I have always been bad at saving, lived for not exactly "the moment", but didn't think long term/retirement/etc. My bad - I'll likely be working until I'm at least 70, or longer, and it won't be a comfortable, carefree retirement. *sigh*

- Tim

So you got all that just through meticulous saving into savings accounts? Or did you do investment as well?

- Tim

I "insist" on living in the city of San Francisco, but because I grew up in the area (Santa Cruz) and really hate suburbs and commuting, and my job is here in the city.

So my commute, usually by bicycle, is around 20 mins, and I am surrounded by things to do everywhere I look. Also, a lot of my friends are here. This is why I stay here.

I am in a rent-controlled apartment, though it had been bumped up to "market rate" about 5 or 6 years ago when I moved into it, so I'm paying $1600/month for a small one-bedroom with no parking or storage. I know that would easily pay the mortgage for a decent sized house in a lot of other parts of the country. But I am not so sure I would trade living in San Francisco for that. Also, I don't have children and probably never will (almost 50), so that's not as much of an issue. I also live right by Golden Gate Park, so I have a "backyard" of sorts.

Of course, should the economy turn sour as it has 3 times in my Software Development career, I might have to stop "insisting" and do what I've done before - go mobile, go to wherever there is work. I'm ready and willing to do that, though I hope that my current job will remain stable; it's in an industry that is not as effected by the economy as some others (medical services/supplies), so I might not have to worry as much. Many of the people here are here, I believe, because of this stability (tho' most have kids and commute in to work). It doesn't attract the "best and the brightest", which makes me a bit sad because I would like to see better quality work being done, and I surely do regret the fact that I didn't apply for (or applied for and didn't get) jobs at the places that look like they're doing fantastically and their early employees are getting rich... but a job until retirement (hopefully not too old) that provides good bennies and is on a good product, working with nice people, at a decent, liveable salary for the area, is what I'm looking for mostly now. I've given up my dreams of vast bucks from elevated titles or stock options.

- Tim

Object-Oriented Basic! Wait... :-)

- Tim

When I was around 13 years old (around 1978), my brother took me up a room at his college (UC Santa Cruz) that you needed a special key for, because it held one of the computer terminals spread around campus, connected to the university's DEC PDP-11/45 running RSTS/E.

It was a dark, mysterious little room, with this mysterious Datamedia terminal wish mysterious glowing characters and flashing cursor on the screen. I was fascinated.

He showed me how to play some games on it (I think the first one was 'trek', text-based of course). It was amazing, and seemed terribly high-tech and complex to my young mind.

A year later, someone at my Jr High told me about playing games on the university's computers, and I remembered that time when I'd done that; they told me how to login to the games account:

HELLO 5,5

And off I went. The first game I played was "Animal" (you know, it guesses what animal you're thinking of). I played for awhile, but then got bored and wanted to look at other games. But... I couldn't figure out how to end the game! "end"? no. "stop"? no. "quit"? no.

Frustrated, I told my friends back in Jr High, and they told me of the Magic that was "Control-C".

I went back, played more games, and decided then and there that I wanted to learn how these things worked!

I bought a Wiley Self-Teaching Guide to Basic. I bought "Introduction to Computer Logic Circuits and Boolean Logic" (or something like that). I bought "Introduction to Pascal". Off I went. I still like programming, these 37 years later, amazingly enough.

- Tim

Ahhh - thanks for explaining. The way they appear, they *look* a lot like the "card"/Google Now functionality; too bad I can't tell Google Search not even to display those. I wouldn't mind so much if 1) they didn't take up extra space at the top of the results screen, and 2) there wasn't that delay between showing that first result and showing the rest (at least on the phone, perhaps not in a full browser).

*sigh*

- Tim

Yes, just a single card - not a whole result set of them. Not a horrible problem, no indeed, but there's also often a delay between the first 'card' result and the rest of the results, which is annoying. It's as if Google is saying "You want this one, right?" and waiting for a bit, and then going to search for the rest of the results if I stay on the results page.

I just want the result immediately, not a "You want THIS, right? right? ... okay, I guess you might want something else - I'll go get some more results" behavior.

Not the worst problem I could have, but I just want to be able to control that behavior, to completely disable the "do what I mean" kind of thing it's doing there.

- Tim

I haven't tried the mobile site lately - I gave up when it was taking forever for them to fix the bug of thumb-scroll being reeeeeeeeely slow, but I've heard they fixed that since.

- Tim

Typo - "Computed by WolframJAlpha"

- Tim

I'm running stock vanilla Android on a Galaxy Nexus.

Lemme check here:

"What time is it in California" using:

Google Search Bar: 1st response is a 'card'
Android Stock Browser: 1st response is a 'card'
Firefox for Android: 1st response is a "card" (but scaled down in size - Google is default Firefox search engine)
Chrome for Android: 1st response is a "card" (full sized - Google is also default search engine)
DuckDuckGo: 1st response is a "card", but it looks like a different implementation - it says "Computer by WolframJAlpha" on it
Bing: No "card" - though I do get a summary of a world-time page as the first result ... so it looks like... THERE IS NO ESCAPE! :-(

I'll recheck my Android settings and see if there's anything else I need to turn off. Perhaps after some recent updates they were reset.

- Tim

I disabled it through all possible means (disabled all cards individually, disabled cards/Google Now generally. It reduces their number, but not entirely... as I mention above, for example, I type "What time is it in California" and get a "card" saying "It's 5 oclock in California" or whatever. I don't want that, I want search results only, no "guessing what I REALLY want" stuff.

I can get around it through using other browsers' search functions, perhaps, or alternative search apps like DuckDuckGo.

It'd just be nice if Google let me turn it off completely.

- Tim

Well, I meant from the search bar on an Android phone. I think the built-in browser also uses the cards, so I'd need to use the Firefox or Chrome search - not sure even those would work, depending on if they themselves are using Google for their search.

I opened a browser, typed "What time is it in California" and got a "card" for the time in California, which I don't want - just vanilla search results.

So your suggestion doesn't work as such.

- Tim

I understand it's utility when, say, you enter the name of a nearby store and it presents info about it, its hours, etc; or a plane flight, and it tells you the details of the flight.

But sometimes I just want plain, unadulterated search, based on the terms as entered. I don't even want the card presented first and THEN the search results (as it does now). I JUST WANT SEARCH RESULTS, NO CARDS.

I've turned off ALL the cards, all the Google Now stuff... but it doesn't go away on my Android device. Despite all the settings, there seems no way to completely turn it off.

Bah.

- Tim

My husband, some hotshot!

HERE'S his "Ancient Chinese Secret"!

I'm confused - did you just contradict yourself? You said in a Union shop, everything is followed to the letter. And then you said in most Union shops, they don't follow things to the letter.

Which is it??