If it exploded when I told it to.

It's always good to have a company that is willing to put some money into the growth of their employees skills. My prior employer was not great about that, but my current one is.

That being said, you're career is just that, you're career. If it's something you care about, you should be willing to invest some of your own money into making yourself as awesome at it as you can be. Without that willingness, you should consider doing something different. While things have changed in your personal situation, and you may not be able to make this conference because of travel costs (though you can make some pretty cheap travel and lodging arrangements in vegas), I don't think this should cause a complete rethink of your situation if everything else about it is good.

Do your best to invest in yourself, it's nice when others will invest in you as well, but don't let the lack of that hold you back.

...Zenrandom, and I fight for the users. Now make with the light cycles.

I for one, volunteer my services as the on-site information security professional for diagnosis, cleanup, and protection. Space Suit Up!

I'm going out on a limb, disclosing this publicly and all. But all vehicles on the roads today are vulnerable to a nefarious flat bed truck with a winch. Said driver pulls up to the vehicle, lowers the ramp, attaches the winch, and pulls the target vehicle onto the truck. Once vehicle is secured to the truck, they drive away. I've not contacted any manufacturers on this vulnerability, but I feel that disclosing it publicly may keep the public informed.

They don't really seem to have any convincing external factors to make them evolve. I have not RTFA'd, but most things evolve because they have trouble surviving. There are so few of these things that they are endangered, but they don't have any natural predators because they apparently make anything that eats it sick... check the wikipedia article on them.

So this all seems well and good, until you think that these folks probably then walk down to their store and ask for a new phone. The number gets transferred to the new phone, and the NYC police are now monitoring all of your calls because you reported your phone stolen.

You know thinking about the talking book, and amazon's kindle with whispernet... it seems only natural to think that the primer from Diamond Age could be just around the corner for some enterprising group of folks.