Why make $200K if you can't enjoy it because you are working 18x7x52???

I make above $100K working 8x5x48. Been doing it since I was 40. Last two nights I worked 10 hours, but it really was needed. Rarely get called.


I'm smart, but not an expert in anything. I am a damn good trouble shooter and work on old software because new developers are too full of themselves to do it and I have a lot of experience working on code I know nothing about without finding excuses.

My salary gives me a very comfortable lifestyle. I drive a 2001 Blazer because I'm too cheap to trade in a truck that works. A truck I paid $12K for in 2003. I have a 1984 and 1989 Goldwing in the garage that get ridden over 15K miles a year because I see no reason to buy a new bike when I can get a used bike has less than 50K miles on it for $5K and will probably run over 200K miles instead buying an overpriced new bike because "it's cool". I have no debt except for the house, and pretty darn good 401K and savings accounts.

It's amazing how far a good $100K salary can go if you spend it on stuff you need instead of stuff you just want. I do buy things from time to time that I just 'want', I don't live like a pauper. But I've found that a $1000 audio system meets my needs, and 42" TV is actually big enough. So my wife and I spend our spare money enjoying life by traveling a few times a year on long weekend trips instead of stuff that just takes up space.

I have nothing against an extravagant lifestyle. If I could make $200K or more a year doing what I do now with the same level of stress, of course I'd do it. And I'd probably have a newer car and, nicer house. But not the bikes, I live my old Wings.

But I don't think I'm good enough make that much, and I don't think too many jobs like that exist. And I'm not willing to work harder to make it that far.

So I guess self-motivation is probably also a factor.....

I've worked in companies of all sizes in my 35 years in the workforce. I've seen 'old, stuffy, cigar-chomping, technology and change-fearing, pointy-haired bosses' in both small and large companies, worked for some medium-sized companies I loved, worked for some small companies where the innovator had no sense of IT at all even though he needed IT do run his ideas. Great idea saying that the 'little guy' like me should have more input, but when he pays my paycheck, he makes the rules.

I've worked for CEOs and CTOs that I thought the world of and while not innovative themselves, recognized talent and allowed the talent to do their job within boundaries. Because they knew what their job was .. to manage the company, not operate it.

I've worked with some truly egotistical moronic peers who had no concept of how bad their ideas were and were always upset they got shot down, by both management and their fellow workers. Who would want any of these people to have a say in anything??

If you don't like your company, and you are skilled enough ... leave for one you do like. If you are stuck with bosses you don't like in a company that is going downhill, then it's only because you aren't good enough. Get over yourself, knuckle down, and do your job. Make sure it's not your fault the company fails.

And please .. stop whining about how you could do a better job. You can't .. if you could, someone would hire you to do it.

They are also great for practice. Load at home, not at the range where range time is costing money.

But don't tell the anti-gun group that target shooting is fun .. it would ruin all of their arguments about 'guns only designed to kill people'. Last time I checked, guns were designed to shoot bullets. Some bullets are designed specifically to kill people, others are designed to kill animals, and some are designed just for target shooting.

Only scientists care about the differences. And they are free to work in metric if they want. I can't measure 'one fluid ounce', I can only get close. And for most people, close is good enough. Only engineers need to worry about things less than 1/8th of an inch when building stuff. And working in fractions is pretty easy when you do it all the time. I worked at a factory that made corrugated containers (cardboard boxes to the ignorant), and everything was in fractions. I got really good at manipulating fractions down to the 16ths of an inch and adding/subtracting. Just because something is difficult for one person doesn't mean it's not difficult to learn, it could mean that they just haven't learned it. Like having to learn all of the centi, milli, micro, kilo, deci, etc. prefixes. Unless you use them often enough, they are difficult to remember. I have no problems remember inches/foot/yard/mile, ounces/pound/ton, secs/hour/day/week/year, months/quarter/year. None of those are decimal. And never had to convert inches to miles, so who cares. When I need to, I can calculate it long hand. And I've never been very good at remembering all of the metric prefixes. Never had to, don't really need to. But I'm sure if I worked somewhere that I was exposed to them, I could.

