Re: As an habitual, non-complacent employee I always send out the same simple email with the words from The Watchmen (Winnipeg band): "My life is a stereo, how loud does it go...". Rarely do I keep in touch with past co-workers; whether I left or they left. To me, the emails most always sound the same but I have been privy to some scathing emails but for the most part they tend to be predictable and boring. When your email does not go out to the group then you know you are really fired. If you lost your internet connection then look over your shoulder 'cause they are coming to unceremoniously escort you out the door. That's my pet peeve! Ya, I'm going to ran-sack the place before I go.

There was a great site, F**Kedcompany.com, that posted emails from employees/employers and it was during the Dot Com Bust and in my cubicle I would print (a rarity even to this day) out some and post them up on my wall and the owner of the company came by one day and asked why I did that - I said motivation as I have a great job (tongue-in-cheek). 3 months later they didn't pay us.

Renewing a leased DHCP IP address is easy enough (reboot router) but , if you are in a small/large business network environment that requires a static IP address then it gets more difficult. Being busted you would have to have been identified by your IP address. Wow - that's pretty powerful. Never was a contributing editor for Wikipedia(tm) but it sure does come up in the top searches when I Google(tm). Nah, the Boss is nasty and just asking someone else do the work for them (equal opportunity employer).

At least the employee knows a bit more about what the Boss is like by the request that was made. A diversion would be to mention that it is a conflict-of-interest and offer a suggestion to get one of their pals to do it as it would be a bit more anonymous and not cause any embarrassment to the Boss. Dale Carnegie 101. As an aside from the crux of the subject - I do not work for employers where I can not speak freely while I am employed in Canada. Never have - never will.

too lazy to call....

Have 5 domain names hosted on a 2 GB USB key (no moving parts) using Linksys's NSLU2 hacked /w Linux running on my internal network and a whole bunch of FreeDNS trickery. I can add sub-domain names at will and have a domain email address forwarded to a Yahoo account. All this costs me the cheap price of the .ca domains, $40 for the uNSLUng and my broadband connection. Sorry, won't reveal those domains as I don't really want to answer tons of inquisitive emails. My online recipes are one of those domain names and I can view them through a web browser in my kitchen and while I am at friends or family.

I play dumb when it comes to "support" in my personal life as I can see if I assist on adding a program successfully I would get a call @ 9:30 pm that their printer doesn't work. Well I never touched your printer - ya, but it was working before you fixed the computer. *groan* I encourage people to seek the answers themselves like I did (before Google) and learn something along the way. Sounds like tough love but some people are not pro-active enough (read: lazy) and don't adhere to the RTFM philosophy for the answer is in their hands.

ps. my mom gets unlimited support though!
pss. great metaphor in the picture about the subject.

There is a wireless 3-COM Audrey www.ideo.com/work/item/audrey/on my kitchen counter that has a 640x480 display. I had converted all my recipes by either scanning or typing them out to web page format and categorizing them. They all reside on a USB key that has a URL. My Audrey can display these webpage recipes and while I am @ friends or family's house I can gain access to my online recipes. Bought an AeroGarden and now have fresh herbs and the Aud on the counter not taking up too much room. I have been displaying recipes online for 6 years now through the Audrey. The Audrey plays MP3 streamed from my MAC Mini and cycles through images when not in use like a screen saver. It truly is an Internet Appliance but it came out before its time. I have 3 of them.