You are now my hero. :)

I do believe I'm going to have to get one of these for my car. For as nice as it looks for a crossover, the 2010 (and later) Subaru Outbacks have a horn that sounds like it's straight out of a 1980s Civic. This could be the answer I need.

The examples you mentioned from China were handled swiftly and severely - those responsible for milk contamination, for example, were executed as a warning to others.

By my interpretation, it was less that they were executed as a warning to others, and more that they were executed as punishment for embarrassing those in power who may or may not have directly benefited from the whole situation. It could be argued that it's still a warning to others, albeit for reasons of preserving the image of those who allow the criminal actions and not for the protection of the greater public. I would imagine that the latter is a more consistent and complete way of preventing harm to come to the greater populace, whereas the former would simply encourage not getting caught.

About six months ago, my Nokia 2730 started going from 3-5 days on a charge (calls throughout the day, left on overnight) to 1-2 days, right about the time that coverage (for ATT) in our office went from moderately strong (3-4 bars) to vacillating from 0-2 bars fairly regularly throughout the day, with lots of new, complete deadspots around the office. Other ATT customers in the building have confirmed they have the same problem, all starting about six or seven months ago. I couldn't say what happened, but my guess is something changed with their cell coverage. Too many calls going to voicemail now without the phone ever ringing - highly annoying.

+1, Sluggy Freelance quote in sig. :)

And what's wrong with that? Until you need hiking shoes or lace-up dress shoes, why not wear slip-ons? I do for dress purposes all the time. Are you also averse to parents whose children only know how to wear sandals?

While my post was not intended as either a Luddite screed (I certainly don't bemoan technology changing) nor as a judgement on the parents of kids who don't know how to tie, it seems to have been taken that way. Replying to yours as it's one of the more coherent and less defensive ones. :)

Mostly it's disappointment because I was raised (and still live by) a philosophy of gaining knowledge and skills for their own sake if nothing else. I would feel I was doing my children a disservice if I didn't expose them to skills and abilities that they'll likely need in the future. Velcro and slip-on shoes have definitely made life easier, but unlike buggy whips, shoelaces aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and it makes perfect sense to me to make sure it's a skill my kids have.

In a way, it's like learning to drive a manual transmission - it's possible to go through life and never need to know how, but it's awfully handy and gives one more options to have that ability.

My wife and I have been extraordinarily disappointed to hear other parents admitting that their children (through third grade) don't know how to tie shoes, simply because the kids have never been given anything but slip-ons and velcro-type shoes of various kinds. A few parents have admitted that they almost never wear anything but crocs and flip-flops. Yeesh.

Who still uses Yahoo?

A handful of years ago, I was looking for calendaring options; Google had just rolled out their offering, but I didn't have a Gmail or other Google account and didn't want one. I looked at Sunbird, but it wasn't going to be nearly as portable as I wanted it to be. Since I had a Yahoo account, leftover from my days of Yahoo messenger and chatrooms (but unused otherwise), I went that direction and have been very happy with it. I liked it even more after the beta and full roll-out of the purchased Zimbra stuff.

I've also tended to use Yahoo as my lunchtime news-reading portal for years now, though I have to say every re-design they implement makes it a less worthwhile avenue for news aggregation. The most recent change has almost driven me to give up and find another.

That ran through my mind, too - since age sixteen, I've been 5'6 and on the lighter side, mass-wise. I know eleven-year-olds that are bigger, heavier, and stronger than I am, even as an adult. By age fourteen, most boys are of a size to eclipse me.

Maybe it is that old adage at work: You learn more from your failures than your successes.

Hi. I'll venture forth with the embarrassing revelation that I'm in my mid-thirties, have been divorced twice, and am on marriage number three. I can't say that failure is a better instructor than success, or that success has less to teach, but that, for the willing and appropriately humbled, failure can teach you a lot of really important things.

