In the Netherlands, if you roll backwards at a driving test, you fail. Period.

If I had mod points, I would mod you up. :-)

Pinky?

I have a TZ7. Although the format will never be my all-time favorite, it is a very powerful compact camera for a (then) decent price. Newer TZ series are apparently more disappointing, but to be honest, I haven't had any first-hand experience with these models.

Please note that in the Netherlands, it rarely snows more than a few centimeters. Most of that snow is tackled by road salt. Furthermore, what does happen, is rain or sleet freezing up the roads, resulting in black ice which is almost invisible in the dark. Normally, I shun warning labels instead of prudent driving, but this idea is IMHO pretty nifty.

Now here's something that irks me, although not by fault of the owners/companions. I have had several budgies. One vet told me that standard issue parakeet food is like Big Macs for parakeets, i.e. very fatty, unhealthy and hardly nutritious. So actually, while I thought that I was feeding my parakeets properly, I actually wasn't.

I never felt guilty for keeping parakeets. When properly trained, they are very social and intelligent and they appear quite happy for your companionship. However, in the end it appeared that I have been consistently poisoning them, even while making sure they would not overeat. That made me decide not to buy a new parakeet.

Long story short, even if pets get a proper home with food and protection, it may not be beneficial by definition, regardless of the owner's intentions.

Coding is not hard. Being the one to do the grunt work is. You'll always be on the bottom of the corporate ladder and in the middle of the shit storm, regardless of skill and experience. You can either stop caring or switch careers. At 36, I am still in doubt which one it will be.

Another thing making it hard to be a (non-freelance) coder, is that most of the time is spent on either trivial stuff or uninteresting problems. I know several coders who would love to work in innovative projects, but are forced to do something spirit crushingly boring like generating excel sheets from a software package from 1997 or something.

If you want to maintain your relationship, do not force feed her Star Trek. There are many SciFi series out there that appeal to a wider (and more female) audience.

I'd agree, but please note that the battery life on a first generation EEEPC is horrible. If the battery is still good (which it probably isn't), you get three hours of battery life. Also: the SSD is way too small for a decent-sized distro, and the Celeron 900 (!) tends to run hot over time. Perhaps I'd buy a slightly newer model, and swap the HDD for a SSD.
That being said, my EEE900 is still going strong and very portable. I even carry it in my tank bag on my motorcycle.

What sport would that be? Binge drinking?

Here's another non-piracy explanation: nowadays, people increasingly buy their stuff from the artists themselves, cutting out layer upon layer of middle men. Hopefully, now they actually earn something from their music sales.

So it's a bit like Windows Mobile 6 then.

If they had been on a quest against evil, they would have resigned.

Word of advice: you probably just have to clean the potmeter. It accumulates dust and dirt over time. Clean it out and you're good again.

Oh dear! How sad! Never mind!