As someone who does not own a car, I doubt cost of public transportation is not a factor in its adoption. People don't ride public transportation for fairly specific reasons: wanting personal/dedicated space, wanting control of schedule, wanting to get from point A to point B faster, etc. The reasons why people *do* choose to ride public transportation are generally more dependent on financial limitations: parking is too expensive, don't own a car, tolls, etc.

To increase adoption of public transportation you need to make it faster and more convenient: no transfers, high frequency, easily understood route system, stops close to origins and destinations, etc. Where I live there is one commuter bus line and one "neighborhood" bus line that I use periodically. The limitations on increased use really come down to increasing frequency and making sure there are viable alternatives in off-peak times.

Provided records what is sent, phone records what is received. That is why I dumped ATT; they indicated I used 1GB in a month while the device indicated 120MB, consequently charging me for substantial overages. They actually have an incentive to provide bad coverage.

You are both leftovers. ;)

The divorce rates for marrying in your major would be a much more interesting study. I would think engineering and CS would top that list.

For the "grossly underrepresented group," though dating in your major is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Do you have wifi at home and work? If so, turn the phone off, put it in airplane mode, or shut off cellular data; you are doing something wrong if you think you are a light user and are consuming more than 1GB/month. I do video conferencing, web meetings, VNC, and a few other data-intensive uses, and am around 1GB/month (up from 250MB though a year or two ago).

With the iPhone you get application-specific cellular data usage, and you can limit applications' access; I assume Android does the same. For my iPhone, about half of my usage is system services and the app store (needed to replace phone while on the road, so I had to download everything over cell).

Focus on the trainwreck then. I will give one example: I get a resume from an engineer every 6-8 months from someone that I have heard stories about from one of his former co-workers as being a non-functional alcoholic. (The co-worker is what I would consider a functional alcoholic, read into it as you wish.) If this person were to put on their resume that they have been focusing on teaching yoga and spinning between professional employment then I would be forced to at least interview them.

Some specific advice: look at what part of the other things you are doing is what I consider "adult daycare." If you spend a lot of your time talking to people and trying to help them out then you really should approach looking for a job from the perspective of project management rather than engineering. If engineering is your passion, you work into it backwards.

I would say working under the table is a little different class; it might be the same ends, getting some extra cash, but working under the table is more like "doing odd jobs." (Tax law already accommodates this; you don't need to give a W2 or 1099 to someone you pay less than $500/year.) On the "employee" side, you just have more flexibility in reporting your income; not reporting is still a violation.

Agreed. A "dependent contractor" is by definition an employee. We have several people that have moonlighted for us over the years. We generally considered them 1099s as they did not generally work in our office, use our supplies, or have responsibilities other than delivering a specific product, which would place them firmly in that category.

Reality is that more people need to be considered W2 employees because that is the easiest way to prevent abuses.

The "gotcha" with Uber is what happens when a driver is simultaneously driving for Lyft, Uber, and the Pizza Company? Has he achieved a nexus where he is independent?

My bias is really over the issue of exempt/non-exempt employees though. Labor laws for non-exempt employees are really hard for small businesses when you get beyond restaurant/retail and into the professional realm. (Would you like a coding session when you are in the zone broken up by a mandatory 15-minute break?)

Not to judge, but as someone with a PE that does a lot of hiring of PEs, maybe you should take a close look at why you are having trouble. There are a number of things that can pose challenges, including location at one extreme and personality at another. It might help to go to IEEE meetings and try to get some help networking, reviewing your resume, and identifying what your specific challenges are, and how to work around them.

For point 3, it really depends where you live. Some of our employees have 2-hour commutes each way. While we prefer for them to first move closer to the office, it often is not possible. The least likely position in our office we recently agreed to let work from home two days per week-- someone that needs to coordinate with all the executives on tight deadlines.

If someone is good, you try to make it work. This person will have an uphill battle, but we will try.

Anything you do very well. Just being in the top 20% of your field is sufficient, although top 30% weeks to be workable if you have a good network.

Working from home adds a layer of complexity to things, but isn't a deal killer if someone can handle the issues.

When you have a run on the banks, it is too late for spending cuts to fix the problems. The stupidity here was that the debt repayment is unsustainable at 1.8x GDP. Greece got themselves into this, with the willing help of the EU, ECB, & IMF. All players are going to have to figure out a way to fix this... and of course the real problem isn't Greece but how the entire European Union functions.

Quite honestly, I can't see any good resolution coming from this. If Greece is pushed out, the other PIIGS might end up the same way, and the Euro starts to look more like a currency shared by France and Germany, with a whole lot of angry people around them.

Rather than treadmills, which instill a sense of walking and getting nowhere, corporate overlords now recommend Jacobs Ladders, so you can be climbing all day and not getting any higher.

I am mid-40's with back and sciatica problems and also recovering from recent laparoscopic surgery. I have been using a balance ball as my chair for 8 years, which worked for me pretty well up until a few months ago. (Now sitting hurts.)

I find I lose my ability to concentrate while standing-- I don't have the deep-focus time I used to get. I also need to have something to lean on periodically (bar height chair from ikea works). For me, the "zero-g" chairs aren't any good; not sure if it is a height thing or what. Locking your knees defeats the benefits of standing to some degree, and you really need to properly contract your abs to brace your spine. A treadmill would not help me personally.

The best advice seems to be to be at a healthy weight, have a strong core and actively engage it in whatever position you are in, change positions regularly, and find an excuse to walk around regularly throughout the day. There is no substitute for excercise though.

Bought a Buffalo Terrastation. Went on vacation a year later to a country with limited internet access. On trip, one-year warranty expired and it died the next day, taking all data with it.

Fortunately, I had a copy of the server with me on a portable hard drive, so I could work remotely. That was our only backup. Sending the accounting database back to the office via GPRS was a lot of fun, but mailing that drive back to the office (after duplicating it of course) scared me to death.

The solution at the time was the right one; we didn't have the money for anything more. Ever since we have a hot backup server synchronized to the primary, for a small business. Like most screw-ups, what is important is how you move forward.