I'm working for a conservation group currently that runs crews based on eight ten hour days on, two of which are travel days, and six days off. It takes a bit to get used to and some weeks will make you murderous but the promise of a vacation every other week makes it worthwhile.

If only all games added something cuddly and evil when you asked for an easy run through.

You should look into the rehabilitation of contaminated sites before stating anything quite so strongly. The undesirability of contaminated land can make it environmentally valuable and worth protecting. Environmental grounds for legal argument aren't nearly as limited as you're pretending.

You should travel more. I live in Arizona and there are plenty of places here and in surrounding states, with neighborhoods (generally ranches), where you need to drive more than an hour to get to the nearest gas station, and further for a bar.

You're not a historian yourself by any chance, are you? I happen to be, and am a bit confused by your thinking. You seem to be creating a strawman by insisting your opponent holds his opinions so rigidly, which he clearly doesn't.

History, as we all should know by now, is little more than a narrative. It seeks to simplify reality and explain where we are in the context of where we've been. Note that history is distinct from record keeping. As a result of this simplification, history is inherently bias even when attempts are made to avoid this bias. You should read some essays by Romila Thapar for a fairly quick explanation of how this plays out and maybe avoid asserting your seemingly incomplete understanding so proudly in the mean time. Your criticisms aren't entirely unfounded, but you're stepping on your own foot here.

A bit late jumping here, but I work in a used bookstore that also sells games, consoles, dvds, and electronics. We essentially function as a pawn shop with a trade credit system. I work in the gaming/electronics department and we poach gamestop's pricing for what they carry and use a combination of digital press, amazon, and ebay to find our selling prices. Standard payouts are 1/2 trade, 1/4 cash for things we don't care much about, and around 3/5 trade 1/2 cash for things that we really want and know will sell. Nothing is fixed, the employees buying are allowed to use their own discretion. We discount most things 10% if you're nice to us, %20 if you're an educator.

The result? A huge community of loyal customers who benefit from our business model. Not because our prices are necessarily great compared to what you can find online, but because you can get rid of a wide variety of media you aren't using and apply that towards things you want, finding things that aren't available anywhere else. We're also the only source in the region for collectible old school consoles and their games. It sucks to give someone $80 for a 360, but the ones that get $30 for a working NES, or $50 for a Master System with all the trimmings are happy. I would much rather be keeping these things circulating than have them end up in a dumpster. Our product diversity separates us from gamestop, but I don't see their general model as being necessarily evil.

I have a t400 without a camera. It's a great piece of equipment. It would certainly fit your needs but seems a touch overkill unless you're working with a limitless budget.

If you've got the time for a book, Edward Wilson's "The Diversity of Life" has a wonderfully concise explanation with examples of species creation and diversification as we understand it in the first couple chapters. Well worth reading.

It'll be nice to have an option to hop into a game for a little bit without committing to an hour+ long campaign or versus match. One of the main reasons I don't play very much is that I can rarely sit down for a couple hours and get a full round in.