Tactic

I can second this. I have started my own company (twice), worked for start ups, mid size companies and now large companies. I turned 50 this year and can tell you larger companies are where it is at as you age. It's forty hours a week with great benefits and mostly static responsibilities. They value your experience and have no issue with the fact that they are just a job. If there is a new skill I need they are happy to pay me to learn it.

You don't work on the new and exciting stuff but as you get older you will find exciting is more tiring than it used to be.

I would say SQL is easier to master than most functional or procedural languages. The true issue, in my experience, is that it is different enough most developers don't want to take the time to learn it beyond the basics, much to their detriment.

My children actually attend a tuition-free, public Montessori charter school and am personally fine with vouchers. I am all for choice and individual freedoms, rights and responsibilities.

Yes. And I have a semblance of input to the government. Again, I am fine if it is decided that we need to raise taxes to cover such things. What I am against is the government telling me I have to buy something. It is a precedent that is sure to get abused and distorted in the future.

If it is allowed it will not stop at health insurance. Business has too active a hand in the US government as it is. How much worse will it get when they start greasing the palms to make sure they too have a required audience?

Edit: (Forgot) Yes, the supreme court upheld it. That doesn't make it right, just constitutional. If an amendment to the constitution is required, then so be it.

Seriously, it has me considering moving to another country.

I am opposed to the mandate because it requires me to purchase something from a private party just because I am alive.

If you want everyone to pay something, we (as you pointed out) have something for that, it's called taxes. And that's what pays for your other "insurance" examples. (And don't bring up auto insurance. I don't have to have it, I can choose to not own a car.)

But by involving private companies you have creates perverse incentives that I have no sway or visibility into.

If we want to socialize health care then lets do that, but lets not introduce a private party middle man that not only disconnects the payer from the consumer but has a government mandated client base of the whole US.

I am opposed to it because it is a horrible individual rights breaking precedent.

I cannot recommend this enough. In the dot com bomb I didn't do so at first thinking I would surely get a job and that applying for unemployment would be a huge amount of red tape.

I was wrong. It is drop dead easy. Do it before all else, it is why you have been paying for that insurance.

I can recommend it. I have a setup with Sonarr, SABnzbd and Kodi plus a sub to a nice European usenet server. Hardware is my desktop, a 4 TB NAS and a fireTV. All told a few hundred dollars and TV shows show up automatically for me, often within an hour of airing.

This is the first I have heard of Radarr though. (Sonarr but with Movie retrieval). I'll have to check it out.

It has value. And thus you can sell it or borrow against that value. The alternative of renting does not maintain value. You pay to live there for a month and then at the end of that month your value disappears.

It is true that a house has its downsides and requires more effort. That is true of most anything with value.

This would be fantastic if work allowed me to install one. Sadly, some of us work in locked down environments so resort to such silliness to get through the work day.

This was back in '85 ;) And while the skills may not have been applicable these days the work experience in the field at that time surely would have been.

To be fair the 10 month training for 68-J did include classes on circuits, resistors, etc... not that we ever used it.

In my case they told me I could choose where I was stationed. It turns out what they really meant is I could choose the TYPE of base I was stationed at. Of course during the paperwork they had me sign that I would like a particular type of base saying I had to take that type for my job, not realizing what was going on, I did what I was told.

This is their tactic more than out-and-out lying, they take advantage of your lack of experience with the rules, regulations and verbiage. And they are your only guide through the red-tape, so you follow.

Similarly they told me the job I wanted (computer programming) was not available because it was full since so many people wanted it and recommended electronics on attack helicopters as it was at least technical. (So I did it.) What they didn't say was that new classes open every week, so while the one he showed me was full, the next one wasn't. (Had I balked I believe a class would have had a "sudden opening".) Or that while there were technically electronics it was really just black box replacement and the real work was on the weapons themselves and involved little to no relevant electronic experience.

Again... not out-and-out lies, but certainly to the military's benefit more than your own.

Not animated but I have been struck by the music bug virus[1]. Given hacker's egos and sense of humor I wouldn't be surprised for a moment by a animated singing virus.

[1] https://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/musicbug.shtml

This is what happens when marketing determines your version names.

I had a similar situation of the one that got away. For decades I told people that I regretted not pursuing our relationship further.

After 20 someodd years we were both available and rekindled our relationship. Things were going well for months until I found out that she had cheated on her husband for years with a man and was continuing to see him while we were together.

Honestly, I was happier with the dream of what I thought we would have been but I lost than the reality.

I'm not claiming your experience would be the same at all, just saying to appreciate the what-if you can hold on to.

This sounds like the type of thing that is being advocated against. Telling a large section of the country that what they feel is not true. I'm not certain from what vantage that statement could ever accurately be made.

I certainly wouldn't try this tact with your significant other.

Just a note that the SSA advises not laminating your card.

https://faq.ssa.gov/link/portal/34011/34019/Article/3786/Can...

I believe your position only holds true if you assume that the applicant has no current employment, no other real options and no resources for between jobs.

