That's why I work with vi and arduino, or openwrt.... Much more fun, simple, and I can do almost anything I need done.

But yes, it's a fixie, not a jumbo jet. It's what I like doing, and I happen to make a living at stuff like that. If you are hired to build a jumbo jet, then you need jumbo tools and jumbo overhead. If you don't like it, scale down, hang up a shingle, and get a client. You might be surprised.

In other words, except for the douche, good customer service.

I fly a regular route with American from a small airport; if I get the usual counter staff I don't get charged luggage fee. Giving up $25 to make a guy who drops $2k - $10K on airfare every month moderately happy is probably not a bad idea. (And no, I have not reached the exalted flyer status, as my flying is spread over many airlines.)

You clearly have not been through some of the airports that I have. It's not the wait; it's the incredibly rude and arrogant staff. I've been yelled at by someone with a bullhorn, had my passport thrown at me, been told to "step aside" when my flight was cancelled and I need to reroute.... I could go on and on.

A nice avatar isn't going to help any of that, unless it means getting rid of the worst offenders that I've run into.

Some airlines (not all, but certainly some) could take that money and use it to train their ground staff in basic customer service; that would provide much better return than a bobbing head on a screen.

That being said, some airlines, and some specific people at these airlines, are shining examples of customer service and dedication, and by and large have saved my trips time and time again.

Read up on Project Management. You're looking for Scope, Schedule, and Budget, in particular the S curve. You should be able to plot % complete against % spent for a sampling of projects, and demonstrate where the projects went off the rails. Then you can figure out why.

Usually it's because the scope was not well defined. and thus budget and schedule were not based on a realistic assessment of what it takes to achieve said scope.

And yes, I provide training for exactly this. A neat little tidbit:

Q: Of 700+ projects in a study, how many recovered once they were over budget at 15% completion? That is, if a job was over budget at the very beginning, what are the chances of completing it on time and within budget, based on 700+ projects?

A: None. Not a single job.

Ummm.... Have we already reduced the bill of rights to "I have the right to shoot you"? I swear there was something in there about speach. Can't quite remember; it's been a while.

Well, I can only go by my family. We use computers, mostly for email and web browsing. My kids use googledocs in school. When their desktop died, I got a cheap laptop with Windows 8 for them. After a couple of weeks, I see my daughter using my wife's computer. So I asked "Why?" Turns out she can't use windows 8, hates the interface, and wants something that works.

One Xubuntu CD later, she has a working laptop that now gets used all the time, and it "just works".

Most people *don't care* what's inside. They just want it to be a part of the background so they can browse, do their stuff, and surf the web.

Try it some day. My car logs GPS coordinates, speed, direction of travel, outside temp, nearest landmark, and elevation every minute. Now you could falsify this with enough effort, but seeing as my car also takes a picture of the road at the time it records the other information, it would be nearly impossible, since you'd have to get the same picture in the correct weather conditions at the same (or different) time of day.

I'm sure the Tesla records things like SOC, engine output, current drain, braking effort, battery and outside temps, speed, throttle position, and pretty much everything else, a lot more often than than once a minute. To falsify this effectively would take a huge effort, as all of the data would have to be consistent, and that's incredibly difficult to do.

OK, but what do you use a tablet for? "Serious" work, or facebook, youtube, maybe some light email or a movie. So I think I'm OK in comparing a cheap laptop that's mostly used for that v. a tablet that's mostly used for that.

$1,100???? My daughter just got a Lenovo, about 3 lbs, 15" screen, delivered for $350. Why would I want to spend 3x the money for a smaller screen and a worse keyboard?

I can equip most of my family with nice laptops for the price of one Surface. :headscratch:

Yes! Motion can do this and much more.

Not. The schools hide the actual cost by shifting costs around.

For example, our "free paid for by by athletic money" athlete study facility is actually costing the university $2M / year - and this is "hidden" in the maintenance and janitorial budgets. Sure, the tutors are paid for and the facility was donated, but the maintenance, upkeep, and cleaning still falls to the university. And apparently our sports prima-donnas don't feel any need to keep their facility clean, as the janitorial budget for that building is substantially higher per square foot than other buildings.

And that's not rationing? If you have money, you can get it. If you don't, die. That's pretty severe rationing in my book.

That must be why the CIA ranks the US 51st in life expectancy, well behind almost every European nation.....

There is rationing here in the US along economic lines. Try getting medications or medical care with no insurance and see how well that works for you.

Yes, this.

It was actually pretty funny. Our team had cultivated our clients and we were quite profitable. We got bought by this other company with the bonus plan. Pretty much all of us quit within a year.

At bonus time, one of our more outspoken engineers opened his bonus envelope, marched into the manager's office, slapped it on his desk, and yelled: "What am I supposed to do with this? Take my wife to McDonalds?" I hadn't laughed that hard since.