It's couched in all kinds of nice geek speak, but basically this is a PAC being created for one goal, campaign finance reform. As I do not believe that campaign finance reform should be used as a method to limit the speech of others, i'm out of this one. Sorry, Woz, not gonna be on your side of this fight.
"Campaign finance reform" as a term used today is an attempt to stop grass-roots individuals such as those who funded this PAC from being able to donate in the future to organizations that support their own beliefs. Only those who can afford to pay for political ads personally will be able to play, and those who can't won't be able to band together as they do today.
I had to reinstall my XP installation when I upgraded to a larger hard drive. Since I hadn't been entirely satisfied with Norton's tools lately, and had discovered other, better tools like Diskkeeper and FreeAV, I left Norton's out of the equasion. The result? My system is running MUCH faster than before. Antivirus scans of incoming emails happen near-instantaneously. Applications load in a fraction of the time they did before. I'm not getting horrible lags when playing games. The difference was amazing.
There may be other explanations for the slowdown. I had a slower hard drive, and since it was much smaller, it was much fuller. I may have had another issue altogether causing the problem. I'm willing to consider all of that. In the end, though, I've found better tools, my computer runs faster, and I'm happier.
I've sworn by Norton's Utilities for a decade and a half. It's hard to say I'm not going to use the product anymore, but I'm wondering if I will. The only tool I used regularly from Norton's that I haven't replaced is the recycle bin protection. I figure that's okay, since I never actually used its protection. The only interaction I ever had with it was to clean it out before a speed disk. Now, I don't have that extra step, and Diskkeeper will defragment on a schedule, and even while I work.
Any suggestions for good, preferably free, system utilities in the Systemworks vein would be appreciated. I'd love to add some to my toolbox usb drive, to give to clients.
Experience from a Dad and Husband on Classical Ed.
on
Improving Education?
·
· Score: 1
Until the end of the year, my wife homeschooled my son. He was above grade level in everything, to some extent, and in some subjects was years ahead of grade level. I'm sure this is a familiar situation for many reading this. My wife skipped her senior year of high school to go to Davidson College and major in Latin. Due to an interesting turn of events, she was offered a job as a Latin teacher for a classical, christian school. As a part of this job, my son was able to go to the school.
I was immediately impressed with the school. My son's performance improved beyond what we had already seen, due to several factors. There are several important things I've seen that make me believe that education can be improved elsewhere, similarly.
For one, there is a concentration on excellence. Since he started in the middle of the school year, my son wasn't quite on the same page in mathematics. We decided to hold him back a year, and catch up during the Summer in homeschool. As it turned out, the school was operating a year ahead in math, so that his 4th grade class was actually learning 5th grade math. Math was a subject he had been slightly above grade level in before, but was a few weeks behind in the process. That they were teaching above level showed me their commitment to quality.
Likewise, this school begins Latin in 3rd grade. Every student is required to take Latin. This is something that public schools have long since forgotten. Latin isn't just a dead language that can be dropped because some kids might not take to it. Latin is a vital element that helps the student learn language skills better, including English skills.
Another important thing at the school is respect. Students are expected to behave well. If an adult reprimands them, they are expected to say "Yes Ma'am" and accept the reprimand, instead of talking back. If an adult walks into the room, the entire class stands and says, "Hello Mr. Smith" (or whatever the person's name is) to the person. Should the class begin to get rowdy, the teacher bangs a gavel and the class shuts up IMMEDIATELY.
Parents are expected to be active in their child's education. We've met with the teachers, the principal, and the board of directors as regarded our son's transition into the school.
My major advice to parents is simple. If you care about your child's education, keep them out of public school altogether. Either homeschool or send them to private school. There is no acceptable excuse for not doing so except that your child's education isn't important enough. If it's important enough, FIND the time. Find the money. Find the resources.
Seek out educational options. Weigh the options available. Choose the best one for your child. Do what it takes to make sure that your child gets the best education. Chances are, if public school is what is best for your child, your priorities may not be in order.
