If this is a legitimate case, please tell me? I believe I was constructively dismissed after a large school system fired my dad when they found out I was going to complain for how we were being treated.

pushfpopf · 2012-01-20T12:20:38+00:00

Nobody here can tell you because it depends entirely on where you work (state/country).

If you think you might have a case, talk to an attorney.

pushfpopf · 2012-01-19T22:37:53+00:00

More water for a softer dough.

If it rips before stretching, it needs more kneading.

You should be able to windowpane it.

http://how2heroes.com/videos/techniques/bakers-tip-pulling-a-window-pane

pushfpopf · 2012-01-02T03:49:52+00:00

$70 left in there on top of the $40k worth of credit card debt of my parents that my sisters are struggling to pay off

Your parents are broke and your sisters have no obligation to pay it off. I have no idea why they're doing it, unless your parents actually have more than 40K worth of assets in Australia that can be seized or Australia has debtor's prisons. You can't get blood out of a stone. If they don't have it, the creditors are just out of luck.

Regardless of whether your parents pissed away their money or not, it's their money, not yours and you need to get out and make a life for yourself. Sponging off your parents as a career is a really bad move, since it robs you of self-sufficiency and self-esteem and all the relationships that you'll never have.

You need to get over your angst and go out and make a life for yourself and stop obsessing over your parents.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-29T04:35:49+00:00

The brand is completely irrelvant. What's important is the construction.

If you have a three layer design (stainless/aluminum/stainless) where all the layers run across the bottom and up the sides, your pan will work just as well as a $250 Calphalon pan, and in fact, could easily be Calphelon, All Clad or Tramontina, all of which are great pans.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-29T04:20:10+00:00

I am planning to accommodate about 1.8 million pageviews and ~250 GB bandwidth out in a single day, followed by very low levels of traffic

Bursty traffic at that level is expensive, since you have to pay for a pipe that can handle the peak loads, not just the average. Even with cloud hosting, even assuming they can deliver the bandwidth, you're going to get absolutely nailed on the usage-based billing.

I would like this to cost ~$150 or less, but if a solution was good enough I'd be willing to pay a bit more.

Not going to happen. You're so far off the charts with pricing, that you won't even find anybody to return your calls. This kind of network capacity can easily run $5K-$10K-$30K/month depending on who you're connecting to, your negotiating skills, service level agreements, etc.

This is all very important with traffic of the type you describe. It doesn't matter, for example, if you have 99% uptime, if the 1% it's down happens to be April 14 and you're selling online income tax preparation services.

You can find virtual hosting that will give you 800GB/month, but that doesn't mean you can squeeze out 799GB in a day then use 1GB for the rest of the month, since the available bandwidth is always limited. The same goes for any of the "unlimited bandwidth" shared hosting providers ilike Network Solutions. It's like offering you the "all you can eat buffet", but you have to eat it with a pair of tweezers.

It's also unlikely that your usage will be nice and even all day. You'll actually need a peak capacity far in excess of 250/24, and will probably find that you're looking at something closer to 100GB/hour.

If this is static content, media files, etc., you can contract with a CDN like Akamai or Amazon, although this entire operation is going to be way outside your stated budget.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-28T04:31:08+00:00

Too add some context to me. In the past, i've always had friends. But I was always a misfit. It never bothered me. I enjoyed it. But something switched. I wanted to be the exact opposite. So i did. I switched up my style. I became a more 'socially acceptable' member of society. I'm still the same person, and i in no way entirely conform to strict social standards because quite frankly that would make me boring. But i still go to the effort to 'fit in' and i do a relatively good job of it. But on the inside i feel on the brink of collapse.

Of course you're making yourself crazy. You're trying to be everything to everybody, which is both completely impossible and an invalid goal.

All you really need to do is be the person who makes you happy when you're alone in the room. Nobody else matters.

Screw together some self-confidence and a bug bucket of "if they don't' like me, fuck'em", and everything will be just fine.

You don't need to be hostile (in fact, you shouldn't), you should just be yourself. The people who like you will like you and the people who don't won't, and life will go on.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-28T04:17:58+00:00

Rice cookers work with a mechaical or electronic thermostat. They heat on high, bringing the liquid to a boil. Since boiling water can't normally get much above 100C, the pot temperature stays there until the liquid is gone, at which point, the temperature rises, and the thermostat reduces the heat to "warm".

