It creates an expectation that you will provide your own tools in every circumstance, and you shouldn't be subsidizing your company in any case. Create a line between your personal and business life or you will find that your personal life will erode away. That isn't fair to you or those in your personal life. No matter how much you love your job, it's still just a job at the end of the day. Don't be a sucker.

I just don't get why Science even needs to prove or disprove a God. Can't we just leave it in a box with Schrodinger's cat?

It is literally impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God. See Russell's Teapot if you don't understand this.

What science attempts to do is provide explanations for the workings of the universe. Religion purports to have already answered these questions. The only problem is that religion provides only one answer: "Goddidit!" That sort of thinking discourages rational inquiry, and is ultimately harmful, because it impedes real progress. Religion (at least, the monotheistic versions I am familiar with) offers a "go along, get along" view of the world - if you follow our rules for your whole life, we'll all be happy, and our invisible friend will be really good to you after you die. Science, on the other hand, searches for truth without regard to how it makes you feel, and that is uncomfortable for many religious types. Science's explanations for natural phenomena leave less and less room for the "Goddidit" view of things, and that threatens a large group of people who make their living off "Goddidit".

There is no way that you are being paid enough working first level support at night in a NOC to justify a three hour daily commute. I know the economy is in the shitter right now, but you are simply abusing yourself. Your question doesn't say what your personal situation is like (do you have a spouse/significant other, what does she do, etc...), but your first priority needs to be to relocate as close to work as possible, or, alternatively, to find a job in the same zip code where you currently live. That three hour commute is essentially three hours a day of unpaid work. Over the course of a year of 4 day weeks, that is almost an entire extra man-month dedicated to your job, for free. Don't be a sucker.

Universities are typically more interested in simply getting your tuition, and if you qualify, and are above 30 years old, they'll typically be more than willing to take your money and still sell your seat in the class to another applicant. Universities generally don;t like putting highly expereinced business people in classrooms where their woried the student actually trumps the professor in knowledge. Many professors who recognize this where the university doesn't will simply give you the 4.0 for the promise you don't show up to class... Some universities will simply give you a masters in BA simply for having worked in management that long (and for a generous donation to the university of $30-50K).

Stupidity like this is why the diploma mill industry thrives.

First, there is not a single reputable school in the world that awards credit for life experience without some way to document that experience - be it through coursework, publication, or the preparation of a portfolio. You can't get a real degree by a generous donation, either. You might score an honorary degree, but good luck using one of those in the workforce (unless you are in the conservative protestant clergy - they love folks with honorary degrees for some reason).

Second, any college professor worth learning from is not only not going to be scared of a student challenging him/her in class, he/she is going to expect it and welcome it, especially at the graduate level. In many graduate classes, you learn as much from your fellow students as you do from the professor or the text. Your idea of the professor who gives an experienced student a 4.0 to stay away from class is an ignorant fantasy.

Finally, your sig is great advice. You should try following it.

Beers and wines have yeasts in them that react with sugars remaining from the liquid's previous life as wort / fruit juice. "Aging" in these products refer to flavor changes resulting from the actions of these yeasts. Hard liquor has been distilled, possibly filtered, and the alcohol content is high enough to kill the hardiest yeast. Whiskey is "aged" by storing in charred casks and allowing tannins from the wood to impart flavors to the liquor - the longer the whiskey is in the wood, the more tannins. Put the whiskey into glass bottles, and the aging stops. I stand by my original comment.

Whiskey (or any liquor that is aged for flavor) only ages "in the barrel". Once it is bottled, it does not age anymore, because glass is inert. So if your grandfather bought a bottle of 12 year old Chivas in 1960 and left it gathering dust in his liquor cabinet for the next 49 years, you do not have 61-year old scotch, you have 12 year old scotch that's been in the bottle for 49 years. The value in these old bottles is not necessarily in their age per se, it's in their rarity - many of these old distilleries have long since ceased production and gone out of business, their recipes are lost, and the old bottles represent a legacy of sorts for the regional producers who thrived before giant corporations took over the production of spirits. It's kind of like buying NOS (new old stock) stickers for your MAME cabinet or arcade build. Only in this case, the "relics", such as they are, are a link to the past that simply can't be recreated once they're gone. The process that's descibed in the article ensure that the unscrupulous among us don't try to take advantage of people's desire to connect with that which came before.

