Well, that's assuming 'finally' means today. Technically after almost daily blue screens I finally had the money to replace the two AMD video cards with nVidia cards and the blue screen problem went away. That was almost 2 years ago. So 'finally' means after 3 years of dicking with driver updates and sending cards back to DiamondMM for testing. And the blue screen was only on boot. Some times 10 or 15 times in a row. But once it was up, there generally weren't any further problems (the seldom video setting wackiness but that was very seldom).

[John]

'brah'? What, are you 20?

[John]

Of course everyone thinks 'finally' means today. I replaced the AMD video cards with nVidia almost 2 years ago and haven't had a problem since.

[John]

I have a RHEL system running on one of the other drives. About 50% of the time I'm in either Windows or Red Hat. Since I play Rocksmith, which is a Steam/Windows game, I'm pretty much stuck using Windows.

I was actually pretty psyched when I got Red Hat installed and it supported all four monitors with minimal work. I had to shift some cables around in order for it to boot the way I wanted it to. And interestingly I'm unable to move windows between video cards. All four monitors show up, I can move my mouse across all four without a problem. But if I open Firefox in either of the left monitors, I can't drag it to either of the right monitors and vice versa. If I try to open a second Firefox instance, it says Firefox is already running and won't let me start it. Other things like VMM open in the right monitors but the sudo box opens in the left monitors. And the span mode doesn't work for the nVidia 560's I have.

[John]

Nah. PEWBD :p

[John]

Agreed, but I generally get heavily modded down when I complain about the actual problem (badly written drivers). I finally bought replacement cards and so far no problems.

[John]

I finally got my Windows 7 system working reliably. I'm not budging until I have to.

[John]

Actually she's having a hard time finding a job in the Bay Area. Maybe just because she's a girl, bike shops won't hire her. :shrug:

[John]

Yea, you knew what I meant though.

[John]

I'm a bit older than that, no coding references when I was growing up. In fact, later when I did express an interest in computers, my Dad told me specifically not to get into computers as it was a dead end field. So it wasn't "because you're a boy".

Plus I never heard any of the "good wife" stuff. Heck, I was (and am) bookish and truely never expected to get married based on my experience with the girls in school. I'd resigned myself to being single for the rest of my life. So yea, just like the culture of "girls don't code" I suppose, there was a culture of "girls don't date bookish/smart" boys.

[John]

On the flip side, my daughters were surrounded by tech. My older one learned how to code when she was 8 and has gone from IT to DBA to Computer Security. The younger one is a motorcycle mechanic. I don't know what caused them to make those choices though.

[John]

Honestly folks. I learned to program because I wanted to. Years and years ago. I continue to code and learn to code because I wanted to get better. I was still interested. When Microsoft came out with Windows 3.0 and 3.1, I tried to learn to code using Windows' API but it was annoying and I really didn't have an interest. I was interested in OS/2 but at $2,000 for the API, I was out of luck.

I code because I like it and want to. I muck with computers because it's interesting and challenging at times. I admin systems because there's a bit of coding involved, challenging tasks, and troubleshooting. It's fun.

In this case, Google is simply trying to jump-start the interest in women and minorities. I got interested because of Dungeons and Dragons and Car Wars. In other words, I had an idea and needed to learn to program to implement the idea, and I did. And it was cool.

People complain that they're keeping guys from coding. Hell, there are guys who code and nothing can stop them.

We (humans) have access to a world of information at our fingertips. If you want to code, freaking code. Don't wait for some corporation or person to give you incentive to code. To me, that feels like cheating. I personally don't want to say "Google gave me money and free lessons to learn how to code". Heck, I would be embarrassed to say that in an interview. Someone had to interest me into coding so without that, I wouldn't have been interested in the first place? Doesn't sound much like motivation to me. If I were interviewing someone for a coding job, I might knock a point or two off for that. My girlfriend says she has done some programming but can't think of anything to code up to help her learn. Someone in a forum said pretty much the same thing. They wanted to be a DBA but didn't have any ideas on how to start.

Write a simple inventory program. Start off with the idea that you want to identify and store all the stuff in your room, apartment, or house. Write one to manage your music collection. Then expand it to add stars or figure out how to normalize the database. Sure, there are lots of programs out there that'll help you inventory your gear. Heck, there are programs that'll read in your UPC bar code and give you all the details you'd ever want.

But you don't learn to code by using someone else's program.

[John]

What's a 'Chuuch'?

[John]

Nah. I'm not all that good with thinking about the unlucky others. Must be what makes me a BOFH. :)

[John]

I wonder if it's more that I've tried other jobs and have settled into a job that I'm good at at a company that generally appreciates my talents. As we age, we might just realize that while the job might be crappy at times, it's the attitude you bring and the realization that a job at a different place really doesn't offer much difference. Just different idiots. Better the idiots you know :)

[John]