On one of my recent business flights, the aircraft ran out of room in the overhead bins (since when is it ok for passengers to bring two full-size roll-aboards with them on CRJs?!) and made the rest of us start gate checking all of our carry-ons. Before I could check my laptop case, they made me remove the battery and keep it with me at my seat. I'm sure this is why (fires in the cargo hold == very bad).

I've always thought it would be kEwL to have a tablet-like computer mounted on the front of one of my kitchen cabinets, wirelessly downloading recipes from my main desktop through a custom cookbook client-server software. With a touch screen, I could easily control it to view parts of a recipe or do measurement conversions (after wiping my hands off, of course). Mounted vertically on a cabinet keeps it out of range of splashes and spills, and out of the hands of the kids. Alas, I am not a software engineer and my husband is a bit too busy to hack things like this together at the moment.

So, I guess I'm the one screaming "Hey I WANT to put big honking greasy fingerprints on my screen!", but not "Oh, and I want my kids to scratch the living hell out of my screen....".

I spent a brief part of my career writing code for avionics. A serious amount of testing goes into the code before the FAA will certify it to fly; you have to prove that you've executed every line of code, that every line of code does exactly what it is supposed to, and that there are no paths that are never executed. But even with all of the testing we did, we would occasionally get a value we completely didn't expect and crash the demo box. Lucky me, I was just writing code to encrypt ACARS... nothing that actually made the airplane fly (or not fly...).

My husband and I were at AirVenture checking out EFIS sytems for an experimental aircraft that we're building. We managed to crash one of them not once, but three times, just by pushing a few buttons in rapid sequence. Granted, they were experimental and didn't go through all of the testing, but every now and then you also hear about a certified system resetting in flight. In fact, a friend of ours recently had his certified EFIS go into a reboot loop while he was in flight due to a faulty database update; luckily he was flying VFR and had backup gauges, so he didn't need the EFIS. There are procedures in place to handle this, but there are also people present in the cockpit to follow them. This is why fly-by-wire scares me, and why it's still a Very Good Thing that commercial aircraft have co-pilots and manual flight systems as backups. There's just too much that can go wrong to be able to trust everything to fly itself -- sometimes you really need a human in the mix thinking "outside of the box" when the feathers start to fly. I think the Sioux City incident is a major example of that, despite how long ago it was.

I agree that it's total bullshit. Unfortunately DoD thinks otherwise. I would think that it's the guys who need to keep their lavish lifestyle going who would be most likely to sell their souls. But I'm just a worker bee. *shrug*

They granted him a clearance and allowed him to posses it for 19 years with this on his credit record until they changed their policy on credit reports and then canceled his clearance. I was just pointing out that this is fairly new in the world of clearances and that they are pulling clearances over your credit record -- which could very well be why the TSA are getting letters threatening them with termination if they don't clear up their debts.

No matter how many times I get it "fixed", my credit report keeps being re-connected with my ex-husband, who I haven't been married to for over 10 years. Last year when I pulled my free annual report, Experian had me listed as living at his address. If they are going to keep this info, they need to have a reliable process for straightening these things out. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to fax in a notarized copy of your drivers license, birth certificate or passport -- it's just easier and cheaper for them to ignore you

The other situation would be your employer seeing your credit report and realizing that the DoD will not issue you a clearance. For IT jobs in my area, being "clearable" is a condition of employment. The second they suspect that they can't clear you, you're gone.

Not that I agree with it, but I think the principle at work here is that if you have lots of inquiries but no new credit account opened then the inquiries are either debt collectors looking for you or from businesses that saw your report and denied you credit -- both of which are viewed as "bad". There are certain types of inquiries (for identification or marketing purposes, for example) that don't count against you, but everything else does. I think mortgages are the exception because a person will likely shop around quite a bit before choosing a lender because so much money (in interest and fees) is at stake.

(I am not a credit expert, but I read a lot about it while trying to rebuild mine after my ex-husband destroyed it during our divorce.)

Here it is; not tons of detail because it happened in 2003 and most of its residue has been erased from the memory of the internet:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2003-09-04-janitor_x.htm

Security Clearances are getting yanked over poor credit these days, because someone with a poor credit background allegedly would have a motive for selling secrets solely so that they could pay off their debts. There was a huge story a few years back about a janitor who had been at one facility and had a clearance for decades lost his job and clearance because his credit score went down. (I'll have to search around and see if I can find it.) I know some great responsible people (now) who can't get a clearance because of some stupid credit card bill from their wild youth days.

My guess is that the TSA is checking the credit of their employees periodically and threatening to yank their clearances, which would also yank their jobs. Maybe they should be firing the ones who steal stuff from my suitcase instead..... oh wait, they have no way of knowing who that actually was.

Dumb.

Oh; nice -- it inserts them, but preview shows without them.

Even more offtopic...

I have the same issue. I've spent my whole life with a congested nose. I've tried every medication on the market at one time or another, done allergy testing (only thing that came up was dust and cockroaches -- great) and even had surgery (they cauterized my sinuses to shrink them... fun). The surgery gave me relief for about 6 months and then the congestion came back. Claratin seems to do the best job, although even on a great day my sense of smell just isn't where it should be. But it's never affected my taste that I know of.

Maybe I will try the saline.

(and why is slash not letting me insert blank lines today?)

Some people can't just take a child home; they need the entire experience. Others, like my husband and I, just need to know that they put in a reasonable effort (in our case, two assisted attempts only) before moving on to adoption. We want a family, so we're moving on quickly. But for some reason, others need the whole enchilada and won't be satisfied with adoption. Don't know why it is that way, but it is.

I like how Jiffy Lube wanted to replace my automatic transmission fluid and showed me a dirty round air filter that needed to be replaced. I have a Subaru with a manual transmission and a square air filter (which was brand new at the time, because I had just replaced it myself the previous weekend). The only reason I took it there was because I didn't want the hassle of hauling used motor oil to the recycling center. I still take it there, but they don't even try to sell me wiper blades anymore, because if they even think about it, I tell everyone in the waiting room about the transmission fluid and air filter. Only had to do that once before they got the message.

They sent me a card for a 2004 Honda, but I've never owned a Honda in my life. I called the number on the card and demanded to know where they got their info. The guy I talked to kept telling me that they got it from Honda and the DMV, then tried to get info out of me about what car I do own so he could sell me a warranty. We went back and forth for almost 15 minutes (I can't believe I kept him on the hook that long) when I threatened to sue him *personally* for identity theft. Poor dumb guy was so scared (seriously.. how would I know who he was to sue him?!) he gave up the company he was calling for: US Fidelis. I still get pissed when I see their commercials now.