I have heard the priority queue is very effective at communicating the limited IT resources. Upper management, the product team, and especially marketing will have a hard time watching features move down queue as more TOP TOP items get added. At first it is hard for them to give up some features for others, but with *rigorous* defense, the whole company can be made to accept the queue, and come to terms with the limited IT resources.

How will the marketing corporations refine their targeting advertising when your loved ones pollute your history with their love-motivated actions?!

From my limited experience, the OLAP community is small and/or behind walled gardens, the tools are poor and closed source, and potential employers are only interested if you have experience in *their* BI tools (Pentaho, Microstrategy, Cognos, etc). Microsoft appears to be the only one trying to establish a theoretical basis for BI, but their efforts are starting to show age despite their being so much more that can be done in the field. Finally, you will be misunderstood by the majority of Rails/PHP/Web developers: The same one who think Key-Value stores and NoSQL are the height of modern technology.

That said, BI can be technically satisfying. If you get down to the SQL/MDX you will appreciate what a database can do; which allows questions to be phrased succinctly. I have seen too much code written in procedural languages (Javascript being the worst of them) that are many lines long and run atrociously slow, that can be restated in SQL (or MDX) simply, and run a 1000x faster. I love that fact there are no loops!

From a business perspective, you have much more exposure to management and other departments: You will have improved visibility in the company, and your worth will be inflated - as you will be the one that satisfies management's appetite for more information to help make decisions.

My biggest consideration when getting one of these warranties is how long it will be gone for repair. Look at the fine print to find how long the company has to make the repair. It has been my experience that the maximum allowed time *will* be the time it takes to repair. Can you go that long without your device? I know I can not wait the requisite 60/90 days, so I do not purchase the warranties.

Say you can not fix it. Fake it if you have to. Once they have to pay a professional a few times, they will be more careful and password-protect thier machines from each other.

No! Do not get it too early!

This is a new virus, and it can be both unstable and deadly. If you can delay getting the virus, it has a chance to evolve into a strain that is more effective at transmitting to other hosts; in other words, it becomes less leathal.

As long as you display energy and enthusiasm during the interview, your age will not be a factor.

I know a retiree that took up Python programming for fun, and he was better than most developers I know. Meeting with him, and working with him, showed me that all the cognitive science/superstition is wrong: The brain does *NOT* degrade over time, it is only your attitude.

I am now 35, I still love programming, and I can be a hacker forever!!

DVDs will fail on you when you least expect it. Service providers will dissapear over the years.

The only sure method is to maintin the backup, and incure the monthly maintnenence fee (either actual money for backup service, or consume your time maintining the backup server yourself).

My primary machine is Raid5, so data is not lost. My backup server is Raid1 (because drives will silently fail). I use a backup service just in case the other two fail (but sensitive information can not go there).

My experience is that a server can last almost a year without hardware failure. Same with hard drives: I have 6 drives, one or two will fail inside the year.

That reminds me, my backupserver died last week. :(

I would have to agree. A person's experience will be littered with mistakes, so asking them about the mistakes will reveal the size and complexity of the problems they had to solve.

I am also of the mind that only real-life work will expose true skill: I wish I could hire applicants for a couple of weeks to see how they integrate, how fast they learn, and what skills they can bring to the company.