My sister used to raise her own turkeys. Up close they looked like something from a paleontology textbook, but they were still good-natured, very curious creatures. They would always come up to you and inspect you, talking all the time. Maybe they were just demanding food. Dunno.

They ate good stuff, they had a big enough pen that they could run around to their heart's content, they were basically happy turkeys. And it showed: they had a wonderful flavour and a nice texture.

...laura

Basic plug strip for the cord that comes out of my computer. I don't have a cord coming out of my armpit... :-)

...laura

I remember a few years ago seeing the 1960s Canadian TV series Wojeck, and it carried a viewer discretion warning that the standards for personal and professional relationships had changed since the program was produced. There was a certain element of "like, duh!", but somebody had thought about it, and I had no problem with it.

Fast forward to the present day. I'm watching Swedish sci-fi show Äcta Människor ("Real Humans" in English). It quietly avoids any gratuitous sex or violence, but there is lots of non-gratuitous sex and violence, as integral parts of the plot. Like all Scandinavian shows it has interesting female characters who do in fact talk to each other about something other than men. That's the sort of culture they want, it's one I admire, and I'm cool with it.

...laura

Automate basic jobs, so I can talk to humans.

I view this as an extension of using cruise control in a car, or an autopilot in a plane. Let robots do what they're good at, so humans can do what they are good at.

...laura

My Dad was 68 when he died. My Mom was 75. I'm 53 now. If I significantly outlive either of them I will be surprised.

...laura

I think it's completely pointless.

At the latitude where I live, the sun sets after 2100 PDT in the summer. That would still be 2000 PST, with an hour and a half of twilight after that. What more do people want?

In the winter the sun sets at 1600 PST. Even 1700 PDT wouldn't buy much, particularly since that would mean sunrise at 0900 PDT.

...laura

I looked carefully at my viewing habits, concluded I was paying a fortune for the two or three channels I actually watched, and decided there had to be a better way. The major drop in the quality of the content didn't help.

I now have over-the-air TV for local news, iTunes, Netflix and Acorn, DVDs, and stream stuff. This includes a U.K. VPN account to circumvent BBC and ITV geoblocking. It all works fine.

...laura

Yup.

There are often limits on authenticity, either due to parts availability (e.g. TTL ICs), or for convenience (modern monitors, keyboards).

...laura

I've made a point of not memorizing checklists. Good pilots always work from their printed checklists. It lessens the chance of missing something.

...laura

My flying background must be showing. I always review the safety information card, confirm safety equipment in my vicinity, and, yes, I actually do pay attention to the safety briefing.

But that's just me.

...laura

I've seen some really cool ads that were right on target - like the time I played a James May video on YouTube and the ad that popped up was for an electron microscope. I couldn't begin to afford the one the advertiser wanted me to buy, but I actually did poke around eBay to see if there were any old ones out there I might be able to afford. I've hit paydirt many times when Amazon and others pointed out "people who bought this also bought..."

That's the way it's supposed to work.

Then there are the way off base ads. I wonder if they are genuinely being blasted out to everybody, or if I fall off too many if-then-elses for anything more relevant to come up. These ads are invariably back-of-the-comics and/or cable tv infomercial quality, like the perennial "weird trick for belly fat" ads. I suppose I get those because Facebook et al know I'm a woman.

That's the deal we made, I suppose. A quasi-free internet supported by advertising. And, like all things, 99% of internet advertising is crap.

...laura

I view Tesla as the best bet for a completely new American car company in a long time.

The U.S. Big Three have been around for eons. After World War 2 Hudson and Nash were hurting, merged to form American Motors, and went bust. Packard and Studebaker were hurting, merged, and went bust. Kaiser/Frazer tried, and went bust. De Lorean tried and got in to all sorts of trouble. Nobody seemed to be able to launch a new car company and make it work.

Tesla, on the other hand, seem to have cracked it. They're selling all the cars they can make. I see lots of them around here (Vancouver).

...laura

Judging by the number of broken web sites I've seen lately, we could use a bit more staticness and a bit less dynamicness. :-}

...laura

I'm guided by the experience of the airlines. While you must, obviously, have the right sort of pilot's license, they also want a four year university degree. Not because it necessarily enhances your flying, but because it shows you can learn and accomplish things. If you can learn and accomplish things, and know your way around computers, I'd love to talk to you.

The big problem at most places I've worked is getting promising resumes past HR people who only count buzzwords.

...laura

I've followed Minix development with interest. The internal architecture is different from most OSs out there. Not different for the sake of being different, but different to show different solutions to problems. The way we do things in Linux et al is powerful, but it's not the only way.

I haven't come up with a compelling reason to use it in my work (yet... :-), but I install each new release on a virtual machine and play with it.

...laura