Bah, 5 minutes, you are a lightweight. Remember you are running an infected vista machine. They do not boot in under 10 minutes, and when you tell them that your machine has been running slowly, they are eager to wait for you. Then another 10 minutes to "download" the file they want you to install - again my computer has been running slowly. Remember the tearing your hair out pain when trying to trouble shoot your mother in laws computer over the phone? Comes in useful, give it back to them, they will lap it up and think they are going to get somewhere.
To add to the amusement while you are "waiting" for your computer to boot, ask them where they are based. I got told my suburb, and when I pressed them on it they picked an area which was actually commercial.
All good fun if you have some time to kill.
The best part is when you tell them that you are running ubuntu, and they realised that the last hour they had through various was a waste of their time.

Yeah, because I would much rather be driving around all winter with under inflated tyres, so I can increase my chances of a blowout when it is -10F.
If you are having to add air to your tyres all winter there is something wrong.
Oh, and if you are that worried about a blowout due to overinflation, you could, you know, reduce the pressure.

He must have got unlucky, or perhaps they tyre sustained damage which caused the loss of inflation.
I was suspicious until I drove in a BMW "thrash/test our car day". On one of the cars, they removed the valve. No air pressure, nada. (ok physics nazis, atmospheric). We then proceeded to do 0-60-0s and a slalom on the way back. When you were really nailing it through the slalom, you could tell the car was a little looser than it should be, but better than an average car with inflated tyres. But the experience of being able to do a slalom course with a flat tyre was amazing.

When we had finished our runs, we looked at the tyre and it has a bit of scuffing on the sidewall. And that was it. Several hours of people abusing it, and it was still driveable.

Can you please explain your "gold does not fluctuate as much as the paper dollar" stance in light of the price of gold falling from USD850 per ounce in January 1980 to below USD300 in June 1982. Close to a 2/3 loss in value in two years counts as "remaining almost constant?"

Your comments regarding the relative price of a suit and an ounce of gold a century ago are irrelevant, for a number of reasons:
Past performance is no indicator of future performance.
You were not buying a suit with any form of money in 1913.
You will not be buying a suit with any form of money in 2113.
In the long run we are all dead.

If you look at your history in a little more depth you will see that basing your currency on gold and silver cause all sorts of issues precisely because the price of the metals DOES vary. And vary a lot.

If bringing another laptop into work is not going to fly, install LAMP at home.
1/ Set up LAMP server at home, getting web access to the error logs would be really useful.
2/ Make sure your dynamic DNS is sorted so you can ftp/ssh into it from work
3/ Write your code in notepad
4/ Send to server
5/ Test in browser
6/ Google to figure out what your error messages mean
7/ Goto 3

It ain't pretty, but you install *nothing* on your work machine, and aren't using unusual/sketchy netowrk techniques which may draw attention to yourself. I am sure proper tools and IDEs would be nice, but you are going to spend most time on step 6, that is where the real learning is.

Bah, it was faked by the marketing department for Omega. Everyone knows they didn't really land there.
Your comment about Apollo 13 is interesting. In the book The Best of Time, Rolex an Unauthorised Biography, by Dowling and Hess, there is an interesting story about why the Apollo astronauts were wearing Omegas - NASA called the US Rolex dealer & said they want 50 GMT Masters & were told no, so went elsewhere (doh!). The book has a photo of the GMT Swigert was wearing and said "enabled me to always be on time".
Damned interesting book, tells a lot about the history of the wrist watch, and explains why Rolex became a status symbol : people swimming the english channel, climbing everest, going to the moon wore them because they were best, their life depended on it. Since the 80s or so, nothing. It is sad to see such a giant trading solely on a fading past,

That is exactly why a mechanical watch has appeal to me.
Even the best quartz watch, when/if they stop making that size battery it is dead. If the crystal dies, it is gone. We recently had my father in laws watch in for a service - the spring had broken. The watchmaker replaced it and the screen - all scratched up, now like new. The look on my father in laws face when we returned his broken watch running again to him was priceless. The watch was circa 1930s, a family watch, a brand which no longer exists, the plating is worn through as he has worn it most of his life. It has seen more history than I ever hope to. For a few hundred we restored it to functioning like it did when new. Is the watch valuable? On ebay, no. But I hope that at some point he considers I am worthy to wear the watch, but I think that it will be my wife that makes that decision, and hope it is not soon.
I cannot see that with a quartz watch.

