goofygrin

As I said below, I pay $270 a month for my family with a $5k deductible. Worst case, I'm out $8200 before my 100% coinsurance kicks in. I am self employed as well, so this is my total out of pocket cost, no employer contribution.

Without getting into specifics, $8,200 is less than 10% of my income. I realize I am not in the "average" spectrum, but realize thay my opinion on the subject is just as valid as those on the other end of the income spectrum.

When I was broke, sure I wanted the government to pay for everything (college, etc.). Now that I'm not broke, I don't want the government to pay for anything (for anyone) if it's going to cost me money. It's funny how things work like that :).

This is very true.

That said, I'd rather be in the pool of healthy, employed people than the unemployed moochers ;)

but if there were no taxes there would be no doctor.

Not that subtle to me.

I'm not arguing that our system is not messed up, but I'm not willing to pay an extra 10-20% taxes in order to have 'free" healthcare. I'd likely be footing the bill for everyone else.

We pay about $270/mo for the three of us on an HSA plan (in Texas). $5k deductible, 100% coinsurance after that, HSA approved.

I actually don't read TC.

I'd rather have the knowledgeable folk on here upmod a good TC article, then I'll read it.

Crowdsourcing my reading :)

If you want freehand art (like sketching), I recommend "drawing on the right side of the brain"

http://www.drawright.com/

I use Monit on my server to make sure my services are running. It also restarts them if they fail.

I use a free uptime service to make sure that my servers are reachable: http://uptime.openacs.org/uptime/

In my experience a lot of drinking and a few weeks of "dark time."

Sometimes it is issues between the founders that tears the company apart. Think "bad breakup" or "nasty divorce" and let your imagination run with it.

hmm... a $0.0000001 postit note now costs $0.025. I'm sure businesses will be all over it <where's my roll-eyes emoticon?)

This is just another case of solving a problem that doesn't need solving. If it wasn't MIT this would be on a late night infomercial.

I second this.

Personally I am super productive from about 9pm to 2-3am.

But I need to be at the client at a reasonable hour (9am-9:30am).

Lately I've taken to hacking away from about 9pm to midnight then going to bed so that I can keep everyone happy. Of course, I tend to toss and turn a bit because there is always something that my mind is chewing on that I left off at midnight.

Weekends, all bets are off and my sleep schedule gets totally messed up with late nights and early mornings (2 year old kid). Ugh, I am not 18 any more :)

I think that's likely high (I'm in Dallas and have some experience in the last couple years with recruiting college people).

I'd say the average is around 50k, only people with real experience getting more than that. Some companies are paying higher, but they are turning around and billing them out at a stupid high rate (EDS I'm looking at you).

There are a plethora of IT jobs in Tulsa and OKC. I know that where I'm consulting right now, one company they work with out of Tulsa likes to bring guys from Tulsa, pay them Tulsa salary and bill them at Dallas rates.

Now, the work likely isn't sexy. Look at the medical and oil/gas industry and start applying there.

And College doesn't teach you how to work in the real world. Why would you trust one of your college professors, who likely haven't worked at a "real" job in 20 years, with any advice relating to salary or real world type work?

I'm on Linked In, but only for the networking opportunities. It's not generated a ton of leads, but it has helped me a couple times.

I spend about 30 seconds a week on it, so it's not like I'm really active with it.

No, using a package manager where you select the app you want is NOT like dragging and dropping executables into some magic location on the filesystem.

Sync up with this guy: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=175649

And get on a jet aeroplane to somewhere where the hill to climb to a better life is significantly smaller.

An article from 2005 on a technique that is passe now (what no <li>'s?)

Karma bait...

How in the hell do you think that dragging files to an "Applications" folder is unix-y?

Ubuntu: Synaptic or "sudo apt-get install xyz" Fedora: "yum install xyz"

Certainly don't see any goofy dragging app files around here.

well flex = a flash widget and javascript is just output as part of the template/html.

Are you talking javascript <-> flex, flex <-> HttpService in django and/or django with ajax?

Frankly I find ajax/flex/flash with django to be easier than asp.net webforms since you just setup a route (REST-like if you want) and then "post" to it and return some data and use it in javascript.

In ASP.NET it's not all that hard, but I just have to remove any master pages and remember to clear out the .aspx page contents if I'm not returning HTML.

I really don't see how it's any different than any other ajax + some server technology, so if you're used to ajax <-> php, then ajax <-> django is no problem.

