I'm with you on getting a refund vs owing the government. I purposely set a higher withholding amount on my W2 so that I get extra money back at the end of the year. My finanicial advisor (who is a friend that happens to be a certified advisor) gives me crap about it every year.

The way I look at it is this: If I had an extra $50 or $100 in my paycheck, would I actually save it or would I spend it? My answer is simple - I would find something to spend it on. So since I don't need it to balance my budget, I'll let the government hang onto it for me. That way in February when I get my money back I'll have a large chunk of money all at once that I can use to either spend on something big I needed to save for, or I can use it to fill up my Roth IRA for the previous year. So instead of going out to dinner an extra couple times per month, by loaning the government my money interest free I can actually get something substantial instead of wasteful.

You just have to know how the psychology works for you. Same concept as bribing yourself to get the paperwork done early, or setting your clock 10 minutes fast so that you're always on time. You know it's dumb and so does everyone else - but that's the system that works best for you.

Hmmm. Close, but I'm not convinced. How about this one.

If you had a million dollars locked in a safe and someone cracked the safe and stole your money (without damaging the safe), would you put your next million dollars in the same safe even though it was still perfectly usable? Of course not. But if they caught the thief and recovered every penny of the money stolen, would they also be able to charge the thief for buying you a new safe? I don't think the US courts have any procedure for doing that, except maybe you can collect damages in a civil court which could be the cost of a new safe to keep your money in.

I don't know if Microsoft offers an official money back guarantee program in other continents, but they do offer one for North America. I used it recently myself because the copy of Windows XP that I purchased for a client would not install due to an odd raid controller. I had to return it and buy Vista instead. They took it back with zero hassle, and I had a check in the mail a couple weeks later that I think actually included the shipping charges from me shipping them the XP media kit. This program does not cover computers purchased with pre-installed software though (OEM). For that you have to go to the company you bought it from. I was pretty happy when I realized I could get my money back from Microsoft and not have to eat the extra cost of the software license. Anybody else in a similar situation, the website is:

Microsoft Product Refund

I think you're actually right. That's exactly what I was looking for. I'm never going to get it because even though I'm only 30 and have lived and breathed tech for my whole life, I have no desire to talk to people without actually having something useful to talk about. As they said on a certain chick flick "That's not exactly a soup question".

I'll never call myself a true introvert - there were plenty of those at my college. Typical computer nerd style, and my friends and I were definitely not like them. But, your point is valid. I don't go out of my way to talk to people I have no reason to talk to right then.

I just had this discussion with my wife over the weekend, but in our case we were talking mainly about Facebook and not Twitter, but the same principal applies. My take is that I like the concept of being able to keep in touch with friends and family easily, but the implementation of facebook, myspace, twitter, and sms messaging leaves a lot to be desired. Facebook and myspace allow other people to post things which you may or may not want posted about you, and it keeps those postings for a certain amount of time (# of posts). Yes, you can delete them, but that's not the point. If there was damage, it's already done. Twitter is completely abused by people posting things about going to the store or going to a movie. Who really cares about that except stalkers or people who need to live vicariously through other more exciting people? I see the point for texting/sms, but I can't stand hearing about people that constantly text their friends. If you need to have a conversation with someone with multiple questions and answers, then it's a lot quicker (and cheaper) to call them. It's only quicker to text if it's a single message with a single response. Yes, I'm very technologically literate - I have worked in the computer networking hardware industry for ten years. But the implementation and addictiveness to many people of these four services is really bad. I know a few people who use these services solely for posting pictures and stories for family and good friends - I definitely get that.

For the flip side - my wife uses facebook quite a bit and likes getting updates from people she probably wouldn't call and talk to. Also enjoys looking at pictures when someone posts them. I get that - I just don't get the constant attention it requires. I look at her page, and see 3-4 updates from some of her friends on a daily basis, and we're not talking high school or college kids here. And half of them are lame attempts at introspective comments like - "can't wait to go drinking", "feeling lonely", "two days until the weekend", "my life is like xxx song lyric", etc. She agreed with me about that stuff, but it seems like most of our joint friends enjoy posting comments like that. As for twitter, she equated it to instant messaging. Definitely not the same thing because it's kept forever and isn't a two way conversation.

I'm not starting flames. I just don't understand why so many people are so addicted to these computer based types of social networks when to an outsiders perspective many of the posts seem either phony or useless. There have to be other people out there that agree with me, or that can come up with rational reasons as to why I'm wrong.

I'm not sure what country you're from. Since you say college instead of some other term I'm going to guess US. I'm not that long out of college myself. In my experience, and that of many of my friends, it's all in who you know. Very few people get internships out of the blue. It's either through family members and friends of family (church, people met at activites, etc), or something setup by your college's student employment department. At least one internship was required for us to grauate, and many people did two.

I actually did three (one with one company, and two summers with another), and I wasn't alone with that. Internships (at least for IT) aren't that hard to come by if you don't wait for them to find you. Engineering might be completely different. Then there's paid vs unpaid internships - all IT internships are paid, but I had friends in other areas that had to work for free.

Internships are not real jobs. The person doing the hiring isn't really all that concerned with your skill level. It is much more important to them that you are an outgoing person with opinions on things that might be able to bring the company some extra value. If they have a large internship program and routinely have dozens of interns, them might want to hire people they think will work well together personality wise. An internship interview is typically only a few minutes, vs a real interview of an hour three times with three different people.

Really, it shouldn't be very hard to find an internship - don't be shy and do ask around to everybody you know. You'll likely be surprised. And yes, a resume is a must - even for an internship. Once your name gets on the interview list for the internship, you have to screw up pretty bad to not get it.

First, I would work extremely hard to progress in my current position. I'm not sure why everybody's assuming you're level one tech support. I would assume if you're posting here that you're level two or level three. Regardless of what level you're at, you want to move up to the highest level. Study, get whatever certifications you can easily get, and move yourself forward in your current organization.

Next, try to move out of tech support at your current job and get a job with the same employer in the server or network department. Stay there for six months or so before applying for new jobs at new employers. If you jump around too quick they'll assume you're going to leave them quickly too and not give you the time of day.

If you absolutely cannot move past your current level at your current employer, or cannot take the time to move to a different department at the current employer, then do some creative editing of your resume. Use a headhunter or three - they will often edit your resume for you. You don't want to list tech support. Bill yourself as a level 2 NOC engineer, or something. Anything but tech support. List specific products and classes of components that you support - ie enterprise MPLS network troubleshooting, or wireless component deployment and design, etc.

Definitely use a headhunter - they'll help you stress the things that you need to stress, and gloss over the rest.