Most fiction and certainly most Sci-Fi can be considered about "altered reality" where something or someone that is not true/doesn't exist in our reality is described in a book. That is what makes it fiction.
As for drug use and meaning of identity, I'd say most of his books DON'T have drug use as a major theme. Meaning of identity is fairly common though. Still, you come off as a hater. The idea of someone being tricked into helping a war effort he doesn't know exists is a pretty cool plot idea and he has many others.

You forgot the pink laser beams.

PKD lover says: screw you. But seriously, have you read more than one of his books or few short stories? Your description of "drivel" seems a very limited view of his works. So many common themes that are beyond just "which reality is real" (which he does very well). Pervasive surveillance/advertising. The meaning of living an authentic life. Effects of modern societies/cultures on lower "cog in the machine" type individuals. Ordinary people fighting struggling whether to accept or fight against large organizations/systems. Mental illness. Alternate history. War. Love/Obsession. Religion.
Belittling his whole body of work as "stoner ramblings" is pretty indefensible in my opinion.

Just to be clear, most of the movies that have been made from PKD's works are indeed based on his short stories, but that is far from all he wrote. A Scanner Darkly was a regular length book as is Flow My Tears.

I thought Paycheck was ok, if a bit cheesy. Next was absolute crap though. I reread the story before seeing it and was trying to figure out how they would make it into a movie.

Most recent episode talked about how Alpha came in and destroyed both their main storage and backups for some imprints. Which made me exclaim "they have offsite backups, right?". Apparently, they do not.

Some good points about controlled/validated systems. I would like to point out, however, that over two years ago the FDA released a special directive making it clear that OS-level security patches did NOT require full re-validation. Some vendors are likely slow on the uptake on this or are still hiding behind the old rules/misconceptions. To re-iterate: FDA says security patches are fine and don't need all the ISO/FDA change control procedures necessary for other software changes.

The Red Hat ad is over 3 minutes long! Not a very effective ad, maybe a good intro for a presentation or something tho.

Just to be clear, this isn't a single/bare quark w/o a partner is it? As I thought isolating quarks outside of a hadron (w/ 1 or 2 other quarks) was not possible due to the nature of the strong force. Is what they are really saying is that they got an event to force just one top quark to decay once released from a hadron rather than 2 or more at once?

He still has something to gain by staying on in as a contractor if he can swing it. Sweet contracting-rate money and good future references.

Quite likely a true story (often retold by Lederman and Higgs at least), it was supposedly Leon Lederman (of Fermilab) who coined the term goddamn (or "god") particle. He also has a book called The God Particle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Particle:_If_the_Universe_Is_the_Answer,_What_Is_the_Question