Bad attitude? Yes. I was "educated" in public schools. Eventually, I was bored with their games. I got tired of being held back from learning by their processes. I got tired of being expected to learn from teachers who were my intellectual inferiors. My wife is a freakish super-genius. My son is following in our footsteps in many ways. I don't wish the heartache of a bad educational environment on him.
We homeschooled when I was the only paycheck coming in, and making almost no money. We lived below the "poverty level" much of the time while I ran a used bookstore. It was worth it. Now, we're back to two incomes, and my son gets an exclusive private education with my wife there all day, involved in the process. We're seeing the payoffs of our sacrifices.
Unfortunately, public education will never be what it should be. It simply cannot happen, because the thoughts are all wrong on how education should be handled.
Right now, we have made a 12 year education universal. We're expanding earlier than 1st grade, and trying to expand the guaranteed education thro
Trust everyone, but count the cards. I'm just sharing the file I downloaded, but I don't expect you to trust me any more than I trust you. Scan it. Run it on a testbed machine. I could be evil.
How can more information be a minus? If I can't trust it. I can get more information from the drunk on the corner. I can get more information from my bipolar, hillbilly, irish, muslim, brother-in-law. If the information I get can't be trusted, then it's a waste of time.
Including Wikipedia doesn't have to be a minus. For me, though, it's hardly a plus.
This means I can no longer reliably use Google's definition links for dictionary terms. I'm no fan of Wikipedia. There's just too much opinion and conjecture in the definitions for me.
One of my favorites is "Scotland Yard"
on
Fun Tabletop Games?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
In Scotland Yard, one player takes the role of "Mr X" and attempts to evade the detectives. The playing area is a map of London, with routes marked in taxi, bus, underground, and ferry routes. Each player has a set of tickets they can use for each type of route. There are x of taxi tickets, y of bus tickets, and z of underground. Mr X is less limited. Mr X moves in secret, but every few turns, he must show himself.
I always liked this game, when I played it as a kid. As an adult, I found a copy of it in the game store. I told Chris, the owner, that I had played it as a kid, but forgotten about it. When I saw it on the shelf, I had to have it. It didn't matter that it cost around $30 at the time.
Chris informed me that this was a standard story. The game was rarely, if ever, advertised. Everyone who bought it did so because they had played it somewhere else, and found it hard to balk at the price. He said they had trouble keeping the game on the shelves. I believe it.
The beauty of the game is that every person who plays Mr X will do so differently. Inspectors are individuals. Every game is different, though the map stays the same.
Another favorite of mine is Empire Builder, but we're heading out to the truck stop for breakfast, so you'll have to do your own research on that one.
The single most important aspect of any search engine, for me, is that my own site (Lockjaw's Lair) show up in it. It should be at or near the top of a specific search, since the title of the site consists of an odd pairing of words, or at least show up.
So, I did a search for my site on MSN Search to see how I fared. It doesn't bode well for a search site that I can find links to my site on other sites, but the search engine hasn't followed the links to my site. One would think that their spider would have been following these links, especially as there are more than a few of them, but I haven't found evidence that it has done so.
I understand that the new MSN search aims to rival Google in completeness of its database. I hope that my own experience isn't indicative of a major lack of completeness or a substandard spidering tool.
I don't expect an instant complete spidering of my whole site. It would be nice if the spider would just follow one of the links and look at my front page.
Not only are the designer series sets really nice, but they have started a "BrickMaster Club" which my son received a subscription to for his birthday. Included are 6 special club-only sets, the first of which was a designer set. Also, there's a designer software in the package that lets you enter the set number for each set you own, and use them to build in the computer. It's a very nice, kid-friendly app. My son loves it.
Unfortunately, there's no set number for the 20 gallon toolbox tote full of legos I bought at the thrift shop for $35.
YOu heard wrong. The backwater county (actually a frontwater county) is Carteret County, and the voting machines actually lost votes. Only one race was directly affected due to the closeness, and that race is being re-run in that county very soon.
