In my experience, YES, it matters. I didn't think it did back when I was in college, but man am I glad I went to a good school.

If I'm hiring a developer, and I see applicants from smaller, unknown or second tier schools, I'm going to be way more critical of them because of my personal experiences in the workforce.

Anyone who says it doesn't matter is probably someone who attended a school with a lower tier CS program. Most CS programs are... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 10:26 PM on July 23, 2008 marked best answer

I nearly forgot to mention: At a visit maybe a year or two ago to my alma mater, I was quite jealous to learn of a kind of hybrid CS/Business program. It still had the good, theory-based CS classes, but also threw in what was basically almost like MBA-prep classes. I believe it was called Technology Management, or something like that. The program sounded really interesting, and I wish I'd had it back in my day. I'm much more of the "get out and do stuff in the real world, and solve... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 10:44 PM on July 23, 2008

tocts: Based on my personal experience, especially when I was working in the banking industry, I'd still actually care about someone's background even 5+ years after college. Some of the biggest detriments to the teams I was on were 30-40 year olds who'd been in the workforce plenty of time, but since they basically went through a programming in [x language] trade school program, they were often clueless about how to solve problems in efficient ways...

I think it... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 8:02 AM on July 24, 2008 marked best answer

Good choice on the TV. I'd also check out the Sharp Aquos line of comparable TVs. I have the Aquos LC46D64U and am loving it.

Your questions....

1) You won't really need anything else, unless you want to hook it up to an a/v receiver / home theater system... in which case you'll need an HDMI cable. Check monoprice.com and get 'em there. Anyone who tells you you need Monster brand cables needs to be rapped on the head with a tackhammer.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 10:41 PM on July 23, 2008

red wings game?
coney island dogs?
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 10:12 PM on July 23, 2008

Mahoney's seems to have Wii wednesday's, and Rock Band Saturdays... Can't say I've checked the place out, though.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 9:32 PM on July 16, 2008

AT&T u-verse isn't yet available in Chicago proper.. only a few burbs.. I checked on this recently.

Comcast's customer service is utterly atrocious - I've been fighting with them for years and the only reason I'm still with them is because of their monopoly, and my unwillingness to step down in speed to AT&T's highest speed DSL (slower than cable, but getting faster and faster these days)...

AT&T is an option for you though... they... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 9:56 AM on July 15, 2008

The only stand-up comedian named Nick I can think of off the top of my head is Nick Swardson, which is probably a bit of a stretch to be confused for Hart. Might search YouTube for him and see if the voice fits?
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 9:47 PM on July 14, 2008

Oy, thanks guys... it wasn't real intuitive that I had to "download the SDK" in order to read the documentation. I just saw all of the grayed out links and figured I couldn't read it...

Thanks for the information Blazecock Pileon... as I suspected, my cool idea for an iPhone app is crushed due to "security"... blah.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 6:44 PM on July 14, 2008

You may have heard of him. Maybe not. Demetri Martin is really funny.

I also liked Dat Phan.

More well known, now unfortunately passed on, but Mitch Hedberg rules...

Most of my friends haven't heard of any of these guys, but if you're into stand up, you probably have.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 3:59 PM on July 14, 2008

I was interviewed by them once. The guy was really cold and unfriendly. I walk in, he points to a chair indicating I should sit, and doesn't even introduce himself. I say "Hi, I'm [name]" and offer up a handshake -- nothing.

I sit, and he says "here's a pen and paper, write up the C++ class for a trinary search tree"...

Disclaimer: This was back in 2000.. and it was one guy.. your experience may not be like this. Still, it... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 10:00 AM on July 14, 2008

The litter robot seems amazing. I own one, but my cats refuse to use it because they're pretty big and don't fit comfortably. Sadly I'm going to have to see if I can sell it because I held on to hope too long, and now my "risk free" trial of 60 days is over.

