I grew up on Long Island. L.I. Tap water is either well water when you go further east (very good) or via the NYC water supply from upstate NY (even better -- you might be surprised as to how far away NYC's resovoirs are: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/maplevels_wide.shtml )

Bzzzzzzzzzzt. Wrong, try again. I live in the world where I don't need to extort salary and benefits from an employer by threat of strikes/intimidation/sabotage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics "In 2010, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union--was 11.9 percent". The other 88% of the workforce is the "real" world. I'm not jealous in the least. Health care costs are rising faster than inflation. Big surprise that employers are trying to shift that cost. That said, I wish the Verizon employees well; this isn't a company that's struggling. They're doing quit well. They want to share the wealth with the holders of stock options instead of the workers.

Yeah, sadly Smultron was abandoned by its developer (or developers, but I think there was just one.) I coughed up the money for TextMate, which has some cool features.

While I realize you were not serious; I was curious what the real numbers were among Congresspersons. I expected 99 Lawyers and a paralegal. ;-)

There are a lot of lawyers to be sure, but fewer than I expected.

For the record, there are 435 Representatives and 100 Senators in Congress.

From Wikipedia:

The Congressional Research Service notes that the vast majority of Members (95 percent) had an academic degree:

168 Representatives and 57 Senators have a law degree. Of these, five (Representative and two Senators) also hold a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree.

83 Representatives and 16 Senators earned a master's degree -- often a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) - as their highest educational degree

27 Representatives and one Senator (Mark Begich) have no educational degree beyond a high school diploma.

23 Representatives (but no Senators) have a Ph.D

17 Representatives and three Senators have a medical degree (this number includes one Senator with a veterinary medicine degree and one Representative with a dental degree).

Five Representatives (but no Senators) have an associate's degree as their highest degree. One House Member has a licensed practical nurse (L.P.N.) degree

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_States_Congress

Yup. Including coal: http://coalcares.com/cleanenergy.html

> But for some reason it's his job that would be classified as "blue collar" and "low-skill". I have to disagree with that. Blue-collar, yes. But tool and die makers are extremely skilled individuals. I worked in a machine shop back in the 1980s and the tool makers were well-respected and at the top of the pecking order in the shop (which was fairly large.) They were the blue-collar equivalent I guess of sys admins, bordering on BOFH status. They were catered to, and the other less-skilled machinists kowtowed to them. They were also the highest-paid in the shop.

I think this is good advice. If I can add on: I've found Lenovo laptops to be sturdy, no-nonsense machines. My experiences in dealing with Dell on more than one occasion has soured me on ever buying another Dell. Good luck!

Heh, nice, you are of course correct; here's a reference by the way for the curious: http://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/top-5-marie-antoinette-scandals1.htm

My town composts them. My tax dollars at work, I'm happy to say.

Where's my mod points? Spot-on observations.