I use FOSS software when it is a complete, finished and usable tool, but the gimp is none of those for me.

I don't need all of them, but I need enough of them that aren't in the gimp that I own not only photoshop but also adobe lightroom.

12 months? 24 months is the "industry standard" to reduce churn. And many times a very large termination fee, especially if you got a really nice phone package free.

Yes.

I can't believe this would work for your car engine while you park it, nor would I think that most people want to add several pounds of galvanized wire to the underside of their cars.

My last employer "outsourced" to rural SC and CO for its call center. I've known people who work from home for a large company doing phone support. This isn't news. This is /.

Considering right now I'm looking forward to getting to the "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" lesson... yeah, it seems a bit daunting, but we got a new mac mini, and I found out a couple days before that that garageband had guitar lessons. I figured anything that helps me keep thinking about the guitar can't be bad.

i've heard of ricky tims; i like his use of color. La Veta's a little south and a little west of where our land is. our land's a little north of walsenburg, where you'd get off 25 to head west to la veta.

no, no, the land we still have. We're headed that way this afternoon after work. There just aren't buildings there yet.

just the house we used to have, we don't anymore.

Oooh, that sounds like fun. Who/what is in colorado for quilting? I know Schact is here for spinners and weavers...

Not only do my cow-orkers not know their unix history, they think I'm way old-school for having any experience on something that's not x86.

Yeah, that's the biggest fear, but my job is more or less something that will be there until either the company goes under or I get tired of dealing with it.

The guitar's actually a 6 string acoustic-electric. It's a Yamaha APX-500 Steel strings, kind of a narrower body. In the 'red' flame maple finish they show in the photo. It's a veneered guitar, which tend to survive better at this altitude and humidity. I'm taking lessons at the music store down the road from work, and enjoying it. I played with my teacher for the first time this week, and it was my first time playing "with" someone else. That was kinda neat. (made my Alouette sound not so bad)

we've been broke and we've been homeless (short sale, not a forclosure, if that matters) and jobless. I've had a crap job since january, and a decent job since july. I know the cause, and I know some of how to fix myself. I've just not had the luxury of not being so worried about having a roof over my head and food in my belly to actually engage my coping mechanisms. Now I have some stability, and things are getting better.

as a side effect, my brain's less foggy, which is a good thing, and fascinating.

I'm going to third, or fourth Wells Fargo. They've really cleaned up their act from a decade ago. I think it's partially because they've eaten so many small banks that they've got the process down. I've had nothing but pleasant bank employees and no hassles since the bank we were at got taken over by Wells, and I'm not a "big-time" customer, I have a paycheck auto-deposited and a small savings account (which I opened ONLINE without having to go to any of the tens of locations within my 25-mile radius).

Key was pretty awful when we had them, especially their online banking. TCF's bill pay is extraordinarily horrible, from what I remember (we'd set up recurring mortgage payments through it, and they'd come out at seemingly random times of the month, most of the times late) but we'd have Bank of America again, now that there are branches closer to us than New Mexico.

I wonder when the first Android ereader with e-ink will show up.

Ya heard of something called "nook"? Runs AndroidOS, has e-ink. I have one which is registered, etc. I have a friend who has one which isn't because he doesn't live in a country where B&N is selling the device, or providing service. I've gotten epubs from B&N, from sources online, and from my library. Yes, many of them are DRM'ed, but meh. So is most of my iTunes library. That doesn't keep me from consuming the music, it won't keep me from consuming books, either.

I'd say O'Reilly, except that when they sell their e-books, if there's more than one format listed (which I've run across a couple of titles which only have a pdf version), there's almost always a mobi version (and an epub, and now a DAISY version) and sometimes an apk.

Then again, I have a nook, and enjoy not emailing myself pdfs and text files. I tried the sony readers, and they were ... well, sony interfaces. I tried the kindle, but I don't need my e-reader to have a keyboard 100% of the time. I tried the nook, and the interface was much simpler, without the space taken up with a keyboard. I enjoy carrying around multiple O'Reilly titles without having to remember to lift with my legs, not with my back.

Can I write in Java an app that will run on every desktop and mobile?

only if you distribute it with your own developer-locked-in version of java. (I have fond memories of java version 2.something.{our lead developer's name} for the software written for one version of solaris on specific hardware with specific os patches.)