No. Find a manager or someone senior you like / likes you and start to explain this sort of thing to them one small piece at a time. Couch it in terms of value to the business. Explain that you could make some cheap changes and improve efficiency. Put together a powerpoint if you have to. Find a mentor in management, and say you have a proposal to make some improvements. Try and get them behind you and start to push for change. Show the value to the business in what you're proposing. Estimate the cost of a downtime / slow network and compare to that the cost of your suggestions. Either push for change with some convincing arguments (which it seems you have a lot of) or look for a new job. Don't waste your effort on a blog. Try to change the situation instead.

I'm still using my WRT54G to in my home network. What am I missing? I don't do much intra-network data transfer, and my bottleneck is my cable connection rather than the router itself... it is worth upgrading?

Actually, no I didn't. My parents managed to do it by themselves. Because they wanted to skype with my sister and see my niece. Grandchildren are great motivators, I'm finding! I know they wouldn't have managed it just to see my ugly mug :) I still can't believe my dad managed to set it up since he regularly confuses Windows, the internet and Internet Explorer. But he did. And I live an ocean away from them. And I'd need to switch my sister, my parents, my brother-in-law's parents and anyone else my parents and sister talk to. For no real incremental benefit for them. So again, no real compelling reason for them to switch. Hence the need for an open source client so at least I communicate with them... perhaps set up for them next time I'm back there, if it works well enough for me...

You think my sister or my not-very-computer-saavy parents are going to do that so I can continue to video chat with my niece in the UK? No. Understandably so (although of course I'd love them too), they have lots of other demands on their time. Plus, no motivation from their end. Why should they go through all that hassle (for them), just to maintain the status quo? No, what we really need is a open source client that can talk to native Skype clients. So this isn't a waste at all, for those using Skype with non-techy friends & family... It's the critical mass effect.

Surely you should just ignore their request, then? I the occasional request like that but just ignore it. I actually have added friends regardless of what field they're in. In fact you might be missing out since they may be able to help you get insider access to other companies, even if they're programmers themselves. Or, you may be able to help them out. Basically, I added anyone I would feel comfortable asking to forward a resume for me (or someone else in my network). That's a high proportiion of people I've worked with closely, but not everyone.

One of my former colleages asked me to forward a resume for a collegue of his, the classic 'friend of a friend' thing. Since I trusted his judgement, I felt comfortable doing so. Another friend has recently graduated college, so I told her to look through my network and let me know who she'd be interested in talking to as she decides how / where to start her career, and then made the introductions (after asking my connections if it was ok, of course)

I check in every couple of weeks - I get the profile change updates and will occasionally send messages to people in my network if I see something interesting that they've done.

Basically, I'm trying to build up my karma so than when I next am looking for a job I'll it'll come back around :) Plus, I am helping out my friends.

Not just movie stars? There, I said it.

...Is anyone there? ...Could you come over here? I don't blame you.

I thought it was because I sucked. Apparently it's not actually my fault. Phew!

No, she's a Canadian-born, Missouri-raised, midwestern girl.... :)

But, I recently installed Chromium on my wife's laptop. This is a person that didn't like 'Mor-zilla' (as she kept referring to FF) and doesn't like 'change', nor things that aren't 'mainstream'. She prefers Chromium over IE though...

Yeah I was running 64bit Ubuntu 8.10. Ended up switching back to 32bit because too many thing were an extra hassle and I only had 4Gb of memory in the first place...

The 2 ~ 5 seconds between me hitting the 'Google Search' button & clicking on the first link I find... Has anyone ever even noticed those few seconds? Are we all that impatient? :)

I've always though that you can't force or tax people into using trains (ignoring London's congestion charge for a moment). People will use trains - gladly - when they are the most efficient way of getting to where they want to go. Last time I checked, DC - NYC on Amtrak took about 3.5 hrs, compared to driving in about 4hrs, ignoring traffic. Make that journey 2hrs instead, price it competitively, and every seat would be full. High speed rail only works on a case-by-case basis (i.e. on specific routes). If you can't make it a better than most of the alternatives, it'll never catch on.

So, I've been meaning to buy Machinarium for ages, but hadn't pirated it. If I buy it now, the developers will assume I that I did! Perhaps I should put in a comment into my order: "I'm not a pirate, honest!" (I'm still disappointed I had to give up on Limbo cos I'm too scared of spiders....)