I see little use in sites that try to be non-partisan. The person running the site cannot be truly non-partisan in nature, as they'll either hold a particular political view, or they'll have nothing to offer to the discussion at all. I prefer that bloggers strongly take a position and approach their work from that position, while letting me know what that position is. That way, I can get my balance through use of multiple sites.
One of the greatest disservices being done to the American public is major media news outlets attempting to put forth an image of unbiased reporting. On any given issue, the trained viewer can see bias in action in most stories. Just because Dan Rather seems middle of the road among the people he hangs out with when he's off work doesn't mean he's middle of the road among his viewers.
What I'd really like to find is a liberal blog that has as much attention to evidence over invective as many of the conservative blogs do. I don't want to read blogs of ANY side that just spew opinions with no data to back them up.
My favorite blog list has been expanding, lately. I regularly read InstaPundit and The Right Coast, among others. I've recently begun reading Powerline and Michelle Malkin. My favorite "political" blogs, though, are actually economics blogs. I can't let a day go by without checking Marginal Revolution and The Volokh Conspiracy, which are two of the most interesting blogs I've read since I started reading Slashdot.
In addition to all of that, I read a wide variety of news sites every day, listen to news radio and watch news in the morning. That's all so I can do a better job in the writing on my own blog, where I cover politics, amateur radio, life, and anything I think is cool. Check out Lockjaw's Lair and don't forget to buy the T-Shirt.
I learned lockpicking as a child
on
Steel Bolt Hacking
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I first learned to pick locks at my childhood church, from my dad. The locks were standard household style locks, on doors that opened outward, so all I needed was a pocketknife.
During High School, I could often be found inside the locked classroom, waiting for the teacher to arrive. I knew which doors opened using which methods, and which windows were nearly impossible to lock properly.
I've learned a few things about physical security over the years. Walls don't always go to the true ceiling. Locks don't always work as advertised. The unknowledgeable don't always understand the proper ways to secure things, and a disgruntled soon to be ex-employee will occasionally just hand you a key you shouldn't have.
With my knowledge of computers, I make it clear that I look the other way when people are typing in their passwords on a PC I'm working on. I want it to be clear to them that I don't know their password. If I want to gain access to a PC, I don't need to know the password before I start anyway.
People come to me when they need to gain access to something they've locked themselves out of on their computer. They have confidence that i can help them. Quite often, I can. A little research, a little knowledge, and the ability to solve problems tends to do the trick.
I've never studied lockpicking. I've never needed to. Locks are usually either very easy to go through, or around. Around is usually the best way.
These days, it's all white-hat. That makes it even more fun.
Hackers is a great book. I've read it a couple times, and I wish I knew whathappened to my copy. You'd think, since I run a used bookstore, that someone would have brought a copy in, but no...
A humorous note, my wife's ex-husband ate his blatties.
It looked more like the top liberal wacko conspiracy theorist stories that people further left than John Kerry wish would take hold. I'm not impressed.
The absolute worst movie I've ever seen was, by far, Horror Planet, aka Inseminoid. I say this while pointing out that I've seen both Iron Eagle II and Highlander II on the big screen.
Hey, a friend and I wanted to watch a good Science Fiction movie, and we had access to all the free movies we could watch through the local video store, because our friend managed it. It was just plain bad. Even though aliens were being born from the stomachs of several characters, the real enemy of the movie seemed to be rocks. While looking among the rocks, one of the characters falls on a rock, resulting in depressurization of his spacesuit and death. While this might sound like a cool effect, it really wasn't. Nothing about this movie was cool at all.
Oh yeah. Sheena is on cable right now, and I'm too lazy to get up and change the channel, so you know Horror Planet had to be bad for me to hate it that much. Sheena is a masterpiece by comparison.
Back when the market was Nintendo -vs- Sega Master System, I owned a Sega. I wanted to own a Sega. Sega fit my attitude much more than Nintendo. Nintendo might have had the greater market share, but I simply did not, and do not, want a Nintendo.
