I've had the exact same opposite, it takes 2-3 days for a letter mailed in Utah to get from Davis County to Salt Lake Count (20 mile difference, why it was mailed is a different story). My dad lives in Nebraska and a letter can take anywhere from 4-6 days to get there (1500 miles).

Boxes are impressive, I've never lost anything and they always arrive in great shape and on time. UPS and Fedex don't have great track records with my packages. I've mailed several things home internationally and the USPS is indeed better than most countries post offices IMHO.

I agree, I'm not surprised but still saddened to see the pricks coming out of the wood work here. I have an app on sourceforge that my next big step is to add localization. It's a hard thing to do, control lengths, poor translations, etc. But you never know who might be using something you release out into the wild.

What a bunch of bullshit. I've been working on code written by people who don't speak a lick of English and it's all C or C# and its good code. Just because you don't get the language doesn't mean the code is bad or they suck. God I hope you're not American because you're making us look bad.

After working for various companies, if they're a US only company sure. But anything with a remote chance of having non US/English speakers is doubtful. I am currently working on code chock full of Japanese comments and variable names. It's a huge freaking PITA. And I'm sure they hate it when I add English comments and variable names to their pristine Japanese code.

As a C# programmer I would take 2x4 to someone for doing any kind of non trivial code in a property. It violates all the C# good practices. Just like in C++ you can do some stupid shit. Does that make it a bad language? No it makes you a somewhat douchebag programmer.

I agree 100%, I used to work for a DoD contractor that required secret security clearance. Somehow I managed to pass but I referred several people who didn't make it past the preliminary background check. All of them were extremely competent and excellent programmers. However I found some were because of bankruptcy and others had actual criminal backgrounds. I agree loosening the rules would increase the pool of applicants but in the eyes of the US government who are you trusting with what can be very sensitive information. They only want squeaky clean individuals to keep their risk down. But then they get guys like Bradley Manning who decide to steal info pretty much from right under his bosses noses so I don't know. It's double sided but I see why they do it.

I have to agree with this, here in Utah they re-drew the entire state's districts for the house and congress to skew even more Republic then we already do and to especially screw Jim Matheson. It made all the local news, papers, and even the local NPR but no one I knew hardly gave a shit.

1. Buy or get a machine to host SVN for version control. I work on my wife's company website and some basic management tools. SVN has saved my bacon on multiple times where I thought I had lost some code.

2. Get a pre-production server and test your code! Sounds like you're living in the wild west and that shit flies until something goes horribly wrong and you're the guy who gets blamed.

I don't have the deafness, but I suffer from Tinnitus too and would also give anything to repair the damaged cells in my ears. Stuff like this gives me hope I might actually get cured of this some day.

Do you want to read or have a media device?
My wife has a kindle that she just wants to read on. If you want to read, watch movies, listen to mp3s, and browse the web get a tablet. If you just want books for the airplane or car ride get an eReader.

IANATP but I enjoy reading about this stuff. Wikipedia has a semi decent article about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson Somehow these higgs bosons form a field that as other particles travel through it causes them slow down and have mass. Very layman answer and probably wrong but is how I see it from the wiki article.

Totally agree, and I'm sure someone will nerd rage and create the next adblock plus plus that will block all ads again until they decide to take the money and run. Kind of a vicious cycle but as long as someone picks up the torch I am happy. Hell I might even be motivated enough to get off my fat American ass and do it myself.