Seconded.

The example you were looking for was the Chronoswiss Opus. Accuracy on a par with any good mechanical - seconds per day rather than per month per year with a $2 quartz. Dark hands on a busy background making it hard to read the time - something that you need to look at to tell the time rather than just glance. Winding - impractical. Cost, don't ask.
But it is engineering, and you can see it. A bad day gets better just peering at the amazing craftsmanship and engineering in the watch.
Even the sound is better. Honestly, a quartz 'analog' watch makes a tinny tick every second. A mechanical watch beats with the speed of the mechanism - 5 or 6 times a second, an almost musical chime which will sound different depending on the angle of the watch to your ear. My wife (I know fantasy on /.) does not like me wearing my quartz in bed, it sounds bad while she is sleeping.
If you really want geek, mechanical is the way to go. What the watch isn't is not as important as what it is. What could be more geek than an Omega Speedmaster - the first watch on the moon. Buy a 60s one, it is just being run in, then you can give it to your grandchildren. Accurate, no, practical, not really, efficient not really. Cool, hell yes.

If anyone claims that your watch is obsolete, you can always point out that it is space age technology.
It is just a pity that space age technology is not what it used to be.
That is a nice looking watch - but I have a question. Is it accurate? I bought a cheap mechanical citizen with a crystal back so I can get my fix, but it is inaccurate enough to annoy me - after a month or so it is off enough to be a problem (10+ minutes). My expensive mechanicals are better.

If you can explain how "30m water resistance" means anything but "if I wear this watch 30m down it will be ok" you are a better man than any watch salesman I have ever met. I mean really, how much difference in pressure does waving your hand *actually* make -1m? 2m? Personally I think one of the biggest lines of BS is the watch manufacturers guides to what you can do with a watch. Want to dive to 30m (the 'safe recreational limit'), oh no, you need the 200m+ water proof version, the 50m version will not be good enough for unspecified reasons.
Most impressive watch I ever owned was a crappy timex I didn't really like, but when it said 50m water resistant, it MEANT it.
Unfortunately it didn't say "Denver Beerfest Resistant" so the screen got smashed in mysterious (or at least mysterious to me) circumstances.:(

Sorry, but you can tell a knockoff from a real one at a glance. At least I can (for cheap knockoffs at least, expensive OTOH...). It is the same thing as knockoff anything. If you know what real looks and feels like, you just know, even if you cannot explain exactly why. I bet plenty of people here could spot a knockoff iphone across the room, even without looking at the 'ipone' label.
And I agree with your 'adult' comment, except I think you mean mature. I have met a *LOT* of adults who would prove your point wrong.
I understand your jewellery comment, but I don't have the ears for earrings, so I enjoy my watch more. Plus it has moving bits as well as simple shiny! YMMV

It doesn't get your hour back, and it doesn't get you the game, but - return it. The game doesn't work. Not sure of the exact details of the UK Sale of Goods Act, but seems pretty clear to me. If enough people return the game, it might encourage them to think a little about their strategy next time. Sucking it up won't.

The price of the bulb is a pretty small part of the price of the lighting. The savings in power costs add up pretty fast - cut the power consumption by 70W and you hit $1 per month in power cost for a single bulb used 2 hours a day.

I agree with the sentiment, but if you write the install date on the bulb, that will go a long way to solving the problem without much effoer. The question really comes down to do you want simple and inefficient or complex and efficient. Pay now or pay later, your call.