"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."

-Douglas Adams

Exactly. Nothing irritates me more than to have the manager who agreed to the ridiculous, unreasonable schedule that forced us to work late going, "OK, see you guys. IM me if you need anything," and then going home to have dinner with his family. Fuck that, you're at least party responsible, you should stay and suffer with us, even if all you're doing is ordering pizza and answering questions. I think if more managers had to work 16 hour days they'd push a little harder to work out reasonable schedules.

It's kind of amazing, I know. The Bill of Rights has proven incredibly resilient so far, having resisted most attempts to convert it into toilet paper.

Just turn it around. Try to even think about the uproar if some game developer released a game where Americans are associated with terrorism and the famous "No Russian" level would take part in lets say New York Airport, instead of Moscow.

Uproar *from the people* is fine. The problem here is that, as I understand it, the ban is coming from the Russian government. There is no way the US government could get a game banned over content that portrayed Americans negatively. Any attempt would rightly be overturned as unconstitutional.

I believe that's correct. I find it's kind of a mixed blessing. One one hand you get the lying bullshit artist who will say anything to make a sale. On the other hand, you tend to get better service from someone working on commission.

A while back, I needed to buy an AC on the first really hot weekend of the summer. We went to Best Buy, and there was one unit left on a high shelf, with an angry crowd milling about beneath it. At least two employees were standing safely out of the way, just watching the proceedings. We walked out and went over to Sears, where the salesperson practically met us at the door. It probably took about 15 minutes to get the AC we wanted, including the time it took to load it in the car.

Fall would be perfect if we could transition from Fall directly back to Spring. My only misgivings about Fall have to do with what comes next.

"Swine virus 100 times lethal than seasonal flu". Of course, it could still be statistical noise. But it seems trends are starting to emerge - there are targets who are not at risk from seasonal flu, but are more vulnerable to swine flu: namely pregnant people, obese people, and teenagers.

Thank god it's virtually impossible to be a member of all three groups at the same time.

Great, next thing you know they'll want us to shower, too.

The problem is that most of the pranks involve convincing people there is imminent danger. Given even 30 seconds to think about it, all but the dumbest people would realize what they are being asked to do is stupid. Having to make a split second decision in what they believe is a life and death situation, and in the absence of any other information, a lot of people will tend to just do what they are told, regardless of how outrageous it sounds.

Maybe the gas thing is just to avoid hauling around bits of loose change?

I used to do it even though I've always bought gas on a credit card. I quit doing that lately, though. My new obsession is getting in those last few squirts of gas so the needle goes all the way up and rests against the stop. It's trickier than you'd think, because every pump seems to cut off at a slightly different point.

I think the idea is that you can simply orbit the planet in the same vehicle used to get there. A lander means you have to carry a separate vehicle which can land safely *and* can climb back out of the gravity well again, with all of the weight, complexity, and cost associated with that. Just orbiting and sending down some throwaway robot probes means the mission is less complex and cheaper by orders of magnitude, meaning it can be done in a much shorter timeframe.

I'm embarrassed to say that I've experienced this. I was horrified to learn that they were installing a cell tower on top of an apartment building I was living in at the time. The day it was supposed to go online, I could "feel" it; I started getting dizzy and nauseous going up in the elevator. A few weeks later, I learned that there was a delay and they hadn't even powered the thing up until a week later. Fortunately, finding this out "cured" me of what was essentially a phobia and I haven't had a problem since.

Yeah, there are definitely parts of Neuromancer that are hilariously dated. The one that always sticks out for me is the part where Case has 3MB of stolen RAM that he's trying to move. It sounded impressively futuristic in 1985. Today, not so much.

Since skeletal remains are unlikely to be a danger to the community, they'll probably let the bastard go.

So the question is: Was the laptop you ended up with better than your old laptop?