Failed relationships hurt. They involve a lot of different personal and social dynamics. They give a lot of great examples of stress-test cases for how we react, feel, and behave toward ourselves and the people closest to us. There's some pride-swallowing involved, and by necessity one must play devil's advocate with a lot of core beliefs and assumptions. "What could I have done differently to make this work? What did I do that I regret doing, or that made things worse? What made me feel this way, and what made the other person feel/act the way they did?"

Personally, I learned that a lot of my beliefs about and understandings of what makes for healthy relationships, as formed in my childhood and teen years, was just plain wrong. I had to teach myself how to detach from a bad situation to look at it more objectively than I could in the heat of emotional response. I learned to start applying the same basic problem-solving processes and forward-thinking that I've picked up in my professional and business life to how I interact and communicate with my loved ones. Most importantly, I've better learned to live by acceptance and understanding rather than denial or inflexibility.

I'm not saying it takes failure to learn how to be healthy and in a healthy relationship - but if you weren't lucky enough to learn how to do it before ending up with problems, then reading about how others learned from their mistakes has a lot of potential to help.

Did you miss Capatain America? Red Skull is at the bottom of an ice-covered canyon. Maybe not dead, I know, but...

Ummm, I thought that was Bucky that was dropped down into the icy canyon, whereas Red Skull got vaporized/transported/whatever by the tesseract in the cockpit of the bomber.

Traffic laws cut both ways!

Yes, they do, which is why cyclists that obey the laws are as frustrated as anyone (if not more so) at the jackasses that break the laws and ride stupidly/unsafely/obnoxiously. The rest of us have to live down the idiotic reputation with which they've branded us.

I understand your point, as it's a great example of the damage done to the situation by people acting like asshats.

What the heck are you doing that people _regularly_ threatened you? That you _regularly_ had to deal with the police?

Motorists in general in the US seem to think that bikes are a pedestrian item and not wheeled traffic. I bike in urban, suburban, and rural areas, and I have to say that the attitudes toward cyclists in the cities and 'burbs are one of annoyance at the least, and outright aggression at the worst. A lot of it, I'm sure, stems from ignorance of the laws regarding bike traffic, and this ignorance often extends to the police force. The local bike clubs in this area give out pocket-sized printings of the city and state ordinances regarding cycling with instructions on how to deal with cops telling them they don't belong on the streets and roads.

They probably thought that you planted the flowers for the same purpose that you put the bench there- for others to enjoy as they saw fit. I'm not saying it was a good assumption for them to make, but it is obviously not an uncommon one.

I'm not sure anyone (including the OP) has the data to say whether or not it's common or uncommon (and if either, how much so), but I think many of us are going to judge this through the lenses of our own anecdotal experience and personal worldview. Myself, I've usually been able to distinguish what is private property and what isn't - and frankly, even when it is public property I've not made a habit of assuming flowers are there for me to take (simply because it deprives others of seeing them).

In other words, you're the one being unreasonable in your ire. And now you are passive-aggressively "punishing" nameless passers-by in your refusal to replant them.

This is the crux of why I'm responding to an AC. My most immediate thought is that it must take a profoundly distinct sense of entitlement to say that the OP is now punishing others by not expending time/money/effort to primarily support and benefit others. What obligation does the OP have to do this that makes a refusal "punishment?"

Plus, you are extending your rage into your vegetable garden because you have decided that people took the flowers because they "are assholes and thieves" in your mind.

I think the concern expressed over the garden is a reasonable extension of the line of thinking learned as a result of the failed "lilies are for everyone to see" experiment. I'll be the first to admit I'm a cynic (bordering on being a misanthrope), but even I wouldn't stick that assessment of the "takers" into the OP's mouth. I do think that assholes and thieves (along with your bog-standard "thoughtless passerby") are common enough that the OP's experiences are pretty representative of why it's so difficult to have nice things in public.

I started out with Godzilla, added Rodan, Mothra, and Ghidora, and at some point on getting my first Mac laptop added Jet Jaguar. :P

D'oh! I lose. In my effort to be funny, I completely missed the subject line and the reference therein (until memory was jogged by a comment further down). Oops. :)