The prospective employer has no power to force you to take the job or prevent you from seeking and accepting an offer elsewhere. It is certainly a mutual business process and should be approached as such. To approach it in an adversarial fashion just puts you at a disadvantage versus your true adversary: other applicants.

For me the reason is that things change. They find new and innovative ways to use that data. Ways that I may not agree with. Ways that I may not be asked about.

But what doesn't change is they have the data. So my preference is they don't have it in the first place. Then I don't have to be concerned about the changes.

Myself I'm worth about $120k given my experience, the market I'm in and what is standard for benefits in my area. (Minneapolis/St. Paul) And I have had no issue with that.

The key to me on top of that is that I am satisfied with that salary. It is not one that would make me look elsewhere with any urgency. Yes, I could try to negotiate more, but I feel no need to and believe that if I got more the company would be paying over market value and eventually realize and act upon that.

It sounds to me like you would be comfortable making around $100k and that if the market bears that for your services that is what you should demand. If the market doesn't support that for you, look at raising skills/experience until it does.

The odd thing is how much more you make by switching jobs versus a salary raise at companies. I am typically offered a 3%-5% raise but have typically increased my pay by 10%-20% by looking elsewhere. Companies really should assess the market more often.

In my mind not naming your number first is advise given only if you are trying to maximize the negotiation. And even then it is quite debatable.

I view it instead that I am offering a service. I am well aware of what my service is worth, what my financial needs are and what amount would make me feel satisfied with what I am being paid. So I tell them that number.

I also tell them that the number is only negotiable in the sense of benefit trade-offs. I have built into my "price tag" such things as medical payments, etc. If they can offset some of those from salary to benefits that does not bother me. In the end my needs are met and I am happy.

I refuse to see the relationship with an employer as adversarial. It is a business relationship, I treat it as such and demand they do as well. Otherwise I don't do business with them.

Do a search for social clubs in your area. They exist and have with a variety of activities to center around that may interest you. Finding a family-based social club may be more difficult, but not impossible. And of course there are the various computer/programming based meet-ups... which are really social clubs as well ;)

Interesting. I too have noticed a similar thing as I have aged. I developed the theory though that when it started happening things that did not impact me directly (such as movies) that it was more a case that I was feeling emotional about something else in life and that this was emotions seeping out where they could. I especially thought this because it didn't seem to always happen.

Your view bears merit though and I will have to consider it. Thank you for sharing it.

And my kids still make fun of me for crying at the end of "Winnie the Pooh", but I've always done that. And I maintain that Christopher Robin leaving Pooh and his childhood behind is cry worthy... even more for Pooh than Christopher Robin.

By not rewarding based on "the best" (which implies comparison) and instead based on performance. Set realistic and definable targets for such rewards and follow through. Additionally, communicate these targets clearly. Allow for additional rewards for team performance.

I believe this maximizes the motivation you get from rewards both on an individual and team level creating the "best" you can get.

Although, realize, studies have shown rewards generally don't impact performance greatly.

Honestly, I spend a about the same amount of time figuring out how to get the abstracted library/api/someone else's code to do what I actually need it to but it doesn't quite want to do the way I need it as I did writing it in the first place.

In the end, it's still 40 hours a week and the pay is still good :)

I suspect that is regional. It absolutely is not the case in Minneapolis/Saint Paul.

www.canistream.it does some of this data aggregation. I believe the problem you would encounter if you put all of this into one slick interface and it became popular is that the VOD services would fight you.

They don't want you discovering what they don't offer. They want you to user their service. Otherwise you may find yourself using the other service more than theirs and cancel.

Plus this doesn't ultimately deal with the pain of dealing with multiple bills and, essentially, paying for the same thing multiple times where there is overlap.

As someone that has lived on the street I can tell you that you are wrong about the $200. Don't read your life into others.

Assuming this is a serious question it is because working for yourself is not that easy. It requires sales and marketing to get your value out there to the people that are willing to pay for it.

Working for someone else is easy because there is an established system to connect you to the people that are willing to pay for your value. That channel doesn't exist for everyone, especially people with skills in areas that do not commonly hire contractors, like IT.

What is your solution?

Personally I don't feel it is difficult to make yourself valuable enough to get "a" job. Maybe not "the" job, but "a" job. Which gives you enough resources to get "the next" job. Which you repeat until you get "the" job. It's the ladder and we climb it.

It really boils down to it is the law of the jungle out there and you want something so it is up to you to figure out how to get it.

And this is coming from someone that was homeless in the winters of Minnesota. I've been there.

As an old-ass father of 3 that pokes here and there I can tell you that does happen. However, that is hardly the point of it. It is because everyone needs to be able to say and do things that aren't recorded. That go away. And kids need space to experiment and grow in ways they are not watched. Honestly, from what I can tell it is used far more for making funny faces and moments than anything else.

Besides, if you are concerned that they are showing each other their bodies you have more to worry about than snapchat because it is going to happen regardless. At least nobody has got an STD from snapchat.

And after the things I found when doing a backup of my 16 year old's computer I'm more concerned with the pictures that stick around than don't. We had a talk about why I never want pictures of naked teenage friends on my network.

But if you think you can stifle teenagers, you are wrong. You just push them into the shadows and you out of their life.