The thing seriously seems great, and well constructed... I'd recommend it to anyone despite my cats reluctance to use it.. seeing in it action i can tell it'd be great.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 2:06 PM on July 9, 2008

American Gods and Anansi Boys, both by Neil Gaiman, are fantastically performed. The reader is freakin' amazing. I got both from Audible, where I get all of my audiobooks.

Also, while it was geared toward a slightly younger audience, the Eragon books are voice-acted pretty well also.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 2:44 PM on July 7, 2008

Gift certificate to Lou Malnati's Pizza if you want him to really experience a true Chicago gem...

Perhaps tickets to the Museum of Science and Industry or Field Museum, if he's into that sort of thing.

You know what I would love the most though? Besides the fact that you're the type of girlfriend who would put together a care package like this?

You're about to be apart for a year and a half. If it were me, I'd probably... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 2:27 PM on July 6, 2008

All of the big banks' rates out there are going to fluctuate along with what the market will allow. When the fed changes rates, it changes what it costs banks to lend/borrow money, and any bank not passing that change on to you is probably making a business mistake that will hurt them in the long term.

I'm happy with my HSBC online savings account, which has no fees for any of the basic needs types of money transfers out there, and has served me well...
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 2:22 PM on July 6, 2008

Shrugs to KevinSkomsvold and ludwig_van. I won't divulge any additional information in a tiny attempt to protect my anonymity 'round these parts, but I will say my knowledge of VW is not a perception, and leave it at that. If your band is really good, I believe you'll get the attention you deserve.

You are so horrendously wrong it makes me sad.

I've spent a good portion of my life trying to help independent bands get somewhere.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 11:39 PM on July 1, 2008

See also... this post on reddit which also popped up today...
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 3:41 PM on June 30, 2008

If you’re calling 5.5% terrible, well… I’d be happy to be getting 5.5% on my money right now. Are you currently at 5.5%, but future CDs are terrible in comparison?

I don't know that it's the best option, but one option would be a high yield online savings account like those of HSBC or ING Direct... they're around 3.5% now I believe.. maybe 3.75%... I'm sure there's higher yields out there, but the nice thing about the online savings (I have an HSBC one) is I can... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 3:14 PM on June 30, 2008

DNS changes are so fast right now, that one option might be to have the following, let's say your 2 servers have IP addresses 1.2.3.4 and 5.6.7.8:

foo.com ==> 1.2.3.4
images.foo.com ==> 1.2.3.4

When load gets high, log into your domain registrar account and change DNS (assuming you have access to this.. Godaddy and most others provide it)

images.foo.com ==> 5.6.7.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 9:59 PM on June 26, 2008 marked best answer

sycophant's idea of using mod_rewrite is also a good one. You'd need to ensure you have mod_rewrite installed, which you may or may not.

mod_alias is almost definitely installed, and you could use redirectmatch (see right below redirect in the link I provided) to use regular expression matches like those sycophant provided.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 10:02 PM on June 26, 2008

I could post some personal anecdotes, but prefer not to write a novel to MeFi.. so, my email’s in my profile if you’re interested in hearing past experiences / how I dealt with it in the past. However, there’s some basic advice I can give:

It sounds like you have no trouble finding interesting activities from graduate school to travelling to taking up hobbies. Now that you’re done focusing on yourself, you should try focusing on others through your hobbies. Use them... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 9:06 AM on June 26, 2008

Any dog, of any breed, has the potential to be dangerous. They're animals.

That being said, a well trained, well raised pit bull is arguably no more likely than any other breed to be violent or dangerous.

The wikipedia article on Pit Bulls is actually pretty informative despite being labeled as having its neutrality under dispute...

If the dog has been well trained and nice for this long, I wouldn't worry about it.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 1:28 PM on June 25, 2008

Is there any reason that you really want a combined suite like this, rather than separate rooms in a relatively nice hotel? You can stay for close to $200/night per room at a lot of the vegas hotels no problem if you don't have to go insanely upscale. Right now I just checked at the Venetian for Oct 20-24 and the Venetian Luxury suite is $896.00 for 4 nights... or about $225 per night on average.