The problem is that Paint.NET isn't as powerful as GIMP in some areas.

I've used Paint.NET pretty heavily over the last 6 months (I use it when I don't want to wait for Photoshop to load) and while it's good for casual use, it is no photoshop/gimp/paintshop pro replacement.

>> after taking several hours just to get onboard wifi working (xps m1330)

I've got an xps m1330 and it's run Gutsy and now Hardy without any issues with the Wifi.

I've got the Intel 3945ABG card in there.

I had the N card in for a while and couldn't ever get it to work well with Gutsy.

holy crap, is there a cliffnotes?

saw a commercial this weekend... looks beautiful. Too bad I'd have to buy a $300 gaming machine that I'd never play after the initial week of marathon gaming to play it.

(as I did with the Wii -- got it, played for a while, then it was played more by other people than me, then I sold it and haven't missed it yet).

Video games are just a huge time sink for me. I just end up tired with cramped hands and nothing to show for it (other than hours and days of my life wasted).

Last week my brother in law's laptop refused to boot windows.

He brought it over on Saturday and I booted off the HH live cd and copied all his stuff onto my NAS.

There was a LOT of crap on his laptop (spyware and viruses it looked like).

I then installed HH, opera and the flashplayer on his laptop and said "here you go, your password is xxx". I showed him synaptic and made sure that hibernation and the wifi card worked and sent him home.

So far, I've not heard any complaints yet :)

I hate that GIMP is so much different.

I mean, I hate that ctrl-d duplicates the current work, rather than deselect... but this weekend, I used the ctrl-d multiple times with wild success, so maybe my process is broken :)

Not advice for improving your craft, but advice for life:

Move away from Nigeria. I know it's your home but it is a hostile environment for economic success. Heck it's a hostile place to live for a multitude of reasons (of which I am sure you are very familiar with).

When I lived in south america, I went to school with a couple kids who's family worked at the Nigerian embassy. They flat out refused to move back to Nigeria. They spent the vast majority of their effort securing visas to the US. I recommend you do the same (or to South Africa or the EU somewhere).

Am I the only one that doesn't know a single one of those?

And frankly I don't care to learn any of them. I have never been turned down for a job because I didn't have Lisp skills.

In fact, I think I can count on my fingers the number of jobs that have required any of them...

My local design buddy charges $90/hr. If he keeps working until he's satisfied, then I pay for it. Plus if he gets one design stuck in his head, then it can be hard to get him to make a new design.

With this, you get the benefit of lots of people's input without an hourly "tic" as they work on it. You never know what a fresh perspective will give you!

I think you were trying to post to the article about these "contest" sites being possibly illegal.

You know, this is a case where I think that the laws, if being broken, should be broken.

I think that these sites are more like "submitting a request for comps and receiving them" more than a "contest."

Now if people are running these "contests" and not fulfilling their end of the bargain, then they are bastards and should be caned.

But for people in developing countries with great design skills (or people in developed countries that are looking for experience) these "contests" provide a much greater potential for income that they normally wouldn't get.

I think that a lot of this whining about the legality and "morality" of these sites and contests by the establishment (in this case the design firms and professional designers) is simply a case of them being afraid of lower cost alternatives (that might be better than them!).

This may be another case of p2p and digital music vs. the recording industry and the RIAA. There will be some losers (napster) but the cat is already out of the bag.

Some of these designs look really good...

Bookmarking now since the price looks to be pretty "right" too!

I took a semester between HS and college to move back to the US (I was in south america). Best move ever since I was on the fence about school and working with my uncle at a sewer and drain cleaning business (and plumbing too) gave me a great reality check.

I then went to a state school where, except for one semester, I worked full time and school full time for 2.5 years (1 $4,500 student loan only and about $2k in credit card debt + a car loan). I got an offer for a $35k a year job in Dallas through a friend and quit my $7.50 an hour job the next week.

Took another semester off and then continued taking classes in the evenings and weekends at a community college and local commuter college.

When I finally graduated it was basically a non-event for me (didn't walk or send announcements) since I realixed I'd just paid $30k for a piece of paper that is a one liner on my resume and that really didn't teach me much.

So, like I tell lots of people these days, take the basics at a community college, take the upper level classes at a college and just get the paper since unless you're going into the hedge fund business or med/law school noone cares about your grades, just that you have a degree.

Of course if you own your own business, noone cares about a degree :)