I don't know about that Math but my provider gives me a 10% discount for bringing my own device. My monthly plan is $70. So I save $7/month, which over 24 months is about $150.... I don't think that's much of a subsidy... If I stay with my carrier for more than 2 years, I'm basically losing. However, for some reason, I still refuse to go on a contract. It seems wrong.

I've been in the telecom business but not the marketing end... I don't know about now but back then, the model was that phones were expected to last 18 months before the battery or something else gave out... So you wanted your customer to renew and tie in to a new 2 year contract when they were almost finished their current contract and prevent them from moving to another carrier.

The dog ate it.

My son uses my mail server for personal mail.

Many schools now use Google apps for students. That includes Gmail, Drive, and productivity apps. My son is required to hand his assignments in via Google Drive and use Gmail to communicate with teachers and fellow students... So "use someone else" is a nice generalization but not always an option... That's why I'm happy to see this.

fwiw, personally, I have always run my own mailserver/webserver/dns.

My water well guy said "Plumbing's easy. Even a plumber can do it."

I have a few tablets. But they serve specific purposes. They're not general purpose machines. One operates as a Plex remote in the livingroom. One lives in the kitchen to display recipes, or check out the days weather at breakfast; or maybe reference a wikipedia article while chatting at breakfast. These are specific tasks for which a $150 ASUS Memo Pad 7 suffices perfectly. These are not tasks that need a $1000 phondleslab.

I beg to differ. I plumbed my entire house myself but had to call an actual plumber for some permit specific stuff. The guy I called was a junior plumber and he charged me $70/hr. He was the only one I could find who wasn't swamped, working 60hour weeks. He was also cheaper than the 60hr/week guys who quoted me $90+/hr. Starting to look like embedded firmware isn't the dream job after all.. At least I can bite my nails.

The junior guy who came out to do my hookup looked at the rest of the plumbing and said "Nice, who did you get to do that?", referring to all of my work. When I told him it was me, he was impressed and said I should come work for him. Plumbing is fairly easy, definitely not $70/hour worth of complicated..

This is western canada, and last summer. The guy who drilled my water well charged me $145/hr but he has a service rig and probably doesn't pull 40hr weeks.

I don't subscribe to Netflix. However, It's true that I watch more TV in the winter than in the summer. I don't generally have a lot of free time in the summer. So if I were a netflix subscriber, I could see myself being 'one of those'.

Many people are cynical and are quick to say 'never'. I've probably done it in the past... Realistically, now that I'm in my late 40's, and the way things are shaping up, I could probably retire when I'm 55 with a small annual income... But I didn't vote '55'. But to your point, I might have a change of career at around 55 which will allow me to spend more time doing the things I want to do while augmenting my investment income with small amounts of revenue... Semi-retirement if you will.

Many people have a view that retirement is pina-coladas on the beach until they die... To me, that's already death.

so would that make you a cereal killer?

Alternatively, Snowden could have information that proves Puten is lying and he's laid out a very public trap...

Though his likelihood of dying in a mysterious car accident would increase exponentially...

you're right. It's funny, reading this. I can see the douchebag admin that I was over 20 years ago... I did this sort of 'rub my nuts in your face' kind of thing all the time...Then I learned to embrace the beauracracy creatively and watch it passively... Things in my career got better after that.

We used to have to fill out timesheets once a week and hand them to our department admin assistant. I wrote a script that generated my timesheet for me using cron with input from a config file that defined charge codes and percentages... (20% of my time was to be spent on FOO, 35% on BAR, 40% on BAZ, etc)... The timesheets had random hours that over time averaged out to the correct percentages. Another config file denoted the statutory holidays. Every monday morning my timesheet appeared on the printer next to the admin assistant and she would promptly type it into the management system. I put the script in a central repository of tools used by engineering staff... Soon others discovered the script and started using it. Inside of a year, there were over 100 engineering staff using the script. I eventuallly caught shit and was ordered to remove my script and was seen as a trouble maker...

later I discovered, I get paid the same if I follow the beauracracy or fight it... If I follow it, it amuses me and I am less stressed. Being less stressed, and less of a douchebag has led to me having a more lucrative career. Now I'm an embedded firmware developer... I still have beauracracy; it's just different... I give my opinion once, when asked, and then I do it the way they want... Usually, later, I get paid again to do it my way when their way doesn't work. The experienced project managers now don't interfere and trust me to just get it done and don't micromanage me...

What I've observed at the customer site that I've been at for 6+ years is that some mid-level administrator will realize his/her job is becoming obsolete so he/she writes a white-paper for management outlining a huge problem that is waiting to bite the company (that upper management might be personally liable for should it ever come to pass)... Management has a bit of a freakout and generates new policy. Voila, author of white-paper is seen to be the resident expert on this problem and is put in charge of handling it. A new department is born and people are hired/transferred. It used to be ISO-900x that drove this stuff, then SOCS came around and provided even better fodder...

I'd thought of that... It's just not within my son's nature so I didn't feel he'd be able to pull it off... In retrospect it was a good thing. The bully is a 'hockey kid'... The son of a 'hockey kid'. He's been taught how to fight and enjoys it. So had my son reached up and slugged him, the bully would have enjoyed it and come right back...

We saw the dad in the local grocery store last year walking around with his little monster... Dad had a big black eye... It was hockey season so he probably got it playing... Nice role model.

I take solace in the fact that one day that kid will be pumping gas into my son's car.