This is why you have to decelerate gradually.

I keep hearing advice like this, but how soon is it that asking for a warrant and citing constitutional rights will be deemed suspicious behavior, and qualify as probable cause? "Judge, when I asked the suspect to consent to search, he demanded to see a warrant. Well, right there, you know he's got something to hide, so that was suspicious enough that I felt that there was probable cause.." I mean, they don't even need to put you on trial anymore, right? If they decide you're guilty, you just get abducted and sent off to Guantanamo.

Since there *are* no such things as zombies, I have to wonder what all these preparations are for. Judging by the demographics, I'd say that "zombie apocalypse" is really just a fun proxy code word standing in for "racial holy war".

Ah, the chemistry metaphor. Thank you for making it all so clear for the rest of us, and for not being part of the precipitate!

If I sold DOS to Microsoft for $50,000, I'd probably develop a drinking problem, too.

Yes it does... I've been running notscripts for quite some time. Works great. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NotScripts

Awesome, i can't wait to relive the joystick era on a touchscreen. (seriously, how does one play oldschool arcade style games on an iOS device?)

Velocity squared is not exponential? Raising something to the second power and all, I thought that was exponential.

...by going to my friend's to watch it. I don't have cable TV. But I do like the show. I'm sure there's someone in the entertainment industry who considers that a form of piracy.

That may be true but it is not really relevant under real world conditions, where you lose energy through braking. Gradual acceleration and braking is more efficient. Also, as speed increases, wind resistance increases exponentially, so going faster harms fuel economy. It's not just the engine's peak efficiency that factors into the equation.

This does not take into consideration the energy wasted by spinning your tires against the pavement, and wasting energy by not coasting, resulting in much of the energy being lost during braking.

Are we really supposed to be maxing out our vehicle's performance when we drive? I accelerate slowly because it's safer and because it's more fuel efficient. I like the fact that if I stomp on it, I can GTFO in a hurry. That doesn't mean I need to use it every chance I get.

150 mile commute? There's your problem.

I understand the appeal of fixing your own stuff, being able to take things apart and figure out how they work, and making them work better, but there's some things that are just not suitable for that kind of thing. Like, you don't hear people bitching that the transistors aren't replaceable on their CPU. As other components miniaturize, it's just too difficult to effect field repairs. They become too small and too delicate and tolerances are too tight.

In my area, I'm lucky that we have a large number of self-organizing developer groups. I found a bunch through meetup.com, and since I started going I've gotten much in the way of advice and encouragement, and picked up some insight. If you participate, don't just go and hang out -- put together presentations, and ask the audience for their thoughts. Probably lurk a while before doing that, but once you get the flavor of how they are run, put something together that you feel strong at, and present on it.