Imperial is very easy for cooking, most of the items are multiples of 2 (i.e. 2 cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 2 quarts in a half gallon, 2 half gallons in a gallon). Even the factions are multiples of two, often 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16. The odd man out is fluid ounces, but many recipes use fractions of a cup, not ounces. Ounces usually means weight, unless it specifically says 'fluid ounces'. But then again, a cup of water is different from a cup of sugar, dry cups are different sizes from 'wet' cups and most people who cook know the difference. It's only confusing to people who don't cook very often, or who weren't taught it. Just as the metric system is only confusing to people who don't use it or weren't taught it.

Just because someone isn't smart enough or willing to learn a measurement system doesn't make it a bad system. They both have advantages and I agree 100% with letting individuals decide which one they want to use. Teach both in school, and if one system offers a true advantage it will become more prevalent while the other fades away to it's niches.

Instead of writing a new language because programmers are lazy, wouldn't it be easier to just hire good ones to begin with?? Or to offer a class that teaches them to type???

As a user of many different languages over the last 3 decades, I have always preferred the ones that require me to think about data types. In those that didn't force types, I found that things went a lot smoother if I used them anyway, or activated a switch that did require it.

In my experience, if I didn't understand what data type I needed, even if it's just 'Object', I didn't understand what I was doing anyway.

Think before coding, it saves a lot of time later because you don't have to rewrite as much shit.

... isn't run by consensus. I'm sure most documents back in the time of Galileo also stated the earth as the center of the universe.

Yawn ... let me know when someone comes up with a theory that actually predicts something with accuracy better than psychics can. (i.e. stop making claims so nebulous they are always right no matter what happens.)

Saying they were bribed is one way to look at it. Of course, the fact that these politicians could already have had pro-sales tax stances, and as such attracted more funds so they could get elected, is another way.

Otherwise, it's just free speech. NRA, Green Peace, Sierra Club, and every other lobby gives more to politicians who help their causes, they would be stupid to give money to people who oppose it. Why try to change someone's idea when you can just help someone who agrees to get elected. Why is it the 'other side' only points out the spending of people they disagree with, and not their own???

Correlation != Causation.

That is not bribery. Find an email where a senator said he will change his vote *IF* he gets more funds, and you have bribery.

There are many opposing lobbies that also spent money on getting their politicians elected. They only people complaining about how things turned out are those who disagree with the outcome. I support 100% coming up with a method to tax internet sales, it's fair and replaces an existing source of revenue. If it's not replaced, then income or property taxes will be going up. You are going to pay it one way or the other.

If you don't support the method (i.e. having 'small' companies have to collect and pay it out), then come up with a better solution and contact your political representatives instead of pouting.

Or .. here is a novel idea ... try to convince your representatives that they don't need to be spending as much money so they don't need to tax as much. Cut back on social services, police, fire, or education so that the tax isn't even needed.

It's not a 'big money in politics' issue, it's a spending/revenue issue that no one has found a good solution for yet. Put your energies towards that end instead of whining.

.. they didn't promise the same access!

Software design is easy. Creating an efficient and effective process is hard, no matter what type of design it is. You can teach some of that by helping to identify the components necessary, or creating rules about how specific types of components will be handled.

But it still takes a person who is creative to put the components together in the most effective or efficient manner. (Yes .. those are sometimes mutually exclusive). Too many rules stifles creativity, too few rules allows for chaotic systems that can't interface with each other and a lack of consistency. Creative people can find the middle ground and introduce order without having too much rigidity.

Why can't it be just someone who actually knows what the fuck they are doing and understands the system. A bad engineer, UI, or user will always design a bad system except for that one time they get lucky.

What a load of BS. Farmers are free to plant any thing they want, they don't have to buy GMO foods. There are plenty of sources for non-GMO material, and the organic nut-jobs are free to buy and plant them. I don't care if you don't want to buy them, that's your choice. I resent a small minority of people (i.e. anti-GMO) trying to remove my choice because they have huge egos and think they are the only ones 'that know what's best.

I guess you are also against the big auto companies since the little guy can't really make and sell cars any more. It's people like you that would have fought against the buggy whip since anyone could make a buggy.

Stay in your commune where everything is bright and shiny and nothing changes. I want to live in a world driven by competition where things improve. I'd rather live in the world today with all of it's problems than the 1800s when everything was organic and people died in their 40s on a regular basis.

