...it's called probing. Not to engage, but to evaluate.

Afterward, listen.

You can't guard against every contingency.

Every financial planner worth their salt will advise you to keep enough cash in reserve to cover *at least* 6 months of your regular expenses, and ideally up to two years' worth.

It's solid advice that we chose to heed from the beginning.

Wife and two kids. Mortgage. More here.

I was laid off. Twice, in fact. Both times, I was unemployed for ~6 months. My wife and I had two small children (under 4) at the time, a mortgage, blah, blah.

Our choices enabled us to weather the bad times without them being catastrophic. We didn't buy the biggest house we could possibly afford, despite pressure from our lender and realtor to upsize. And this was in 2003, in the heyday long before the housing bubble exploded. We didn't buy new cars every year or two. We made most meals at home. We did travel the world a bit, but we prioritized savings, of both the long-term retirement and rainy-day varieties.

So when life threw its inevitable curveballs our way, we endured...and despite the snarky presumptions of some asshats here, we didn't run to our parents for shelter.

As I said, we *created* our circumstances, just as everyone does...either through preparation or lack thereof. That doesn't mean I'm without empathy, though. I'm about as tree-hugging crunchy leftist hippie as they come where social/humanitarian issues are concerned. But I have no patience with bullshit puling about victimhood and powerlessness in these types of employment scenarios. If you're a slave to debt or salary, it's because you put the yoke on your own shoulders.

I haven't voted for a major-party candidate since '08 (fooled me once, Obama), with most of my national-office votes going to the Libertarian candidate.

This time, though, I'm batting for Jill Stein.

Hillary Clinton is not an option for me.

Didn't realize I wasn't logged it. I didn't mean to post as AC...but it explains why I got a CAPTCHA prompt to submit!

I *created* my circumstances, as does everyone else. We all have agency. If you choose to squander it, you can't rightly blame anyone else for the result.

The question you perhaps should ask yourself is, "Why don't I?"

I don't live beyond my means, and that includes having savings. I wouldn't worry about those bills you mention because they'll get paid in the interim. If they'd worry you, I posit that perhaps you're the one who needs to take stock of his own financial situation before judging another for being willing to live out his convictions.

The implied point was that it's exactly this sort of debt/wage slavery that enables these inhumane practices in the first place.

And that's not even addressing the underlying idiocy of running institutions of higher learning as for-profit businesses.

I also have the financial sense to save for a rainy day and not leverage myself to the eyeballs. I've been months without employment in recent years, and my family was provided for quite well despite the disquieting uncertainty.

Seriously, I'd fucking walk.

And when I interviewed for my next job, I'd be brutally honest about why I did it. If the prospective employer didn't like it, that would tell me all I really needed to know about working for them.

The reason is simple: most customers of these devices prefer to implement them in transparent proxy mode, which requires no endpoint device (browser, etc.) configuration, no pushing of internal certs, etc. Browsers are talking on 80/443 happily unaware that their traffic is being proxied, and the SSL server certs being presented by Google or Facebook or their bank are not actually certs from those servers...they're Blue Coat's imposter certificates, generated on-demand.

Thanks! Yeah, I'll likely sit that one out as well. X works just fine for what I do.