This.

Basic training means different things to different branches--field-stripping a rifle is replaced with using Wireshark or disassembling some code or basic drone flight (even for pure (h|cr)ackers) in the theoretical ChairForce (LOVE that term).

Probably still a bit of a physical fitness/discipline requirement (arranging into squads, e.g.),but no need to be so intense. Or more accurately, time-consuming with all the march-20-miles stuff. Maybe 30 mins/day of calesthenics and certain minimum proficiency for simple "you're likely to get sick enough while on-duty to be a net liability"-type mitigation. Doubly so if there is the occasional expectation to use stimulants to maintain vigilance during long duty shifts (we never give our footsoldiers or pilots stims, right? :-p ).

This. 1000% this.

Especially for new grads, folks entering a branch of coding they haven't done professionally before, or folks looking to change careers (or come back to tech after some time away).

I see resumes from students all the time with all the same projects (because they were assigned that in school) and two things make you stand out:

1. Doing stuff that clearly you have a passion for (or at least an interest in). That may mean running a soccer stats website that scrapes other sites and amalgamates it, or it may mean contributing something to an existing OSS project, or it may mean putting something up on github.

2. Being able to speak intelligiently about why what you did was any good (or that you at least recognize why it sucked). Many students in particular have trouble eludicating design details and/or the "why" of their choices--even a "we chose PHP because it's what the other team members knew" is OK, as long as there is a reason and a defense.

Contributing to OSS is terrific because:

1. I can look at your code to see if it's any good, and
2. The code is open so I don't have to worry about possible legal encumberances to talking about it, and
3. I can be reasonably confident you know how to use source code control and/or play nice with other developers.

If you're not VERY confident in the other stuff on your resume, OSS contribution is the best thing to put in a portfolio.

Have a token- or ticket-based approach:

1. If you don't have a token/ticket (or need to buy more), there's one line for that.
2. Folks with tokens hand 'em over in exchange for bags, preferably right at the truck so no fetching (you effectively crowdsource that bit).

Money is separate from the actual moving of product then (have to do the whole "no refunds/no cash value" thing on the tokens). For people that pre-buy tokens, the line will be lightning fast. For everyone else, it'll still be faster than before and you can flow people to the registers or to pickup as needed to deal with demand.

OK, so if you're asking this, there's no way you've done a proper disaster recovery plan--folks that have done those have sufficient documentation in-hand that someone else should be able to pop in and do the job.

So this is a great opportunity to do that. Together. You gain confidence in your IT minion while s/he gains confidence that they're flying right. And any keys to the kingdom are nicely stored where they should be, so any authorized IT person can get at what they need.

The first step is to get the lay of the land and prioritize services. Gather the keys/passwords/whatever together (make sure your AAA story is good, etc). Come up with what your backup/restore stories are. What do you do if you need to restore one file (the "oopsie" moment)? What about a dead drive/server? What if a plane hits your data center? etc, etc.

Make no mistake--you're in the middle of a disaster RIGHT NOW. You're losing your lead IT staffer to promotion :-)

I decided to go by "BJ Black" when I was 7 years old--years before I realized that Googling that would result in interracial porn.

Nowadays, Google is smart enough to SEO me as the top hit and (relatively) safe sites behind that. For interracial porn, you have to do an image search with safesearch off.

I tend to agree with the OP regarding the (ir)relevance of calc/diffeq. I rarely (if ever) use any concepts from farting around with f(x) in that sense...

BUT stats and discrete math is HUGELY important. I've gotten way more use out of my one semester of discrete than the entirety of calc.

I for one would love to see CS students get 2-3 semesters of discrete (and preferably 2 of stats) and one semester of calc (rather than the other way 'round).

We need high-capacity, storable, renewable energy, period.

If you can do a fresh install, this would be a good opportunity to do so:

1. Install XP from scratch, with all the latest fixes and whatnot. Get it nice and pristine with no crap milling about beyond the barebones stuff. Get the licensing happy.
2. SNAPSHOT
3. Get your custom software installed.
4. SNAPSHOT
5. BACK IT ALL UP.
6. Use gingerly :-)

Seconded. Either:

1. Run it on a hypervisor host and RDP into it or
2. Run it in a local VM using VirtualBox (which does surprisingly well running XP-on-7 as long as you have the VM tools instaled). Set the desktop to change size when its window does, auto-hide the toolbar, and it looks/behaves fairly similarly to a local app on W7.

I had a friend's business (which relied on an old map application whose DRM WOULD NOT run on W7) implement such a thing and it's worked great. Plus you get snapshots, which is enough of a reason for me to recommend just about all embedded/oddball apps run on a VM.

Waiting for it to be a service at e.g. my local Walgreen's (as lab-quality photo printing is today). Doesn't need to be in my house, just convenient.

Frack that, you motherfracker. This whole story makes me want to go frack something up. ...or maybe I just need a good fracking.

I'd say a strand of creeper was involved, but this IS /., so there is no shortage of creepers here.

*bah dum bum*

If marketing isn't one of your firm's core competencies, outsource. Either hire an outside agency or get a hired gun in as a contractor.

If someone is really motivated to become a partner, let him/her go through a trial period where they're essentially in that contractor role and you can evaluate results. But you're right--if you're worried about possibly underperforming partners (and don't have enough mojo to figure it out without hard numbers), then get some hard numbers first.

As you correctly surmised, you can't completely ignore marketing if you're a business owner. Get some training on the subject (even if just an online class or something, though no need to go completely nuts). This is, unfortunately, one blind spot you can't have forever--marketing can be expensive and you must know and maintain what works.

Fixed (I think :-). Thanks for pointing those typos out--I think I inherited them from wherever I copied/pasted the quote and just didn't look closely enough.

Yes and no.

I did a bit of IT consulting a while back for a small company owned by a friend of mine that upgraded one of their (dead) machines to Win7 from XP. One of their pieces of software (that isn't supported by the vendor anymore, natch) had some copy protection on it that ABSOLUTELY REFUSED to run on Win7. As in "every single post I could find about it on Google said 'don't bother'" and no amount of backwards-compatibility junk would get Win7 to make it work, period (though admittedly this was Win7 Home Prem, so no built-in VM stuff).

The solution: VirtualBox, running a spare XP license, and just this one application. With the VBox tools installed, I set it to resize the desktop automatically when the window's resized, put the taskbar on autohide, and it works great (nice and snappy for an office-type app). When you click the close box on the window, VBox suspends the VM. When you open it back up again, it un-suspends. Plus you get snapshotting and portability of the environment.

They were not sophisticated enough to pull this off, but their local IT guy (me) was, and this is a little 5-person extermination company...