Surely the school didn't purchase a bunch of new heart monitors because it might improve the calorie-burning of their students.

If you haven't been paying attention this summer -- fat people are the new terrorists. It seems a lot more plausible to me that a school is implementing a weight control plan than that they're expecting a gym teacher to diagnose cardiac abnormalities with a heart rate monitor, something a cardiologist couldn't do usefully.

Thinking this over some more, though, I'm more sympathetic to the asker's paranoia than I was at first. If school's can embrace policies of publicly weighing and humiliating children, they might well decide that the heart data might be shared in some inappropriate way, although the insurance thing seems unlikely.

Back in the olden days, we used to monitor our pulses in gym class using a finger and a clock. No, there's nothing suspicious about this, and anyone who used common equipment in gym should understand the benefit of buying your own strap instead of digging through a box to find the least sweaty one from the period before.

This is good advice, and gives me an opportunity to speak to the community at large: some of us who go to cons and are in a position to shake tons of hands politely decline. It's not because we're being dicks, it's because we know it's a good way to substantially decrease our chances of catching and spreading any germs.

I played the PAX Pandemic game, where the Enforcers handed out stickers to attendees that read [Carrier] [Infected] or [Immune] (There was also a [Patient Zero].

I got the [Immune] sticker, and by the time I got home on Monday, it was clear that I had the flu. I've had a fever between 100 and 104 all week that finally broke last night, but I'm going to the doctor today because I think whatever I had settled into my lungs. I'll tell him about the H1N1 outbreak and get tested if he wants to run the test, but at this point I think it's safe to assume that I was [Immune] to the Pig Plague, but definitely [Infected] with the damn PAX pox.

Even though it's been a week of misery, it was entirely worth it, and I don't regret going to PAX for a single second.

Last night, Evan unprotected his twitter account and Reifman began to follow him, under the disguise of a fembot.

Twitter seems as appealing to me as gluten-free pizza, so presumably a "fembot" is some Twitterism with which I'm unfamiliar, and not an actual fembot?

Don't talk to the police, or the FBI, or any authority without your lawyer.

Everyone knows that, but how many people have the number of a criminal defense attorney when they've never needed one before? Talking to the police (especially if you think your innocence is obvious) is an attractive option compared to sitting in a police station while you research lawyers or wait for Legal Aid to show up.

Of course, if I'd accidentally walked out with ultra-secret Goldman Sachs code while trying to download vi from an internal server, I'd be one of those people!

Playing the Hockey MMO that is the NHL 09 inspired me to do just that. I quit playing the video game, and now am in an adult league playing 2 games a week. Have lost 40 lbs too.

Agree so much on Space Operas. I think that's what got me so much into the TV reboot of Battlestar Gallactica. It felt like the TCS Tiger's Claw from Wing Commander. It would be so cool to see WC come back in some form with actual story lines between missions.

I'd even settle for the re-skinning of Space Quest like they recently did for Monkey's Island.

Wow, I haven't thought about Syndicate in a long time. Such a great game, and one that has so many possibilities.

A while back I had a problem with the power brick for my Macbook Pro. It was running awful hot, and some of the plastic on the cable near the magnetic adapter was starting to melt. Applecare kept trying to tell me that the problem was my fault for unplugging the adapter by pulling on the cable instead of actually grabbing the magsafe plug, and that despite me having paid for applecare, they would not fix it.

A couple days later while playing a game in bootcamp, I went to unplug it, and was so hot that the power cord's coating actually melted to my hand. I called up AppleCare went through the situation again. I even explained that it had melted, I seemed to get nowhere. Where I had touched the cord it had now darkened considerably, probably from me being able to see the bare cable beneath it. I was trying to describe this to the tech and said something along the lines of, "Well there's melting damage, and the area is blackened a bit as if there was a small fire there"

Suddenly the whole tone of the conversation changed, and I was immediately transfered to a supervisor. I went through about 10 minutes answering a series of questions off a script. "Did the Fire cause any property damage?" "Was there any bodily injury caused by the fire?" "Have you suffered any loss of income due to this problem?" etc etc etc.

I answered no to everything, but simply mentioning "Fire" got me a new power brick, when no other method did. It is something Apple is clearly concerned about.

I would have thought that the Navy would have led hybrid engine research with everything that was done in WWI and WWII for submarines. Essentially those were hybrid engines, with the diesel's powering the boat on the surface and recharging the batteries, and then using the batteries when the ship was submerged.

That has all been supplanted by nuclear submarines, but you have to wonder where battery technology would be today if the Navy had kept using that system.

I ended up getting a job as a game producer thanks to Quake. I was playing online in a clan, and was one of the worst in the group but having fun. To help my score I "cheated" by figuring out how to modify the models in the game, and then adding the rocket attribute to all the player models. This caused them to smoke when they ran (pretty funny) and more importantly glow in a way which allowed me to see them when they hid in dark areas or were just around the corner.

This was long before Punkbuster, wallhacks, or any other cheats. The result was I played a lot better. One of the guys in the clan found out what I had done, and his father owned a game development studio. Next thing I know I was on a plane for Silicon Valley and working as a game producer for a few dreamcast and playstation games.

Unfortunately I was only able to continue to work until my life savings ran out. Yes the jokes about eating Tap Ramen are quite true. I was making only about 70% of what I needed just to cover basic expenses. When I asked for a raise I was told in no uncertain terms that there were plenty of other kids living with their parents who would gladly work for what I was getting.

I'm now a sysadmin living in the midwest making about 3x what I was making in the games industry, and my mortgage payment is less than the rent on my studio in Silicon Valley. I love what I do, but am really glad I took the opportunity to work in the video games industry. Have I thought about writing something on my own, sure I have. I even have a couple notebooks with fully fleshed out game designs. And I have time to do those because I'm not working 90 hours a week on somebody else's game.

So my advice for somebody wanting to get in is simple. Do something, anything, to stand out from the other potential applicants. Find a game you enjoy and mod it. If you're into graphics, find an open source game and help them out (Open source games are notorious for needing graphical help) Write flash games, make something with the XNA. In short, just do something. You'll find out a lot about yourself, and if you have the drive and dedication necessary to make it. Set yourself timelines, make milestones and meet them. But most importantly, do SOMETHING.