I ordered bulk .22 Cal. ammunition online. Federal Express shipped it to my rural address. It was in a box labeled "ORM-D" and had a label indicating "contains ammunition or small firearms". The left the box down by my road at my (closed) gate that they have instructions to open. OTOH, my stock broker sent me a "thank you" gift of some nice wine. That required "a signature of an adult over age 21 that is not under the influence of alcohol". I got a laugh out of both events.

I tend to agree with you. I can't think of *any* message that I like so much that I need to have it permanently injected in to my skin. I think Jimmy Buffett called it a "permanent reminder of a temporary feeling". Not to say Buffett is a scholar but I believe he has a point. We're going to see some pretty bugugly old farts in a decade or two.

No need. Doctor Turlington has already taken care of the problem. https://vimeo.com/69310297

Free is never "free". Money doesn't grow on trees or out of the ground. "Free" means someone else pays for it.

Your daughter needs a spanking.

Tracfone uses Verizon's CDMA network where I live. TF used to have pretty crappy phones but the "bring yer own fone" program works for some phones and they just started selling a Moto-e phone which isn't that bad. Yes, it's third world cellphone but for the price, it does it for me.

Goodbye to Allied Radio, Heathkit, Lafayette Electronics, Henry Radio and the rest of them. Times have changed. It's so sad to see the end of the ability to design and experiment with electronic hardware. Let's face it, who's going to attempt to hand wire ASICs, SMT devices and keep signal integrity on what was previously-known as a "breadboard" circuit? Things have changed but there is a huge gap in the ability for hobbyists to design and construct hardware. All that seems to exist is video shit/games. Minecraft, Halo et. al. My son is "getting in to it" but it's very limited. Nothing of substance except messing with programming languages. I see a niche opportunity. Not easy to accomplish but it would be interesting to see if an interface of SMT devices for experimenter hardware could be accomplished. However, in the day of "immediate gratification" youth, I'm not sure it it's viable. From a financial perspective, likely not. Gone are the days. (time to bring the Swan 350C back from the dead)

Like HP and the Touchpad tablet. Cost them about $330 to make one. They sold it (after they discontinued it) for $100 each. They made "revenue" but lost on each one. I guess they "made it up on quantity".

Meg is spinning off printers (and PCs) this year. The second "new HP" (Fiorina used that term too) will not have printers or PCs. Both (Fiorina and Whitman) were/are simply stuffing their pockets before the next "rock star" incompetent CEO is appointed by HP's errant Board of Directors. It's been going on for 16 years.

Dang! You took the words out of my mouth.

I don't give a crap if the company is led by a man or a woman. The bottom line is competence. Take a look at Carly Fiorina or Meg Whitman. HP stock was valued approximately $170/share in 1999 when Fiorina took over. It went down more than half after her reign. Yes, it split once. In order to be at parity with HP's 1999 value, the stock would have to be in the 80's. Sixteen years later, it's less than half of that. Try taking a look at General Motors with its female CEO. It's just skyrocketing (not). However, we have dweebs like Robert Nardelli who ran Home Depot in to the ground, then did the same with Chrysler. Incompetence knows no gender. Statistically, more companies are run by men so statistically, more companies have the possibility of being run by incompetent men. However, let's take a look at the small number of large companies (oh yes, there's IBM too) that are run by women. Are they doing well? The whole premise is flawed. Crappy leadership yields crappy results regardless of whether the company is run by a vagina or a penis.

I have interviewed and hired many engineers over a 35 year career with a "very large computer company". Here's my opinion on the subject. Lately, there has been a big push in the media to have "diversity" in the technology fields. Jesse Jackson is involved in it so one can assume reverse discrimination. Now political nutjobs have entered the fray. The bottom line is that there are NO barriers in colleges that discriminate against anyone taking technology subjects. It's just that they tend to be difficult. Many don't wish to take difficult courses. Many don't like solitary endeavors and prefer socially-related positions. Mandating the outcome without proper education and training is simply ridiculous. However, our wonderful "media" ignores these facts. It's like mandating the same in a football team, ignoring capability. If someone is truly interested in pursuing a technical field, then all they have to do is well, pursue it. It's out there and if one wishes to train in the area, they will obtain employment in the field if they know what they are doing. I took science subjects in school because I was truly interested in science. Forcing someone to hire me in to a scientific position if I had no or insufficient training in the subject would be stupid. Forcing an incompetent in the field will only undermine their cause. When I interview a college graduates for an engineering position, I asked the same questions of all candidates, regardless of whether or not they had boobs or if their skin color was whatever color. In the end, we hired the best person. In many cases, they were someone with boobs (only if they knew engineering well) or someone who may have had skin darker than mine. We hired *people*, not colors or genders and those people were hired to perform a job. The bottom line is I recommended someone for the job IF I felt they could do the job or had the capability to learn to do the job.. Ironically, I was on a team that turned down our manager's brother (who happened to be a white male) because he wasn't a good candidate for the job. He was a crappy engineering graduate. It's what one can do, not the outward appearance that makes the difference. If our stupid "governments" hold technology jobs so high, perhaps they should *mandate* engineering and computer science courses in the public schools rather than forcing the outcome on people of various appearances with little or no training.

I successfully installed CM10 on a Verizon Galaxy phone. It worked pretty well but for some odd reason, it would NOT install gapps. I've done this successfully on several tablets. I confirmed the gapps file version was compatible with the CM10 nightly but the danged thing just wouldn't install. I tried downgrading to CM9 to see if that would work. Same thing. Then I really screwed myself. I ended up flashing and "almost installing" another version of CM but the file was not completely functional. It would bring up the Cyanogen "spinning robot thing" and just stay there forever. That meant that I couldn't get in to Recovery Mode to re-flash the cminstall folder. I've essentially "bricked" the phone with the crappy nightly of Cyanogen Mod. I'm not sure why gapps didn't run but the phone was severely-hobbled by Verizon software. I'm wondering if some remnants of it were still on the phone, preventing gapps from installing. Now, there's no way to reflash a new OS on to the phone because I can't get to it via USB at all.

Using similar logic, since they thought they "owned the airwaves" then they could theoretically jam all cellphones in their building. The California State Prison System has found out that this is illegal FWIW.

XERB and KRLA. Later, KPPC, KLOS, KNAC (Jim Ladd).