@Captain TickTock

Actually, Mr. Tick Tock, I've had no trouble using ASL in the British Isles ... Not that I generally need it in technical situations, mind ... But it's nice to have as an option :-)

For the record, I'm not deaf ... but I do enjoy having the ability to communicate.

@Urh

Our guys typically do between 50 and 100mL per session, with a maximum in late spring/early summer & a minimum in late fall/early winter. That's (roughly) one or two 1.5 US oz (~44mL) shots per session. Thanks for asking; sorry if it ruins your horse porn fantasies :-)

@Killraven

Cool. If you're willing to sign a contract, I'll pay you twice that ... $30 per collection ... if you like. The mandatory vet charges twice that, and the two helpers[1] adds another $60 to the total[2], and that's just for the collection. Should be good for a giggle, and maybe I'll finally have something worth posting to YouTube[3].

[1] Safety first ... Keeps insurance rates low.

[2] I pay my field hands well ... I want to keep 'em!

[3] That's sarcasm ... There is no way I'd put my horses in the hands of a rookie.

@Anomalous Cowturd et ali ...

That poor stallion needs to get cut, as he's obviously not worthy of breeding. If he was, he'd be making a lot more money ...

By way of explanation, our main stallion, an 18 year old with a good track record, sells for US$3500 per mail-order cryo-packed AI application. We offer up to ten repeat applications for proven brood mares, or until they produce, whichever comes first. It's 4500 for room & board if your mare needs to visit us for "live cover" (he doesn't travel anymore), which is required for some equine disciplines. Our youngster (his grandson, 8 years old) is USD$1750 & 2500 ... as will be our two-year-old (great great grandson) if/when we deem him ready.

15 bucks a shot is silly, at best ... the cost of harvesting the stuff, plus keeping it fresh long enough to get it "to market" would be close to ten times that price. Gut feeling is that they are selling tapioca to idiots who don't know any better ;-)

HCF

Halt and Catch Fire.

Or the ever popular "You should never see this error."

Similarly, I looked at the clock this afternoon & it reported "4:04" ... My brain immediately interpreted that as "time not found" ... Nice temporary personal "WTF?" moment :-)

@Stuart Longland

I taught my daughter how to use alternative base numbering systems right from the git-go ... A little over two decades ago, when she was around 7 or eight, she started using the phrase "132 you" ... it took me almost a week to figure it out ... When I did, I busted a gut laughing.

Smart critters are a joy to train, two-footed or four-footed :-)

@Obsessive Wiki-fiddler

Only if you're a machine. I use my left big toe for the overflow bit ;-)

On a related note, why are Christmas and Halloween the same?

Dec 25 == Oct 31 ...

OS/2 failed as a mass-market OS because ...

IBM chose not to roll the Windows 3.0 API into it ... *probably* because Apple had a hissy-fit at the very idea. Am I the only one who remembers Taligent and Pink? The concept of Apple and IBM dating sounds daft these days, but back in the late eighties ...

As a side-note, OS/2 isn't actually dead. I still use it in some places. See:

http://ecomstation.com/

Gopher? Nah. Only me Great Aunt still uses Gopher ...

... She's been using it to publish the 95+ years of her life's story these last 17 years. It works for her, so who am I to suggest she get a trifle more modern? (True, I maintain the server-space ...).

I can't remember the last time I used a search engine, outside of Wikipedia[1].

And no, I don't just use 80X24 ... Sometimes I need to crop pictures ;-)

[1] I don't trust Wiki, mind, but occasionally I'll look something up there in the hopes of finding a more authoritative link for my nieces & nephews ... After over a third of a century online, I pretty much already know where to find anything I personally am looking for.

Out of curiosity, slightlyoff ...

What flavo(u)r was the goolaid?

Pianos & organs have any number of pedals.

And a standard keyboard has 88 keys.

I'd expound on this, but Wiki[1] has a couple pretty good articles on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_pedals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedal_keyboard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano

The device I experimented with started life as a Moog Taurus. The eight pedals provided (theoretically) 256 binary "cord" options[2], but in reality with only two feet I couldn't manage quite that many. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out exactly how many ;-)

[1] I almost never recommend Wikipedia ...

[2] You do know how to count to 1024 using your fingers, right?

@doperative

There's a word for what you just did: "stalker".

@amfM

I think I'm awake ... Care to expound on that?

Or maybe I can condense your message:

"Please don't feed the establishment, trolling suckers out of their dollars".

@Denarius

This is about intelligent minds observing reality, not IT[1].

Ice dams break, true. But there is no record of that happening regularly in the cores from the Colorado Delta.

We know what the life-cycle of the desert plants is, we know what the precipitation cycle is, and we know what the rate of rock erosion is. And we know what the deposition rate is in river deltas. All from direct observation.

