I've been there, and I've clawed my way up a bit, but it's still very hard sometimes (I get paid well hourly, but work on call as many as 65 or as few as 3 hours per week, can't rely on it to be regular at all). How'd you do it?

That would be my job, except that it was 30k per year, not 200k.

You seriously think they give a damn? I live in an apartment complex with package lockers, and I had a lazy mail carrier break the key off in one of the locks, making it unopenable. They chucked the key in my mailbox and left it there for three days. My options were to call USPS or take power tools to the locker. The latter would be a felony, as it was supposedly USPS property. I spent two hours on the phone before I got to the regional postmaster, and even then, they refused to do anything until I threatened legal action. I just wanted my goddamned package... And people wonder why I ship everything I can via FedEx.

Unless you are obscenely overqualified, and have either huge saving to pay rent/other expenses or don't have them at all (mom's basement?) being unemployed for several months while looking for a job that pays better than starvation wages (not an exaggeration at my last one, I had to choose between gas, food, and rent on a regular basis) isn't exactly an option. Since most people like not going hungry, building huge amounts of debt, or being homeless, we tend to keep the jobs we have.

Cube-shaped satellites silhouetted against the Earth, and no one makes a joke about Borg cubes?! This is not the Slashdot I remember...

...NYC outlawing remote-controlled planes/helicopters/etc in 3...2...1...

One of several reasons why I bought an older high-end car. It still has all the benefits of being made well, and still cost far less than some modern American or Japanese made plastic peice of crap. I'll buy electric one day. But until then, I have absolute confidence in my old Mercedes to keep clanking along. Regardless of how many years or miles between now and then.

I've owned various Apple portables (as well as PCs) since the Powerbook 170. Until I owned a G4 iBook, Apple's battery longevity was nothing different than the PC counterparts. I bought a used G4 powerbook when that model was 1.5-2 years old. When I got it, the battery was good for about 6 hours of solid average use. I had it for five years (only replacing it with this Macbook I have now last year) and in all that time, the battery only ever lost about 30% of it's capacity. I still saw a solid 4 hours of use out of it per charge. It was by far the longest I've ever had a laptop battery last (even keeping the comparison to Li-Ions). Comparatively, this Macbook never got great life (maybe 3hrs tops) but in over a year, I've yet to notice it losing any capacity. And in the past, a year is about all the time it ever took for previous laptops' batteries to hold zero charge at all. I had a Sony Vaio that killed it's battery every nine months, and before I bought the iBook, I was just used to a $50 replacement cost annually or so.

From this article (as well as what I've heard from others) at some point between this Macbook and the current models, the batteries or charging method Apple's used have significantly shortened the usable lifespans. Which will probably prove annoying when it eventually comes time to replace this machine in another 3-5 years.

Thanks to A/B/C (and D, in wagons) pillers quadrupling in size, increasing focus on aerodynamics lowering visibility in modern vehicles (especially for tall people like myself), I'm less likely to get into a wreck in my antique because I can actually see the damn road!

I gladly give up the side curtain airbags and better rollover survivability for that 25 or so degrees of road that's now typically blocked. The best way to survive an accident is to avoid one, and the best way to avoid one is better view. Somehow, this principle seems to be lost on those designing cars nowadays.

I have seen quite a few newer vehicles so poorly maintained as to more than offset superior emissions control. The 2007 Ford Cobra blowing a giant cloud of blue smoke I saw a month or so ago is a great example of how newer != better. My three decade old diesel does not smoke. At all.

I have seen (and predict more of) people like myself maintaining "classic" older vehicles longer in order to avoid exactly this sort of crap, as well as the occasional custom build or kit cars. They can have my '84 when they pry my cold dead hands off of the wheel.

Is it bad that I know that your Mercedes is one of the W123 era diesels (or older) just from you mentioning those special wrenches (of which I also have a set)?

....comfortably numb!

My 1984 300TD begs to differ. I'm happy if I make 0-30 in 20 seconds.