If you scale down lower than the Venetian, you might be able to get more... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 6:13 PM on June 23, 2008

LoriFLA: To be more clear: it's 4 rooms -- about $225/night each... not a big four bedroom room... My point being I'm not sure such suites exist at a reasonable price -- but 4 separate rooms can be had even at a very nice hotel like the venetian for close to chudmonkey's price point.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 8:31 PM on June 23, 2008

To follow up on miss lynnster's suggestion: Staying off the strip is nice... especially once you realize that rental cars are not only cheap, but amazingly convenient in vegas. You can park for free at any of the hotels on the strip!

If you think you'll be drinking a lot, etc... then cab it.. it'll be about 10-12 bucks a ride for a group of 4 of you from the rio... maybe a bit more since there's multiple passengers, but nothing outrageous..
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 10:25 PM on June 23, 2008

Seconding moxiedoll on the moving thing. I have experience with shortening my commute due to a job change... I also have experience with lengthening my commute while I stayed at the same job. It has a huge, huge impact on your quality of life, not to be underestimated.

Even the change from a 45 minute commute at my last job to a 20-22 minute commute at my current job has a drastic effect on my life -- that's 40 minutes every weekday that I'm getting back to myself, and... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 6:07 PM on June 23, 2008

Online poker is not officially illegal in the USA. However, transferring money to online poker sites is --- however... not for you... it's illegal for banks...

Basically, you can still get money into sites like Full Tilt (which, as mentioned above, is one of the only ones out there with a Mac client...)

I think you'll be better served spending your money on a book or two FIRST... you're not going to learn a heck of a lot from just continually... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 2:56 PM on June 23, 2008

There's a big difference between firing all the women in a company and firing all of the felons.

I know this is a horrendously contentious and politically incorrect point -- but an attempt to fire all felons, statistically speaking, may drastically affect some demographics more than others... In that sense, it could be extrapolated to fit the definition of discrimination...

It's possible that you can't fire someone for... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 2:44 PM on June 20, 2008

If a girl suggests hanging out at your place, she's either into you, or she thinks you're gay (or at least "safe")... Let's assume the former...

I like the cooking idea, but you should get outside...

How about you buy some nice cheeses, crackers, etc... you think of a nice dish that's portable... you only hang out at your place for a while to cook / whip up some pretty simple food and take it on a picnic. Walk to the picnic location,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 9:31 AM on June 20, 2008

As zany and fun as you might think it is, I'd just point out that even seemingly nice / upbeat coworkers might find it tremendously annoying if you start singing in the office... especially with any sort of regularity...

that being said.. I suppose if you started singing "C is for cookie", I'd probably laugh.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 11:27 PM on June 12, 2008

MediaMonkey 3 Beta supports USB mp3 players and has a last.fm plugin (see the beta forums)... It's my favorite mp3 / music manager ever.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 2:37 PM on June 12, 2008

I've been having a lot of these problems recently myself. I believe a huge part of it stems from something not terribly obvious (even though it should be):

I do not sleep enough hours.

Seriously.

Everything I'm reading about sleep deprivation (which I definitely suffer from due to my inability to get to sleep at a reasonable hour) lists these sorts of things as symptoms... the lack of focus, the missing of details, the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 1:28 PM on June 10, 2008

You should call AT&T to find out for sure. May as well get it straight from the source (and record the name of whoever gave you that information AT the company providing that information), rather than trusting anecdotal evidence from internet strangers....

I say this not to snark, but to save you some hassle - the most correct information should (in theory) come from the company itself. Their job is to be able to help you with this kind of stuff.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 2:29 PM on June 9, 2008

The company I work for specializes in flash based games. They're not exactly inexpensive to produce, though.

$75/hour is probably a decent rough estimate for a freelancer depending on region. However, freelancers vary wildly in quality.

