Not one reference to W. Edwards Deming this entire thread!? You really, really need to investigate his work.

"Deming's teachings and philosophy are best illustrated by examining the results they produced after they were adopted by Japanese industry, as the following example shows: Ford Motor Company was simultaneously manufacturing a car model with transmissions made in Japan and the United States. Soon after the car model was on the market, Ford customers were requesting the model with Japanese transmission over the US-made transmission, and they were willing to wait for the Japanese model. As both transmissions were made to the same specifications, Ford engineers could not understand the customer preference for the model with Japanese transmission. Finally, Ford engineers decided to take apart the two different transmissions. The American-made car parts were all within specified tolerance levels. On the other hand, the Japanese car parts were virtually identical to each other, and much closer to the nominal values for the parts - e.g., if a part was supposed to be one foot long, plus or minus 1/8 of an inch - then the Japanese parts were all within 1/16 of an inch. This made the Japanese cars run more smoothly and customers experienced fewer problems. Engineers at Ford could not understand how this was done until they met Deming." -wikipedia

Read his books! You are asking the wrong questions!

Parents are too busy working multiple minimum wage jobs, or tons of unpaid overtime at their job, to be home spending time with their children. Children simply do not have enough adults in their life. Children spend most of their time in a classroom with 29 of their same-aged peers, and a single adult instructor who is forced to march them around like soldiers just to keep order.

I think it's more of an economic problem; the social problem is a symptom.

craigslist?

"Whether they choose to do something about it or not (e.g. offer a better salary, benefits, etc) is their problem, not mine. "

You say this as if we are all independent of each other and the economy. We stuck in a cycle of workers have less money -> demand slows -> economy slows -> businesses cut jobs -> less workers have disposable income... etc. It might be to our mutual benefit if we can nudge things in the other direction.

p.s. what is your job/what did you major in/what sort of experience do you have? I think I need to do whatever you're doing.

AKG Acoustics K-240 Semi Open Studio Headphones

Can't beat them at $80.00 USD. Very detailed sound.

The only problem I've ever had with Newegg: there were two versions of the GPU I wanted; one with a fan, and one with a heatsink. The catch: they had the same Newegg product ID. Terrible, terrible decision on Newegg's part. After getting the one with the fan 3 times even though I talked to support, explained the situation with the product IDs, etc., I gave up and ordered from another vendor.

But it still annoys me to no end that they couldn't fix that problem.

I still order from them though... creature of habit I guess. It's always interesting to compare their reviews with Amazon.

zfs! Works great. Included with FreeBSD 9, amongst other OSs.

You might also enjoy John Siracusa's exhaustive review of filesystems on one of my favorite podcasts.

I feel almost ashamed to say that as a 30 year old man, music teacher, and classically trained musician, it wasn't until just last weekend that I heard REAL live guitar amps, performed in a hall by expert musicians, without any other sound reinforcement.

I had been to many, many rock concerts, but they all fed the sound through the PA system, and though it sounded good, it was nothing like I heard in the hall last weekend. Just two small floor guitar amps, one on each side of the hall. The stereo effect was amazing. The bass player had his own amp. Otherwise the drums were un-mic'd, and only the vocal mics were fed through the PA system.

Speaking about just the tone quality, I'd rate every other rock concert as being about 60%-80% of last weekend's tone. It absolutely blew my mind.

The only thing I can compare it to is standing in front of a really good drum corps.

Even recordings I thought sounded awesome can't touch the live sound I heard last weekend. I'm afraid I'm addicted, and I don't even know where I'm going to find more performances like that. Even in the smaller clubs here, most bands feed through a PA system.

It is something I think every person should experience. No PA; just the amps, live in a good hall, expertly performed. If anyone cares, it was the wonderful Christina Courtin and her band.

Looking over? Doesn't anyone else use electronic bookkeeping and reconcile their bank statements? Money is so hard to come by. It is really worth your while to keep accurate records. And if you're nerdy enough to read this website...

I spend a few minutes each day typing receipts and cash transactions into the computer. Just this very act has increased my savings. My theory is that it helps bring your transactions into consciousness. You can also get all sorts of cool charts and graphs, which helps me decide if I'm really getting good value for my money.

This free and open source accounting application has served me well for years.

I am all for theoretical knowledge, but I really do believe basic bookkeeping should be a standard high school class... I didn't start keeping books for myself until I was into my 20's, and it has been a highly empowering activity.

Solution: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/

Access 2003? Even Access 2000 would be a huge landmark for open source!

Surely the increase is due in no small part to Leo Laporte and the HAM Nation podcast?

It's my first and only exposure to anything HAM.

In New York State, passage on many of the highways requires tolls. Many of us use an electronic system called EZ-Pass to pay the tolls. It's especially pleasant to avoid having to roll down the window during the cold winter.

Instead of all this fancy monitoring gear, you could just look at the times from toll to toll. It would be impossible to prove that a vehicle was never speeding, but easy to prove that it definitely was speeding.

I already feel my environment is overly draconian so I've never been one to advocate such a system.

Very thoughtful... thanks. :-)

How about a commodity balanced digital currency where x number of units will always be equal to the price of y bailes of hay, z barrels of oil, etc.?