Suggesting that that those rates have somehow changed within the last several million years is intentionally disingenuous, at best. That makes you a liar, if you have half a clue as to what your are discussing. If you don't have that half a clue, why are you commenting?

[1] Judging by the current crop of Web sites, there are very few intelligent minds in IT ...

@Denarius, Re: "consistancy"

Which of your four gospels got the last words of Jesus right?

Has to be one of 'em ... the other three *must* be wrong.

OK, to be fair, Mark declined to comment ... But Matthew, Luke & John all report differing accounts. Which one is closest to reality? My money is on Mark ;-)

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

@TeeCee

"You fire PowerPoint dweebs for a living?"

No. I clean up b0rken corporate computing culture for a living.

"I sooooo want your job"

You can have it. All you have to do is bid on, and win, the contract(s).

"you just can't buy the level of job satisfaction inherent in that."

Nah. Firing people in this economy leaves a bad taste in the mouth ...

@AC 21:15 ... Power Point? Waste of (corporate) time ...

"take away powerpoint(c++) and watch as all the big companies are brought to their knees :)"

Uh, actually, the first thing I do when brought in as a consultant is ask "who are your Power Point experts, and who relies on their presentations within the organization?"

And then I promptly fire the lot of 'em[1].

Power Point has wasted more billable hours than anything else ever invented by the global corporate infrastructure ...

[1] Yes, I have that power ... it's in the fine print in my standard contract ;-)

@foo_bar_baz

Most programming that isn't close to the hardware is frivolous. Think about it.

It's not the HLL that makes you a sheep, it's the mind-set (see "app stores" and the like, and what they mean in the great scheme of things).

I lost interest in managers over thirty years ago ... I'm my own boss :-)

@AC21:13 ... Where did I say I didn't use different tools for different jobs?

I was commenting on real programming, not the likes of "Farmville" ... If the underlying hardware+OS isn't stable, none of your toys, bells & whistles will mean squat.

@amfM

Ah. I see. In your mind, it's a vast conspiracy by "the elite few".

In my mind, it's the stupidity of the GreatUnwashed[tm] buying into Madison Avenue, and there is no "elite few" ... I mean, seriously, when was the last time you saw an advertisement for a product, political idea or religion that wasn't immediately ignorable? You think of the originators of this crap as "elite"? Seriously?

@amfM

Break it down to basics: Centralized computing is still centralized computing, no matter how many bells & whistles you hang on it.

We all have a CPU, memory & storage at our fingertips. We don't need to borrow from multi-national data-mining advertising organizations.

Can we not move away from the nanny-state "take care of it for me" paradigm?

Or perhaps men from Mars actually enjoy advertising and being marketed at?

@dave 93

::eyeballs Heidelberg Windmill & KORD and Chief 217 in my own printshop::

OK. If you say so ... But from my perspective, printing's always been a home industry, kinda like growing veggies, baking bread, making beer & wine and smoking bacon.

@AC20:46

"Define real work."

Coding close to the hardware, which should be obvious from the comment your replied to ... but for some reason you seem to think I'm not allowed to comment on that ... I mean, "stick the mucking out"? WTF?

"Can you conceive of a problem space where you need to think bigger to solve a more complex problem?"

Yes, I can. Are you equipped to understand my commentary?

"Arrogant"

I prefer "capable".

"narrow-minded"

I prefer "knowledgeable".

"and, here's an irony"

God is an iron ...

"unintelligent."

Says the AC, with no actual rebuttal to my post...

Earth to idiots, re-read this bit: "on his own time, off campus".

That means PARENTAL responsibility applies. Not school district responsibility. But I think you'll find that (according to the article), he is 18 years old and an adult (by law) in his own right. If I were in his shoes, I'd take out the entire local school board[1] for their heavy handed, illegal tactics.

My mind boggles at how many people seem to not only enjoy the nanny state, but actually invite it into their lives ...

Ms Bee, are you absolutely certain that "sheeple" is a cuss word?

[1] Oh, to be in my late teens again ...

Not mass murder.

Chlorinating the gene pool.

When I were a lad, two wrongs didn't make a right, but euthanizing dogs with Parvo was considered "best practice", because it was better for the humans and the dogs over the long haul.

Don't get me wrong ... I like the idea of an open internet. I was sad when I had to kill the guest accounts on my internet facing servers in 1988. These annonytwats are a symptom of the problem, not the answer ... Don't glorify them. They are just as bad as the corporations they are trying to vilify. Maybe worse, in that they are intentionally causing the casual/ignorant user's data to become accessible to any and all criminals who care to access it.

Again, I'm anticipating plenty of "thumbs down" from people who aren't thinking this thing thru'. Enjoy, if that makes your weekend. Me, I'm trying to educate :-)