Yes.

I started out on the Mac in high school. Then, in college, when I got into computers themselves, I switched to building my own and tweaking. I used them for 10 years and had a lot of fun breaking and fixing things.

Then my career really started going, and I didn't really want to fiddle with crap anymore. I just wanted to hit spacebar, do work, put the thing to sleep, and have no problems.

And here I am, back on the Mac, and enjoying it. All the PCs are gone from the house. My wife still, out of habit, asks me if it's okay to agree to a software update, since I had trained her to be suspicious of them for so long. Just yesterday, I said, "You know, you don't really need to ask me. Apple basically never breaks your computer with an update, and they don't install weird crap. Just run it." It's nice to feel like a customer and not an enemy, even though I only bought one copy of Snow Leopard for our machines.

Also, I most certainly can tinker on my Macs. This Mac Pro is highly customized. One of the things I really like about MacOS is that, even without getting on the command line, you can tailor so many behaviors to your liking--without breaking anything. Keyboard shortcuts, man. They're done right here.

Lately, people are conflating Apple's approach to their information appliances (iPods, iPhones, iPads) with their approach to the Mac platform, but it's totally different. Apple stays out of your hair on the Mac. If you want to fiddle with things, there are many other MP3 players, smartphones, and upcoming slate devices that you can buy--and you can use them with your Mac. As the Steve said, "if you want porn, get an Android." However, I actually really enjoy the user experience of my iPods and iPhone. I don't want to tinker with either of those. I understand that some people might, but those people can buy something else. Or hell, they can jailbreak. It's really a non-issue.

I know that many of the people here are Linux folks, and I really like the idea of Linux. I keep Ubuntu on a VM just because I like playing with it. But I don't want to have to depend on it. I don't have the time, and I don't have the desire to do upkeep. I need to focus on my job, and that job--although it requires a lot of computer use--is not related to the upkeep of computers.

(Thank you.)

Hear hear! Your coworkers are a part of your life. They are your family at work. Just like your family at home, you weren't allowed to pick them, but you're stuck with them, so you need to learn how to like them.

I've lived and worked in Japan for most of my working life, and I just have to say that most places here get that right. Westerners wonder why Japanese workers are so loyal to the company, and there are a lot of reasons, but one of the strongest emotional/psychological ones is that many places really try to foster a real kinship. You very well might think that Kinoshita-san from 2 desks over is a jackass, but when push comes to shove, he's your jackass. Also, thanks to the boozy parties the company throws (that everyone pays for equally), you've chatted with him over beers and know that he is a super-involved dad who takes his kids out on the skiff to go fishing every weekend. You can't see him as just a jackass anymore; now he's a neat dad who happens to be a jackass at work.

At first, I resisted this culture with all my BS American individualist might, but before long I came to get it. They aren't forcing you to go to the party because they want to see what kind of stupid thing you'll say when you're drunk; they want to hang out together, and if you don't go it'll be a bummer for everyone. It's not a trick. People actually want to get to know each other. They probably won't be BFFs or anything; and the relationship will probably disappear if you transfer to another department or office, but for the time that you work together, you're doing it with people you know, and that makes all the difference in the world. When Sayama-san is going through a tough time with her husband, you cover for her--not because she's having a hard time with her husband, but because she's Sayama-san. And Sayama-san is having a hard time with her husband.

Finally, though, so much of this is predicated on the assumption that you're not going to be fired at the drop of a hat with a simple "oops, we can't afford so many people; bye." But that's another post entirely (and again, not really a socialistic post--one about not handing so much goddamned money to the people at the top so you don't have to panic every time the market changes, because you have money in the bank and tons of wiggle room in the budget).

--Yes, you have your choice between the many Mom & Pop broadband ISPs down the street, or one of the many friendly faceless corporations that exist to serve you, not unlike the broad range of choices you have for electricity and water service!

Pragmatism, man, not ideology. Some things can really only be done well by giant organizations. There is no consumer power in such a system, however, so we need government--which we do control, as evidenced by this very issue, which was pushed by people calling and writing their representatives and the FCC--to speak on our behalf. Is it 100% customized to your particular needs? No. But it's never going to be, so you might as well stop talking out your ass and just work for the better.

