Well in this case I'm in a hotel room with no wi-fi (only 3G on my phone). So I was limited to the hard way of importing into iPhoto (after much dicking around with itunes, then googling on the phone to find out I should use iphoto). Then some more googling to find out where iphoto put my files.

Also the ever enjoyable "Delete files from your camera?" which defaults to yes. Yeah iPhoto - take completely control of everything and hide it where I can never find it again.

On PC all I have to do is copy from the iPhone drive that appears. Why is Mac so much more difficult? They're my pictures - I just want to get them onto my damn computer to go through them like I can with any digital camera that's not an iPhone.

Why doesn't iTunes just have a simple link to dump my latest photos somewhere on my computer? Why does photo sync only work from computer to camera when the most common use case is camera to computer 99% of the time? Who gives a **** about getting pictures from another source onto their phone? They have no problem syncing apps both ways. I think the most logical conclusion is they want full control of grandma and grampa's photos "oh I don't know I just go to my iPhoto" - just like limitless PC crapware programs that try to launch anytime they think you've plugged in a camera.

Apple is really annoying sometimes if you're not a teenager or fanboy.

Your time has value, and you must keep opportunity costs in mind. Time spent working a standard summer job is time you're not improving as a programmer.

An internship, especially if it has even baseline pay, will reap much more value in skill gained + compensation than just the $12/hr of a summer job.

Plus you'll begin to network at an internship. "It's not what you know but whom you know," and as stated before internship connections can lead directly to a post-college job.

Only reason to do summer job would be if you were so short on cash that an internship was virtually impossible.

I don't know how it is where you are from but around here most CS internships are paid and they pay quite well. Much more than 12/hr. IBM pays interns almost twice that.

I found it hard to get a paying internship. I took an unpaid one and ended up getting hired (by a different company) before I even graduated.

Internship + degree >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> just a degree.

In LA they are almost all unpaid.

You should definitely look for one. If you get into a good firm the internship pay is similar to a decent full-time salary.

Would it be out of line to ask for constant update and change reports from a software company?

The software I was writing about above has near daily changes. I spent many hours a week trying to figure out if some change is a bug or new functionality.

I've asked on several occasions to have better communication, but that doesn't seem to be working out.

How big a customer are you? Who does the account manager talk to in your company?

A good internship (=you learn a lot and meet interesting people) would probably be +EV at -30$/h (number pulled out of...you know where)

The fact that you usually get payed is just icing on the cake. Ignore pay and chose the one where you expect to learn/network the most.

We are their largest.

The account manager talks to me.

Then you have leverage and can ask for whatever you want, but do you want to PM someone else's problem? You should have someone on their side to ask about problems you run into instead of wasting your time debugging someone else's code though.

Definitely not looking to debug code. I want to mitigate the cost of me wasting time deciding if some unexpected behavior is... expected.

Almost every day, someone shows me something that at first blush looks like a problem, but is nothing more than an update in protocols.

An example would be a data field that said x yesterday says y now, or item that is valid today won't be valid tomorrow. Things like that. It would certainly be helpful if. knew when a major update was implemented and what department is going to be affected so I can be more prepared.

Do they have a support organization? If they are making these kinds of changes routinely and it's wasting your time you should be raising hell with them. A lot. If that doesn't work escalate, see if someone with more clout in your organization will start bitching to someone higher up in their organization.

I wasn't sure it that was overbearing or disrespectful. I politely asked for something, but they said something on the order that they are constantly making changes and there is no way to track the changes as they are never written down in the first place. They told me that they'd put me on the mailing list and it turns out that I'd only be getting their general marketing email which doesn't help one iota.

We have access to the top dog. They want to have a phone meeting with him. I haven't quite figured out what it is I wanted to talk about yet and I don't plan to think about this during my day off tomorrow. It's quite difficult to figure out how to prioritize all the issues. Basically, I wouldn't know how to talk to the guy until I know if he is aware of particulars of the issues.

The way we would get grilled by the customer was them asking for status on all the open issues they had with us. But if they aren't tracking requirements your kinda screwed.

I'm pretty sure asking for status on all open issues was how it was done before. I take the opposite tact by introducing one issue at a time since we have so many to go through, and I assume that there is a decent class of issues that won't or can't ever be fixed. I don't mean it as a slight to them, but I don't expect them to be able to keep track of everything. Some of the issues are so complex that it can't be given all at once. There was also an issue that I brought up two weeks ago that is very high priority and they forgot about it completely, but I can't blame them after the eventful week I had.

I think it has been working out better with my technique (things get done). I'm at odds with management on this one, but I'd rather just divide the problems into smaller chunks and go from there. It also makes it easier on me to keep track of what is happening and measure progress.

Man, it doesn't sound like they have any processes at all. Keep track of the list so you know what they are ignoring but they've probably used up all your nice until they become more responsive. On a positive note, depending on how much you rely on their software you may have found your companies biggest risk... Happy Thanksgiving...

What you say is true. It appears they have no version control or bug-reporting in place.

The company is aware of the risk, but it is difficult on everyone because friendships are involved here.

Anyways, I've been off work for three hours now and I shouldn't be talking about it now. I've already had two beers and looking forward to waking up at noon on a Thursday.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Planning to buy one of these this weekend:



I've always wanted one.

Cheers to everyone in this thread and forum. You're all great.

It amazes me that patent trolling is actually something real. The pressure they can put on tech companies (and basically destroy them) is an embarrassment to the very core of what it means to live in America. Seems crazy, but when you hear about someone that gets hit by one, it is the nut low.

our interns are paid

daveT - This sounds like a problem that Agile was basically made to sold.

Come up with a back log of issues that you want to fixed/resolved and use something both you and the company can see to track them. Could be http://www.pivotaltracker.com/, https://trello.com/, google docs, whatever you're comfortable with. Then you can keep things ordered in the way you'd like them addressed and they can update it as they make progress so you know whats done.

I've never heard of unpaid developer interns for college level CS students. My gut instinct is that most unpaid internships would be bad.

I have a feeling a company that doesn't use bugtracking or version control might not be all that firmly in the agile camp jjshabado

It sounds like their development process is akin to a hockey game; a lot of movement around on the ice that doesn't make much sense and then out of no where, GOAL!