sceaj

I used to strongly feel the same way. My setup used to be 24" screen in front with keyboard and mouse, with the 13" MBP to the side. Code on the monitor, browser on the laptop usually. I thought I was the king of productivity, and I couldn't imagine ditching the dual monitor setup. I'd been rocking the dual monitors for the past 4 years.

I gradually drifted away from the monitor, and now just sit in front of the laptop. I think I just got sick of wasting time every morning plugging 4 cables into my mac (power, monitor, usb, headphones). I also like the mbp keyboard better (a LOT better) than Apple's quiet low-profile key usb keyboard. Yeah, I could have just gone with a different keyboard, but I _really_ like the keyboard on my macbook. Not using a mouse, I move my hands less. The gestures make me more efficient (and I use BetterTouchTool, as well). I also _really_ like the trackpad on my macbook.

I think there are several benefits to using just the laptop:

   1. The browser is usually hidden behind the code I'm working on, instead of staring me down. I'm distracted less, and with the keyboard I can quickly switch to the browser just as quickly as I could turn my head.

   2. Whether I'm at my desk in the office, the table at home, or lounging in bed, I'm always using the same setup. I typically do most of my work ssh'd into the cloud, so I don't really care about transporting my .vimrc all over with Dropbox, but if that weren't the case, my dot files always with me.

   3. I'm more comfortable since I don't have to keep turning my head back-and-forth between the two screens, and I don't have to keep swapping my hand between the keyboard and mouse.

I do best between 10PM-3AM because that's when I get the most uninterrupted time. After the wife and kids go to bed, I'll crawl back out for some hacking. I'd prefer getting up at 4am, but if I do, it's not long before my wife notices I'm gone and then she can't get back to sleep.

However, I've got the sort of job where I have to be there by around 9-10am. Staying up until 2-3am takes its tolls, and many nights I can't stay up much past 9pm due to only getting 4 hours of sleep the night before. If I were able to sleep later, I'd prefer the 10pm-3am shift. I feel and think better after getting up at 4am than when I stay up until 3am, fighting the desire to just fall asleep on my laptop.

TMUX is very nice to have on those nights I have to fight sleep. I almost always end when I'm at the point that I'm too tired to write logical thoughts any longer. I just shut the laptop lid and go to bed, ignoring the fact that I've still got 3 files open in vim and an active ssh connection...

One of the differentiating factors of Wolfram|Alpha: Gone.

Google's doesn't require a 250mb plugin to become interactive (just a webgl capable browser...). And it seems to be about 8 times faster than W|A...

W|A still does a lot of things other sites don't do, but it tends to be unusably slow, and inconsistent (running same query twice in a row will sometimes not give all of the same results).

I figure the end is probably closer than one might expect for W|A. They don't seem to be moving quick enough to stay infront of the curve forever. Also, the site is becoming littered with obtrusive ads, and that's a pretty negative experience. (I also hear Wolfram's company may be struggling.)

This should have been praise for Google's new tool, but it turned into a rant on Wolfram|Alpha... whoops.

Google sort of respects the header, but my experience has been that the behavior is odd.

I was working on adding localization to a web site, and so changed my headers to prefer Japanese. I accidentally left this on when I visited AdWords. I put English back to the top, but it took a week or so of manually changing the interface back to English for it to stick. Took one time to get it in Japanese, and about 50 to get it back to English.

My daughter is 4. She loves LEGOs. She also loves bugs, snakes, sharks, dinosaurs, Star Wars, her train set, Barbies, princesses, fairies, puppies, and sneaking into her grandma's makeup.

My son is 11 months old. He's taken a liking to cars and balls, but he also loves his sister's Barbies. Particularly, he likes to pull their hair, but I think he's drawn to the (ahem, slight) humanness they possess. They look friendly.

Separating "boys' toys" from "girls' toys" is pretty much nonsense. Of course, older boys aren't going to want to play with Barbies. Not necessarily because they wouldn't enjoy it, but because they are marketed to girls, and, most importantly, they would get made fun of for doing so. Were it socially acceptable for boys to play with Barbies, I promise they would.

Realize that when we're shopping for toys for my daughter, the toy store is twice as big for her, because she's not aware that she isn't supposed to like action figures and rc cars.

I think the genderizing of colors is just crazy. What makes pink a "girl's color" and blue a "boy's color" ? I'm convinced it's just marking influence. Most girls' clothes are pinks and purples, and similar "girly" colors. With that, most of what my daughter wears is pink or purple. Of course she loves the colors; we drape her in them daily. She chose blue, green, and red for her bedroom, and we let her do that, instead of saying "No, no, those colors are for boys."

My favorite part about the Contrast Rebellion is that Media Temple is listed as one of the bad examples... and then at the bottom:

hosted by (mt) Media Temple

So, I'm most certain that I'm being given the shaft by my employer.

A coworker recently quit, because he felt underpaid (his previous job paid him over 10% more). Negotiations with HR got him nowhere, so he left.

The coworker and I had identical jobs, and we did them in the same capacity, with very similar skill levels. When he left, he disclosed everything to me. Despite being underpaid, he was still being paid significantly higher than I am (almost 25% more).

Of course, I'm no longer happy with my pay, but don't really know what to do about it. I don't have the flexibility to just leave town, and I'm in a town that just isn't hiring developers right now ("metro"=200k). I've applied to places far away, but just without much luck. I thought if I got an offer, I'd have some arguing room. But I don't; I don't have anything. Besides, if my employer doesn't budge, I'm not prepared to take the leap. I can't leave town because my wife is in school here, now.

I started at a lower pay rate, because they hired me without a college degree. I've been working for them for three years now, and have been moving up in pay, but I started so low that it hasn't amounted to much.

I think a huge part of my problem is that I don't have a college degree. I think that I've obviously shown that I'm capable of doing the job, regardless, though. How much should the degree really matter? I've seriously been considering applying to a lower tier school (I mean low tier state school, not U of Phoenix, etc.) for a degree completion program, just so I can pad my resume up some. I don't know if that hurts more than it helps, though. I did already finish up the handful of courses I needed for the A.S. from the local community college.