On 24/10/2011 1:23 PM, Invisible wrote:
>>> Sure, the CEO of a large corporation might earn something like that.
>>> (Depending on how large, of course.) Normal humans don't earn that
>>> sort of money.
>>>
>> No, trust me normal people do earn that sort of money but they tend to
>> be contractors, in my experience.
>
> Like I said, the ONS claims that such a figure puts you well beyond 
> the 90th percentile.
>
Me! I never said I did.

>
>> A nightmare. When I occasionally work in London I take the bus or the 
>> tube.
>
> I usually go by train as well. (Then the fun part becomes figuring out 
> where to park at MK station...)

You'd have to go early before it fills up.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:06:58 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> On 23/10/2011 11:16 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> On 10/23/2011 13:44, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Who the hell has internet access from a telephone?!
>>
>> I bet the other sysadmins in your company do. Get your company to pay
>> for it. ;-)
> 
> I know a few of the more important members of staff get a company phone.
> People like the CEO, the site managers, and so on. I'm not nearly
> important enough for that. :-P (Besides, who *wants* to be contactable
> 24/7?)

Generally, businesses want their IT support staff to be contactable 24x7 
if the organisation operates during those hours.

Jim

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On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:50:44 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>>> What if they said "We'll give you $150,000 more each year to move to
>>>> London"?
>>>
>>> That's almost a hundred grand in UK currency. Nobody earns that much.
>>
>> Yes people do. I know several.
> 
> Sure, the CEO of a large corporation might earn something like that.
> (Depending on how large, of course.) Normal humans don't earn that sort
> of money.

I know people who do as well, and they're not CEOs of large corporations.

>> Commuting from MK to Victoria would take at least 75 minutes each way
>> by train and tube and cost about GBP 50 per day.
> 
> Yeah, not fun.
> 
>> As for driving there, no
>> one in their right mind would drive into central London to work in an
>> office. AFAIR parking is GBP 4 per hour.
> 
> The cost of parking is the least of your worries. Have you *seen* the
> traffic?! At rush hour? Truly no sane person would do this unless they
> had absolutely no alternative...

So everybody who is actually driving in London rush hour is insane?

Jim

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On 24/10/2011 5:05 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> As for driving there, no
>>> >>  one in their right mind would drive into central London to work in an
>>> >>  office. AFAIR parking is GBP 4 per hour.
>> >  
>> >  The cost of parking is the least of your worries. Have you*seen*  the
>> >  traffic?! At rush hour? Truly no sane person would do this unless they
>> >  had absolutely no alternative...
> So everybody who is actually driving in London rush hour is insane?

I didn’t say that, Mr Strawman. ;-)

What I did say was that you need your head examined if you drive in 
Central London out of choice during the rush hour.
The week before last, I left Paddington about 5pm and it took me over an 
hour and a half to drive less than 15 miles.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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>> I know a few of the more important members of staff get a company phone.
>> People like the CEO, the site managers, and so on. I'm not nearly
>> important enough for that. :-P (Besides, who *wants* to be contactable
>> 24/7?)
>
> Generally, businesses want their IT support staff to be contactable 24x7
> if the organisation operates during those hours.

Yeah. Fortunately, I don't have that problem. A few of our staff *are* 
contactable at every hour, but I don't need to be one of them.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> To be fair, I don't think they try to exclude me on purpose. It's just
>> that they all work in the same room, and I don't.
>
> Right - when you have one remote member of a team, it does require a
> conscious effort to include them.

And they make a half-hearted attempt to do that. It's just that, like so 
much in this department, it's not very thorough.

>> Is it really worth abandoning everything I've ever cared about just to
>> have more coins in my pocket?
>>
>> That's not a rhetorical question. The answer I suppose depends on your
>> priorities. If you value happiness more than money, then I guess that
>> fixes the answer...
>
> Except that you don't seem particularly happy, either.  Maybe that's just
> what comes across here, but you often sound quite miserable and
> depressed.  You worry about people in your own town beating you up, you
> hate your job, your mom drives you crazy....About the only thing you've
> said you like is the way Milton Keynes is organised.  That seems like a
> very minor reason (to me, but hey, it may be very significant to you) to
> stay someplace you hate around people you can't stand to be with who
> don't respect you.

In order to answer this properly, it becomes necessary to understand 
that my life has changed over the last few years.

I used to live in a box, paranoid that if I set foot outside, I would be 
beaten to death. After all, almost every social interaction that I had 
ever experienced consisted either of being ignored or attacked.

My life isn't like that any more. For the very first time in my life, I 
have *friends*. Actual, physical people that I can reach out and touch. 
[But only if dance class is on this week, sadly...] I'm happier than 
I've ever been at any prior point in my life.

But yes, I still really dislike my job. I just feel that I'm wasting my 
life there. And my mum still drives me crazy! (In fact, just tonight 
I've had to put up with 3 hours of her bawling her eyes out like an 
overtired 2 year old...)