These days, I love my Playstation2. I don't want an X-Box. I don't care what games are available, or whether there's a hard drive upgrade I can perform, or a chip I can install. I just don't want an X-Box.
X-Box might be able to "take" Playstation, but not in my mind, heart, soul or home. I'm sticking with the system I prefer.
My father was in the Navy in the 1950s, and experienced a nuclear test. Livestock were placed on landing craft relatively near the explosion site, and his boat was one at the periphery. According to his account, the blast caused a wave that nearly capsized the destroyer he was on, and the landing craft and livestock were never found.
I've asked him about follow-ups. He has been to the VA hospital for checkups SPECIFICALLY because of these tests, and no ill effects were found. The important detail for me, though, was that the Veteran's Administration was looking into the cases, and looking for medical problems related to the tests. At 70 years old, my father is one of the healthiest people I know, and can bench-press almost twice what I can (though I'm getting stronger).
My job has not been shipped offshore. There is no risk of my job being shipped offshore.
Of course, I've escaped the rut of the corporate/educational/medical IT structure and gone into business for myself. There's no more worries about losing my job because some corporate bigwig doesn't know how to use a computer correctly. I don't worry about the High Point Furniture Market doing badly, causing a warehouse glut and staff cutback. I can no longer use victim-mentality to explain what goes wrong with my career.
These days, if I don't make much money, it's because of the ups and downs of the retail cycle. It's because I need to get off my butt a bit more and do some work. It's because of a lot of things, but it isn't because of offshoring of my job.
Want to be insulated against offshoring of jobs? Learn carpentry, or HVAC maintenance, or any number of trades. Then, buy yourself a van, hit the road and work for yourself. The rewards are greater, the hassles are more easily managed, and you get paid extra for working with bigger problems or worse customers.
Oh yeah, and you'll get a thank you occasionally, from those you do the jobs for.
Slashdot Mirror
It's couched in all kinds of nice geek speak, but basically this is a PAC being created for one goal, campaign finance reform. As I do not believe that campaign finance reform should be used as a method to limit the speech of others, i'm out of this one. Sorry, Woz, not gonna be on your side of this fight. "Campaign finance reform" as a term used today is an attempt to stop grass-roots individuals such as those who funded this PAC from being able to donate in the future to organizations that support their own beliefs. Only those who can afford to pay for political ads personally will be able to play, and those who can't won't be able to band together as they do today.
Good news. Sounds like I should be able to buy the game around Memorial Day. That gives me all Summer to play the game.
I had to reinstall my XP installation when I upgraded to a larger hard drive. Since I hadn't been entirely satisfied with Norton's tools lately, and had discovered other, better tools like Diskkeeper and FreeAV, I left Norton's out of the equasion. The result? My system is running MUCH faster than before. Antivirus scans of incoming emails happen near-instantaneously. Applications load in a fraction of the time they did before. I'm not getting horrible lags when playing games. The difference was amazing.
There may be other explanations for the slowdown. I had a slower hard drive, and since it was much smaller, it was much fuller. I may have had another issue altogether causing the problem. I'm willing to consider all of that. In the end, though, I've found better tools, my computer runs faster, and I'm happier.
I've sworn by Norton's Utilities for a decade and a half. It's hard to say I'm not going to use the product anymore, but I'm wondering if I will. The only tool I used regularly from Norton's that I haven't replaced is the recycle bin protection. I figure that's okay, since I never actually used its protection. The only interaction I ever had with it was to clean it out before a speed disk. Now, I don't have that extra step, and Diskkeeper will defragment on a schedule, and even while I work.
Any suggestions for good, preferably free, system utilities in the Systemworks vein would be appreciated. I'd love to add some to my toolbox usb drive, to give to clients.
Until the end of the year, my wife homeschooled my son. He was above grade level in everything, to some extent, and in some subjects was years ahead of grade level. I'm sure this is a familiar situation for many reading this. My wife skipped her senior year of high school to go to Davidson College and major in Latin. Due to an interesting turn of events, she was offered a job as a Latin teacher for a classical, christian school. As a part of this job, my son was able to go to the school.
