In my experience, you'll seldom find one in a vet clinic either. Similar to person-doctors, there are good ones, and there are reasonably priced ones, and on incredibly rare occasions you may find someone who falls into both categories. Most of the time though, they'll just want to sell you an expensive test and lab work, when the reality is I don't care what pathogen is giving my animal the shits, I know a broad-spectrum antibiotic will fix it and don't need lab work.

A good person-doctor will say the same - when I travel, my doctor gives me a small prescription of broad-spectrum antibiotics and says "if you get traveler's diarrhea, take a few of these 12 hours apart. If it doesn't get better find local medical care."

Some things just don't need to be over-thought.

Funny, we must live in different realities, cause it worked great for me (I'm not a programmer, but have had offers to become one). I started doing rack & stack and remote server imaging as a contract gig, took on more and more scripting/automation tasks, and eventually got hired full-time and moved into sysadmin work, then moved horizontally into datacenter engineering. As a result, my salary has increased literally > 500% from where it was 7 1/2 years ago, and that's not including stock awards or bonus potential.

Could have been an inside job and someone disabled it?

Funny, I don't think I ever saw a P800 that lasted beyond the first 6 months or so... the P400 was good, the P410 excellent, but the P800 in our org had a notoriously low MTBF. Never saw the same problems with the P812s though.

I take it you've never used HP in the enterprise? HP ProLiant servers are solid hardware, and even with this move (much as it pisses me off) HP's enterprise support is still some of the best I've dealt with. I'm upset about this change (and have, very vocally, let HP know my feelings on the matter), but truth be told they were one of the very few companies to be offering these kinds of updates for enterprise-level hardware without a support contract in the first place.

Well first of all, she's a native English speaker born in America, so there's a huge disadvantage right there, especially if she happens to be white. Then, she has a Bachelor of Science, rather than Masters in Test-Passing from the University of the Holy Cow, so that's another mark against her. Finally, maybe she's trying to get a higher level job than what she has the experience for? Tell her to start small, be willing to look at contract jobs, and possibly try to get in the door by taking an officially non-programming position, something like system administration. There she can prove herself with scripting and automation, and move horizontally within a company into a programming role.

Look for the not-so-obvious foot in the door, and something where there's not so much competition from H1-Bs willing to work 80-hr weeks for peanuts.

They key is to find a good farm supply store with knowledgeable staff who've been there for a while. I'm fortunate to live near one that used to board race horses (and may be doing so again, I'm not sure - they stopped for a while). The majority of their staff have worked closely with animals (including the above-mentioned ridiculously expensive equines) for years, and so the store a) doesn't tend to sell cheap crap and b) knows to give a good recommendation.

They also now have an on-site vet clinic (as of this past summer), so if they don't know they can find out easily. So no, I wouldn't trust your average pet store staff at , you need to find a good farm supply store with good staff.

Also, the staff won't necessarily know more than a vet, but they'll very frequently know enough. I don't know more than a vet, but I know that an eye infection that doesn't clear up in a few days needs antibiotics, I just don't readily know which ones. The staff at the store knew that part and had a good ophthalmic ointment intended for such infections. I'm not going to trust them for DIY spaying instructions (neutering perhaps), I'll leave that to the vet.

The best thing I can suggest is to go to your local farm supply store instead of the vet, for anything but the most serious symptoms. They typically have the medications readily available for a reasonable price, and will often have people knowledgeable enough to point you in the right direction.

Case in point: My cat had a nasty eye infection, and I decided I didn't want to spend the time, effort or money to pack up the cat and go to the vet. So I went to the local farm supply store and said "hey, my cat has goopy eyes that aren't clearing up, and in fact seem to be getting worse. Do you have anything for that?"

They sold me a small tube of ophthalmic antibiotic ointment intended for cats/dogs, gave me brief instructions on how much to use and how to apply it without putting the cat's eye out, and about $10 later I was on my way home. It cleared up the cat's eyes in a couple days, and I had plenty left over and have used it on a couple occasions since then. In total, I probably saved at least $500 in vet bills, since I've used it to treat 2 cats on 2-3 occasions each over the past several years.

The same type of store will often have good wormers, earmite meds, etc., so as long as the animal has classic symptoms that are easily diagnosed (and again, if in doubt just describe the symptoms to someone working at the store), they ought to be able to help you.

Most of the small animal problems that only a vet can fix, can instead be fixed for about $0.06 at home. Large animals like horses, cows, etc. are different, and may warrant a call to an actual vet. Just about the only thing that's probably worth a visit to a vet for a cat/dog is to have them "fixed" (which really ought to be called "broken" in my opinion - not because it shouldn't be done, simply because it's removing functionality).

Sure, as a start, the little box that pops up allowing you to auto-complete parts of formulas in Excel, and lists the valid arguments you can pass to it. That one little feature has undoubtedly saved me hours while working in Excel.

Additionally, the "Format as Table" option is incredibly useful, and wasn't in OOo last I checked.

Admittedly it's been 2-3 years since I gave up trying to do anything remotely fancy in Calc, though I still use it occasionally on my Linux boxes, so these features may have been added. Point is though, they've been in MS Office since at least 2007, and as of a couple years ago still weren't in OOo Calc.

If you've been using OOo for 12 years now, how do you really know how it lines up to Microsoft Office?

I had an experience where I switched to OOo somewhere around 2001, and for years I was quite happy with it. Then I got a job where I had Microsoft Office installed on my work computer, and started using many of the more advanced features (especially in Excel).

I went back to my home computer and tried to do the same things in the most recent version of OOo, and failed miserably. At which point I gave up and installed Microsoft Office.

For basic use, OOo is fine. For anyone needing advanced functionality and compatibility with 95% of the business world, Microsoft Office is an absolute must. The others are simply not there.

Hmm... Condensation. A few problems with this...

1) If it's that cold out, why wouldn't the condensation freeze in the tank? I've never seen a heated gas tank...
2) Most of the really cold places I've seen put 10% ethanol in the gas... this should help dissolve any condensation nicely into the fuel, letting it just run through the system without freezing up.
3) Really Cold also means Really Dry, which should mean little to no condensation. The condensation happens when warm, moist air hits really cold things or air. Unless someone's making out with their gas tank, there shouldn't be much opportunity for warm, moist air to enter.
4) Anyone who has a major problem with condensation should consider using additives (methanol/ethanol) to take care of the problem. These are plentiful and cheap - I believe last time I bought the Walmart version I paid $0.50/pint (clearance after winter last year).

Yep - I know a few people there... Not cold enough to freeze gasoline, sorry.

Where the hell do you drive that your gas line freezes? Diesel can gel, but any sane driver of a diesel vehicle will also put an anti-gelling agent in their tank when the weather turns cold (and I'm sure in the colder of those places there's an anti-gelling compound already mixed in by the distributor to keep the pump from getting stopped up).

Gasoline, on the other hand, doesn't stop flowing nicely until it's way colder than what your average vehicle will handle... Chances are your water cooling system for the engine will freeze up long before then (even when properly filled with an antifreeze mixture).

Or maybe he turned on the heat? There are times when the "inefficiency" of an item becomes a benefit, such as the heat of an ICE when it's stinking cold out, or the heat from incandescent bulbs in the winter (in which case, for those of us with electric heat, they aren't really costing more that a CFL/LED, they're just helping out our heater).

Uh... false. Sorry.

I wouldn't mind if it were so, but here in Washington it's $52.50, an application, and a set of fingerprints - After that, the state shall issue within 30 days unless something shows up on the background check.

It's the main reason we don't have reciprocity with a lot of states - we don't meet their training requirements.