But I made it a goal to learn Python during my unemployment period. I read a little bit of the online Python books every day. Let's just say my unemployment has been long enough that I've gotten awfully proficient. :-/

You should watch the documentary A Death in Gaza. It doesn't argue in favor of suicide bombing, but it will help you understand why desperate people in a desperate situation do things that seem otherwise irrational.

It's a frakin' TV show, not a philosophy seminar!

Have you tried any of those cracks? I tried playing a pirated Half Life 2 and it crashed on me every few minutes. A cracked Team Fortress 2 would only work on a handful of very laggy foreign servers.

Screw that. I'll pay rather than having to deal with it.

I must be missing the reference. But anyway, I chose "turning leaves", because I see myself getting away from civilization one day, watching the leaves change color from a remote mountain cabin. :-)

I was laid off, so I'm not working right now. My last job I had an eight minute walk to work. It freed up two hours per day, ten hours per week, compared to my other jobs' commutes.

I just started learning Python a few weeks ago when I got laid off from my QA job. I imagine I'm not to the point yet where the language differences between 2.x and 3.x are going to matter?

Okay, but what is that in real units of measurement, like Libraries of Congress?

I produce music and recently installed a PCI soundcard to use insted of the onboard sound. I immediately noticed a different: no background hiss/noise anymore. I also used to hear high pitched sounds that correlated with HDD access.

LOL. I think not. There are many places I'd move to before I moved to India. Besides, I'm not in "IT", if by IT you mean support centers and crap.

They're notoriously restrictive, so much so that I was surprised when I heard them while scanning through FM radio stations on my iAudio, because it had been so long since I'd heard a Beatles song.

I was laid off about five weeks ago along with others at my company. I have never seen it this bad in terms of searching for work. I hit the job boards every day and I'm in touch with several recruiters, but there's just nothing out there right now, at least in my field. One of my former employers (a very large one you'd recognize) laid off 90% of their contractors in December.

Incidentally, if anyone needs a software QA guy in the Portland, Oregon area... you can get my email on my site. :-)

Interesting premise, the thing with everyone on one server. But it's a grind. I found myself just waiting for the next skill to complete. What they really need is skill queueing -- queue up multiple skills to train sequentially. I have no idea why this isn't in place. Lots of players want it.

"Vegetable" is a culinary term, not a scientific one. Fruits can be vegetables.

Agreed. I loooooooove my Saitek. Had a solid feel to it, and it is nice and slim. I hate keyboards with a crapload of multimedia buttons on them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823175104