Do you know more specifically what kind of a budget you have? Send me MeFi Mail if you like...
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 7:48 AM on June 6, 2008

Oh yeah, I should point out: Time needs to be spent on actually coming up with and refining a concept for the game too.. not just programming the flash... which ends up being a more costly process than you might think, unless you already have a solid concept drawn out and just need someone to implement it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 7:52 AM on June 6, 2008

I've answered this one before. I guess I'll do it again. The UFC's website has a "Sports Bars" link on every event to show you where you can go to see it. Note that bars showing the fights often charge a cover.

Here it is for UFC 85...
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 11:50 PM on June 5, 2008 marked best answer

Doesn't matter who you go with - you still need a secure certificate to serve up https things from a given domain name.

The only way around it is for the images to be hosted at someotherdomain.com that DOES have a secure cert. Otherwise, the user is going to be prompted about the security (lack thereof) of downloading those GIF images...
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 2:00 PM on June 5, 2008

I had a slightly embarassing (though I guess in retrospect there's no reason it should be) situation with my ears that I thought might be due to my long hours of wearing earbuds and also my hours of wearing earplugs at concerts to protect my hearing.

Chances are, the blocked/popping stuff isn't actually from the earbuds or irritation (if you're itching, on the other hand, that might be irritation)...

So here's the deal: There finally came a... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 12:00 PM on June 4, 2008

As a non vegetarian, I can vouch for the Chicago Diner being a pretty darned good place to accomodate vegetarian friends.. it's vegetarian-focused, but had plenty of stuff I liked.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 11:51 AM on June 4, 2008

Usually fan forums are the best place to go... I don't know of an all-in-one source... Have you tried looking for a community discussion board / web forum for these artists and searching threads?
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 11:51 AM on June 4, 2008

Not that I don't agree with rdr's sentiment to back up... but my interpretation of your problem is that it could be a hard drive issue or a BIOS / motherboard issue...

The fact that your hard drive dropped down the list could be a symptom of a hard drive problem -- if your motherboard's BIOS is set up to deprioritize it because it failed... but that seems like a rather odd "choice".. so I'm not too sure that's really your problem.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 7:22 PM on June 2, 2008

I don't have experience with them, but there's also Spreadshirt and Zazzle
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 12:50 PM on May 30, 2008

Just found a review site that covers 4 examples.. no clue how biased it is / who authored it / why it exists... so.. take with a grain of salt while reading...
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 12:52 PM on May 30, 2008 marked best answer

A few more for you:

tech: Gizmodo and Engadget
deals: Slickdeals.net
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 11:07 AM on May 30, 2008

Oh yeah I forgot Mashable.com ... web 2.0-ish stuff.. (yeah, we hate buzzwords, but.. whatever)
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 11:08 AM on May 30, 2008

What you really want to do in the future should dictate which language you choose.

You want a job? Learn ASP, JSP or PHP. Maybe Python. Rails is slightly useful in this arena since it's "the new fun thing", but it has already lost its luster in most areas. Reason being it doesn't scale for shit.

You want something scalable to large applications? ASP, PHP, JSP, Python.

You want to just be able to build fun,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 3:53 PM on May 29, 2008 marked best answer

I use Soy Vay's Veri Veri Teriyaki, with a bit of Sesame Oil for a deeper, tastier flavor... it's awesome.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 9:50 PM on May 27, 2008

Seconding pivot tables -- with good real world examples of how/when to use them...

I don't know why, but people seem to crap their pants when they discover how easy these are to do..
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 10:46 AM on May 27, 2008

Reason is incredible... and just gets more incredible with each release...

Haters of Reason will say that all songs made with Reason sound like songs made with Reason.. this is only true if you limit yourself to the soundbanks and templates that Reason comes with to help you get started...

You can buy (some are also free) what are called "Refills", which are sound effect / instrument packages to use as instruments in Reason... When... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 8:59 PM on May 26, 2008

Oh yeah - google now has an amazing html and css reference to get you started on that front.

MySQL's documentation site is actually quite good. Here's a not so bad tutorial on database design for beginners.
posted to Ask Metafilter by twiggy at 12:41 PM on May 22, 2008