There are times that it feels heavy. That was one of those times.

Some girls are into geek guys, even if they aren't into the business themselves.

I once had this customer, an absolute babe, bring her virused out Dell into my shop. The decision was for a plain re-install (she had all her stuff backed up, smart girl). Installing XP is not a hard task, but to someone who's never done it, it's like going down the rabbit hole. She was fascinated by the process. Simple little things like blowing the dust out of the machine, changing the boot order, partitioning the drive, she was totally into it. She wanted me to explain everything, and I did, if for no other reason than to appreciate her beauty a little longer (my bad). Maybe she'd missed her calling in life.

As the install got underway, I told her the usual thing I do on a Saturday when a machine is doing an automated install and I have no other work: go to the pub down the street and have a couple of pints, watch the football, come back, queue up the updates and then go home. She suggested that she could come along to the pub, too.

Okay. I'm living every geek's dream here, for real. A hot, young babe is impressed by my skillz and wants to go on a date.

I blurted out that I wasn't sure what my wife might think of that. She was embarrassed. I felt like a jerk. :( She never knew because I wear my ring on a chain around my neck so it doesn't get scuffed up.

As funny as the article is, geeks face the same lessons in love as everyone else.

The CIA? This is a bunch who allegedly run clandestine torture camps. Use illegal software - oh no, they'd never do that...

Another pertinent question to ask is, "Who gains by doing this?" Tin-foil hatters always forget that bit. It is possible that the Aliens are up to something, but really, if the Aliens have the tech to come here, they probably have nukes themselves and don't need any help in disabling our defences. So then the question turns into, "Why bother pulling pranks?" There may be lots of answers to that one, but surely there must be more interesting things to do in the galaxy than punk some backwater, pre-stellar world.

So then you go back to the first question, "Who?" Well, if it even happened at all, it's probably a more terrestrial source. Certain other superpowers might be trying to see what they can get away with. Seems a lot more plausible to me. Hell, it might be the U.S. They might even be trying to see what they can get away with; useful against others.

Asus one too. Socket 939, so good luck finding a decent one unless you are willing to try your luck on eBay.

When I got it back to my shop I realized I had a stack of dead mainboards, all of them Asus, all of them AMD, all of them just out of warranty.

I drive an Intel Core 2 Duo with an MSI board now.

Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free / You are a pirate!

Just saying. When did it become hip to spy on people when you can simply ask for their opinion? Isn't communication is what leadership is all about?

Doesn't say much about an IT company when they can't even figure out basic information technology tools, including their own:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=fort+gay

They bore the hell out of me. Signal to noise ratio is not good. If anything, they isolate people more.

I don't come to a place like /. for companionship, I come to learn stuff, which I get. Something like Facebook is the reverse. All I learn there is useless stuff like "my baby burped," "OMFG my dog just shat on the carpet" or "I feel sad, bored, unhappy, unfulfilled, etc, etc..."

The sad one blows me away; you see it so often. The Internet is such a bad way to deal with that. I once went through Postsecret for an hour and wanted to kill myself after. If you are really feeling sad pick up the damn telephone and give someone a call because you probably need to. Better yet, come over to my house and we'll have a couple of beers and we can talk face to face like humans are supposed to.

There is a reason why humans can make dozens of different facial expressions, zero of which you can parse out in a Facebook status, forum posting, a tweet, or even a blog. It's why I don't bother with social networking sites anymore, I socialize.

Just asking. $1000 of kit to have 12 minute virtual dogfights? I can think of cheaper hobbies, like reading /.

IMHO, what Cameron got right with that movie was two things:

1) Cute little story with enough action to keep the boyfriend amused and enough romance to keep the girlfriend amused. Also environmentally themed, that's big today.

2) Realistic CG characters. It's one of the two movies I can think of that has beat the "uncanny valley" for me (Lord of the Rings is the other). One of the hardest things to pull off in CG is emotion and they pulled it off, even in characters which are clearly alien.

Notice how 3D didn't play into my enjoyment of it? Maybe some people like it, but it's a gimmick as far as I'm concerned. You want actual 3D? Go watch a stage play.

It sells for 20 million a kilo I hear.

Here's a notion. Why not try to figure out what is wrong with your society that causes so much crime and then deal with it. Then you won't have to put so many people in prison. The U.S. is the land of the free, yet it has the highest incarceration rate on the planet. Surely someone must be asking, "Hey, why is that?"

Keep it simple, mate. Use a telephone. Or Skype. If you want to see pics of the family, have them email them to you. Gmail account is good for this. Having dad call around dinner time could become a very treasured memory for the family. Also remember, you're the one who's taken the remote job, you didn't have to do that.

Now, if you are thinking surveillance, that's a whole different ball of wax. Might want to have a chat with the fam about that.

You're on glue mate. Selling AMD is a ghetto.

Don't misunderstand, I used to build and sell OEM AMD based systems religiously for years and what did it get me? I've had more dead boards and more dead CPUs than I ever had with Intel stuff. And it's not like I was using crap mobos either, I was using Asus and MSI. I was using Kingston RAM, Antec PSUs and these things were still falling over left and right. I've lost so much money servicing the warranty on their platform it's embarrassing. Intel, out of the hundreds I've assembled, I've seen less than a dozen back. They just work, no complaints, no problems.

I'm not sure what 'customer experience' is supposed to mean, but me not going out of business matters to me somewhat more. There is a reason why they sell their CPUs for $99 these days: because they are slow and shitty and no one with any brains wants to buy them.