Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes... "Hassen Sie leichter ein Kollektiv oder eine bestimmte Person und hassen Sie lieber allein oder in einem Kollektiv?"

Are most folks thinking of a long-A sound? Because to me, it seems like it works if you use a short-A sound for 'a' and quickly roll it into 'man'. Like pronouncing the name Amanda, but without the '-da' at the end.

The idea that a SAPR (Synthesis, Auto Place & Route) flow is fundamentally inferior to a full-custom layout is tenuous at best. It's really just a new parroting of the good-old days cliché.

Modern gate-mapping, placement, and routing algorithms are quite sophisticated these days (and improving all the time), and computers are incredibly fast, relative to a human mind. Could a really good layout engineer do a full-custom 64b carry-lookahead adder that is smaller, faster, less power than an automated flow? Maybe. But how long is it going to take him to do the whole FPU? Or how about a complex block with upwards of 1M logic gates? Hand-layout for digital logic has rapidly diminishing returns, in my opinion. Better to have your layout guys do some awesome stdcells, and let the tools and PD wizards do the rest. In many cases, it'll be just as fast (if not faster) than the full-custom option. Note well that automated flows don't explicitly demand random/non-structured P&R algorithms.

www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lhm/IEEE_Guide.pdf

Not an electrician, but I thought a Ufer ground was basically required by NEC these days(??). Basically, just put it in the foundation footer, or slab for slab-on-grade, and you've got a really good local ground for the house (concrete is a pretty good conductor, relative to dirt). Making sure all the utilities enter the building in roughly the same area, all with short-as-possible low-resistance connections to the ground goes a long way too.

Yup... I posted this before: comment from 2008.

And for the curious... The salary ranges that I posted have basically been increased ~2% (cumulative) over the intervening 4 years (2007 range vs 2011 range), and average employee salary probably increased ~5% (also cumulative), based on data I've seen from HR. Also, no, my company's HR department isn't refreshingly transparent. They're just completely clueless...

Hmmm... not sure if it was the "official" way to deal with a child's passport, but when I was a kid, my mom printed my name, wrote "Signed by mother" above my name, and signed her own. I traveled all over Europe, to Egypt, Canada, the US with that passport. No one paid it any particular attention. But that seems so much more sane, in my biased mind, than having small kids sign it themselves.