with threat of termination if you refuse.

(1) I only have direct experience with two hospitals in the area, but based on other employees reactions, this is standard procedure.

500 calories/day * 7 days == 3500 calories == 1 lb of fat per week. Not 2 lbs.

It really depends on the co-worker and the culture of the company. Sometimes I would tell co-workers, sometimes I wouldn't say anything because I was concerned they would leak that to management and I would be asked to leave before I was ready.

I have found user groups meetings a great place to network though. Everyone is helpful when someone says they are looking, even if it is that persons first time at a meeting.

pander, not panda

Although I wouldn't panda an auditor either.