We had a model rocket birthday party for my son (turned 5). We pre-built a number of bulk-pack rockets, had the guests decorate them, took them out for a launch.

We made sure to warn parents that if they were flying soon, they would want us to handle the engines and post-launch rockets, for fear of the glorified mall-cops that are "protecting" us at the airport.

Little did we know that black powder was hard to detect. Guess that's changed now.

One reason that the hobby is waning: regulations that make it nearly impossible to launch rockets in/near a major metro area.

When I was a kid, I could launch on the ball fields of any of several local elementary and junior high schools. Now there's a single local park in our city of 4 million people where I can launch rockets on public land without going to the pokey.

Been over-the-air for years.

We get pristine 1080i network-supplied digital picture for free, no broadcast flag, a fair number of local channels, and Netflix, Amazon and Sony Playstation Store supply the rest over the internet.

Haven't really done much with Hulu, but it's another opportunity for you to stream fresh content.

I use MythTV and a HD Homerun tuner, running on Debian on a QNAP TS-119 (which draws something like 6 watts spun up). For TV frontends, I use the PS3, or a recent Mac Mini.Very reliable.

Took a fair amount of setup, but all works great. My just-turned-five kid has been working the remote himself for about 18 months, getting lots of great commercial-free kids programming from PBS.

Been forever since I've paid for cable TV.

Love, Love, LOVE my Ergotron arm (single monitor arm, 24" Dell, way adjustable). Check it out!

it _IS_ hard, but no reason it can't be done better.

take "stuff to do" (steps, gigabytes, number of files to copy) and divide "stuff done" into it for "fraction complete".

Put that "fraction complete" into a proportion with "time taken so far" as the known item and "total time" as the unknown.

Apply some inertia or hysteresis to the "total time" so you don't have it rapidly jumping all over the place (like file copy dialog estimates seem to).

This total time estimate relies only on knowing what _HAS_ happened at a given time, not on predicting what _MIGHT_ happen on a user's machine.

Apply "fraction complete" to the length of the progress bar, and report the expected remaining time as text.

The bar is for "progress", and mustn't go backward unless "progress" does so as well (maybe when you cancel an install? This is an edge case). The estimated time can vary as needed - but gee, maybe build some logic into the dialog to let the user know to bang on the side if it looks like something's hung.

You could trend completion speed ("that part went fast, you're slowing down now") as a sparkline or other visual decoration (color map - green for fast, red for slow) to give the user more confidence that the dialog knows what's going on.

Under NO circumstances should a site or app put up an animated gif in place of progress (because it shows only that the browser's still running, not that any completion is taking place). Think of how often this happens today. Tragic.

My wife found a butt-ugly electric sit-stand desk on Craigslist, from which I salvaged the legs.

Bought a nice $40 birch veneer top from Ikea, with their cable tray, attached a full-length outlet strip to the back, an Ergotron arm for my monitor, and mounted all the geeky gear (GbEN switch, KVM, USB hub, etc.) sub-surface.

It's nirvana, and I can sit or stand, and even raise the desk to get under it when they drop the big one.

You can find electric legs in my major US city new for around $500 (more than what I paid for a used desk).

"The White Mountains" trilogy enthralled me as a kid. Great for a young reader.

No, don't get the prequel (though I haven't read it).

If you've had customer face-time, and worked in a large company, or visited large companies and worked in them, your understanding of the corporate world is not to be underestimated.

Young clowns right out of school typically take years to understand how corporations work, how to navigate, how to handle the politics, how to communicate, hell, even how to dress. You probably want to focus on getting back in to corporate work, or perhaps consulting with corporations.

As another poster mentioned, you'll be hired at this age for experience - so parlay what you have, don't fret about age.

If you'd like to take on a modern language, Udacity's got a really good intro course on Python, six weeks long and free. Other courses on web application development, programming a robotic car, and more are there for the taking. Worth your time. Start with Python - its used there extensively, and is a modern interpreted language.

Excellent short story: A boy makes a "disapearer" and puts it to use. Quick, entertaining read, economical, vivid prose.

All excellent titles (and most of these are on my shelf). One I'd like to add is "Simple and Usable" by Giles Colborne ISBN: 978-0321703545

Simple and Usable is a short read, but does a great job at helping you understand what goes into simplifying a design. "Simplicity is not simple" - there's always an irreducible amount of complexity. This book helps you understand how to manage it.

It's a mindset book, not a cookbook - not really similar to "Design of Everyday Things" (DoET), but it serves a similar purpose: help you set your course through the field.

Must be quite a drag for kids in Cumming, Georgia (or for those poor youths from Butts county, GA).

Love my ThinkTank Urban Disguise: http://www.thinktankphoto.com/search.aspx?find=Urban+Disguise. This is a briefcase-look bag, which you wouldn't think held camera gear. Can get a harness for backpack use. Word to the wise: this is a LOT of gear to be hauling. My bag weighs a ton without ANY laptop, and my 15" MacBook Pro makes it a strain on a shoulder. Travel lighter than me, please.

Well, you could go to /dev/null for the functionality they've delivered for me so far.

Your question implies that similar functionality (in the sense of a product that's purchasable, not vapor and that will work as advertised) is actually available somewhere else.

I believe there's a British firm that markets the same hardware, that actually gives a crap about the customer, but unfortunately you're not going to get two working GBEN ports from them either - it's the same device.

No idea where to tell you to turn.

Yeah, I'm still waiting on my "Early June" delivery of a GuruPlug+ from an order in May. It's spec'ed great. Too bad you can only use the Gigabit Ethernet at 10/100.

They think they're going to sell me a "professional upgrade kit" to make it meet the spec they advertized when they billed my card. Bullshit.

So let's say you want to do something you need to rely on: home music server, 24/7 monitoring applications, security. If you haven't laid in a spare, are you going to wait over 3 months for a replacement when it breaks. N.B.:WHEN it breaks.

Run far and fast from GlobalScale!

Why expend so much effort to piss a customer off at your company? Couldn't they have just put up an order page that said "Fsck You, Customer!"?

It's a great idea to get a tour from a dosant. Ours was ex-NSA, and the commentary is was fantastic. There's more than one Enigma there, and also the American version of the Cryptographic Bombe, which broke the 4-wheeled Enigma code. Brings a whole new meaning to "brute force computing".