kirbman89

The benefits are great at the USPS. However, salaries aren't great. It's difficult to witness much of the waste of deadbeat full-timers and even some incompetent staffed contractors. Outsourcing to Accenture and IBM are often just massive give-aways with no-bid contracts. It's a demoralizing environment along with finicial state of the Postal Service.

Managers have the same benefits. Plus, they get to telecommute 2-3 days a week! Since that benefit was given a year or so ago many of the managers have become even more disconnected with their job.

Managers also get bonuses which they deny. The bonuses are called "pay for performance". That's a joke because the metrics used for the PFP bonuses are ridiculous and encourage micromanaging which creates resentment towards supervisors. The entire workforce is demoralized. For most, it's difficult to leave the benefits.

what you describe does sound like it worked out well.

my opinion is that there is enough demand for good programmers for the market to determine good wages/benefits. the usps union in question is working on a new contract. rumor has it they are agreeing to a whopping 3.5% raise spread over 5 years. the last annual raise was 1.2%!

there are a large percentage of "obsolete" CoBOL programmers that weren't transitioned properly to web applications. many of whom perform non-technical/light-duty tasks. the mostly younger folks carry the majority of the load. it's mostly a result of incompetent management whom never enforce accountability.

Did you have anything lined out as far as a job?

Sublet fell through twice in a week! Did you lose any money?

My biggest problem is that I would need to sell my house before I can move to the Valley. Otherwise, I'd just pack up and go!

Are you tied into one of the online dictionaries via api? I had similar idea before social networking. I can see how this could take off.

If not already, make it searchable by school, class, and textbook.

Good luck.

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I'd review the relevant trademark laws before believing a third party. Get an attorney if you still aren't sure. Question everything.

Any variables created in the method are cleaned up when the thread leaves the method. I've never heard of clean up being done after execution leaves a try-catch block. Does anyone know the answer to this?

I wasn't refering to those resources, only what the example showed, cleanup of objects in memory.

Of course closing open connections is a must. That's day 1 stuff.

I see too many programmers that get in it for the money and not the passion. Having passion removes the need to be formally instructed. Passion gives people the drive to excel and be the best. However, you do get a big picture view of what's going on having earned a degree. The slackers tend to be the non-self-teaching among us.

Books are good. That's how self-taught programmers learn.

Bubble Smubble. This bubble has a long ways to go before it pops. We're coming out of a recession! We have a few years left before we should be concerned.

What is Scheme? Sounds cake. We used Putty, Pico, and javac. I take it that this school is not an engineering school?

I agree. I'm guessing that the author doesn't even know what his database tables look like. Starting top-down doesn't make sense. As an OO programmer, it's not best practice to start a project using concrete classes. We should always code with scalability and flexibility in mind.

Why not just put the username in the cookie and make the user enter their password each time? If a user doesn't want to enter their password then they must not give that site much value.

I like the company, but don't see the big deal. I did this very thing back in 2002-3 calling a DLL to convert Word to HTML. Their implementation is much prettier of course.

This is just a bad idea. Is this going to happen before we all get computer chips implanted in our arms?

This service seems like it could be a privacy nightmare like Facebook.

Will joining affect my credit rating? In other words, will this service be validating my identity based on information in my credit report?

I'd rather stay off the grid until the government threatens to fine me if I don't sign up. (sarcasm)

A book that I would recommend for refactoring object oriented code (Java in particular) is Refactoring-Improve the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler (a friend to the Go4). Written well and in a simliar format at Design Patterns-Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Go4 (Gang of Four).

Apple is far behind Android when you look at annual growth. Let's not cherry-pick stats.

This idea of a 'Kill Switch' is nonsense. Lieberman is a pussy as he scares easily. Imagine the propaganda people are going to spread, like "the government wants to control us". Actions like this will cause a revolt because of false facts.

I am with the author. I deactivated my FB account back in December. I don't trust friend's opinions and don't trust facebook to securely store personal data of mine or prospective users. Before adding the pretty bells and whistles, make sure your site attacts users and works correctly before wasting valuable design time.

Many businesses start out just like you describe. If you did all of your work off the clock and you're not using any intellectual data or proprietary processes you should be in the clear. Keep any concept designs or specifications just in case. I have friends who started their business on the side, left their employer, and then the employers became their customers.

I like that idea. There needs to be a startup accelerator based on solo founders. We could definitely collaborate on ideas and strategies.

I agree. Read the book eBoys-The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work . The first few chapters reflect this message and may amaze you.

Brainstorming on a problem together is mutually beneficial. That really strikes a chord with me. I'd rather get to know the person that I might be working for than a boring question-answering session or worst yet writing pseudo code for recursion.

I advise you to quit school and focus on the startup!

Are you talking about Rich that works two cubes from me? Wait, you're not!

I don't see many people tweeting from work, but I do see some Facebook abuse. I don't consider gmail being to unproductive unless a person is running a side business at work through Gmail. That shouldn't fly.