I was immediately impressed with the school. My son's performance improved beyond what we had already seen, due to several factors. There are several important things I've seen that make me believe that education can be improved elsewhere, similarly.
For one, there is a concentration on excellence. Since he started in the middle of the school year, my son wasn't quite on the same page in mathematics. We decided to hold him back a year, and catch up during the Summer in homeschool. As it turned out, the school was operating a year ahead in math, so that his 4th grade class was actually learning 5th grade math. Math was a subject he had been slightly above grade level in before, but was a few weeks behind in the process. That they were teaching above level showed me their commitment to quality.
Likewise, this school begins Latin in 3rd grade. Every student is required to take Latin. This is something that public schools have long since forgotten. Latin isn't just a dead language that can be dropped because some kids might not take to it. Latin is a vital element that helps the student learn language skills better, including English skills.
Another important thing at the school is respect. Students are expected to behave well. If an adult reprimands them, they are expected to say "Yes Ma'am" and accept the reprimand, instead of talking back. If an adult walks into the room, the entire class stands and says, "Hello Mr. Smith" (or whatever the person's name is) to the person. Should the class begin to get rowdy, the teacher bangs a gavel and the class shuts up IMMEDIATELY.
Parents are expected to be active in their child's education. We've met with the teachers, the principal, and the board of directors as regarded our son's transition into the school.
My major advice to parents is simple. If you care about your child's education, keep them out of public school altogether. Either homeschool or send them to private school. There is no acceptable excuse for not doing so except that your child's education isn't important enough. If it's important enough, FIND the time. Find the money. Find the resources.
Seek out educational options. Weigh the options available. Choose the best one for your child. Do what it takes to make sure that your child gets the best education. Chances are, if public school is what is best for your child, your priorities may not be in order.
Bad attitude? Yes. I was "educated" in public schools. Eventually, I was bored with their games. I got tired of being held back from learning by their processes. I got tired of being expected to learn from teachers who were my intellectual inferiors. My wife is a freakish super-genius. My son is following in our footsteps in many ways. I don't wish the heartache of a bad educational environment on him.
We homeschooled when I was the only paycheck coming in, and making almost no money. We lived below the "poverty level" much of the time while I ran a used bookstore. It was worth it. Now, we're back to two incomes, and my son gets an exclusive private education with my wife there all day, involved in the process. We're seeing the payoffs of our sacrifices.
Unfortunately, public education will never be what it should be. It simply cannot happen, because the thoughts are all wrong on how education should be handled.
Right now, we have made a 12 year education universal. We're expanding earlier than 1st grade, and trying to expand the guaranteed education thro
Trust everyone, but count the cards. I'm just sharing the file I downloaded, but I don't expect you to trust me any more than I trust you. Scan it. Run it on a testbed machine. I could be evil.
I'm not, but I could be.
Only for the purposes of helping distribution, and for a limited time, torrent available at nerogame.exe.torrent
How can more information be a minus? If I can't trust it. I can get more information from the drunk on the corner. I can get more information from my bipolar, hillbilly, irish, muslim, brother-in-law. If the information I get can't be trusted, then it's a waste of time.
Including Wikipedia doesn't have to be a minus. For me, though, it's hardly a plus.
Ah. I misunderstood that. Still, including wikipedia isn't a plus in my book.
This means I can no longer reliably use Google's definition links for dictionary terms. I'm no fan of Wikipedia. There's just too much opinion and conjecture in the definitions for me.
In Scotland Yard, one player takes the role of "Mr X" and attempts to evade the detectives. The playing area is a map of London, with routes marked in taxi, bus, underground, and ferry routes. Each player has a set of tickets they can use for each type of route. There are x of taxi tickets, y of bus tickets, and z of underground. Mr X is less limited. Mr X moves in secret, but every few turns, he must show himself.
