Look at my sig.

I finally fired CenturyLink's 1.5Mbps DSL after a decade waiting for their promised "upgrade" for 40Mbps+ download--for the SAME price! I am astounded at the speed of, well, everything. Videos play without "buffering." Downloads are amazingly fast. It doesn't help shitty web sites bringing in ads from all over the world to 'populate' their crummy sites, but overall I'm as happy as a clam. Wow! Just wow! The 21st century has arrived.

I know. No big deal, but I'm enjoying wallowing in all this speed for awhile!

I've tried 'em all, and sometimes IE just doesn't work, period. But the fact is it has the best built-in RSS feed out there. No muss, no fuss, no "add-ons": It's just there. Everything else is a hassle and you never know when Google will say, "We're removing this because we don't like it."

My last shop had twice as many desktops, four times as many servers, and less staff. Your problem, it seems to me, is that your ratio of programmers to IT staff is completely skewed. In other words, you're doing way too much "custom" work. Turn a programmer or two into IT staff (if not the physical person, then the position) and you should have sufficient staff for support.

Of course your programmers won't like that and your IT Manager, being a programmer, won't like that, but the fact is your programmers have created a fiefdom that never should have existed in the first place. It's like a tumor that has infiltrated the brain, hard to remove. For such a small company to create so much custom work is really absurd. You're not that "special."

What you REALLY need is a new CEO who understands the nature of the problem and cleans house.

If I had mod points, you'd get 'em all.

Watched my father die by his refusing food altogether. He was still lucid enough to do this. The "rule" in my state apparently is that you can offer food three times, and if it is refused, you need not offer it again. I realize he was 'in the driver's seat,' so to speak because he was lucky enough not to be already hooked up to tubes and such.

The medical people were giving him morphine and told me I could ask them to give him more if I wanted. I really didn't understand what they were telling me at the time. Today I understand there was a lot more behind this statement than I realized.

Also, though I appreciate Adam's lament that his father's estate was being burned up at $8,000 a month and that he was probably speaking as if his father was average, the fact is Adams is a multi-millionaire several times over and could easily afford to subsidize his father's care. Few of us are in that position. I think Adams' failure to at least acknowledge his father's true financial position is a bit disingenuous on his part. He could still make his case with full disclosure.

They're fine of you are a Metro sexual who feels all tingly about saving the planet when driving a Prius around. You can afford a Tesla just by cutting back on the cologne. But for a real soccer Mom it works like this:

Two youngsters in OSHA-approved car seats (nice and bulky), plus two teenagers who have reached adult size, two huge duffel bags full of equipment and clothing, a couple of D-sticks plus Goalie sticks for lacrosse. At least one diaper bag, a stroller, folding chairs, the portable tent for the sidelines, snacks for the kids, water bottles (big ones), and the inevitable snacks for the big kids. Plus Mom & Dad.

That's a full-scale SUV which is absolutely stuffed to the gills or take two cars. Suck it up. Not everyone leads the Yuppie lifestyle and in these cases, a Tesla is not going to cut it.

The electric market isn't taking off because the consumer has few choices. And just because a tiny electric can get good "mileage" does not solve the problem above where the advantage disappears just on weight alone. Make an electric that can actually do the job plus not have a range that is across town, but not back without recharging, and you'd have a winner. The market is not going to blossom until the manufacturers produce what consumers want to buy. And that's not the consumers' fault.

What, is this some sort of Jewish tank or something? never been in the Army, have you? Nice try, though.

McGinn is mayor of Seattle, but not well-liked. First, he's a bully. He does the kinds of things you all condemn Comcast for doing. He uses his power to close down businesses he doesn't like. He closes roads so he can make them for bicycles. He opposed the tunnel that is going to clean up Seattle's waterfront. Meanwhile crime is up so much that it is unsafe to walk the streets. His response: Businesses should be gun-free zones. He's the opposite of the "Progressive" he thinks he is and ANYTHING that can stop McGinn is a good thing, including Comcast. Why is it okay for McGinn to do the things you condemn Comcast for doing? Living in a city like Seattle is not all about sitting home safe alone in your basement with oodles of bandwidth; it's about being able to walk to the corner grocery without being harassed by a "homeless victim" who wants you to turn out your pockets for him.

So he kinda pissed me off, but I'm really more angry at cable than I am at Wade. The exchange:

Hey Wade,

Just read the article on how I am subsidizing your access to shows. Well done. Just the right amount of snide "I'm smarter than you" rhetoric. You must be really proud of yourself to have "discovered" and taken advantage of streaming video. With an IQ like that, well, you are ALREADY great. Thanks for writing and letting some of it rub off us peons.