> Leaving home, though, isn't "abandonment of everything you've ever cared
> about", though - I left my parents to go to college and to pursue a
> career.  I still am a major part of my mom's life (my dad having passed
> away a few years ago).

I'd love to not have to live with my mum any more. It's just that I 
actually like MK. I have actual friends here, I love my dance school, 
and to be honest, every other city I've seen is just old and run-down.

>> Well, I suppose there is something to be said for just replacing the
>> entire car... It's potentially a lot quicker than a lot of complex
>> troubleshooting. But to me, it just seems like the "wrong" answer.
>
> It also tends to be a lot more expensive, and to most businesses, saving
> money is a key part of survival.  And there's no guarantee that the new
> car you buy won't have the same problem, or a different - and more
> difficult - problem.

I hear you. Like I said, *I* don't think it's the right answer. But hey, 
that's just me. Apparently.


>> It was getting late at night. I told Gentoo to "emerge mozilla", and
>> went to bed. By the morning, it has nerly finished compiling.
>
> So with gentoo, an emerge actually downloads the code needed to build,
> and it builds all the dependencies.  So you weren't just building
> Firefox, you were building the entire system.
>
> That's just slightly different.

Well, no, I had already built several large things at this point. 
(Including X11 and KDE.) So those were already done. However, yeah, it's 
possible it pulled in some other dependencies as well as Firefox itself. 
Given that the ebuild system spews out commands longer than one terminal 
screenful (WTF?), it's hard to say.

>> OK, well let me put it this way: I would be /surprised/ if HP are
>> interested in helping anybody not paying for the priviledge.
>
> If you bought the product, you've already paid for the privilege of
> getting at least fundamental setup help for the product.  If you can't
> get it to work, you're likely to return it, and returns cost them money.
> It's in their financial interest to support any product in at least a
> minimal fashion.

Sure. But if it's just a glitch in their driver that make it not work 
with a certain product, they aren't going to bother fixing that. Not 
unless there's money in it.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:59:59 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 24/10/2011 5:05 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> As for driving there, no
>>>> >>  one in their right mind would drive into central London to work
>>>> >>  in an office. AFAIR parking is GBP 4 per hour.
>>> >  
>>> >  The cost of parking is the least of your worries. Have you*seen* 
>>> >  the traffic?! At rush hour? Truly no sane person would do this
>>> >  unless they had absolutely no alternative...
>> So everybody who is actually driving in London rush hour is insane?
> 
> I didn’t say that, Mr Strawman. ;-)

Ooooh!  I didn't say you said that, check who my post was in reply to. ;)

> What I did say was that you need your head examined if you drive in
> Central London out of choice during the rush hour. The week before last,
> I left Paddington about 5pm and it took me over an hour and a half to
> drive less than 15 miles.

I'd believe that. :)

Jim

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On 10/24/2011 6:51, Invisible wrote:
> I swear it's just busy-work to keep the kids quiet for a few hours...

Nowhere near as bad as art class,tho.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On 10/23/2011 20:47, Jim Henderson wrote:
> But maybe I'm an abberation.

You do all that if one web page times out, before you try just refreshing 
the page? Yes, you're an abberation. :)

I bet you disassemble the door of your car every time you hit the remote and 
it doesn't lock on the first try, too. ;-)

>>> a function of your teammates or their nationality, it's the way
>>> Microsoft has trained people to "troubleshoot".
>>
>> And how do people fix such problems in MacOSX, or on their Android
>> phone? It's not Microsoft. It's just that Microsoft provides a huge
>> proprietary platform with no checks on who can use it.
>
> Well, I can tell you that when I run into trouble, I actually do take the
> time to try to figure out what's going wrong rather than just refreshing
> or rebooting.

Well, sure. But it takes knowledge of what's happening inside the machine 
and what might likely be wrong. If you don't really know the difference 
between RAM and disk, you're not likely to try trouble-shooting a fragmented 
page file or something.

> Because I would far rather not run into a preventable issue over and over
> again.  I get bored with the same problems cropping up, so I try to
> resolve them.

Sure. But we're talking about a one-off, for the most part. If it keeps 
happening, people go back and complain it didn't get fixed with a reboot.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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On 10/24/2011 0:58, Invisible wrote:
>>> Why did you even apply?!" I'd feel like I wasted everybody's time.
>>
>> What if they said "We'll give you $150,000 more each year to move to
>> London"?
>
> That's almost a hundred grand in UK currency. Nobody earns that much.

I earn more, and I'm at the low end of the scale for what I do. No, you 
probably won't earn that much because you don't have the experience, but 
maybe you'll get something more significant than what you have now.

> AFAIK, London is their only UK presence. (Although obviously they themselves
> would have a better idea than I do.)

Indeed. There are lots of companies that have offices where you wouldn't 
have thought they have an office. Like, the office I'm in now. They don't 
really advertise where they have offices.

> And it's not that I don't ever want to come to London, just that I don't
> want to do so with any great frequency. Once per month wouldn't be so bad.
> Once per day would be.

How far away is it? Get a place in London, come home on the weekends, or for 
dancing.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.

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