I left IT in 2007 to take an Engineering degree - specifically, one in the Structural Engineering field, hence the "down to earth" joke I keep using, because my studies include soils and foundations. My IT career was going nowhere, at least partly because I didn't have any degree before this, but also because I saw no opportunity for advancement within IT. To get anywhere at the (large US) IT company I was at, I would have had to go in to people management, which I did not want to do for different reasons. The managers at the company were no happier either, and I don't think I have the required "people skills" (lying, scapegoating, sucking up, etc). For various personal reasons, including health, I wanted out of the "virtual world" and back in to the "real world", where I could be around real things and real people. (We'll see how that works out!)

Future? What future? The Great Recession has put many in Engineering-related industries out of work, and as for Construction ... fuhgeddabouttit. I'm fortunate in that I saved heavily for years before starting university. I'm a UK citizen living in a country (Ireland) where tuition on first degrees is paid by the govt., though there are other charges. The cost of living in Dublin is no joke either, but I'm managing, and hope to come out debt-free. I should have a B.Sc (Hons) by next June, and will probably stay for two more years for a Master's (which is not free). What else can I do? It's not as if employers are going to need me next year ...

Opposite experience here: eeePC 1000, with 8GB and 32GB SSDs. Not a hiccup in over a year of daily use under Ubuntu Linux, though I should note that I've avoided a lot of wear by not using any swapfile as standard. (I have the SwapSpace package installed in case an app really needs the memory, though that rarely happens.) I expect to stay with SSDs for OS on my next PC, but for bulk storage I'll still use HDDs.

I was going to mention Guild Wars too, as an example of a game that is highly playable as a single player. You can be offline for a month, and it's not costing you anything, since they don't have monthly fees. The quality of the graphics is such that you can just wander around in your own time admiring the scenery, especially with the Eye Of The North expansion.

On one of the few occasions I joining a pickup mission, I ran in to an "expectation" problem. The character I used was a Monk, and what I learned is that there seems to an expectation that a Monk will sit back and cast healing spells, while the other characters can go blundering in to battle without a care. Um... not this Monk. This Monk walks softly, carries a big stick, and is usually too busy Smiting to heal anyone else. 8)

Yep - they're spammers, but who are they spamming? I don't Follow them in return, so I never see a single word from those accounts. I just see the numbers of Followers going up at no cost to me.

As for the complaints about people tweeting "I'm on the John" or whatever: you don't have to put up with that. Un-follow. Problem solved, unless you're the one tweeting such crud, in which case I don't know you.

Until a couple of years ago, I worked for a major US IT firm, in Storage, and went to Bangalore to train new 2nd-level support guys on our mid-range products. The guys themselves were generally OK, since they weren't new to the industry, though there were some odd gaps in basic storage knowledge, such as SCSI protocols. Not something you'd expect to find in a person who'd allegedly done 2nd level support at another company, one that specialized in storage!

In general, though, I wasn't training new graduates from the likes of IIIT-B, but I met a few and had discussions with their managers. What I learned was that these young people were under immense pressure to succeed in IT, with the hopes and expectations of whole extended families riding on their backs. IT is the ticket out of the slums, and families make enormous sacrifices to get their kids in to the industry in the first place. In college, I was told, there's also massive pressure to score high marks, and the process is more biased towards rote learning and cramming for exams. Not totally, of course - that would be impossible - but the point is that, like the Indian education system in general, it's tighter and more authoritarian in terms of curriculum, and the schools themselves were under govt. pressure to deliver high numbers of graduates.

I hate to say this, but I met a few "graduates" who were simply not "graduate material", in terms of basic intelligence, curiosity, enthusiasm, or ability to absorb new concepts. Other graduates I met have great careers ahead of them, but I came away with the impression that "graduate" over there is a bit (again, not totally!) like "MCSE" in other countries: a statement of the exams you have passed, not a wider measure of your ability to function in a complex, ever-changing IT world. The problem with "cramming" is that while it might get you through an exam, the knowledge is not integrated and retained as well as it should be. I'm seeing this myself, now that I'm getting to go to university as a mature student (Engineering), where some subjects would IMHO be better assessed by e.g. thesis, not exam.

Try going to your Help page, and under "Classic Index", check the box that says "Use Classic Index". There are other boxes there too e.g. "Simple Design".

I see the typical "I'm too hip for Twitter" comments are out. The system makes more sense if you use a little moderation - a bit like Slashdot, when it comes to it:
  - the home page only shows tweets from the people you're following. Messaged from Spammers don't appear unless you Followed them.
  - So, you have control over what comes up and who you see. If you want to see interesting tweets, follow interesting people.
  - if someone Follows you, you are under no obligation to Follow them in return. If they don't look interesting or relevant to you, don't Follow them.
  - Ignore people who Follow you with the aim of building a Follower count. Not your problem.
  - Be selfish. It's your time and attention, and no-one else has an automatic right to any of it.

One of my friends is about start on a motorbike trip around the world, and Twitter means he can post quick blog updates from Outer Mongolia or wherever he happens to have a few minutes to spare. For that application, it's like SMS texting to a group of people instead of one phone number. Nothing wrong with Twitter if you use it sensibly, as much as it suits you.

It's not the first time this has been tried: in fact, I'm doing it right now. I have MS, and am nearing the end of a 2-year double-blind trial of FTY720 a.k.a. fingolimod. It reportedly acts by inhibiting the movement of T-cells out of the lymph nodes. It was originally tested as a renal anti-rejection therapy, didn't appear to work well enough, but it seems to be doing better in preventing MS relapses. Other applications are in the pipeline.

It's a bit risky, taking an immunosuppressant, and I've been warned to watch out for skin cancer or anything else strange, and not to get any vaccinations without talking to the doctors first. Don't ask me how well it's working: I'm supposed to be blinded, eh?