As others have indicated - the qualifier changes the standard answer.

I chose "6-10" to cover all of my "salary/hourly" roles before becoming an independent UNIX consultant a few years back.

In my case, I always have one Windows computer and one UNIX or Linux computer at my desk.

At work, I manage UNIX / Linux servers in several data centres. All of the productivity applications that I use live in the Windows space.

I've adapted to the point where I primarily use putty and cygwin from the Windows computer. Having said that, when it comes to testing HA or DR solutions, having available hardware within arms reach is invaluable.

At home, I have a Windows computer for gaming and web surfing, and a UNIX computer for mucking about.

Just be careful that you don't jump to conclusions...

I'm not a developer, but I do write a lot of scripts (perl/sh) and I agree with your position.

As I learn more about the code that I write, I am better able to understand the documentation that accompanies more advanced tasks.

There's almost always a better way, but I won't know if I don't look...

There, fixed that for you.

But to "err" is human!

I have 3 large dogs that roam my house when I'm not home. They are an effective deterrent even before they are visible.

It's easy enough to prevent a "treat" from disabling your dog. The trick is to teach your dog to only eat food after you have given a command. You teach them to sit, you teach them to roll over - just add this to the list.

But there isn't a decent defense against the "locked in a room" attack. But you just try to get all three dogs into a room at the same time!

And now his microwave is running the popcorn kernel...

It was a good (if long) read. Just don't read too much into it!

Luxury!

We had to design our circuit boards half an hour before we knew what the requirements were, fabricate them from stale cheetos and pocket lint (with tongue!), then drink two vats of boiling bleach while arm wrestling coaches shouting motivational slogans in heavily accented Yiddish. And we were lucky!

There's a lot of road between Seattle, Washington and Portland, Maine!

My brother works for the major telecom provider here in Calgary. He is constantly submitting ideas that he believes might be 'the next big thing'. Generally speaking, they are neat ideas, but more suited to a smaller, more dynamic, niche-type company than a major conglomerate.

I've heard a handful of his better ideas, and I can see where they would make money - if you already have the infrastructure of the conglomerate.

A catch-22.

The big company isn't small enough to realize a significant return. The small company isn't big enough to invest. In the end, his ideas are discarded and the customer misses out on yet another feature.

Ideally, great ideas would be encouraged in a round-table environment, recorded, and then at least cursorily investigated. I'd recommend separating the round-table discussions into useful themes. One for state-of-the-art tech stuff, one for "where do you see us in 3 years" stuff, one for "the work environment", etc.

Perhaps, but it's not ill-eagle

Can't remember the names of the 3 VERY SIMILARLY named hosts that you work in regularly for Development /Quality Assurance Testing / Production? Easily done:

Assuming the following hosts map to 192.168.1.10 through 12:
SJC-LX-APPDEV02
SJC-LX-APPQAT04
SJC-LX-APPPRD01

Add them to your local /etc/hosts file with names that are useful to you. (make sure that /etc/nsswitch.conf includes "files" for host resolution)

192.168.1.10 my-dev
192.168.1.11 my-qa
192.168.1.12 my-prod