Is $150k in San Francisco really that great though? Using two different cost of living calculators to translate San Francisco to Raleigh, NC (which is close to average), $150k turns into either $74k or $86k. How accurate is that? Are people living around San Francisco that underpaid for where they live compared to workers someplace that isn't insanely expensive? Even using the high $86k number, that sounds more like a good side of average programmer with 5 years experience. $150k is what good programmers I know in central FL with ~5 years experience are making, and cost of living there is under the national average.

I could care less about that.

XFCE? ....
Actually looking for the option, I did not find it...google gave me this page though, http://askubuntu.com/questions/15971/getting-visual-feedback-of-workspace-switch-in-xfce

I know one of the window managers I've used frequently in the past would do that...I thought XFCE, but maybe it was a *box or Enlightenment. Middle click in xfce will show you workspace names, and you can change them.

This was the first thing that came to mind. You don't need to go reading barcodes. Getting one of those tickets is like finding a dead and cooked in a box of cereal that you've already mostly eaten.

Is he able to configure the network? Setup some DNS entries, routes, proxies, wireless, etc. Install/uninstall software, maybe some user management? I'm sure it is really easy to turn it on and open a browser, but that isn't really accomplishing much. Yeah, I only read the summary...this is /.

The biggest hurdle I've noticed with most users (well, ok, my parents) is "I don't want to break something", and that thought seems to paralyze them as soon as something unexpected pops up. A 3-year-old is probably not thinking about that.

$128,336 in San Francisco equates to about $65k when cost of living is adjusted to the US average (specifically Raleigh, NC...it was the most average I could think of and is pretty close). I'm sure there is some flexibility in those numbers, but I don't know of anywhere in the bay area that isn't well above the national average.

Yes. The Apple Newton came out almost 20 years ago.

So what are some of these job postings where you can't find any Americans? I know more than a few who are qualified by your description, but who knows if they'll be weeded out before even talking to a real person at Microsoft with applicable domain knowledge.

+1 insightful there. Kids these days.

Neither attending, nor protesting, but instead watching as armed patrols marched down the streets where I live. I may have glimpsed a protestor, but it could of just been another homeless person. From a distance they mostly look the same standing on a streetcorner disheveled and holding a sign.

Yeah, pretty much everything you said there except for the Debian part....who the hell runs Debian? Nothing big (Oracle, SAP, Websphere, etc) supports it, and there is nobody to hold accountable when things go wrong except for the admin (the people who write the checks really like to have that...and if you have customers that rely on your systems they will like that more). It is a better place to start than something like Ubuntu or SuSE, but most people use RHEL and CentOS.

I started using Linux in high school with Slackware 3.0, and continued on using it as a desktop through college. After graduating during a recession with a degree in computer engineering, I couldn't find anybody willing to hire somebody with 0 experience. I ended up working as an office assitant doing mostly data entry for about a year at a local government office. Eventually there was a job opening for somebody who knows Linux in the IT department. Being in the government sector, they were rather prejudiced towards government employees, paid crap, and had a 15 page application that took a couple hours to fill out. I was also able to see who the hiring manager was, so I would stop by and bug him whenever I had documents to deliver to the office where IT was based. Eventually, about 6 or 7 months after I first applied I got the job. Fortunately for me, there was nobody who really knew enterprise Linux working there, so I was able to get in.

On another path were a couple more guys in IT who ended up becoming Linux admins. One started out in desktop support and another started out on the helpdesk. The guy in desktop support worked in the same office as the (two) Linux admins, so we got to know him pretty well. He had used Linux a lot at home, ran it on his desktop at work, but mostly he was smart and capable of learning new things well as needed. 100 servers later and during a re-org, the powers that be were finally convinced that we needed another Linux admin, so we volunteered that guy. The helpdesk guy was another similar story. He worked far removed from us in the call center, but we still talked to them when calls came in and would stop by and visit every once inawhile. He would call from time to time just with his own questions about Linux, and would usually not ask the same question twice. When he did forward on a helpdesk call, he was one of the few people working there who did the basic troubleshooting they were supposed to do like pinging servers, checking credentials, user account lockouts, etc. If we got a ticket from him, then it was usually because something was really wrong or he didn't have the access rights needed for the fix. When one of the (now three) admins left, we told our boss that we wanted that guy to work with us.

So, you can bug the hiring manager so that he recognizes you and be one of the only people working someplace who can spell linux, or you can get a crap IT job, get to know the *nix admins well, ask them the right questions, and have a track record of knowing how to think logically and do some complex problem solving.

Mainframe pricing is generally out of reach for most people who don't already have a mainframe. My zVM environment is ridiculously over-provisioned at the moment, so I can't really say what works well and what doesn't on it, but the largest bottleneck seems to be CPU cycles and certainly not I/O. That is kind of the opposite what you usually see on x86 VMs. It looks like databases will run pretty well here, and if the application runs on the mainframe or within zVM as well, then you get a free 6gbit network to use...I haven't been able to saturate that yet.

Wow...somebody drank the Cisco blade Kool-Aid. What is your opinion of them?

That is why I bought a Grand Seiko and a pair of Koronya shoes. I figure with these two nailed, I can go just about anywhere in bermuda shorts and a white t-shirt.