I'd probably wear a nice, not short skirt because that would be against the rules, but a nice mid length skirt.

Without that, it's really tough to get kids involved.

Screw it. It's too hot to go outside we'll stay inside and eat. I know that most older people that I know start going downhill quickly when they stop moving.

I was just thinking about 15 minutes ago that I had a very enjoyable day doing some real coding.

I was so guilty of that. Freaked out every time a single packet from anywhere would hit my home machine. Even had email alerts sent to my cell phone. That lasted about 48 hours when I decided I wanted to sleep. Wish I could send email back in time to myself. Eh, I probably wouldn't believe it anyways.

This or something like this will be huge. I remember arguing against linux. Why would anyone want to install that? It's crap written by some college kid. I was extremely wrong, but I learned quickly after Solaris kept getting crappier and crappier.

I wouldn't worry about that. We could give ponies to crippled children and that would somehow be used to recruit terrorists.

...considered posting a comment in this, then stopped and deleted it just in case *your* employer takes offense?

I don't think it's possible to block all the noise in a dorm unless you have designated quiet dorms.

I liked to tinker with configs and settings and libraries, but now I like my home computer to just work. They cost more, but are worth it. I still have a unix command line and most of the open source tools but have access to commercial software as well.

Yummy KoolAid.

As silly as it sounds, I find that I'm far more productive when I take a few minutes before I start working and make a list with paper and pen of the things I want to accomplish today. Cross them off when complete. Something about the list living in the real world versus a list in a text file keeps it more "real". Maybe it's the way my brain is wired since I grew up when computers were things you hooked up to your TV. I definitely understand the OP's situation. It's really hard to focus when you literally have the world at your fingertips.

I love the GQ and Men's Health articles that show the outfits that you're supposed to wear. Suit - $3000, Shoes $750, watch - $8000. Yeah, sure.

As silly as it sounds, "putty" made Windows bearable for most admin tasks as I rarely need X Windows. It's probably been 10 years since I had a true linux desktop. Now if I want to run linux on my laptop, it's done as a vm which makes driver issues much easier. And I can run Netflix on the host OSX. IMHO, the only reason to run linux on a desktop/laptop is to get some life out of old hardware.

The TI-994a Extended Basic manual and "Cosmos" when I was a kid.

No books really stick out from college, I'd say it was more of a cumulative effect from the individual books.

"UNIX in a Nutshell" in the early 90's - sure it's just a dump of man pages, but I think I memorized everything between the pages and it got me started in UNIX.

"Learning Perl" - perl has paid the bills and let me go home at a decent hour. Thanks Larry!

...or am I the only one picturing Mario jumping up, hitting a block and then collecting the coins that shower down?