Thank you John D. Cook!! I think you hit that right on the head. Writing a lot of sloppy code (or insanely terse code for that matter) is MUCH worse in the long run then thinking about it a bit and writing good solid, well documented (i.e. Self documenting) code. One of my first big coding jobs was for the best boss I've ever had. He was not an ubergeek. In fact, he was an Agriculture major from Texas A&M. He had the idea that code productivity was like building widgets; x widgets will be built in y days at the rate of x/y. Now I educated him a little bit and told him in advance that it would take me 90% of my time to build the engine that the rest of the code would use and then in the remaining 10% of my time, the rest of the functionality would be done. Though he didn't know me too well, a fellow programmer whom he did know (and who wrote code by the bucket load) convinced him to let me try it my way. Everyday he would come in and ask for a "percentage done". I would tell him what I had worked on but also reminded him that it wouldn't look like much progress. To make a long story short, he just about lost it waiting for me to get the 10% done as I had said would get done in the first 90% of the time I had to do it. But I delivered just as I said and built a most useful product for him. I went from "10%" done (in terms of functionality and lines of code) to complete in one week (this was a several month project). Because of the way I had built my engine, I was also able to accommodate several additional feature requests that I received when I was working on the first 10%, and which would not have been able to be built at all if I had done it his way. I never had trouble with him trusting me after that and I didn't let him down. Of course this was many years ago and probably wouldn't work with today's Agile methods too well. But the point carries that automation is basically a front loaded investment and there is a balance between risk mitigation and long term viability. Version 1.0 might take me longer to engineer but by the time we've gotten to 2.0 I've caught up with you and by 3.0 you can't even see my dust trail. Its a luxury I don't always get (at least not up front) but I work pretty hard to educate my management and there's nothing quite as convincing as success... that is if both you and your boss can survive the onslaught of "Get It Done Now".

You know, this is one of those ideas that sounds good the first time you hear it but requires a "shoe on the other foot" perspective to see just how bad it is. Lets say for a moment, that it was your whole life opened for every tom, dick and harry to see. Would you like every one of your emails, receipts, bank records, blog entries, facebook submissions, etc all laid out for everyone to see. Suppose you did absolutely nothing wrong at all. How much of your time to do think would be required to answer the lame ass public who didn't understand that late night run to Taco Bell, your penchant for overpriced Starbucks coffee, or the need to have a flat screen TV in your bathroom. Ah, but you say, I haven't received taxpayer money like AIG. Really? No school loans, no unemployment, no subsidized food products. How about that tax rebate we all got in 2008 to help stimulate the economy. We taxpayers would like to know EXACTLY how YOU spent that money? So are you willing to let the entire globe, or at least the American public see that? I definitely think AIG, Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, blah, blah, etc, etc, should pay back the money, and if they can't do that in a reasonable time, let the pros investigate them, the people who actually have a clue about what are appropriate business practices and what are not, rather than some joe six pack who sucks off the government teet themselves.

Wow, Gratz to the submitter of this article. This is one of the most rabid and foolish examples of "going green" I've seen. PHP is certainly not the most efficient language in terms of run time resources. But you have to count the resources required to develop and maintain C++ code with all its pointer foulups and memory leaks versus PHP which is relatively simple and straightforward to develop and runs in a very stable manner on either a LAMP or WAMP stack. Sure servers eat up a lot of energy. But so do programmer armies who have to commute or log in or fill out timesheets by the forest, all to chase memory leaks, buffer overflows and the like. Oh yeah, and lets not forget the number of EXTRA servers you're going to have to put online to make up for the ones that need rebooted every few hours because some high school script kiddie doesn't bother to sufficiently check for memory leaks that chew through the server like a teen athelete on steroids. Maintainability is a HUGE factor in overall cost in terms of both $$$ and other resources. Use C++ or Assembler or whatever low level, low resource hogging language on a FEW critical sections, written by l337 coders, and let the pock faced script kiddie army churn out the mountains of PHP, .Net, JavaScript, etc that is at least garbage collected in their own VMs.

You're going to get a whole lot of "modern" advice to your question on this forum I am sure. I am a Software Engineer with a BA (and a genius IQ) and my wife is a Research Scientist with an Earned PhD. The key to your wonderful and happy marriage is the same as it would be for the jock/cheerleader stereotypes that you mention. Beyond a selfless dedication to one another you will find that your wife's highest need is security. She needs to know that you're love is unconditional and you devotion to her will be demonstrated by your finding ways to show that you cherish her. Do that and you will find out that she will put up with an awful lot of your geek-driven activities. OTOH, what you need most is respect and admiration from her. If she will be extra thoughtful to show that admiration by listening to your struggles with work, tech, etc. and mention that you are handsome and smart, etc. you will find yourself having nearly unbounded energy to find ways to do things that mean something special to her. My wife likes flowers, but never when she is mad at me (which is pretty rare). BTW, learn to be the one who apologizes first. Also the answer is ALWAYS "no that doesn't make you look fat" period. Tell her often you love her and if she ever asks you whether you still do, that is never the time for diliberation. The right answer is "yes, with all my heart". You'd be surprised how that will make her truly beautiful in your sight. Also, never fall for the "oh don't get me anything for my birthday, anniversary, etc.". They always want you to do things because you love them, not because they compelled you to do it. Start there and you'll be just fine, Geek or not.

I believe there is a special place in hell just for the domain name cybersquatter. Were it not illegal and immoral to inflict slow torture, I'd be all for that as a response. What I wouldn't do is EVER purchase the domain name from them. Think of the unique brands that have come from alternates, like 'flickr' for instance. I can not conceive of a brand so important as to reward these vermin. As an owner of dozens of domains, I can understand reserving a brand that you may or may not develop in the future and if not, either letting them expire or put them up on auction to recoup past registration fees and a reasonably good idea that you just don't have the drive to commercially develop. But to own thousands just so others will have to pay you a premium is to provide absolutely no value whatsoever while demanding exhorbatant fees for the privilege.

The government can't find its own navel with a mirror, 500,000 pages of regulation, a constellation of GPS satelites, Echelon, and an Army Divison. What makes anyone think they can handle the cybersecurity for themselves much less every little mom and pop organization. Oh yes, they are only talking about critical privately held assets now, but this is a slippery slope to grab control of every computer on the planet. I have "free" anti-virus software installed on all my systems at home because I take classes at a local community college and of course they don't want a virus getting into the network from my house. So far it's voluntary. But sooner or later even individual personal computers will be spotlighted as the hole in the dike that still needs plugging. And when that happens, we'll all have mandatory hardware based security built in and controllable by the Government. After that, when NIST is telling us what a "virus" is, sooner or later, any "unproductive" or "harmful" speech that doesn't serve the common good will be the virus that needs squashed. At that point its just a matter of time before Stalin shuts me down for such speech, or they create a master AI program (SkyNet) who decides that the only leak still needing plugged is the pesky Carbon Based Life forms that pollute the planet and introduce viruses into the otherwise virtual perfection that the Internet has become.

Don't worry about going green, worry about getting a life. Honestly, who blasted stupid can you be to worry about whether beer is going to doom our planet because of its CO2 footprint. Much more damage is done by 6 Billion people farting than through Alcohol production, much less the tragedy of those addicted to the stuff. So either go have a beer or six or go stick your head in a toilet!!

So what do you supposed it does when you pick your nose.... Oh, yeah, that's right, it browses microsoft.com!