I used to work for a company that made microchip inspection machines and they had a "clean" room. Things go so unclean that everyone in the building had to have a re-education class in clean room even if there was no chance they would ever be in one. It was that bad. People wouldn't wipe their feet, wear masks, hair covers, etc. But what I think really, really pushed management over the edge and require classes for *everyone* was people were not only eating potato chips in there but leaving the wrappers. That, was the last straw.

There is plenty of information about this incident: http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/wahpeton-cop-who-arrested-kid-for-recording-him-gets-suspended/ I don't know if this is the best article about it or not (at work, can't do extensive research) but he was suspended without pay. Some good youtube clips about it out there too. Kudos to the youngun' for standing up for his rights.

I think the best investment my parents ever made in us kids was buying an encyclopedia. I can't tell you how many hours I sat in our library (a room filled with books on two walls and a giant map on the third) reading about all sort of subjects under the sun and subjects far beyond the sun. Lots and lots of time. I would just pick up a volume and open it at random and start reading. So it's kind of sad that the printed version is going away. Once in sixth grade, in response to some knowledge I gleaned from my encyclopedias, said, "Do you just sit around and read encyclopedias!?" I replied, "Yes, I do."

Some years back, the home secretary decided that pinochet wouldn't be extradited because he was...too sick, yeah, too sick. So someone who makes a few links gets extradited for something that isn't a crime in the UK and a mass murderer doesn't even though he murdered thousands. I'm ashamed of the U.S. If I were a UK citizen, I'd be ashamed too.

Just a nit. I flew El-Al and I did have to take off my boots. They took them away and and x-rayed them. This was in April of 2001, just a FYI. I was one of the few non-Israelis and got quite a bit more attention than the others.

I was interviewing with a company that did a lot of mechanical engineering but lacked the software expertise. They basically offered me the job at the interview and I said, "Sure." Only one "formality" remained: a mechanical skills test. Now I was being hired strictly for software and would never, ever have to turn a wrench. The test consisted of a hand-cranked machine that moved a block of plastic around a table surface, flipped it over, around the corners, and returned whence it started. Lots of cams, gears, pulleys,etc. Four parts, 15 mins. per part. They "break" the machine and I have to find what they changed. The first part I got, a cam was out of phase. Second part I got half of it but couldn't find the 2cd part. Third part I was stumped and then the tester said, "We're done." I asked about part 4 and he said he had what he needed. A few weeks later, nothing. I call the hiring manager and ask what is happening and he tells me I failed the test and there was nothing he could do about it. I said I didn't take all four parts and he was angered about that but HR dug in their heels. He put a request that mechanical engineers take C++ test but no dice. I asked him if there was something else he couldn't talk about at work and asked him to call me after work and discuss this. He said, "It's the test, nothing more." For real. My friends in ME said that they would have had problems with such a test yet a software engineer is expected to pass. In the subsequent years, I saw positions I was very qualified to fill at the company, but I couldn't be bothered with them

I may not understand truecrypt correctly, but I thought that the hidden partitions showed up as random data, which was not distinguishable from empty space on the outer encrypted partition. So they could say, "Yes, there is 10GB free on this disk, whether it is free or a hidden partition, we can't know." Am I mistaken on this?

> nobody would have ever seen The Silmarillion were it not for him Not seeing it would not necessarily have been a bad thing.

But you're not in the business world. You're in a family. If you run your family like a business, I am most pleased to have grown up in the family I did rather than yours.

Wonder how well this is going to go with the Saudi government. They are pretty touchy about archaeology that pre-dates the Islamic era. For those earlier times, they use the term, IIRC, "time of ignorance" and are reluctant to allow too much knowledge about past times, especially if it is something more advanced, such as a great trading city. I have read about (and the reference escapes me now) where they were ok as long as the research stayed obscure (journals) but once it became more widely know (i.e. popular press), they started to cut off access to the sites. A "treasure trove" might contradict "ignorance".

Evidence of a few years ago, revealed that the Milky Way was a barred spiral, http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050825.html, wonder how these two findings will mix.

> Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin....but if you really look at it, they simply wanted to opposed just about everything Bush was in favor of. Anyone who says this really has no idea what Feingold is about. He has consistently stood up against this kind of BS. He is still against this kind of thing now that they have that new guy in the president's office.

He had a 1 kb. magnetic core memory module, maybe 6-8" cubed and heavy as all get up in his office. They had shepherd crooks to pull someone out of the machinery if they touched something they shouldn't have but he was unable to procure one of those.

They put in their offer that I "would work uncompensated overtime." I asked what this meant and they said that I would be working 48 hours minimum every week and I replied, "and gettting paid for fourty?" and they said that was correct. I got a big grin on my face and said, "So that the following week I work 32 hours and get paid for fourty." They couldn't even crack a smile. I told them to go pound sand.