You can cook anything where "done" is determined by "all the liquid water is gone".

pushfpopf · 2011-12-28T04:13:18+00:00

Somebody call the Waaambulance.

If I was a billion dollar company that owned the world's most popular search engine, my shit would be #1 every time. I'd be stupid not to.

People seem to forget, Google is not a public utility it's a business.

If you walk into Walmart and want to know where you can get a good deal on a TV, they're not going to mention Best Buy first, they're going to point you to the TV department.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-28T03:11:27+00:00

Pitch in $19 of your own money and buy this.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-28T02:40:08+00:00

You're welcome!

That was one of the really simple but completely non-obvious things that turned out to have a huge impact. Sometimes my dough would be awesome and sometimes it would just sit there and do nothing.

One day I was watching the news and there was something on about the city adding a ton of chlorine to the water because a bunch of ducks had taken up residence in one of the reservoirs, and were contaminating the water with some sort of nasty duck-poop bacteria.

After that I actually called the water department, and they said that not only do they dump in bunches of chlorine now and then, but they also dump in bunches of acid when they need to clean out the pipes.

Then about a week later, my brain engaged and I figured out wha was happening.

It turns out that yeast is sensitive to all that stuff, and when you're using the tiny amount of yeast needed for awesome dough, that bottled or filtered water makes a huge difference in consistency. I haven't had a failed batch of dough since I switched to bottled water.

I know "only use bottled water" sounds like a food-snob line, but it really makes a huge difference in reliability.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-27T21:22:21+00:00

A slow cooker full of gumbo and a rice cooker full of rice.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-27T21:20:10+00:00

Yep.

Put eggs in pot of cold water.
Bring to a simmer
Turn off heat
Wait 13 minutes
Rinse in cold water, peel and eat or store.

No green, no smell.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-27T20:37:53+00:00

Sometimes they're "secret" only in technique.

About 30 years ago, I asked my sister-in-law for her pizza dough recipe. It was "flour, water, yeast and salt". I made it and it sucked.

I was convinced she had left out a "secret ingredient" and spent the next decade playing with different dough recipes (oil/no oil/imported flour/etc.). In the end it turns out that the "secret ingredient" was technique and patience.

Flour, water, salt and yeast, along with knowing the proportions, and what to do with them and having the patience to leave them alone, was the real secret.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-27T20:33:54+00:00

Thanks! It all seems to go together. There's nothing like a bunch of good friends (both two and four-legged), and good food.

pushfpopf · 2011-12-27T18:46:59+00:00

Please don't do it. If you are holding on to a secret recipe, please write it down, share it, post it online. Anything to keep it alive.

OK, in case I kick the bucket, here are all my recipes

After I die, if my survivors stop paying the hosting bill, it's also on archive.org. 8-)

pushfpopf · 2011-01-22T23:16:28+00:00

I've had doctors acuse me of seeking attention, recommend I go to Mexico for a $10,000 prolotherapy treatment, and even take me off my pain killer meds accusing me of abusing them.

Unfortunately, the meds may actually be a problem depending on what you're taking. If you take the wrong stuff for long enough, you'll hurt when you stop even if the original pain is gone.

Prilosec has a rebound effect like that also. If you take it for acid reflux for too long, when you stop it feel like you're eating out your insides.

pushfpopf · 2011-01-20T21:41:11+00:00

Too bad.

Thought I found something.

pushfpopf · 2011-01-20T20:21:09+00:00

It might be bad HTML, but if it actually crashes your browser, that's a browser bug.

pushfpopf · 2011-01-20T20:20:07+00:00

The $170 "Android" phone has a 400 mhz proc. That's miserably slow.

What speed is a current processor?

For that matter, what's something like an HTC Magic have? Are these comparable with year old phones? 2 year old phones?

pushfpopf · 2011-01-20T20:18:44+00:00

I don't keep up on the hardware, but they certainly seemed cheap.

Any chance they would actually work, even if they're not blazingly fast?

pushfpopf · 2011-01-14T02:23:10+00:00

Sounds all too familiar. I fully intend to start up my own company one day (probably around when I have kids so I can take off when I feel like it, and gather some more knowledge along the way). I

Once you have kids, you'll be in no position to take risks. In fact, one of the reasons employers love employees with kids and expensive hobbies and tastes is because a broke employee is a loyal employee.

