I mean HD-DVD...

I'm working in a similar situation. Bigger outfit, and I'm a bit older, but unless the culture is really off the rails then I believe it's all about how you handle it.

In my case, the key is to not exclude myself. I definitely don't participate in all the extracurricular activities, but I do join in enough to stay part of the scene. Yep, I've been to one of those epic Tahoe long weekends. Disc golf at the park. Drunk at the office. Barhopping in the Mission. But only once in a while.

Even the occasional late-nighter is doable; in my case the girlfriend travels for work occasionally, so I just load up on coffee and Dew and code-rage with the gang when she's away. Your situation will be different, but I bet there's a way you can crunch hard a few nights a year.

I've found that if I go out of my way to fit in, others go out of their way to include me. It helps that I'm "youthful" (a nice way to put it) and active for my age, and have hipster-friendly interests since before they were cool, like rock climbing, cycling, and whisky. But I only participate in a fraction of the party mentality and no one seems to mind.

So I'd suggest jumping in! Just be yourself and don't let the grown-up pants get too tight. Focus what you can do, not what you can't. Hang out late once in a while, teach the young bucks how to hold their liquor, go on one of those Tahoe trips. Chill with the crew on a Saturday afternoon, then bow out when it's time to hit the clubs. Just keep it at the level that works for you, stay positive, and have fun.

I've even been able to bend the culture where I work a bit. More stuff is SO-friendly. A few peoople have quietly aspired to more "balance." And some days the chess set gets more action than the (obligatory) foosball table. It's okay to be the old guy. Own it. Make the place better for it.

Sometimes it seems like the main reason to keep Slashdot in my RSS feed is to click though for the jokes about the typos.

No... On second thought it's also good for misleading headlines on articles I read yesterday.

Redbox's big win is convenience. It's at the grocery store or drugstore I'm going to anyway.

Yeah, first world problem, but going to yet another destination (twice) for a couple hours of superheroes or lens flares was what killed Blockbuster.

If physical media has any shot at competing with streaming, it's gotta be on the way to the beer aisle.

Not exactly. It took us 16 years to work out what was being satirized.

As stoned kids, we thought it satirized militarism. As drunk adults, we think it satirizes Heinlein.

...they seem to resist fixing even the most trivial bugs in Photoshop...

Adobe fixes bugs! They save up all the fixes then charge for them in the next release.

The solution is obvious:

Autonomously-driving cars would also have manual controls, activated by a bright purple Special Handle. Pulling the Special Handle enables manual high-speed driving mode and the driver, skills un-degraded by years of not driving, can rush the Special Emergency to the hospital.

Special Emergency Unicorn Mode activates the car-top rotating purple beacon, to alert everyone else (via their cars' Special Unicorn Detector) that there's a Special Emergency nearby.

Unicorn Mode also transmits geolocation and in-car audio/video (copyright waived) to DMV and the History Channel, deploys a trail of glowing purple sparkles behind the car for use by Actionhype News, and marks the driver's hand with permanent purple Tribute Ink.

After the Special Emergency, circumstances can be validated by DMV and hospital staff. Drivers reasonably acting to save a life win a guest appearance on NatGeo's True Unicorns, 10% off Tuesdays at Disneyland, and a $25 Applebees gift card.

Alternately, drivers who Unicorned their very special offspring to the hospital for a split a lip from squabbling over the iPad will get their car's Special Handle removed, their purple-dyed hand surgically attached to their head like that thing on a rooster, and a $25 Applebees gift card.

I have a Kobo Glo with lots of legitimately purchased ebooks from Amazon and BN on it.

All it takes is the Calibre open source library manager and a couple third-party DRM-stripping plugins. Rarely, converting from AZW, you'll need a bit of CSS skill and a text editor to track down a conversion glitch.

Of course this entails an account at each vendor to buy the books. Downloading is handled by the Amazon and/or Adobe Digital Editions (BN/Kobo) apps used by those accounts. Just don't let the apps fondle your ereader -- that's what Calibre is for.

This technique probably works for Nooks as they're epub-native like Kobo. Not sure how easy or effective converting into AZW/Mobi/etc would be for Kindlers, but these same tools might well do it.

Not a chance. Educators and advocates lack two things: Lobbyists. Jesus.

Yeah, listening to both music and podcasts this morning, the interface isn't trying to sell me anything at all.

Maybe someone got confused by the iToonz Extreme Premium Platinum free trial on their BigBox box.