Depends what you're doing on the ground. If you're welding pipe, about $2450 per week, and possibly an extra 400-700 weekly per diem depending who is hiring you.

If you're welding beams(non-pipe), about $1500ish per week, with the same per diem.

If you are welding boilers(which is more dangerous than all of the above in long-term health effects), you can expect $3500ish and up per week, with the same per diem.

Keep in mind those are just estimates where I live and work(Arkansas, Texas, mid-south), and if you travel north the rates go up nearly double once you reach WI & MI.

Your answer, it's called "welding school".

I can't be the only person hanging from a crane welding in new support beams on a bridge...also reminding myself to submit my kernel patches when I get home.

The pay by the way, is about the same. (30-50 for nubs, 50-100 for traveling pros)

We don't pay CS majors 65k a year out of school. You get less than half of that.

Reality is alot less comforting than your parents "computers are the future!" speech I imagine.

It does have it perks though, you will never put in a "hard days work", although you might have to press the buttons on your blackberry on the weekend.

I agree with you 100%. Banks I've worked with will hire Indian workers at 20k to network admin over 1000+ clients. That's a bare minimum 50k to a US worker. It's bullshit. I know about "hard times", but like you said, if it's hard times, then execs shouldn't be getting 7 figures.

Take is slow

damnit i can't stop! there is a "page 2" link at the bottom, but no page 3 =( and it's all in italian, but goddamn!

bwahahahahahahahaha.

..first one to register and create something like "seethebudget.com", mirror the gov page with forums, comments, and articles about specific parts of the budget - will be a millionaire.

Tons of folks logging on to bitch, moan, flame, and look at banner ads. Sounds like a winner =P

That makes far too much sense to ever pass. I don't know how our system can be changed without t

No, they are NOT programming languages. Don't ever delude yourself into thinking they are. A perl/python/ruby/whatever-you-learned-while-NOT-getting-a-cs program has no concept of memory management.

/agree

ready, it's got more work than any one human can pull off, and it's located at http://kernel.org/

Please stop submitting stories, each one is uniquely similar to shit.

I modded my xbox (250gb hd, xeniumgold chip), and it doesn't even HAVE an xbox game on it. I did it to put on all my emus and about 300-350 DivX movies I ftp to it over from my PC. Also, the controller and such is so easy that my girlfriend and house guests can figure out how to watch movies, or play old emu games without me having to walk them through installing ZSNES and using bittorrent on a pc.

The sad part is, you wouldn't even grasp how to rub the sticks together to heat up your bark to gnaw on.

Bono doesn't have any musical tutorials for you either =(