Either way I do see my height as being advantageous if I should need to attempt to defend myself or my family with a bat at home.

You are rolling the dice with your life unnecessarily with that plan. If an armed assailant breaks in, that bat -- even if it's a bad ass double walled DeMarini -- is no match for any kind of firearm, and you'd be taking the proverbial knife to a gunfight. You've got to watch out for yourself and your family.

Also, the latest trend in criminal activity is to bring a buddy or two -- I don't care how tall you are, even with a bat you're not going to be capable to defend yourself against two (or more) unarmed assailants, let alone armed ones.

For home defense, in my opinion the best defense is a pump-action shotgun -- specifically a 12 gauge. A 20 gauge may get the job done as well if you're worried about the recoil, but if you're holding it correctly the recoil should not bother you much. As an added benefit, the sound of that 12 gauge getting cocked may be enough to deter a criminal, but if it isn't, you're going to need the stopping power of a shotgun.

A 00 Buckshot shell has 8 pellets, and each pellet is roughly the size of a 9mm bullet. If you hit center mass, it'll be like the assailant taking 8 shots from a 9mm almost all at once (the pellets are loaded into the shell in 4 groups of 2, and exit the barrel thusly). Needless to say, it's devastating to a human body.

Take ownership of your own self-defense -- 911 doesn't respond fast enough.

Hopefully, you'll never need to use a gun to do more than put holes in paper (or water jugs, or watermelon, or even a tasty deer or warthog), but -- it will always be better to have a gun and never need it than need a gun once and not have it.

Unfortunately, I've been in a position where I needed my gun, and I thank God I didn't have to fire it, that the sight of it was enough to deter any future stupidity from the assailant.

If you want to talk self-defense any further, just ask. This is something I'm very passionate about and something I advocate every person do -- be prepared to defend themselves.

The only person I've seen have trouble with a 12 gauge shotgun is a 110 pound woman not holding the weapon correctly, and sadly youtube has no shortage of women with poor posture firing a 12 gauge (probably with a magnum load) and dealing with the recoil.

I doubt you, as a man, would have any trouble with it. As for the .45 -- the recoil is not unmanageable in my conceal carry weapon, but might be a little much for someone inexperienced. My full sized Glock 21, on the other hand, my wife fires with no problem and no trouble with the recoil.

You got a cite for that little factoid?

"I can understand wanting to save money by putting tech script as the first line of tech support, but it gets a little tiring when want to skip to the advanced folks and still they want to stick to their script and ask me to reboot the modem as if I hadn't done that 3 times already. If it isn't low hanging fruit for the script readers it's not going to be a very successful or efficient support call."

The sad thing is that the volume of calls is so heavily weighted towards people that refuse to do anything whatsoever on their own before calling and demanding someone else fix it that clued-in customers with real problems are just lost in the noise from their perspective.

"The pdf javascript reader wastes kilobytes on your / or C:\ partition, that's all."

It also adds more lines of code that need to be carefully analyzed, audited, and constantly re-audited for exploitable bugs to the codebase.

Web browsers are the main point of vulnerability, they have an absolutely horrible track record for anything related to security. There are several relatively good .pdf programs that are actively maintained and whose security track records are not nearly so tarnished as Mozilla's. Some are Free Software as well. So I am seriously having a very hard time imagining a scenario where this has any reason to exist. And I am usually the one that's all in favor of having 15 slightly different choices for every role.

"Screw your acceptable ads, there's no such thing as an acceptable ad."

You are entitled to your point of view. I personally do not agree.

I like to expose myself to advertising. By seeing what is currently being pushed I know which products to avoid, which is a big time-saver. And the notion that some small payment comes to a website as a result of giving me this information is 100% ok with me.

Yet I almost never see ads. Why? Because I refuse to allow random servers all over the net a free hand to run programs on my computer. And ad companies apparently have some sort of problem with using the web, the only thing they know how to do is javascript, java, and flash.

The two times I've had in-store card referrals (high value transactions: the first time was buying a P3 laptop, which was quite high end in those days; the second was furnishing a new apartment after moving to Houston), I'm pretty sure it was the issuing bank ultimately handling the call - I can't imagine the bank would have transferred the personal information they were asking for as a security check to the merchant services provider: past unlisted contact details, previous transactions etc. I suspect the call may have been transferred to them, though, rather than called directly.

I had a similar issue this year with British Telecom working on a broadband fault. The service manager wanted to speak directly to the field engineer working on the fault (different divisions: the engineer's BT Openreach, the manager was BT Wholesale) - but the Openreach guy said he couldn't call the Wholesale one directly. So, the Wholesale one called my number and asked to speak to him ...

it is the retailer who is supposed to make the call to the financial institution on the retailer's own phone line

To be fair, the Apple Store staff tried phoning on their own iPhones first, but none of them could figure out how to hold it to get a signal, so they had to borrow the customer's phone instead...

And please tell us how you made that logical leap, calling me a racist for stating the objective truth that there is no such race as a "Palestinian", that they are Arabs. This is scientifically correct, so please tell me how I disparaged anyone on the basis of race.

* crickets *

Right. Just as I thought. Find a new crutch when you're losing an argument, asswipe.

Of course. The objective answer is the mythical "Palestinians" who are just Arabs with a different name.

"So what do you think should be Israel's response to the constant bombing of their country?"

What constant bombing? Hamas has honored truces and cease-fires in the past, it's the IDF that keeps breaking them. How do you think the Palestinians should respond to Israel periodically 'mowing' their families down 'like grass?'

Ultimately you simply cannot keep a nation captive forever, nor can you exterminate them, and Israelis of all people should realize that.

I'm saying your concern about collateral damage is honorable, but your blame for it is entirely misplaced.

Hamas fired the first shot, does not respect cease fire agreements, does not control it's people...

So... fuck them. I hope Israel rounds up every terrorist over there and executes them.

Peace will only come when one side is victorious. I pray that the victor is Israel.

NT