I'm not sure how many people actually choose their specialism, and how many stumble into. I certainly didn't choose to get into ERP, but just happened to be offered a job in it when I was desperately in need of job. I didn't even want a career in computing. Most people I know, if you ask them how they ended up doing what they're doing, will say "Dunno, it just kind of happened, and here I am, 20 years later, an expert lion tamer/DBA/window cleaner".

Stripper? Or does it have to be IT related?

Anyway....anecdotally I've been responsible for servers for 3 SMEs over the last 15 years. In that time I've probably got through around 15 Proliant servers. The total downtime during that time is precisely zero. I've also got through hundreds of HP desktops and can count the number of failures on one-hand. So my anecdotal experience is that hardware is incredibly reliable. The only things that generally fail are power supplies and hard drives - but this hasn't resulted in server downtime as these two items have redundancy. I've even run mission critical server software on old re-allocated PCs, which isn't the wisest thing to do, but again, has given me relatively little trouble.

So without any reliable statistics to tell me otherwise, I can only rely on own experience which is that Proliant downtime isn't a big problem for me. I couldn't justify the cost of buying two SANs purely to address a risk that I'd never personally experienced, even if that risk was real.

My personal experience is that software is far, far less reliable than hardware, so my tight budget tends to address making software more reliable and not hardware. I'd be interested to know how many people spend thousands on a SAN but then fail to patch their software in a timely manner. I bet it happens and it's crazy because patching is generally free and SANs are expensive.

If anyone has stats to disprove my theory then I'd love to see them!

Yeah, I'm really not looking forward to global warming screwing up the Gulf Stream. <shivers>

"The idea of working in boxers or pajamas while sipping on your own coffee from your own mug is appealing to people"

I'd say that may be appealing to someone who is 20, but as you get older that becomes less and less of a goal. I have a colleague who works from home but still puts a suit and tie on every day because it makes him feel more professional and helps create that barrier between home life and work life.

I think the lack of a long commute to the office is probably the biggest reason people like to work from home. A 10 second walk to your home office is a lot better than two hours a day in a traffic jam or standing in a crowded train. Studies have shown that commuting is terrible for people's stress levels, happiness and well-being.

I always interview as a team. I'm not sufficiently multi-tasking to be able to make notes, think of questions and listen to answers all at the same time.

@scottalanmiller said:

But what you can know is that almost no SAN vendor makes a server on par with a Proliant.

IIRC some HP SANs are or were Proliants. I recall the HP 4300 was basically a Proliant. When we were looking at getting a pair, we were basically told our existing Proliant was at risk of failure and in order to mitigate this risk we needed to effectively replace it with two Proliants, plus some software to keep the two in sync. It's adding redundancy to something that I've never personally had fail.

But like the majority of SMEs, we have no redundancy at the software level. We're running single databases for our ERP system and for our Exchange system, for example. So if the database fails we're down. Having a SAN would just mean the failure occurs across two pieces of hardware instead of one.

Another point to make about redundancy. I am really, really confident about the ability of my Proliants to handle disk failure. I've had quite a few over the years, and am now pretty relaxed about the process. That little red light comes on, I phone HP, a new drive arrives, I pop out the old drive, I pop in the new drive, the lights flash, and I walk away. Completely confident that the array will rebuild. It still makes me nervous, but it's a controlled nervousness. I doubt having a SAN fail is anywhere near as straightforward. My point being that I like simple redundancy, I dislike complex redundancy.

@nadnerB said:

Looks interesting, particularly the UV monitor.

Really? I've always just gone for the "I'm in a hot climate in the summer so I need to wear a hat and put on sunscreen" approach. I've never felt the need for a UV monitor?

In the UK now workers have a legal right to request a change to their working hours in order to fit their life/work balance. Employers have to have a valid reason to refuse any such requests. So quite a few of my colleagues have now changed their hours to suit them. I think this can be a better direction to take rather than home working as it's kind of the best of both worlds.

@scottalanmiller said:

(the interview orgy)

By team, I meant two or three people max.

It annoys me. I used to buy OEM versions of H&B 2010. They were dead easy to manage and dirt cheap. I then switched to Key Cards but it's a massive pain. It's almost unmanageable, so I've given up.

So I've now switched to O365. Even that's a pain to manage compared with the old retail/OEM versions.

@scottalanmiller I don't call $432 to rent something for 3 years versus $169 to own it forever "a pretty natural price increase". It's a huge price increase.

It just means content providers will now delay public release in order to extract some revenue from suckers, I mean "super fans", rather than release stuff publicly, for free, straight away.

I would definitely pay for a lot of content that I currently watch on Youtube for free, but no-one seems to have figured out the best way of facilitating that yet, so there is plenty of scope for new business models.

@scottalanmiller said:

But I've seen a tremendous amount of pushback from IT, not finance, because IT often does not like to "not own" their software.

Really? I find that attitude strange. Then again, I find a lot of IT people strange!

In my personal life, I quite like owning things. I love my original vinyl copy of the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, for example. But I don't feel the same way about the DVD of Photoshop 6 sitting in the safe at work.

Worst interview I ever had was arranged by an agent for a fairly large ERP software house. It was a few hours from my home so I had to stay in a hotel overnight, all at my expense. The first interview was with a few fellow programmers and lasted about an hour. After a short break I was then told I'd passed that interview, and they would do the second interview there and then with a middle manager. That lasted another hour. After another short break I was told I'd passed that interview and they would do the third interview there and then with the CEO. That lasted another hour.

By this stage I was exhausted. Three hours plus, three different interviews. But I felt it was going really well. The questions seem relatively easy.

After the third interview there was another break and they then told me they were really impressed with me and were happy to tell me that they were going to offer me the job of X. This was a fairly junior role. I told them I was there to be interviewed for the job of Y - which was a fairly senior role. What was going on?

It turns out the agent had screwed up and sent me to the wrong interview. They were like "no wonder you seemed so good for this position, you're massive over-qualified" and I Was like "no wonder I did so well in the interview, I'm massively over-qualified".

Two f[moderated]ing days and about $200 I'd wasted on this shit. The agent was just like "oh, sorry, my bad".

@Dashrender said:

@Bill-Kindle Yeah I've done that. I logged in as that user on the machine, made the drive mapping, logged out, tried the service and fail.

with the /persistent flag?

What about a video of me singing Taylor Swift in my underwear?

I'm really interesting in minimalism. The trouble is, if I get rid of my own stuff, my wife and kids just see it as excuse to get more of their own stuff. For example, if I get rid of half the clothes in my wardrobe, the next thing I'll find is my wife has stored a load of new dresses in my wardrobe. So my beautifully minimalist wardrobe is now just as a rammed as it used to be, but with my wife's clothes instead of my own.

So why can't you motivate workers and what's the difference between motivation and inspiration (sounds like bollocks to me...)?

Google Maps Coordinate is now included with Maps Engine Pro, which is $5 per month. So they obviously listened to your complaints that it was expensive and have slashed the price dramatically.

So the MangoLassi Venture Capital arm has given is a unaminous thumbs down. I now expect Google to buy it for $10bn in 12 months time