So, when I started consulting I called myself a "technical consultant" ( and named my company technical consulting) because,1) I am not licensed, and 2) I am actually an applied physicist by degree, in spite of spending my whole career in engineering organizations. That got me around any state licensing stuff. I also never did the kind of "civil" projects that would require licensing.

Totally agree. I have left several jobs for less pay but more interesting work, and more upside potential. Sometimes it has paid off (issues of having spent the last 20 years in a number of start-up companies). If you can afford the risk, take it. Life will be more interesting, and your return to society will be better as well.

Yeah, I meant to say Celeron, but had a senior moment. I think yesterday's machine was actually a P-4, but I deal with plenty of other 2 GHz Celeron machines as well.

The computer that made me spawn this post has not been running any virus checker for a number of years. No evidence of viruses when I checked it out. I left it running without one because AVAST brought it to its knees. The gentleman using this machine is tech savy (retired engineer, not EE), mid-to-late 70's, but not a computer power user. Mostly he uses it to check email (browser only), and write letters. My experience with users of that generation is that they get comfortable with what they have been using, but changing to MAC or LINUX would make them very uncomfortable, in spite of the fact that they use only a browser (usually IE) and a word processor.

Having worked in the traffic sensing industry for 4 years now (but not red-light-running cameras), and from over 40 years of driving, I very much agree that long yellows only encourage red-light running. Oak Ridge (TN) put in red-light and speed cameras in a few intersections, and the Turnpike has much calmer drivers now, who travel much closer to the speed limit, and pay attention to yellow lights. A yellow light used to mean -floor it-. I will acknowledge that some towns may be cheating on yellow-light timing, especially if they are violating the national traffic standard. BUT, most of the libertarians in town think that longer yellows are the answer and that the cameras are just -revenue cameras-. The calmer traffic on the main drag are my proof that they are wrong. As to traffic accident reduction, that I am less sure of, and I have not seen the numbers.