stoic's comments

> frankly most sysadmins don't make the money, the people they support do

> the fact that most ops positions at a non IT company are a lot less stressful, yet much better paid than all other jobs.

Which is it?

Physical copies of movies still cost about the same, though.

Wow, this is really great! Soft Skills 201 could be a book unto itself, nice to see this stuff being discussed.

In general, I think the soft skills sections should get a lot more promotion (it's buried so far down the sidebar I had to scroll!). The technical stuff is already well-documented elsewhere, but nobody ever told me how important being politically savvy was in this niche until I had already blown both feet off several times.

I wonder why you still managed to use the term "loansharks" when trying to defend their quite obviously predatory business practices.

"Higher interest rates" doesn't even begin to define the exploitation of these people who are desperate for cash. The rates for these loans are on the order of 400%, which makes the comparison laughable.

It's almost like saying "the US national debt is $22 trillion, which is more than the average American makes in a year."

I once was able to confirm (with reasonable certainty) that the caller was using Twilio, because the message they left was a verbatim text from a Twilio example[1] for detecting whether a human answered:

"You did not reveal yourself to be human. Goodbye!"

Since then I've filed Twilio alongside Cogent in the "doesn't ask too many questions about who uses its services and for what" category.

[1] https://www.twilio.com/blog/2016/02/tracking-call-status-how...

This isn't a show that is well-served by sequential viewing.

Try the Best of Both Worlds two-parter.

I find it strange to give this advice, then provide 3 alternate example routes that add a mile or more of climb to the ride. Gravity isn't friction, per se, but it does pack a wallop all the same, especially if sweat or fatigue (or injury) is a concern.

Are these roads safer or prettier or something that I'm missing from the map?

Further anecdata: Amtrak is a joke in Texas.

Amtrak from Dallas to Austin is a 6h22 trip for $29 (value fare), departing only once per day (11:50am) and taking about 2 hours to reach Fort Worth, a 30-minute drive.

By contrast, there are 11 Greyhound buses from Dallas to Austin per day, from $13-19, and the ride is never longer than 3h40 (mostly 3h to 3h10). There are usually 3-4 Megabuses in each direction per day as well, for around $12 for an unreserved seat.

time to fork it and send a PR!

Bless you, sir.

I just put "School of Hard Knocks" on my LinkedIn and leave it at that. If that's unacceptable to a prospective employer, I've successfully weeded out a bad fit.

So far it hasn't been.

It says right on the tin that this is meant for IOI/ICPC-style contests, whose participants are high school and undergraduate students respectively.

As a former competitor in USACO, ACSL, etc., I would have loved to have resources like this around for practice and self-study back in high school.

Dr Bronner's meets Project Mayhem?

Our old '77 Cadillac had the same feature.

I always had Batman fantasies about that thing.

We sysadmins don't exactly love it, either...

It's a bit tough to play by itself, but I'm okay with the tradeoff for the portability.

FWIW it works quite well if you connect it to a MIDI host and use another controller to play or sequence the synths on it.

...just don't connect your 12v AC adapter to the OP-1's USB hub that wants 5v, or you'll lose all data connectivity (USB disk mode and MIDI) to the unit. :(

boo TAG go SEM!

Glad to see another Townview graduate representing us well. :)

I don't know about anyone else (a problematic side effect), but I went to a science-focused public magnet school instead of my neighborhood high school and it made a world of difference in my life, both in terms of instruction and social experience.

Maybe this deprives the kids in the neighborhood school of some diversity near the top end of achievement, but maybe they shouldn't have been dicks to us in middle school if they wanted us to stick around.

Subterranean construction (basements, tunnels, subways etc) is uncommon in Texas due to a very thick (6-10') layer of limestone bedrock which must be drilled or blasted. This is probably not a good tradeoff for Google or their partners in terms of cost.