Heh, their "comfort zone" is funny. They clearly haven't seen what summer weather is like in the southern US. I guess iStuff users are suppose to turn off their devices to go outside.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Hey, I was very happy with my Rollex. Made in China, and sold in Mexico for $20. That thing lasted me months. :)

But the Rolex won't be obsolete in a year. :) And you are pretty much guaranteed that the Rolex will still be working 24 hours later. The Apple Watch has an estimated 18 hour life.

I don't know about the Apple fanclub, but I've had plenty of days where I didn't get home for 24 hours. Needing to feed my phone twice a day seems just about as needy as a tamagotchi.

I guess I could explain it a bit better.

It was payroll. The first bank was the bank the payroll checks were drawn on. That wasn't my account. That bank actually wouldn't have me as a customer, because my credit rating wasn't good enough without adding more fees. They also charged fees for *everything*. If you were rude enough to talk to a teller, that was $5. Using a check cost. They had all kinds of creative ways to hit you with fees just because.

On the credit rating part, it wasn't "bad". It was good enough to have credit cards, get a car loan, etc. They were just dicks. So an extra service charge for my credit score.

If I deposited in my bank, it could take a week for the funds to show up. I just mentioned it as writing a check in the previous post.

They still charged me the $5 for showing up to cash the check, and I still argued against it every time. It required 2 forms of ID, verification of the signature card, manager approval, calling my boss to verify that he wrote the check, and whatever else they could do. Sometimes I had to wait for "the cash truck". No truck ever arrived, but suddenly they'd have more cash. That was basically that they ran out of ways to annoy me, other than to make me wait.

So I'd take the cash, put it in my pocket, and walk down the street to the second bank to deposit it.

Years ago, I had to move about $2K between two banks every week. The banks were only about 3 blocks apart. If I wrote a check, it could be delayed by up to a week.

After a few weeks of that, I decided to just walk into the first bank, withdraw the cash, walk to the second bank and deposit it. Every single fucking time I did it, there was always some hassle.

On several occasions, I explained to both bank managers and various middle managers, why I was doing it (because they both sucked). Something would always get it hung up. What should have taken about 10 minutes total could take up to 2 hours.

They are both in the top 10 largest banks in the US. Because of their repeated incompetence, I will never willingly do business with again. I can go in there to take money away from them (legally, of course). I will never have an account with them again.

.... it did? Most of us in my group of friends in college thought Voyager stunk on ice. That's as people who were, after all, in college when it came out - I know that I wasn't an expert on the original series, enjoyed TNG and DS9. (DS9 is my favorite these days, I would say.)

The Kaypro 10 was a portable, not a laptop. :)

The last time I saw anything like it, a friend got one for free, and was going to convert it into a portable PC. I don't think he ever did anything with it though. That's probably for the best.

If it makes you feel better, I vaguely remember working with MFM drives. It's been long enough ago where I don't remember anything about how they work. :)

I think I used this one. Looks like just about the same thing. It's probably identical inside.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...

The most ancient laptop I ever touched was a Compaq 386/16 with a 20MB 3.5" 1/2 height IDE drive. It sounds pretty much like the same, or probably the piece of crap I had was a predecessor. I do remember it was clearly a 20MB drive though. I swapped it for a regular desktop 40MB IDE that we had in the shop.

Everything I found about that series says it's IDE. I couldn't find anything specifically saying the physical size, but I suspect it was a 3.5" drive. I seriously doubt it was RLL, MFM, ESDI, or anything more exotic. So he's wasting everyone's time asking rather than just opening it up and seeing "ooh, a IDE drive." Even if it was, he could go find some combination of adapters to use it. Anyone who's worked with stuff long has a box full of adapters and cards for exactly this. Well, I did ditch all my ancient cards on eBay a few years ago.

I'd be surprised if the drive even spins though. Most of the time when I go to try ancient hardware, the drives don't spin, or spin enough, even though the owner remembers that it was working when they shut it off.

Lets see... What would they say? This is the one-sided conversation, since it doesn't matter what you say anyways.

"Ok, we can accept that estimate."

"Ya, ya, ya, whatever."

"We'll have that information to you by the start of the project."

"The information isn't ready yet, we'll have that by the time you need it."

"I thought we had that to you already. We'll have to check with the information source."

"The PMs have some changes."

"Here's the information, but there are some small changes."

"No, those are small changes, they won't impact the timeline."

"No, you can't have more time, we already made commitments."

"The PMs have some changes."

"What do you mean you won't have it in on schedule? You agreed with the initial estimate."

"You're going to stay here until it's done, I don't care how long it takes."

"I don't care that you've been in the office 30 hours straight, this is your fault."

"We're hiring an off-shore company to help you with the project. Get them up to speed."

"The PMs have some changes."

"Since we have the off-shore team, we need to cut your department back."

"I read an article saying Java is the future. Redo it in Java."

"What do you mean we're waiting on the off-shore company?"

"We fired the off-shore company. You're good, you can get it done in time."

"Ok, hire more people into your department, but we're only offering half the salary, and no more bodies."

"Why is this project so far behind? Don't you know what you're doing?"

"The PMs have these changes."

"Why aren't you done? We're weeks from the deadline!"

"You didn't meet the deadline. Don't you know deadlines are firm. We have commitments."

"I don't want excuses, I want results."

"You and your idiot team are fired. Get out of my building."

[2 months later]

"We need you to come back and finish the project. We need it by next Monday, that should be plenty of time."

"Here's all the new specs. They should be easy to do."

"What do you mean total rewrite, it's only a few chances. You are an idiot. Get out."

[1 month later]

"We need you to come back and finish the project. We need it by" {click}

"We need you to come back and finish the project. We need it by" {click}

"We need you to come back and finish the project. We need it by" {click}

"Why do you keep hanging up on me?" {click}

He was a wise man...

I've heard of similar things. For example, this guy sending air, water, and sugar.

As long as you have the right safety labels, there shouldn't be a problem. The guy in the above link screwed up with the "Rocket Fuel" label.

If they were sending a mill, why did they say "It's a machine for making guns"? IT could have been labeled as coming from "GG Machine Works", and if they needed a declaration of contents it's just "a CNC machine."

I can't even think of the countless things I've shipped. Usually I'm only asked on International shipments for the customs declaration. If I explain what's in them, it's too complicated, so they just put "computer parts" or "tools".

I've received some things that surprised people, like ammunition (legally marked and shipped as such, handled by UPS), a truck front axle, and all kinds of weird smaller things.

(Perhaps things are more skewed in Indiana. It's a surprisingly conservative place.)

And it's very, very difficult to find the line between evolutionary programming and societal conditioning. I'm a female computer programmer at a defense contractor, while my husband has a degree in art and is currently staying home with our five month old baby. Not only is this the best financial situation, but I think that we both are far happier than if we went the opposite routes.

I think that most normal feminists, rather than misandrists on the fringe, just want artificial barriers for everyone in all professions to be removed. We've come very far in a relatively short time, and things will continue to improve. My mother received an education fit for becoming a secretary (and became a waitress), I had friends who were discouraged by teachers and even parents from technical fields, but I didn't experience that myself. Things will continue to be more open for my daughter, I hope.

I'm a feminist, but not a misandrist. I'm also an engineer, and I want to find the cause of things and fix it. Men have been the ones in a position of leadership for most of human history, nothing more. Women have, sadly, been fairly bad in many points in history at taking and making opportunities for themselves, since society has conditioned both genders in how they should behave.

I believe they didn't grade the test twice because this was an examination of available data rather than a created situation - they were two different tests that were typically graded in these different ways.