So Google commits the most blatant act of copyright infringement in the history of mankind - basically stealing 7 million books and posting them on the Internet (with "limitations", which will be quickly circumvented with some clever Google "mash-up"). Someone steps forward, claims to represent the entire class of authors who has been wronged, accepts a pitiful "settlement" (well, it's pitiful if you are one of 7 million authors who are going to be paid $60 for your hard work, the $30 million cut for the lawyers is pretty impressive), and now the authors have two choices:

1. Accept a really crappy deal.
2. Sue one of the largests corporations on Earth, which can point to the 6.99 million plus other authors who took (or at least, didn't opt out of) the lousy deal and say, "This is what everyone else thought these rights were worth."

Meanwhile, a 12-year old downloads a crappy pop song onto her grandparent's blueberry iMac, and the RIAA gets to extort thousands of dollars out of dear old Grandma.

Why is "Hit Me Baby One More Time" worth so much more than something like "Innovation: The Attacker's Advantage"? And if it isn't, why can a bunch of lawyers step in for 7 million people and accept a crappy deal?

I see I wasn't the only person who watched "Idiocracy" on Comedy Central over the weekend. I bet Luke Wilson cries everytime he thinks about that movie.

Actually, there are battery designs where the container can be reused an "unlimited" number of times. One such design is the vanadium redox battery. Unfortunately, they do not begin to compare to lithium ion batteries in terms of energy density. However, if this tech or similar tech could be improved to the point where you could build an auto-sized vehicle that could get 150-200 miles per charge, then it's not hard to imagine a world where gas stations have been replaced by "electolyte swap facilities" where the discharged battery is "recharged" quickly by draining and replacing the electrolyte solutions. The same car could also be recharged by mains power at night.

Content providers don't want Hulu on your TV. The Boxee debacle proves that. Right now, they can't monetize the eyeballs delivered via Hulu as well as they can as the ones delivered via broadcast and cable. Until they figure out a way to do that, they're going to make it as painful as they can for you to get "TV" over the Internet. Look at how the amount of content on Hulu has actually shrunk lately (fewer full runs or full seasons of shows available, more "preview" and last three broadcast episodes shows).

Assuming the "rich" software engineers you're referring to made less than $250K last year, they actually got a tax cut from Obama. Stop drinking the GOP Kool-Aid for a minute and think about where your interests really lie. A 3% tax hike (actually, expiration of a previous tax cut) on the top 5% of taxpayers is not a march towards socialism, it's a sound fiscal move.

No, that's the exception that proves the rule.

Not to be pedantic or anything, but do you actually use hammers on a fairly regular basis? An 80-year old hammer would likely have a heavy wooden handle that transmits all of the shock and vibration right into the user's hand. It's likely worn smooth on the face so that the head might wobble on impact, sometimes slipping off the nailhead, causing you to have to re-drive more nails.

Modern hammers are much lighter (have fiberglass handles or are cast as a single piece of metal with a rubber handle), don't transmit as much shock to the user, and have a textured face that "bites" the nail and ensure that the head doesn't slip off when your strike is slightly off-center.

If I actually had to drive nails all day, I'd much rather have a newer hammer.

...you will tell him to get a professional to do this for him. Whether he understands it or not, your father's livelihood depends on having computers that are up and running, and from the limited picture you've given us, it sounds like he only thinks about information technology when something is going wrong.

Simply replacing his current hardware with newer gear is just kicking the problem down the road. In the last 15 years, there have been significant advances that he should consider taking advantage of, because they can make his business run more efficiently. But the only way to determine the "right" solution is to have someone who understands your father's business design a solution for him. A good place to start would be with the vendor who sold him his current setup, if they are still in business. They can most likely recommend a suitable hardware platform and assist with data migration to a newer, supported version of their software, and provide some sort of service arrangement that will ensure that these systems are maintained, not just used.

If you're bound and determined to do this yourself, the recommendations about virtualization are good ones - you can build a couple of VM images that you can backup to a USB flash drive nightly, or even better, several flash drives - learn about backup rotation schemes and design one that gives you the ability to recover two weeks worth of image data at least.

Up thread, someone said that if you do this, you will be supporting it for the next 10-15 years. You need to keep that in mind when deciding how to proceed. Best of luck!