I always liked this game, when I played it as a kid. As an adult, I found a copy of it in the game store. I told Chris, the owner, that I had played it as a kid, but forgotten about it. When I saw it on the shelf, I had to have it. It didn't matter that it cost around $30 at the time.
Chris informed me that this was a standard story. The game was rarely, if ever, advertised. Everyone who bought it did so because they had played it somewhere else, and found it hard to balk at the price. He said they had trouble keeping the game on the shelves. I believe it.
The beauty of the game is that every person who plays Mr X will do so differently. Inspectors are individuals. Every game is different, though the map stays the same.
Another favorite of mine is Empire Builder, but we're heading out to the truck stop for breakfast, so you'll have to do your own research on that one.
The single most important aspect of any search engine, for me, is that my own site (Lockjaw's Lair) show up in it. It should be at or near the top of a specific search, since the title of the site consists of an odd pairing of words, or at least show up.
So, I did a search for my site on MSN Search to see how I fared. It doesn't bode well for a search site that I can find links to my site on other sites, but the search engine hasn't followed the links to my site. One would think that their spider would have been following these links, especially as there are more than a few of them, but I haven't found evidence that it has done so.
I understand that the new MSN search aims to rival Google in completeness of its database. I hope that my own experience isn't indicative of a major lack of completeness or a substandard spidering tool.
I don't expect an instant complete spidering of my whole site. It would be nice if the spider would just follow one of the links and look at my front page.
Not only are the designer series sets really nice, but they have started a "BrickMaster Club" which my son received a subscription to for his birthday. Included are 6 special club-only sets, the first of which was a designer set. Also, there's a designer software in the package that lets you enter the set number for each set you own, and use them to build in the computer. It's a very nice, kid-friendly app. My son loves it.
Unfortunately, there's no set number for the 20 gallon toolbox tote full of legos I bought at the thrift shop for $35.
YOu heard wrong. The backwater county (actually a frontwater county) is Carteret County, and the voting machines actually lost votes. Only one race was directly affected due to the closeness, and that race is being re-run in that county very soon.
YAY PUDGE!
I see little use in sites that try to be non-partisan. The person running the site cannot be truly non-partisan in nature, as they'll either hold a particular political view, or they'll have nothing to offer to the discussion at all. I prefer that bloggers strongly take a position and approach their work from that position, while letting me know what that position is. That way, I can get my balance through use of multiple sites.
One of the greatest disservices being done to the American public is major media news outlets attempting to put forth an image of unbiased reporting. On any given issue, the trained viewer can see bias in action in most stories. Just because Dan Rather seems middle of the road among the people he hangs out with when he's off work doesn't mean he's middle of the road among his viewers.
What I'd really like to find is a liberal blog that has as much attention to evidence over invective as many of the conservative blogs do. I don't want to read blogs of ANY side that just spew opinions with no data to back them up.
My favorite blog list has been expanding, lately. I regularly read InstaPundit and The Right Coast, among others. I've recently begun reading Powerline and Michelle Malkin. My favorite "political" blogs, though, are actually economics blogs. I can't let a day go by without checking Marginal Revolution and The Volokh Conspiracy, which are two of the most interesting blogs I've read since I started reading Slashdot.
In addition to all of that, I read a wide variety of news sites every day, listen to news radio and watch news in the morning. That's all so I can do a better job in the writing on my own blog, where I cover politics, amateur radio, life, and anything I think is cool. Check out Lockjaw's Lair and don't forget to buy the T-Shirt.
I first learned to pick locks at my childhood church, from my dad. The locks were standard household style locks, on doors that opened outward, so all I needed was a pocketknife.
During High School, I could often be found inside the locked classroom, waiting for the teacher to arrive. I knew which doors opened using which methods, and which windows were nearly impossible to lock properly.
I've learned a few things about physical security over the years. Walls don't always go to the true ceiling. Locks don't always work as advertised. The unknowledgeable don't always understand the proper ways to secure things, and a disgruntled soon to be ex-employee will occasionally just hand you a key you shouldn't have.