That's an interesting opinion, because my very-educated daughter who has gone to college for several years and studied bio-engineering says it's mostly ignorant and uneducated people who believe GMO foods are harmful. She says they listen to people who claim to be educated spout half-truths about the GMO process, and then don't have any basis to determine where or not to be concerned. Since the people making the claims are so scared, those that are ignorant and uneducated tend to believe them rather than those with reasoned arguments that aren't scared.

Now, I'm not a genetics expert, but I do have some science background. She went through the arguments against GMO point by point and was able to persuade me it was all 'crying wolf' syndrome.

But what do I know, I program computers for a living and don't really have the science background to determine if GMO foods are dangerous or not.

Unlike so many fear-mongers who just spout whatever they heard on Current TV without understanding most of it.

Sure, we can stop taxing everything. As soon as a bunch of people decide that we shouldn't be giving food and money to people who don't work or are disabled, provide fire and police protection, build highways, and a bunch of other shit that people keep asking the government to provide.

CEOs have to pay for their company cars if they use them for personal use. It's not unusually for people that own a business to have the business pay their bills, so why shouldn't that payment be taxed?? Obamacare has decided to tax overly generous health care plans.

If a benefit becomes a significant source of savings for employees, such that salary could be reduced because the benefit makes it worthwhile, why shouldn't it be taxed?? When the government raised income taxes, companies switched to options and benefits to compensate high-salary employees because it became cheaper.

Google providing food to it's employees is a method to retain workers without having to pay them more, and may encourage employees to hang around the office and work more. So Google gets the benefit of buying food, which they don't have to pay unemployment tax or medicare tax or medicaid taxes on and use that as 'payment' to work there instead of shelling out bigger paychecks.

There is a significant difference between providing a lunch every month of sandwiches, and providing free food every day. While I don't completely agree with taxing this as income on a personal level, it is consistent with existing taxes.

But, like the Occupy Anything hypocrites, feel scream out to tax everyone but me. Or feel free to scream out that taxes need to be cut without offering to reduce spending on social programs.

And, since I pay to go to college, it's none of their business. If someone wants to pay thousands of dollars and fail a course because they don't read the course material, that's their right. It's none of the professor's business really. I never took any notes in college or highlighted anything, and did just fine. Probably could have done better. But I didn't fail anything. And I paid for every dime of it.

On the other hand, if I go to the professor and am having issues, and he suggest that he monitors my study habits to help me, and I agree, I see nothing wrong with it.

It's the professors responsibility to provide the opportunity for me to learn, since I'm paying for it. It's not his responsibility to make sure I do learn.

Using this at the high school level and sooner might make more sense, since it's tax dollars that are paying for the education.

So .. you must then advocate that people shouldn't be allowed to change the temperature of their car then, because looking at the dash is distracting? Or change the radio? Or eat? Or even look at their odometer since they have to take their eyes off the road. Or for that matter, their mirrors???

If you claim it's OK to do those things, then please tell me what exact period of time am I allowed to turn away from the highway and look at my mirror or odometer? And if so, why can't I use that same amount of time to look at a GPS?

I can glance at my GPS on a 4 lane highway while traveling in a straight line with clear lines of sight for several hundred feet and if I'm following at a safe distance, just as I can change my radio or glance at my odometer. As the highway gets busier, or starts to curve, the need to stay more focused increases since more variables are changing or can change when I glance away. But I still glance in my mirrors if I want to change lanes, so there is still a window of time that is currently acceptable to be distracted. In fact, if I'm stopped at a stop light, there is no reason whatsoever I can't glance down and check emails since nothing is even moving, as long as I don't take too long and miss the light changing.

Conditions while driving change, and what is possible in one instance may not be in another. We constantly weigh risks while driving to determine appropriate responses. Some are better at it than others, it is not possible to come up with one rule to cover all circumstances. I have gone through a red light in full view of a police officer, because it was not safe to stop. He could see that I tried since the front of my motorcycle dipped when I braked, but I continued through because the car a few feet behind me wasn't slowing down (he slammed on his brakes just after I released mine.) The police officer didn't chase me down and give me a ticket, because I used common sense.

It is possible to make sure that if someone does not use good judgement, they are held responsible for their actions. Rules like you suggest are the same ones that get kids suspended from school because they point their fingers and say 'bang'. And, in the end, do nothing because police won't bother to enforce them anyway.