In my experience, what women *want* and what gets women *hot* are two different things.

They want a nice guy. They get hot for a bad boy.

The trick is to show your bad boy side when you meet them (and periodically throughout your relationship) but show your nice guy side most of the time.

Here's the thing, most guys misunderstand the bad boy concept. They seem to think being being a bad boy means mistreating when what it really means is a) being willing to break the rules *for her*, and b) be willing to stand up to her when she needs it.

Now, one girls "bad boy" might be another girls, "too nice" (i.e. boring) so you need to find a girl whose idea of bad and nice fits with yours.

It's not really all that hard.

Perhaps civil engineering or hvac engineering. Engineering-level construction jobs can be very rewarding and are well paid.

I also happen to think that software development will continue to be a rewarding career. I recently went back to it myself when I realized that the need for software is going to increase faster than the world can supply talented developers.

Why is this moderated down? Plumbing is a very well-paid job that cannot be outsourced. I pay my plumber $100 an hour and he's worth every penny.

A slightly lower paid but cleaner career would be electrician.

Your "hard tech" company making useful things has customers. A portion of those customers are unhappy. A portion of those aren't telling you directly but are tweeting about it. Finding out what they are unhappy about is useful and Twitter helps with that.

That's all I was saying.

I suppose someone who is exactly 49 could wait one microsecond before answering and would thus be technically older than 49.

I was born in the mid 60's and taught myself programming on a TRS-80. I went looking for my first ever job last year and received multiple offers almost immediately.

Absolutely. Twitter is an excellent way for businesses to find out what people are saying about them.

I don't use tweet, personally, but I know how to query it for my employer.

The phrase is "a gleam in your mother's eye" which refers to the sparkle a woman gets in her eye when she looks at someone she would like to take to her bed.

It makes perfect sense once you have experienced it.

on *his* pointy-haired boss!

Top 10% seems about right to be considered great.

It sounds like you are not self-motivated. What happens when you get eventually get your PHD and then get tenure?

What you are describing is called the "Dilbert Principle" wherein the worst producers are promoted to management to get them out of the productive flow.

That works right up until your customers abandon you for a more reliable vendor.

To be fair, engineers created the first Instagram and cloud computing service, too.

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/c...