Grownups aren't paid for their time; they're paid for their results. I'm sorry to hear that you still work at McDonald's.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes! The fear of the government is one predicated on the notion that it is separate from the people, which simply is not true. Libertarians and tea partiers create the disconnect between the government and the people, when they should be working through the system to effect the changes they want to see. They are actually the problem. By refusing to participate in a meaningful way, they force the disconnect!

Preach it!

There's a scene in Bill Maher's Religulous where he goes to a trucker chapel, and the people are very kind and accepting of him, and pray for him in a very tender, loving way. As he leaves, he says, "thank you for being Christlike, and not just Christian."

I was raised in an evangelical/fundamentalist household. I have known some truly wonderful Christians, who, I think, "get" what Jesus was trying to say/do. But most of them are assholes, same as everyone else, but they are even worse, because they actually believe that there is an ultimate reality, and they know what it is.

If you read the Bible honestly and objectively (i.e. not with the guidance of someone telling you what this and that means--twisting words to match established values and behaviors of the West), what you see is this:

• Judaism is a violent and imperialistic religion--luckily, Jewish culture encourages arguing with the text, so usually they don't manifest these traits (I don't think Israel has anything to do with Judaism)
• Jesus was a pretty nice guy who cribbed a lot from Buddha (there are some scholars who think that trade routes might have brought Buddhist ideas into the Middle East by the time Jesus was alive, which might explain the similarities). He was against sexism, classism, fundamentalism, and--yes--capitalism. He was a hippie.
• Paul is a fucking asshole who took the ideas of a peace-loving lunatic and turned them into a product to be sold to the Gentiles, and who added a lot of his own ideas to the pot (i.e. returning sexism and intolerance). This is not really surprising since, if the story of his origins is to be believed, this is a guy who had no problem rounding people up and selling them to the Romans to be used as lion fodder for entertainment.
• Peter did a massive power-grab after Jesus' death, ultimately building a hierarchical system that would have made Jesus vomit. (This is one of the reasons that the Gnostics and early Catholics didn't get along--but the problem was solved with the wholesale extermination of the Gnostics.)
• Most of the Bible is ignored by Christians.

I think that religion is fascinating, because it's so clearly crazy, but with years and repetition, it becomes the default way of thinking. I think it is incredibly dangerous, not just because of teachings I don't agree with, but that it, like all belief systems, is unable to admit when it isn't working. It is bad for the same reason that communism or Libertarianism is bad. It isn't pragmatic, and simplifies complex problems down to platitudes that can be written on one hand with magic marker. Belief systems are dangerous, but good luck convincing people that they need to think very carefully about each problem that life or governance presents and start from a blank slate with goals and objectives... People don't have that kind of time.

Amen. Whenever the police act in an inappropriate manner, we need to nail their asses to the wall.

When I'm king, there will be a new law making it illegal to violate the public's trust. Politician taking bribes? That's a hanging. Spitting in the food while working at a restaurant? That's a hanging. Police brutality/theft/rape/torture/sending out pictures of a mutilated teenage girl? You better believe that's a hanging.

Society doesn't work when the people we give control over aspects of our lives aren't worthy of our trust.

Amen. I didn't take any stats until I was doing my master's either, and the learning curve was steep, but before my first class was over, I was virtually shouting to anyone who would listen, "Hey! Do you know about statistics???" That should be the primary mathematics taught from high school on. It is applicable to everything.

I look back on all the math I had in high school, and I think, "Okay, I use geometry every time I build or repair something, I use trig every time I... launch rockets at the moon... or something... I use calc... Shit, what is calc even for?" I think that if we replaced a lot of those kind of physics-related math classes with stats, people wouldn't give up on math so soon, and they'd also learn to be more critical thinkers about the world.

How could anyone ever claim it was useless???

Thank you.

I often point out that almost every cellphone I've ever had did more on paper than the iPhone. The reason I love my iPhone, though, is that it actually does the things it says it does on paper, and does them with an ease that makes you likely to do them.

This. Oh, God, this.

I do a lot of statistics for my research. Do you know what has become my work computer? A MacBook Air. I run my IRT software on Windows XP via VMware Fusion. And it works great.

I'm typing this now on a Mac Pro that I bought when I thought that I needed a really powerful computer for all my powerful computing. No. I did not.

