As the father of teenage boys, I could have told them Cheerios are great at growing fungus years ago.

To quote Oakland Raiders coach John Madden, "All I want is my unfair advantage."

Sums up just about everyone, really....

In a perfect world, your employer would jump at the chance to send you, give you full per diem and a room in the conference hotel, rental car, and an allowance for books and materials on sale at the conference.

But as Huey Lewis said, "Ain't no living in a perfect world."

I was fortunate to go to Black Hat and Defcon in Las Vegas for 11 years while I was at my previous (private sector) employer. They paid for all but the first time. For that one, I took leave, paid my own way, and then came back and demonstrated to them the value and knowledge I picked up (mainly by starting just about every sentence with "Well, in a talk at Black Hat..." I got laid off when the company was downsizing, ended up in a public sector agency, which sounds very similar to your situation (great people, interesting work, surprising lack of sticks inserted up people's butts). Same situation - I had to go on my own first, the next year they willingly paid for me to go.

Your employer is at least offering to pay for the training piece, which says that they see some value in this. And I know how hard it is to do things like this on a public sector salary (which is still about 40-50% of an equivalent private sector one). My advice: look for the bargains. Stay at a cheap casino (you can get into places like Excalibur for $40-50/night, sometimes lower) instead of the conference hotel. Walk and use the monorail to get around ($10/day). Eat fast food, or fill up on conference munchies - don't eat in the conference hotel or celebrity chef restaurants, but find the coffee shops and cheap buffets. And most of all, talk to your employer. Tell them you're willing to go on your own dime this time, but when you get back, you'll want to make the case for someone from your group going every year, fully paid.

It will scale up to 100 gallons/year, which is the legal limit in the US for homebrewing. That's 20 batches, or 1.6667 per month. Put it another way, it's 960 bottles of beer on the wall. That's more than enough scaling for me.

Mine is 1,351 per millifortnight. I don't see that as a option either. What's with the sexagesimal bias around here?

One 5-gallon batch at a time. And so far, I too have never run out.

My choice is Poker, because for me, it's the most social of the games listed. When my friends and I were all local to each other (we're now scattered to opposite ends of the country), we'd get together for penny-ante games that were more about conversation, jokes and obscure movie references than about gambling. The big winner of the night might leave $4-5 richer, the big loser might drop $2-3, but everyone would have had a great time.

"Git it on." But it's only effective with Vic Romano and Kenny Blankenship providing commentary.

"Let's head 'em up and move 'em out! Yo!"

Oh, for those of you born after 1985ish, "The Duke" refers to John Wayne, not Mr. Nukem.

NSA, or someone with (even) fewer scruples. It's only a matter of time before people start getting free malware with their charge.

The "d" was dropped when NSA recompiled the web page in your browser.

Do not worry about the dropped "d". The dropped "d" was never there.

For me, it's financial. I was downsized in 2010 and out of work almost 2.5 years; went through savings, cashed out my 401(K) (at the bottom of the market), lost my stock options because I couldn't afford to exercise them and the company would do a cashless exercise or buy them back. I love my new job, but for retirement, I'm starting at Square One. In a little over 15 years, I'll be 70 (yes, yes, I'm old), and I figure that's the absolute earliest I can afford to retire. If I can do a few more years after that, I'll get a little better retirement package and life will be a bit better.

If I had my druthers, I'd be retiring before 65.Sometimes life has other plans.

Boehner is under no compunction to tell the truth. And there's no reason to expect he would.

McConnell is under no compunction to tell the truth. And there's no reason to expect he would.

Ryan is under no compunction to tell the truth. And there's no reason to expect he would.

Equal time, don't ya know. The statement applies to virtually any politician.

Director of Information Security, six-figure income, no degree. Not exactly the "shit-end of the industry". I've known IT managers and directors (and one CSO) who can make the same claim.

Maybe... just maybe... there are career ladders in IT and IS that don't lead to staring at a monitor for hours on end writing algorithms that the users will break.

The fact that this isn't a listed option only reinforces the "News for Nerds" stereotype.