is 3400 miles? Really??

So? What can you do about it? When we travel we tell our kids not to expect constant contact. If someone dies, we can't do anything about it. If someone is hurt, they don't need us there to observe them. We're not cutting our vacation short. WHY do people need to be in constant contact or "available"? It isn't necessary.

It's true. When I look at their activities and their lifestyle when they were 65, I am much more active and act "younger" than they did at this age. This is not just a perception issue on my part. My father would never have plaid SW:TOR with his grandson nor eagerly awaited Dragon Age Inquisition. The bar has moved up for everyone across the board. And yes, I DID retire early at 55. That just gives me more time to level up!

He said he had both. "I am a felon with several misdemeanors." He may have been unclear, but he did not mix them up.

He also did not enumerate any of them. That doesn't automatically mean they were for non-serious crimes and has nothing to do with the fact that the US has some idiotic laws on the books that can make felons out of "really nice people." This "poor baby, I'm so sorry you live in the US" crap just turns criminals into victims.

He had at least one felony and several misdemeanors in his background. That points to some sort of "life of crime" that is likely more than youthful indiscretions. Without more information we can only speculate what those were. This is information OP has not provided, perhaps willfully, as the type of crimes would surely would surely influence our answers.

When a company does a background check, they get back more than just "1 felony, 3 misdemeanors." They get back what he did. And if they don't want to hire him under those circumstances, they may have very good reasons.

Sometime what you do actually does influence your future. But "He was just turning his life around" is a stock phrase in nearly every article about yet another arrest. What you do shows your character, and if that messes you up, that's really too bad, but tough.

It's all relative. If the spouse is looking for zero noise and a whisper-quiet front room, turning on a cell phone will be too loud. But compare a laptop to a tricked-out gaming box with multiple cooling fans and a huge power supply, with all the attendant cables and peripherals and a laptop is relatively benign.

I have an Alienware 17" and when the graphics card fan starts up you can definitely hear it, but I've never had a complaint. It's unclear from the OP if it's just box noise that is the issue here, or if it's possibly surround sound with deep bass explosion that is driving spouse nuts. If it's the latter I can certainly understand the issue and suggest a pair of good headphones,

Hard core gamers will tell you a laptop is inappropriate, but I can't imagine playing at a desk in front of a large monitor. On a soft couch with the laptop propped in my lap is far more comfortable, though a touchpad mouse does not bode well for quick reaction times.

BTW, I have to laugh at those slashdotters telling OP to grow up and stop gaming. I'm 65 and play Star Wars, the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Inquisition with my grandson.

result? No noise.

Nice idea where distances are cooperative. New York to LA--not so much

With a story like this, it's clear you are 48.

I think the idea is that B&W TVs were a "fad" in the fifties, not the late seventies. If you were 65, your original comment would make sense. At 35.....maybe not.

Why this would be marked a Troll is puzzling in that it is an absolute fact.

Although I realize you are a "physicist," not a "psychologist," it's still one of those "phy" type words. What do you think of Slashdot's (so far) overwhelmingly negative reaction to its editors asking for questions about the SCIENCE of the show for the show's SCIENCE ADVISOR and instead getting comments about the show's characterizations, humor, laugh track, and a fixation on the size of Kaley Cuoco's breasts? As the show's SCIENCE ADVISOR are you in a position to change or influence any of these "transgressions?"

Is this proof that the Geekdom of Slashdot is not capable of paying attention to the question at hand and has completely missed the point, were all forced to play the cello as kids, are letting their pent up emotions get in the way of asking an intelligent question and instead choose to lash out at a show they all watch, or still, after all these years, are incapable of getting laid? Or all of the above?

Actually, she had them "augmented." She said it was the best thing she has ever done.

So it's perfectly OK to "hide the decline." After all, it doesn't really matter if tree ring data shows a decline in temperature in modern times when the temperature is obviously rising as shown by accurate thermometers. We'll just use the tree ring data as a proxy for past temperatures anyway. And when we discover the "anomaly" we'll just neglect to extend that graph line because it would be awkward to explain just why that green line is headed down, down, down while everything else is headed up.

After all, we're only coming off the "Little Ice Age" and are in an inter-glacial period. We can explain the "Medieval Warming Period" and the "Roman Warming Period" They're just "local variations," you know.

And so what if Al Gore got his CO2 readings and his temperature readings backwards, thus claiming CO2 caused temperature rises when the rises came first? It makes a very scary looking graph.

And what about the ice core samples from Greenland that show the "Hockey Stick" is such a minor glitch it can't be seen? Don't worry. We can change the scale to make it look bad and besides, no matter what input we use, as long as it's "red noise" (like stock prices) we get a hockey stick anyway! So no matter what we do, we can show how alarming it is!

Oh, and did we put some of our temperature gauges in asphalt parking lots in the south? Don't worry, we've "adjusted" those readings artificially.

After all, we're SCIENTISTS and we can explain everything. Move along. There's nothing to see here.

Chemtrails are real, too....

How many gasoline cars catch on fire every year? Thousands.

How many Teslas have caught on fire ever? Two

Conclusion: Teslas catch on fire.

Using a key is so 19th century. Pushing a button? 20th century. Embedded RFID is where it's at. Get in the car; it turns on. End of story.