Most artists consider it an honor to have Weird Al do a parody of their work.

It's precisely because I DON'T live in fear of the government that I'm annoyed with him. Even some of the liberal wing of the country has given up on trying to ban guns entirely and is focusing more on gun education and home firearm safety.

Happened in FFXI too. Giant ant race took over an entire island. Displaced the Galka and forced them into slavery for 200 years for the Bastokans that took them in.

I didn't say on public record. I'm also sure the NSA has a backup copy too.

I was being facetious. I permit myself some free reading time while on the treadmill, and eat a tasty protein bar as my reward for a workout (those things are like candy bars, but I guess with more vitamins.) Despite this, I'd still rather not go to the gym every day because it's such a bother. Especially now that the weather is warming up where I live. I'd much rather go on a hike, or do exercise disguised as something fun.

The State Department IT wouldn't let her have two accounts on her Blackberry. She answered that question from a reporter after the official presser.

She said that anything that is classified isn't handled via email at all, but via secure diplomatic channels and cables, which are all done via the State department and on record.

Can someone zap the pleasure centers in my brain while I'm looking at a picture of a treadmill? Or better yet, am ON a treadmill?

That was my first thought too. If she didn't even HAVE an email address issued by the state department, then someone dropped the ball downstream and the entire IT department needs to be fired. Requesting a network based email address takes someone in Exchange about two minutes. Whatever email solution they have, there's no excuse for not creating an email address for every employee that works there.

Now, if she had one assigned and just didn't want to use it, but if she never had one assigned at all that's gross negligence.

The amount of time it will take to complete a project is inversely proportional to the perceived difficulty of the project. This also applies to tasks and deliverables within the project. The project that you think will be easy and fast will be neither. The project that you think is going to be a tangled nightmare will turn out to have some surprising shortcuts and simplifications that make it not so bad.

Part of this is the stupid human trick factor - if we think something is going to be difficult, we approach it differently and with more caution. As a result we're more able to identify things to make the project go smoother. Conversely, if we think something is going to be easy, it's because we've only determined one path to approaching it, and if that path turns out to be non-viable, we have an immediate delay as we scramble to find other solutions that will work.

There's also the psychological factor at play for the customer - if we say something is going to be ghastly and difficult and will take us a long time ( because we think it will) but then turn around and deliver it ahead of schedule and under budget, we look good and feel good. This does not work if you say something will be ghastly and difficult but secretly think it will be easy and fast, however.

Going to agree on this. The most important memory I have with my father was the time he took me to an observatory. We stayed up until 3AM watching the stars. It was the first time I had seen the night sky without light pollution. He encouraged me when I said I wanted to work for NASA, but it was this action that I remember the most. An hour of driving, a few gallons of gas, and a free Saturday night at a state park observatory - I never felt as loved, cherished, or supported as I did that night. I lost my father when I was 21.

I agree, the best guys I've met are at best 2x-3x. We've worked with a few pickups from a local consulting firm when we're short a developer. There were two guys known as the "rock stars" from that company. My company eventually poached one as a permanent hire, and the other guy became their senior architect and a VP. The other guys we've worked with are good, but by no means rock stars. They're average 1X coders. For most work, that's good enough.

If you're trying to hire an agent, at least in other areas of creative space like acting or writing novels, the agent themselves has to believe you're worth the effort. So if this really does become a thing where a hotshot developer wants to find an agent to represent him, you can be damn sure that agency is going to be a hundred times harsher about testing skills before agreeing to represent the talent than an interviewer would be.

I'm pretty sure that the planet Krikkit had no sky because they were in a nebula and could not see any other stars. And as soon as they learned about other worlds, the first thought they had was they'd have to destroy everything. And then the killer robots came for us all.

You don't need to hire experts right off the bat. What you want to hire is someone who recognizes that they don't know the answer, and tells you that, and then immediately says they'd go research it to find out. "Can I Google that?" is a perfectly valid answer sometimes. If you hire a person who knows how to learn whatever it is you need them to become an expert in, you'll have a new employee who is not only going to be a valuable asset for where you're hiring them, but also has the flexibility to expand to other areas when necessary.

TL;DR: Stop looking for purple unicorns, and start looking for fast learners.