My RWD Suburban is definitely a bit sketchy around corners, especially hilly ones, during wet weather, if I don't keep the rear-end loaded down. A few sacks of concrete, and a bunch of tools, does the job admirably, though.
I work in a different field than most of the people on here, but I actually got a bunch of pretty damn nice stuff for Christmas. I'm a carpenter, working for a small remodeling company. This year, I got a decently nice DeWalt sawzall and drill combo in our "white elephant" game at the Christmas party. Then my boss pulls me aside and gave me a brand new compound miter saw. Come payday, there's an extra check for $150. This all from the gun-toting lunatic who pointed an assault rifle at me the day before, just to mess with my head (it was funny, in context, albeit inappropriate for most of y'all's work environments, I'm sure). The best part is that even though we primarily work in residential remodeling, we have some commercial work coming up next week, so the paychecks continue uninterrupted (construction is seasonal, even in TX, and you HAVE to be ready to miss some work in the winter). I love my job...
As far as overall replay value goes, I can't think of any game better than Megaman X (SNES). That's the game that finally convinced me to go out and buy a gamepad for ZSNES purposes. That game has so many little hidden secrets and hard-to-get items (the heart tank in Spark Mandrill's stage is difficult to obtain, as is the blaster upgrade in Flame Mammoth's, and the Hadoken powerup once you have everything else). I actually found a site featuring videos of a guy tearing through that game as fast as humanly possible - finishing the game with all items and all powerups in under 45 minutes. Like most Megaman games, it was an instant classic.
We have a component of our class where we analyze scientific writing from a more liberal-arts perspective; as I said, we were looking at it with more of a critical eye toward style and diction than accuracy.
Just last night, I cited the Nature article in question in an assignment regarding poorly-written scientific papers (focusing on the quality of writing itself, not the quality of the research).
This is the abstract of the article in question:
All organisms interact with their environment, and
in doing so shape it, modifying resource availability. Termed niche
construction, this process has been studied primarily at the ecological
level with an emphasis on the consequences of construction across
generations1. We focus on the behavioural process of construction within a single generation, identifying the role a robustness mechanism2--conflict
management--has in promoting interactions that build social resource
networks or social niches. Using 'knockout' experiments on a large,
captive group of pigtailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina), we show that a policing function, performed infrequently by a small subset of individuals3,
significantly contributes to maintaining stable resource networks in
the face of chronic perturbations that arise through conflict. When
policing is absent, social niches destabilize, with group members
building smaller, less diverse, and less integrated grooming, play,
proximity and contact-sitting networks. Instability is quantified in
terms of reduced mean degree, increased clustering, reduced reach, and
increased assortativity. Policing not only controls conflict3, 4, 5,
we find it significantly influences the structure of networks that
constitute essential social resources in gregarious primate societies.
The structure of such networks plays a critical role in infant
survivorship6, emergence and spread of cooperative behaviour7, social learning and cultural traditions8.
Citation, if you're interested: Flack, J. C.; Girven, M.;de Waal, F. B. M.; Krakauer, D. C. Policing stabilizes construction of social niches in primates. Nature. 2006, 439, 426-429.
I noticed in the Austin newspaper today, in the business section, that Sun is going to be hiring planes to fly banners around advertising these. One, which is apparently going to fly around austin, will say something along the lines of "Thanks, AMD!" The other, which is apparently going to circle Round Rock, will say "Watch out, Dell!" I don't have the paper in front of me, so the wording may not be exact.
I generally feel the same way; the only KDE app I use on a regular basis is k3b. However, I find that app to be so useful for making mix cd's that it justifies installing KDE in and of itself. Trying to make mix cd's from the command line is a real pain; with k3b I can just drag & drop automagically from a Rhythmbox playlist.
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My RWD Suburban is definitely a bit sketchy around corners, especially hilly ones, during wet weather, if I don't keep the rear-end loaded down. A few sacks of concrete, and a bunch of tools, does the job admirably, though.
I work in a different field than most of the people on here, but I actually got a bunch of pretty damn nice stuff for Christmas. I'm a carpenter, working for a small remodeling company. This year, I got a decently nice DeWalt sawzall and drill combo in our "white elephant" game at the Christmas party. Then my boss pulls me aside and gave me a brand new compound miter saw. Come payday, there's an extra check for $150. This all from the gun-toting lunatic who pointed an assault rifle at me the day before, just to mess with my head (it was funny, in context, albeit inappropriate for most of y'all's work environments, I'm sure). The best part is that even though we primarily work in residential remodeling, we have some commercial work coming up next week, so the paychecks continue uninterrupted (construction is seasonal, even in TX, and you HAVE to be ready to miss some work in the winter). I love my job...
As far as overall replay value goes, I can't think of any game better than Megaman X (SNES). That's the game that finally convinced me to go out and buy a gamepad for ZSNES purposes. That game has so many little hidden secrets and hard-to-get items (the heart tank in Spark Mandrill's stage is difficult to obtain, as is the blaster upgrade in Flame Mammoth's, and the Hadoken powerup once you have everything else). I actually found a site featuring videos of a guy tearing through that game as fast as humanly possible - finishing the game with all items and all powerups in under 45 minutes. Like most Megaman games, it was an instant classic.
We have a component of our class where we analyze scientific writing from a more liberal-arts perspective; as I said, we were looking at it with more of a critical eye toward style and diction than accuracy.
Just last night, I cited the Nature article in question in an assignment regarding poorly-written scientific papers (focusing on the quality of writing itself, not the quality of the research).
This is the abstract of the article in question:
Citation, if you're interested: Flack, J. C.; Girven, M.;de Waal, F. B. M.; Krakauer, D. C. Policing stabilizes construction of social niches in primates. Nature. 2006, 439, 426-429.
I noticed in the Austin newspaper today, in the business section, that Sun is going to be hiring planes to fly banners around advertising these. One, which is apparently going to fly around austin, will say something along the lines of "Thanks, AMD!" The other, which is apparently going to circle Round Rock, will say "Watch out, Dell!" I don't have the paper in front of me, so the wording may not be exact.
I generally feel the same way; the only KDE app I use on a regular basis is k3b. However, I find that app to be so useful for making mix cd's that it justifies installing KDE in and of itself. Trying to make mix cd's from the command line is a real pain; with k3b I can just drag & drop automagically from a Rhythmbox playlist.
The original Linux-based robot.