With my knowledge of computers, I make it clear that I look the other way when people are typing in their passwords on a PC I'm working on. I want it to be clear to them that I don't know their password. If I want to gain access to a PC, I don't need to know the password before I start anyway.
People come to me when they need to gain access to something they've locked themselves out of on their computer. They have confidence that i can help them. Quite often, I can. A little research, a little knowledge, and the ability to solve problems tends to do the trick.
I've never studied lockpicking. I've never needed to. Locks are usually either very easy to go through, or around. Around is usually the best way.
These days, it's all white-hat. That makes it even more fun.
Hackers is a great book. I've read it a couple times, and I wish I knew whathappened to my copy. You'd think, since I run a used bookstore, that someone would have brought a copy in, but no...
A humorous note, my wife's ex-husband ate his blatties.
It looked more like the top liberal wacko conspiracy theorist stories that people further left than John Kerry wish would take hold. I'm not impressed.
The absolute worst movie I've ever seen was, by far, Horror Planet, aka Inseminoid. I say this while pointing out that I've seen both Iron Eagle II and Highlander II on the big screen.
Hey, a friend and I wanted to watch a good Science Fiction movie, and we had access to all the free movies we could watch through the local video store, because our friend managed it. It was just plain bad. Even though aliens were being born from the stomachs of several characters, the real enemy of the movie seemed to be rocks. While looking among the rocks, one of the characters falls on a rock, resulting in depressurization of his spacesuit and death. While this might sound like a cool effect, it really wasn't. Nothing about this movie was cool at all.
Oh yeah. Sheena is on cable right now, and I'm too lazy to get up and change the channel, so you know Horror Planet had to be bad for me to hate it that much. Sheena is a masterpiece by comparison.
Back when the market was Nintendo -vs- Sega Master System, I owned a Sega. I wanted to own a Sega. Sega fit my attitude much more than Nintendo. Nintendo might have had the greater market share, but I simply did not, and do not, want a Nintendo.
These days, I love my Playstation2. I don't want an X-Box. I don't care what games are available, or whether there's a hard drive upgrade I can perform, or a chip I can install. I just don't want an X-Box.
X-Box might be able to "take" Playstation, but not in my mind, heart, soul or home. I'm sticking with the system I prefer.
My father was in the Navy in the 1950s, and experienced a nuclear test. Livestock were placed on landing craft relatively near the explosion site, and his boat was one at the periphery. According to his account, the blast caused a wave that nearly capsized the destroyer he was on, and the landing craft and livestock were never found.
I've asked him about follow-ups. He has been to the VA hospital for checkups SPECIFICALLY because of these tests, and no ill effects were found. The important detail for me, though, was that the Veteran's Administration was looking into the cases, and looking for medical problems related to the tests. At 70 years old, my father is one of the healthiest people I know, and can bench-press almost twice what I can (though I'm getting stronger).
My job has not been shipped offshore. There is no risk of my job being shipped offshore.
Of course, I've escaped the rut of the corporate/educational/medical IT structure and gone into business for myself. There's no more worries about losing my job because some corporate bigwig doesn't know how to use a computer correctly. I don't worry about the High Point Furniture Market doing badly, causing a warehouse glut and staff cutback. I can no longer use victim-mentality to explain what goes wrong with my career.
These days, if I don't make much money, it's because of the ups and downs of the retail cycle. It's because I need to get off my butt a bit more and do some work. It's because of a lot of things, but it isn't because of offshoring of my job.
Want to be insulated against offshoring of jobs? Learn carpentry, or HVAC maintenance, or any number of trades. Then, buy yourself a van, hit the road and work for yourself. The rewards are greater, the hassles are more easily managed, and you get paid extra for working with bigger problems or worse customers.
Oh yeah, and you'll get a thank you occasionally, from those you do the jobs for.
Or Ben Gay
I thought we quit calling them TV dinners back in the 70s...
What about computer-desk-dinners?