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Comment Been doing it for 2 decades now - love it (Score 5, Interesting) 114

I'm an iOS developer (and used to do OS X) who has worked at home for over 2 decades now. I did have one year where the new boss wanted me in the office. (I upgraded bosses via the resume route eventually.) And I once was laid off because I refused to move halfway across the country (new boss wanted me sitting there.) You need discipline to not blur the line between home and work. For me that means regular hours and an office with a door that shuts. Once place I lived even had the office in a studio that was attached but I needed to go outside to get to it. I loved it. Family also knows what working means and treats it as such. I wouldn't change it for anything.

Comment Re:Cool, but... (Score 2) 280

Not an excuse. They are a "premium luxury" brand. If they couldn't do right by the customer with the parts they had on hand then they should have given the customer a better replacement.

I'm typing this on a MacBook that Apple gave me. You see, my previous had failed and been repaired twice. On the third failure, they gave me a brand new machine. Not identical to the old one, but a brand new one. This is Apple's "three strikes" policy. If a machine needs a third repair, in warrenty or under Apple Care, just pick out a new one with the same size, hard drive, and memory as the defective one.

That's doing right.

Comment Good but hard... (Score 1) 480

I've spent about 14 of the last 15 years working from home. Mostly full time but some of that was half in the office, half at home. First off, be prepared for a better life. The one thing you can't get more of in life is more time, now you have more time since you're not driving.

Office with a door - Mandatory. You'll find that you'll always be "on" and that is bad. Telecommuters either slack off (and get fired) or work too much. I love my current setup, my current office cannot be accessed from my home, it has a separate entrance. So my commute is about 10 seconds of walking.

Hours - You'll want regular hours and stick to them. Again, this is to prevent overwork. It is also good in the begining to prevent goofing off.

Water Cooler - you don't have one. You will be out of the loop on everything that goes on in the home office. Oh well. 90% of that was crap anyhow. Missing the 10% can hurt you, but don't worry. You'll get by.

Perception - All of your co-workers will think you are goofing off. So you will be held to higher standards then they are. That's ok, they get to fight traffic on I-whatever twice a day. If you work 9-5 you are home at 5:00:01.

Headset - get a nice one. And I don't mean a $100 Bluetooth one. A $10 wired one that is comfortable is far better.

Pets - get a cat or fish. I have 4 fish tanks in my office. I'd love to let the cat in but with the walk outside that's just asking for trouble with her.

Enjoy your new life, congrats!

Comment I got a job from /. posting... (Score 4, Interesting) 554

My name is shared with a very famous (dead) person so I'm hard to google. But of course he had my email address. From that he found my geocaching account, liked that I made puzzles (he was looking for a game developer) from that found my /. postings, liked what he saw.

Yeah, I got the job and it was fun, but it creeped me out. I hardly ever post anywhere anymore.

Except, of course, for this...

Comment You clearly are willing to pay... (Score 3, Funny) 359

You are clearly willing to pay a little bit for this, since you don't mention any extra fees. So this sounds like a service opportunity to me.

For only $3.99/month I'll deliver your csv records to you. Just send me you account and password information. Might as well give me your social, mother's maiden name, and favorite color.

No problemo...

Comment Re:CMU Sphinx (Score 3, Insightful) 221

Both options are just back-ends, you'll have to write a front-end. However, it shouldn't be too hard to do that

Actually, it can be rather hard to do that. I was one of the founders of MacSpeech and there is a surprisingly large set of details you have to deal with, punctuation, capitalization, etc... Of course since you wouldn't be making a commercial product much of the gloss need not be coded but once you have the engine, the part that takes the audio source and converts it to text, you still have a large amount of work left over.

Comment Re:Two Stupid People (Score 1) 291

I just use password strength answer and I keep a file of them. I had a great conversation with an online bank. Security had detected a pattern that was unusual and called me. They asked me what high school I went to. I told them UMc9vdX0QLOH (not really, but you get the idea.)

The guy was flabbergasted.

I told him that although I appreciated their security, I didn't trust them, say, to not sell a used laptop on ebay.

He thought it was a great idea.

Of course if I loose my file, I'm screwed, but that's what backups are for.

Comment Re:I lived in Truro and was at the election (Score 1) 449

Opps, my bad. I just RTFA. I had thought the bad vote was on the seasonal use of the cottages. It was on the condo conversion laws. The selection have put up the ballot question on seasonal use. I don't know if the condo conversion is going to be discussed at Town Meeting. I no longer live in Truro.

Comment I lived in Truro and was at the election (Score 1) 449

You need to understand how the election works. This is not hidden paper ballot election. Rather, like in many small New England towns, you simply raise your hand.

The issue was a contentious one, an issue that has divided the town for a long time. Heated arguments were made for awhile and then the vote occurred. After the winning side was announced many people left the meeting. A voting irregularity was pointed out (and procedurally, it was done incorrectly, and a second ballot was (incorrectly) called for.) Now mind, many people on both sides of the issue had left. The moderator ran the vote again and the answer was unchanged. Note how error prone the entire process is.

Curiously, based on the verbal arguments, the issue could have passed with some fairly minor wording changes. (I was opposed to its passing so obviously I didn't point this out.) The same issue is not on a town warrant for this year. Rather, the selectman will be asking the townspeople if they want a paper ballot election to look into the issue. I'm a little surprised that the proponents didn't resubmit the question and just make sure they had their supports show up.

I'll post this now and get into the issue next.

Paul

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