"BTW, in a suburban setting it would be considered uncommon to have a neighbor with a gun."

Not in any suburb I've ever lived in. And I live in Northern Illinois, so that's saying something.

I had a computer science class in high school in 1994 & 1995. We had Apple ][e as I recall, and the coding was done in Basic. Your usual stuff, learning about conditional branching and so forth. Also had typing class.

In 1995 or 1996 I got a dial-up account with Fox Valley Internet for my 486DX which I believe was running OS/2 Warp. Couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do with UUCP, Gopher and Usenet (besides the obvious photo-downloading) so I didn't keep it for more than a few months and went back to chatting on the Lunatic Phringe.

I kept trying to give people my email address...I suppose that'd be like giving someone your pager number now. Most people would call up, hear the beeps, get confused and hang up.

Page Plus Cellular will get you Verizon's native network at much reduced cost. But that depends on whether you care about 4G. If you care about 4G, this won't be an option. Also, the largest amount of data they offer in a monthly plan is 2GB, which is fine for most people, but not if you're a heavy data user via your phone.

I spent several weeks one summer installing Windows 95 on 60 computers from disk.

I would put the first disk in one computer, finish with disk one on that one, put disk two in that computer and disk one in another, and so forth.

I want my time back.

AT&T keeps sending my 5-year-old letters offering her really good deals on a UVerse package. I kind of want to have her call in and try to set up an account. I think it would be a fun audio recording.

But, I hate AT&T with a passion, and so I don't ever plan on speaking with them again unless it's unavoidable.

I think this is feasible, certainly the designs which allow access to the lock release mechanism are a real problem.

The other stuff seems to be mostly a result of the electronic locking design. Most of these use an electromagnet to push or pull a pin into or out of the appropriate spot to keep the bolt from being retracted. These type should never be considered secure if they are mounted, though even then someone with training can defeat them with a rubber mallet and a lot of practice.

But, mostly I would say don't keep your firearms loaded. I don't think most three year olds can rack the slide on a semi-auto, unless the spring is really weak.

Most of all, I would say that if you're going to have firearms, familiarize your children with them the way you would with knives. Most kids don't stab themselves with knives because they're taught to leave them alone. Same logic applies here.

Last week I found a notice posted that my employer is bringing in an H-1B for $115K per year for a three year contract. I think that's significantly more than most of the 10+ year employees on my floor make.

So I sent a question to the floor director asking what skills are needed that we can't fill from the local resource pool at that salary.

Crickets.

Imagine that.

Oh, but when I sent an email to the CEO to complain, I got a nice call back from a lady who said all that crap is on there because customers want it to be. So, I asked her whether she'd ever read the reviews on the Android Market for the bloatware apps, and that she might notice the reason they're rated low is because people want to be able to uninstall them.

Everybody else who cares should email the CEO as well, and maybe we can get this changed.

Let's not go encouraging the FCC to mandate anything. You clearly haven't noticed, but government mandates rarely work out well for the consumer. I'm thinking of, oh, I don't know, the fact that I have to pay $60 for an inhaler now because the old ones used CFCs, and so due to the government mandate to eliminate those, there are now no generic options. That also is the case because of a government mandate.

Having competing standards in the US has only been a good thing for the consumer, in my opinion. And, CDMA is the better technology anyway.