First, not having a four-year degree has held me back more than once. It sucks, but that's the way it is. Strangely, I think I could've had a degree in just about anything as long as I had one.

Second, agencies that place you as a contractor someplace are good. That's how I got my current job. I started as a contractor, proved myself, and got hired full-time. My previous job was also as a contractor, after having been fired from the one before that (and therefore a high-risk candidate).

Third, have proof of your work handy. Provide code samples, screen shots, whatever you can produce quickly and conveniently in the interview. When I switched industries (going from working in industrial control systems to a true full-time software shop), I had a three-ring binder full of examples of my work. It was old-school, but (a) it was 2005, and (b) I wouldn't want the success of my interview to be dependent on an internet connection, no matter how reliable.

Finally, know people. Network. Make friends and stay in contact with them. I've obtained more than one job because of who I knew, not what I knew (especially early on, when I didn't know much).

Get yourself on the terrorist watchlist, and let the government do the rest.

I have a feeling that our development group would engage in a competition to see who could get the highest/lowest score.

It wasn't the TV (Vizio VA22L). It was a combination of the WinTV card (WinTV-HVR-1600) and the HDMI-out video card (MSI GEForce 9500 GT 512MB DDR2 V133 v1.1 (nvidia NV50 family : NV96 (G96))). I still think the WinTV card is junk, but it works just well enough. And despite it being a low-end video card, that works fine under XP.

Seriously, most of the responses are going to be along the same lines: games, work, not on windows. I'd be interested in the numbers.

As for me, personally, I run Win7 at work because I have to, Win7 on the "family" computer because that's where the games are, WinXP on the HTPC because that's what I got to work (after trying Ubuntu, Mythbuntu, Win2k, and Win7), and Debian/Xfce on my personal laptop because the other systems address all of my issues with doing so.

After 20 years in the industry, in various forms, I've come to this realization: C++, Java, Hadoop, Ruby on Rails, PHP... all these things are the airgun and socket wrench and grinder and welder and all the other tools in the garage. What matters is if you have experience working on BMW's or Kenworths or IndyCars or Harley-Davidsons. In other words, have you written accounting systems, industrial control systems, customer-facing websites, etc. I don't want to work for someone who's going to hire me because I'm a C# guru. I want to work for someone who recognizes that my background in financial systems fits their need on a loan processing project. Ok, not really, because that would bore me to tears, but you get my point.

I hate DST. I hate DST. I hate DST. I hate DST. I hate DST. I hate DST. I hate DST. I hate DST. I hate DST.

There. I feel better now.

Seriously, switching Indiana to DST was done to make businesses happy. That's it. I wish I'd wake up and find that it was a bad dream. And class basketball, too.

I was happy with Windows 2000. Then XP came along and some stuff got shifted around. Some of it made sense, some didn't. But it wasn't a big adjustment. Then came Vista and Windows 7 and the new Office with the ribbon thing. My reaction? Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org, which looked a whole lot more like what I was used to than the new stuff. And what matters to me is being able to find things where I expect them to be so that I'm not wasting time. So then I finally decided to upgrade from 10.04, took one look at Unity, and went to Debian and Xfce. I'm very happy with it (albeit after only 24 hours). I'm hoping the "less is more" design principal of Xfce keeps it from being the next interface I leave behind.

I'm running 10.10 on my personal laptop. I loaded 11.10 on a VM to see what it looked like. The result: I'm switching to Debian and Xfce.

One thing I didn't see recommended elsewhere was to keep monitors low. This keeps your eyes form drying out (by looking upward) and reduces eye strain. I'm practically the only dev in my shop with my monitors still on pedestals - everyone else is using swing-arms. Although, I'm switching to swing-arms myself just to keep the dust bunnies down, I'm still going to keep them low.

FYI, I had eye surgery (surface ablation, similar to lasik) a year or two ago. I don't have a problem with dry eyes, even though I am at a computer most of the day.

J

When I left college (note the absence of the phrase "graduated from"), I needed an income. I made it writing VB/VBA/ASP apps tied to SQL Server databases. And I made a very fine income. Then when .NET came out, I "upgraded" to C#, and was very happy with it. I have to be reminded once in a while that we're in a recession. I've spent the better part of the last 20 years on Windows because that's where I felt I was in the most stable business environment.

Last week, I bought a PHP/PostgreSQL book for my current project on Linux/Apache2.

We dropped our cable subscription a few months ago when they forced set-top boxes on us. We were already paying for something we hardly used, and the idea of adding even more electronics to our setup was distasteful. Our main home theater unit already has too many devices to list here, and two of the three other TV's are wall-mount with no reasonable place for a set-top box. I actually shopped around for satellite before realizing that every one of those providers force you to use their equipment as well. So now we have just basic OTA HDTV, yet get a lot of video from Netflix and a lot of other online sources.

My only regret is live sports. I'm a fan of one particular sport that is carried on a cable sports channel, and has virtually no online availability.

Smaller class sizes, more carrots and sticks to spur parental involvement, less time spent on mandatory testing, more money spent on teachers than stuff, and more empowerment and accountability given to teachers as opposed to administrators, school boards, and politicians. Cash or check is fine, Bill.

Being a teacher was on my short list at school, but life got in the way. I've been told several times that I would've made a good one - once from a retired teacher who happened to overhear my conversation with two of my kids in a doctor's waiting room. I'd still like to be one. But making the switch now would take two years of college and a 50% pay cut. That's a tough pill to swallow.

I used to be in the manufacturing world. I wrote software that made production more efficient. The work itself was infinitely more satisfying than what I do now. But the working environment was just the opposite. And I'm not talking about the physical environment (though I've probably written plenty of code under some pretty strange conditions), but the business environment. I saw the best in the business struggling to make ends meet, and saw outfits that had no business being there getting the best contracts (which really weren't all that good).

Nowadays, I write code that helps marketers. The reward is purely financial. And it is very rewarding, in that sense. And I don't care - usually. Every once in a while, I do have that moment like Billy Crystal in City Slickers... "I sell air?!" And then I remember that I haven't worked in a shop that was at risk of closing its doors since 2005, and life returns to normal again.

...wrote in Pattern Recognition in 2002 that "far more creativity these days goes into the marketing of products than the products themselves." I'm a software developer for what is basically a marketing company, and I heartily agree.