I've been telling people for the last few years to just hold on to whatever computer they have. There is virtually nothing that normal people do that is benefited by more horsepower these days.

Still... The iPad is way too expensive for what it is.

I use Macs for everything these days, have several iPods (contrary to what everyone claims, I can't seem to get them to die, so I end up accumulating them), and I'm constantly attached to my iPhone.

But I have to agree. For $500, I could get a perfectly serviceable netbook. I would be interested in the iPad if it were $199. Otherwise, I have a MacBook Air as my work machine, and I have the iPhone. The former does everything; the latter does everything I want when out and about. I just don't understand where the iPad is even supposed to go. I don't get it.

I'm a prof., and I can attest to everything the parent said.

I can also attest to everything the OP said. I know, because I, like the submitter, screwed it all up. I thought my friends who were "working for free" at internships were crazy. They all got jobs--usually the same job they were doing for free--immediately after graduating. Me? No. I did not. I graduated in the top 10% of my class and am bilingual, but I couldn't get a job. This went on for years (I was working crap jobs), until I figured out that, although I think the business world is lazy as shit in that they refuse to train people anymore (I live in Japan; the companies here hire smart kids and turn them into whatever they need), that's the way it is. The problem was me, not them.

So I looked at my academic record and realized that the only people who cared about it were other academics, and that the way out was through. I went back to school, and here I am: a prof. at a very prestigious university. But I got here by paying a lot of money and working for free for years and years. --I just don't think there is any way around that anymore. The "entry level position" is a myth.

I tell all my students to get internships now. I tell them how I ended up standing before them. I like my job, don't get me wrong, but I ended up here because I didn't do the things I needed to do to go anywhere else.

There is a fundamental lie that we tell young people: Go to college and you will get a good job. That just is not true. I have a close friend who dropped out of high school and is a very successful developer. He's very, very smart, and wears that lack of even a diploma as a badge of honor. But he got where he is today by working a lot of terrible jobs--starting by building PCs at a Mom & Pop white box shop in a strip mall--and honing his skills. It took a long time. It always takes a long time.

I'd like to add something to the parent's point, though. The "go to college, get a good job" is a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (i.e. correlation does not imply causation). In the old days, only the idle rich could go to university, and they were largely finishing schools. That's why we still have total bullshit like literature degrees at 4 year institutions (I like books, but getting a 4-year degree in book reports is nuts). So those people didn't need jobs, or might be installed at the family business as some titular boss when they finished. However, if you were a really smart cookie from the lower classes, you might be able to go to university on scholarship. You might earn your way in. Once in, you were suddenly rubbing elbows with the ruling class, and one of your mates was virtually guaranteed to talk his dad into hiring you. Even if that didn't happen, when you graduated, someone would hire you because, "OMG you have a degree???" This is because they were rare. They are not rare anymore. It would be different if you went to an Ivy League school--that would at least get you an interview--but you didn't (that's the other thing I've learned since being "in the industry"--name value is everything; there's almost no point in going to a school that is not well-known--I work with a complete moron, but he went to the same Ivy League school as our boss, so he's in).

So here's what you're looking at: You have no experience, no name value, and you don't know anyone. You have a random bachelor's just like everybody else. You are not getting a "real" job anytime soon. You're not. It's not going to happen. The sooner you make peace with that, the better. You need to get some experience, and that is going to mean doing it for free, probably. I'm sorry, but it's true.

Good luck.

A well-designed survey would have been born as an open-answer one first, administered, and the resultant data categorized into constrained responses. Then it would have been given again and checked for reliability. There would probably be some manner of factor analysis done at this point to identify patterns in the responses (make sure that items that should be similar are similar, etc.). Then you give it again and make sure that the factors or paths look the same. Then you'd give it for real. Each time, though, you'd need a unique sample.

Virtually no one does this, though, for obvious reasons.

So what you were working with there was a poorly-developed survey.

Thanks for answering the fellow's question.

Regarding your student, she may be able to salvage a big of her reputation with Nvivo. I try to keep my personal research clean and quantitative, but I have advised on projects where messy, open-ended data was necessary. I don't actually know how to use it, but a colleague of mine did a presentation on it, and it seemed to offer a neat way to at least be organized in one's interpretation of messy data.