As another imperialist pig who's not a native English speaker (Romanian in this case), I strongly recommend getting her used to the English keywords.
An important part of learning programming is going through documentation on your own, and most documentation worth a damn is in English.
Mind, i first started with machine code/assembly language when i was 10-ish, and that has no connection with any language known by humans :)

My 15 months old iPhone 4S continues to be good enough. I'm not interested in the new Samsung, the new iPhone or the new anything.
Maybe after two more hardware refreshes...

Mmm that I didn't know. I thought she was still sleeping under her desk and doing 200 hour weeks while pregnant...

Of "you can work 200 hour weeks if you sleep under your desk" (while at google) and more recently "no more telecommute" (at yahoo) fame?
Is that someone to be praised, regardless of gender?
I think she belongs on the "stay away form wherever she works" list.

... when I played the original Far Cry.
Pretty engine, then zzzzzzz.
Haven't touched a cryengine game since then.

But the iPhone 4 is just the right size for me. The 5 feels already too long. I'm worried that if Apple jumps on the 'my phone is bigger than your phone' bandwagon I'll be left with no replacement, as all the Android small phones are el cheapo versions with slow hardware.
Btw, I'm male, and I don't have particularly small hands. I can reach around a 4-4.3" screen with one hand, I just don't want one.

freelancer/rentacoder are there if you want to starve. And I say that as a Romanian programmer who works in theory cheaper than USers. Maybe I do, but not *that* cheap.
If you network, you will end up with side projects without even asking for them. Someone you know will need just a little help on some project, someone you know from a previous job will contact you to tie up a loose end, or do something simple, etc etc.
From personal experience, my holiday expenses for the last 3 years have been paid from money made outside the day job.

For complex operations, doing accurate progress may take a lot of development time you can't afford. Mostly everyone has deadlines...

Maybe you... i browse with FlashBlock on all machines, portable or not. If I want to watch a movie I'll click to enable just the movie, thank you.

Subject says it all... why enable flash by default? Even if it didn't have any security holes, it's still the great battery eater...

I've lately upgraded the GPU every other generation (i buy mid range cards like the 660) and the CPU every 4 years or more. It's been fast enough for my purposes.

Wake me up when their linux drivers work as well as nvidia's please :)

I think your problem here is that you have no gaming machines, and even if you install windows you will get crap performance even if the games work at all.
As some other people here say, I've been running WoW with no hassle in linux for the better part of 5 years until i got so bored i didn't even look at the latest expansion.
Do you have a PC with non integrated graphics? ;)

I live in Romania and i was using iGo anyway; google maps didn't have what i needed here. Same probably goes for more countries around me.
So when i upgrade my phone to iOS 6... i will be still using iGo :)

Meanwhile, no matter the hardware specs, iOS will keep being more responsive and iOS phones will keep getting software updates for years after launch. Clock speed and number of cores has stopped being relevant even in phones (it's not really relevant on the desktop any more as well) already.
Note: i've owned two Android phones before switching to iOS.