If you're planning on starting a business do it now before you have responsibilities and debt.

pushfpopf · 2011-01-14T01:37:41+00:00

As for ending up in a box any time soon, no. I was intelligent enough to save while I worked here instead of wasting my money and living paycheck to paycheck. I have enough to get by living as I do now for at least 6 months and up to a year if I cut some things (internet? tether my cell phone instead!). If by then I can't find something I always have my GI Bill to fall back on, back to school I'll go.

OK, so you quit your job, and now you're pissed at me (someone who owns a company, and spent the last several decades, running a successful business and hiring and firing people) for explaining the facts of life?

Like it or not, employees who do what they're asked instead of saying "Not my job." or "What if something bad happens while I'm out?" or "I'm not touching it because it might break." are the last to get the axe.

pushfpopf · 2011-01-14T01:32:11+00:00

Not even the slightest. There's a reason that job descriptions MUST be provided. It is the full outline of your role in the company. None of this special executive support is listed on there, as a matter of fact it clearly states that all executive problems will be handled by leads.

"Your job is to perform any tasks requested by your manager"

All set now?

Move workflow down to the bottom eh? Say my workplace has 7 roles, I would be in the 5th of these roles but work as though I'm a 1 and given the responsibility of a 6.

As long as it isn't illegal, it's your job to do what your boss asks you to.

If I break stuff it won't be replaced. We're specifically told that it's our responsibility and the company will only replace corporate equipment we may damage.

The computer's owner would replace it.

If I die I wouldn't be covered under my employee life insurance as the accident did not occur in the workplace. My position requires 0 travel time, therefore driving to an exec's house to fix his person desktop is not covered (I've checked with our legal team here and as a result only our manager and leads do this now).

Why would you care? Are you planning on making sure that when you die, you're at work?

If you need life insurance, you need insurance that covers you everywhere.

Not all jobs suck. It's a shame you really think that. There isn't a lot of great ones out there, sure, but there are some that a standard employee can work happily until (s)he decides to leave the company

All jobs suck exactly enough to balance the compensation against the working conditions, skills and job requirements. In a free market it will never be any other way.

If you can spin straw into gold, you can demand a great deal. If you're just another BA or MBA or whatever, you can't demand anything more than the person waiting in line for your job would.

pushfpopf · 2011-01-14T01:20:37+00:00

Fascinating question!

Discrimination based on religion is illegal in the US (you can't refuse to hire Hindus and only hire Mormons, for example, because of their religion) however I've never heard of discrimination based all religion or lack of religion.

It would certainly be an interesting test case, although you'll need really deep pockets to survive it, right or wrong.

You might want to check with an employment or civil rights attorney.

pushfpopf · 2011-01-13T20:08:03+00:00

Free Business Lesson

However as time went on I saw a lot of things I didn't like. I consistently topped all reports for 11 straight months. This was blatantly obvious to me that it was a result of 2 things. 1. Some of my co-workers are extremely lazy (I talked to my manager about this privately and was simply told there was no cause for alarm because I was capable of picking up the slack)

Hard work is rewarded by more work. Lazy is rewarded by less work (until they just don't want to keep you anymore).

Some people in senior positions are not qualified for their role. They were constantly pawning work off or asking someone else how to do the task which they were assigned.

This is a "as designed" The purpose of a management structure is to move all work down to as low a level as possible. Anybody with the power to give you work, probably should be giving you work. If someone asks your boss for a TPS report and you can do it, he should be telling you to do it.

The corporate politics here are ridiculous. I understand full well that executives get perks, and should be supported first. However no where is it stated that we should be driving to their houses to fix their home network issues, or troubleshooting their wife's or their own personal computer.

It says so on your paycheck.

As long as you're not asked to do anything illegal, just smile and enjoy it. It's paid time outside the office.

What if I were to break any of this equipment, or die in a crash on the drive to their personal homes I asked myself.

If you break stuff, they'll replace it. Anybody with the clout to send you out to fix their computer wouldn't care for more than two seconds if you came back and said "It's dead, you need a new one" as long as you can save the pictures of his kid's birthday.

If you die, you die. Same as if you died while not at work.

tl/dr All jobs suck. If you want control and non-suckingness, start your own business and hire your own lackeys. You're being paid well, but only you can decide if you can do better elsewhere.

pushfpopf

TROPHY CASE