Now I'm going to tell you WHY I am subsidizing you. I mean, I have the Internet, obviously. I even have a "network capable" TV with it's own IP address. And my DVD player has a gigabyte USB device on it expressly for watching streaming video. It uses something called OrbCaster. Pretty cool. I'm right on the brink of firing Comcast, so why don't I?

Because, Wade, my Internet connection is limited to T-1 download speeds. That's 1.544Mbps on a DSL connection furnished by Centurylink (The former Quest). And you know what? It's not fast enough to stream much of anything. Even a YouTube video jerks along slowly. But an hour-long TV program? Not a chance, Wade. I'd rather watch the damn commercials than endure the gaps while it is "buffering." Now I've asked for a higher speed. I live in an affluent community which would lap up higher speeds faster than a new model Lexus. I've been on the list quite a long time now. When they "upgrade services" for their DSL lines I'll be the first to know.

I've been waiting about 15 years so far. Before that I tried satellite Internet. Every time it rained, the Internet went out. And I live near Seattle, so you know the Internet was down more than it was up.

I do have an alternative. There is one provider that will give me about 6Mbps for about the same price I am now paying Centurylink. That provider is

Comcast.

See the problem now, Wade? I knew you would. And I don't even watch sports.

His answer:

Thanks for your thoughts about my article. The snide act was intended to get readers riled up; I had hoped it would be recognized as satire. I wasn't trying to tell 100 million cable subscribers that they're stupid. I was trying to rile them up about being forced to overpay.

That said, quite a few readers have been reading the piece as a direct insult, so it sounds like I didn't strike the tone I'd wanted.

I totally understand that there are lots of people in your situation who don't have the broadband speeds needed to make extensive Internet video viewing practical, and I'm all in favor of policies to improve broadband delivery around the country. But given that the article was a bit of a comedy sketch, my feeling as I was writing was that it would have weakened the effect if I'd insert a bunch of caveats like that.

Anyway, thanks, and I totally get your point that the alternative to cable that I was suggesting is only available to people lucky enough to have fast broadband.

Wade

That about says it. Nobody else cares. I've been using Word since it came on two 5-1/4" floppy disks and included a mouse and used every version since what? 1983 or so? (Before that I used Zardax on an Apple ][ and, of course, WordStar.)

There's not a damn thing wrong with Microsoft Word. It is quite adequate--superb, even--for 99% of the people 99% of the time. I've written several 300 page books with it, including extensive indices, sidebars, tables, graphs, and pics and it works just fine. No, you can't do EVERYTHING you might want to do with it. And you might actually have to put some time in learning how it works, but ONE thing is CERTAIN:

It's not going to go away. The chances of it going away are equivalent to the chances the United States will convert to driving on the left. Only the nerds care about the arcane details under the hood.

Nobody else gives a rip.

Sure we could, but if you use that attitude about everything, nothing would ever get done unless it passed some bureaucrat's idea of "practical and prudent."

Besides, that's just a fucking boring attitude.

Um: "For its creation." Don't blame me; I'm just living up to my sig.

It isn't. It's North American, as per the Oxford English Dictionary.

Yes, A/C, it is true. I worked for the state unemployment department. They sent me to school to teach me all this stuff, then laid me off. Very funny in hindsight, though I didn't think so at the time. It is, of course, vastly more complex than what I was able to post here, but what I did post is completely accurate. Naturally, I got quite a bit of unemployment out of the deal! :-)

Subsequently I went to work for the firm where I spent the vast majority of my career, and at one point was the Personnel Officer. This was a time when the unemployment rules were changing a bit so, naturally because of my background, I was tasked to figure out what we should do. We had to make a choice between becoming a reimbursable employer or one which paid 3.5% as a tax. I determined the former was better for us because we were fairly stable, and that should we find ourselves in a layoff situation, we should switch to the tax beforehand. By being reimbursable, we saved approximately 2/3rds, so it was a good deal for us. The firm still does this, though I am quite convinced they have no idea why they are or how they got there.

Later computers began to "get big," and once again, because of my prior interest and the fact I had one of the first Apple ][ computers, I wound up in IT, where I stayed 20+ years and wound up CIO. That kind of thing would never happen in today's world, but I was in the right place at the right time, so it did. When I retired we had 500 computers, 40 servers, and a 9 site WAN on fiber optic, a far cry from the single Apple ][ on my desk we started with. What a ride!!

To the other poster complaining about long hours for employees, meh? That wasn't the point of the topic. We were discussing the proper way to quit, right?

TL;DR Bottom line: If you get laid off, it's the employer's fault. If you get fired, it's up to your employer to prove you were fired for cause. If you quit, it's up to you to prove you quit for cause. Saying the right thing and making the right decision means dollars in your pocket--or not. Your choice. It's not up for argument.