SG-1 please Amazon!

You know... swimming pool, soccer... screen time is after dinner. And ya some of us (adults) do actually go outside.... to sit next to the pool and play Eve Online...

I remember as a kid in the 1960/70s not being allowed outside during summer vacation due to "Smog Alerts". So glad we're making America great again. Looking forward to the enjoyable times of not letting my kids play outside.

This is the chronic issue. They work full time at Facebook, but Facebook outsourced this labor to a sub-contractor for cheap rates. They skirt employment laws by outsourcing labor. Then the employees are paid far below a living wage. It happens in all tiers of employment. The is very dominant in IT. Large companies outsource their IT labor to contractors and those contractors get a sub-standard wage and no health benefits. The company get's a good financial outlook on paper while large portions of their workforce are shafted. What needs to happen is a change in law, that which if you work full time for a company you must be paid by that company at least a living wage and health benefits. All this sub-contracting to skirt decent wages and benefits needs to end.

I have a 2014 volt. Love it. I'm averaging 42-45 miles on the battery. I gotten gas 2 times since I purchased it. It has an 8 gallon gas tank. I drive it every day to work which is 35 miles each way. So... 70 miles a day for 3 years and so far used a total of 10 gallons of gas.. Cause well I still have 3/4 of a tank in it now... I charge at home with a phase 2 charger in my garage. My house is solar powered. My cost to charge at home is $0 I charge at work from my employers solar grid. My cost to charge at work is.. $0.. So ya.... I'm basically done with the whole buying gas thing.

Speaking as a UNIX Sys admin... that 80-100k a year is likely your problem. 80-100k was competitive 15 years ago..

While I no longer have a Dobsonian telescope.... to this day every Halloween for Trick or Treat instead of candy I setup my 14inch Celestron on the sidewalk in front of my house and "Treat" the kids and many parents to views of the night sky. Rest well John Dobson. Rest well.

Lol good luck!! A few years ago when I left the company I worked for when a certain very large bank that was taking over the very large bank I worked for.. I took the package. They sent a Unix (AIX) admin to come learn about my 400 (ish) Solaris systems. Most of which where Oracle RAC and VCS Clusters. This poor AIX guy knew nothing of Solaris, Oracle or VCS. All the documentation in the world wasn't going to help him. So, I did what any self respecting UNIX guy did. I told the very large bank what my very large hourly rate would be going forward after I left and gave them all the help I could for the next six months while they found a Solaris knowledgable UNIX admin.

Last time a potential employer asked me for my Facebook login, I said, sure! Give me the financials and personal Facebook account info of your CEO, CTO, CFO, CIO, etc. I'd like to do the same checking. They of course declined and I walked out of the door.

So the phone company now believes they have the right to: #1 - Police/observe what you do #2 - Judge what you are doing with no Jury or defense or proof #3 - Sentence you as guilty #4 - hand out a sentence of cut your internet access or re-direct you. If the government tried this people we go nuts. But I guess it's ok for a company.

When my son was 18months he already had complete understanding of my iPhone. Lots of fantastic learning apps for kids too. He's now age 3, he can read, count, and spell. And... Call Grandma. At age 2 he was teaching Grandma how to use her newly bought iPhone... He also knows many more dinosaur names then I do, all thanks to some great apps on the iPhone. Of course he only uses my iPhone supervised and he learned very quickly to be careful with it. Any sign of "about" to become rough with it and it's instantly taken away. Kids learn fast and they love the iPhone so he treats it very gently.

http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/senate/st01/st01790.htm

Ya nice thing to do and I agree. Educate them is the best plan. I agree in theory with the annoyance tho. Being I'm the family "computer support person". I'm a UNIX admin and really don't do much with Windows at all however, I sure get plenty of calls from family members. The thought (key word "thought" as in not something I say to them) is wow, they sure spent a lot of money on a tool (PC) that they haven't even learned the basics about. You don't really see people spending that kind of money on other items and proceeding to use (and break) it without at least opening the manual. The other not so fun part is that I'm 2000 miles away from them and trying to go step by step trying to figure out what exactly is wrong ... well takes quite a bit of time. And quite often that is time (hours) I'm spending on weekends that honestly, I'd rather be doing ANYTHING other then working on some else's computer issue. Especially, when they broke it to begin with :-). And ya... doing it for free. Funny thing is my wife is an attorney and they don't ask her for free lawyer advice... Why is it expected that we fix family pc's for free? =P... Late my answer has been, "yes I can fix that windows problem! If you want me to install Linux let me know"

My company has firewall rules that block using email from yahoo, gmail, msn, etc etc. They also have some pretty strict rules about using wireless devices to access outside networks. Funny I have similar rule and policy on my home firewall that blocks work email. On the same token I doubt a blackberry would be allowed under "home" policy either. Such a device would "clearly be in contradiction to the required activities demanded of me at home". Oddly work has a similar rule that "any device that is in contradiction to your required job activities is not allowed". It's amazing how my work and home policies are so similar. Like they were written by the same lawyer or something. I've often told my manager that if the companies policy where to change that I'd talk to the admin of my home firewall and see if she'd do the same. It very hard for work to argue the point. After all it is their policy!