They look like traditional mechanical analog watches, but under they hood...

Yes, sure, and you can get battery-powered analog quartz watches that look like a mechanical analog watch, and you don't have to wind them either.

There's something special about a wearable machine. An atomic-syncing solar-powered watch is cool and all, but I'll keep my automatic thanks.

A watch is just for telling the time - your other gadgets are for everything else.

That being the case, there are few things as geekishly awesome as an automatic (ie self-winding) mechanical wristwatch.

A little tiny machine, small enough to wear on your arm, that uses nothing but springs and harmonic motion to keep time, accurate to within a couple of seconds per day.

If you have the means, you can spend $_absurd on a status-symbol automatic watch.
If you don't have those means (or that inclination), you can get some serious bargains.

My everyday watch is a Vostok. http://www.vostok-inc.com/ . Delivered from Moscow for under $100. Seemingly indestructible, and more than accurate enough - I only ever need to adjust it if it stops, after not being worn for a couple of days.

I've seen some Seiko 5 automatics recently on Amazon for similar prices. More elegant (and delicate) looking than my Vostok (which is more like a watch movement set in an anvil), but very good little units.

Second-hand mechanical watches can be found for even less.

Get some cheap watchmaking tools off Ebay and pull a cheap mechanical watch to pieces, just for fun. Because you can.

It's a city, but no ordinary city

Here in Australia, an "ordinary" city is extraordinary.

The majority of the population live in the Metropoleis - the 5 big state capital cities in Australia house 13M of our 22M people (2009). Down here at city #19, population 90k or so, we're deeply in to the tail end of the bell curve.

90k people. Not a metropolis. Not a town. But hardly "ordinary".

But if you don't put any barriers in how shall they ever learn about proxies, address spoofing, packet sniffers and all the other wonderful things involved in defeating technical parental controls?

I'm in Australia, you insensitive clod!

My kids won't be defeating parental controls [1] - we'll all be defeating overbearing paternalistic government controls. [1] although she's only 2.5, this thread has given some food for thought on how to deal with my daughter's computer useage when the time comes. Monitored freedom sounds like a sensible approach.

A good example of homeopathic remedy ... is good old fashioned marijuana.

I am currently breathing a homeopathic concentration of marijuana smoke.

In fact, the air I'm breathing probably exceeds homeopathic concentrations of marijuna smoke, assuming somebody in this city has smoked a joint some time in the last few days.

Comparing the effect of this "homeopathic remedy" concentration of marijuana (aka "air") against previous experiments using "naturopathic remedy" concentration... I observe a correlation between concentration and effectiveness, contrary to the theory underlying homeopathy.

A quick grep of the constitution shows no references to vibes.

It may surprise you to learn that there is more than one constitution in the world. Only some of them deal with the compulsory acquisition of property.

This thread is going straight to the pool room.

The next generation of social scientists will have significantly smaller error bars due to the feminising synthetic hormones in the environment...

To me, that just goes to highlight the vast amount of low-grade heat that is available, effectively for free, and the absurdity of burning virgin fuel to produce low-grade heat suitable for house heating.

Warm air is a waste product of almost every process in the home (to say nothing of industry, or the warm air available free from a very crude solar-thermal collector), yet we choose to consume fuel to produce special warm air to heat our homes. Insanity.

How secure is your job, employer and industry? How transferable are your skills?

I'm 5 years your junior (in a different industry, on a different continent), and I made a considered jump out of tech a few years ago. I regret doing so. I found myself in a specialised technical niche of a declining industry. I made a push to get into a project management role, where, if nothing else, I could get a few more generalist skills to write on a resume. Now I'm in a dull administrative role which I don't enjoy at all.

I've come to acknowledge that I get job satisfaction from solving problems. Now if I do my job properly, I don't see problems... and if I do, they're long-term problems that can't just be sat down and worked through. To run projects in a resource-constrained organisation, I need to be shameless in pushing people to do my work ahead of the other work they've been given... and that doesn't come easy to me.

The reasons for making the shift are still there - I could still be the tech guy with no transferable skills. Now I have some of the skills I would need to bluff my way into a comparable job elsewhere... but no interest in doing a comparable job elsewhere.

I don't have a good answer. Just don't burn any bridges unless you're pretty sure you're doing the right thing.

I would want to see evidence one way or the other before I decided whether the 11th time is the same or is different.

Ten times, you're late to work because of traffic.

On the eleventh day your car doesn't start.

"Oh crap", you say, "I'm going to be late for work".

Then you look at the historical records, which prove that all late-for-work events are caused by traffic.

"Phew, that was close" you say. "I won't be late for work after all".

And you go back to bed and get a few more hours sleep, safe in the knowledge that you won't be late for work because you can't even _get_ out into the traffic to get stuck.