Your concept of what I.T. is only works in small companies. In companies with large I.T. workforces or large information assets, the job of I.T. is NOT to help the end user make the most of their available assets. In those cases, the job of I.T. is to protect company information, secure I.T. equipment against uses which may create a liability to the company or violate contracts or laws, and to enforce company policies (often based on legal requirements) regarding the use of information and I.T. equipment.

With the massive economic downturn, I.T. (in the U.S., at any rate) is more frequently called upon by Human Resources deptartments in large organizations to ferret out misuse of I.T. assets in order to terminate employees in such a way that unemployment compensation can be legally denied. This allows the company to perform RIFs without the penalty paid in higher unemployment insurance costs.

Never assume that I.T. exists only to help the end user. In many cases, if not most, I.T. is in place specifically to prevent the end user from overstepping their bounds or using information and assets in ways not approved by the governing body of the business.

I don't mean to suggest that this adversarial relationship is correct, nor excuse the dismissive attitude many I.T. pros have toward end users, but it is one of the chief purposes of current I.T. work. Were most companies to use I.T. assets to their full potential, they would need far less of those assets.

Speaking as a local hardware support tech (for a Fortune 100) who is in the process of being outsourced to an Indian support group, I have to disagree.

Fedex is the great leveler for hardware support. It (apparently) becomes cheaper to package it up and ship halfway across the world than to keep someone on staff to handle local issues. Sure, the users will have to wait a week or two for problem resolution, but when looked at from the executive suite, that's a problem only for the individual user, not the company.

As for knowing your way around a printer, most large companies have been using throwaway printers for small workgroups for years. In larger settings, Xerox and Ricoh offer high volume systems with service contracts. The local support guy is quickly going the way of the farrier; the need won't completely vanish, but will be reduced drastically in coming years.

Now I'm headed back to college for a BS in Psychology. I dropped out of an IT program during the dot-com days, but I have little interest in continuing work in an increasingly commoditized field. It's time to learn how to hack humans.

85F and 78F? Are you drying meat inside the house?!?

In winter, I program for wake: 70F, leave: 64F, return: 70F, and sleep 62F. (Summer is 74F, 85F, 75F, 72F) If you get cold at night, add a blanket. If I run the heat above 70F, everyone in the house complains that it's too warm. Of course, we try to keep the humidity 40%+ inside the house to help hold in some warmth. (And avoid the static nastiness that low humidity can cause.)

Of course, I live in the central US, where winter is 45F/35F and summer is 100F/85F, and our energy prices (electric and gas) are essentially unregulated, so we get gouged. Electric for my 3 bed, 1000sq/ft "ranch"-style house ranges from $35/mo in winter to $300/mo+ in summer, with gas going from $150/mo+ in winter to $15/mo in summer.

Still, if you're going to make jerky, get a smoker, don't hang it from the family room lamps.