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Comment I wear a watch, so obviously (Score 1) 381

I am interested in watches.

Whether or not a smart watch is worth it is an open question. If they can provide me something that I think I need with it, then sure. I've outlined a list in comments on previous stories, for quasi-trolls that were about to lash into me for being so general.

But I wear an automatic mechanical beater right now—specifically because it's virtually indestructible, represents only a minor investment (and thus financial risk), and requires no maintenance, attention, or battery-swapping. It's accurate to about 2 minutes per year, which means that about once a year I tune the time on it.

Most of the stuff that smartwatches are currently being said to do I either don't care about (fitness tracking, health monitoring) or currently use a smartphone for with far less hassle (bigger screen, more natural UI) so it'll be a stretch. But I'm open.

Comment Re:Schedule some days as offset days (Score 1) 265

Actually that 80 hour a week guy will quit without notice really fucking the company.

Hell I took my vacation time left and called in sick for the last days I had in my sick bank while I worked at my new job.. the day I was supposed to be back at my old job I walked in at 8 am dropped my badge and keys on my bosses desk and said, "I quit, hope you can hire the 3 guys you will need to replace me quickly." I had informed HR that I was quitting in writing that morning at 7am when they got there.

It screwed them over hard, really hard. I got a call from the VP begging for me to come back with a 30% pay increase 2 hours after I walked out the door. I said he doesn't have enough money in the world for me to work there anymore, I wished them luck replacing me.

Funny thing, 6 months later the 2008 crash happened and they closed up for good.

Comment Re:Puppet. (Score 2) 265

Just having a proper IT infrastructure works even better.

Patch and reboot secondary server at 11am. everything checks out, put it online and promote it to primary. All done. Now migrate the changes to the backup, Pack up the laptop and head home at 5pm... not a problem. Our SQL setup has 3 servers we upgrade one and promote it, the upgrade #2 #3 stays at the previous revisions until 5 days have passed so we have a rollback. Yes data is synced across all three, worst case if TWO servers were to explode, we will lose 15 minutes of data entry.

I NEVER do late at night or weekend maintenance anymore. Servers are dirt fricking cheap to not have redundants always running and ready to drop in.

Comment Re:Buy Surge Protectors (Score 4, Interesting) 78

99% of the surge suppressors you can buy at stores are useless crap that simply use a $0.29 MOV to shunt a voltage spike. they will do NOTHING to stop most real problems that come in on data lines and NOT power. Those things are designed to stop surges from your vacuum cleaner, your furnace and AC, and the industrial building down the street.

We have customers whine every thunderstorm asking why did their $9.95 surge suppressor not stop lightning damage... It cant, in fact you can not buy anything on this planet that can stop a close or direct lightning hit.

I have seen lightning blow up electronics that were unplugged and sitting in the cardboard box. getting a hard strike 8 feet from the south wall where all the gear was going to be installed. Every single device was fried when we opened the boxes and hooked it up.

Comment Industry being destroyed! (Score 1) 78

"they calculate that the economic impact of geomagnetic damage must amount to several billion dollars per year."

We can not tolerate this economic disaster hitting the very low profit insurance industry! WE shoud act and demand congress solve this issue by blowing up the SUN to eliminate these solar geomagnetic storms.

Comment So called "designers" (Score 0) 47

I read a few years back about how Bezos had then-recently hired designers to redo the website since its design seems like an over-crowded holdover from the '90s, before disregarding their ideas entirely...

In all likelihood we should thank our lucky stars he did. There are Designers and then there are "designers". "Designers" unfortunately seem to value aesthetics well above all else, including usability. They are art school grads without any particular skill with engineering or and they appear to have slept through usability training. The interfaces I'm seeing lately tend to hide functionality that should not be hidden even when that makes it less pretty. I don't care if an interface is ugly if it maximizes functionality and ease of use. Form should always follow function.

There are excellent Designers out there but like truly good Programmers they are a relatively rare bird. Even at companies like Apple where they have a reputation for good design you can see many examples of varying skill levels between the Designers and the "designers".

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