riddler

One thing about COBRA is that you usually can activate it retroactively - I believe it's 30 or 60 days after you leave. Here is my experience with COBRA: I left the employ of a large defense contractor on Friday, and started a job with a large telecom company on Monday. My health insurance with the former company ended on the day I left, and the new health insurance with the latter company did not start for 30 days. 20 days into the "gap" I developed acute appendicitis. So I went to the hospital and they yanked it out to the tune of $11,000. Afterwards, I used COBRA, and paid retroactively for my prior health insurance (cost about $170 for that month) to cover me for the month of the gap, and then in turn the health insurance company of the defense contractor picked up the tab for the appendectomy, since they were required by law to do so. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Am I the only one that thinks the Apple TV is a lame offering? 40 gig HD - even the newer iPods have 80 gig, and they're about 1/5 as small. No DVD player - I've only got one HD input on my 30" flatscreen, and it's currently occupied by my DVD player. If they want us to really use this, they need to stick an HD DVD player in the thing so we can use it as our DVD as well. Syncs from iTunes - so Apple bends over for the RIAA and doesn't allow iPod to download back to a PC. That was just peachy when my VIAO HD failed and everything was stuck in limbo on my iPod mini. Now this thing pulls iTunes content wirelessly? Will Apple please just tell the RIAA to piss off and do something right for the consumer? It's as if this thing was designed five years ago and released last week Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

For some reason, whenever I see that car, I think of Godzilla on roller skates. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Stay tuned for the Zen Phone, with Verizon as the carrier. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Lol! And a big pile of dead leaves at the bottom helps! I'm pretty sure that's how that guy was planning on landing the wing suit - a big pile of dead leaves at the bottom. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

HTP (Peroxide) and Kerosene. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I payed $1500 for three Bang & Olufson house phones seven years ago, and they still work great. I got my Blackberry 8700 for free, but had to get into a two year contract for it. It normally retails for over $500. Yep, these are expensive toys. I work from home, so I spend a lot on phone and internet. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

The Ford Escape Hybrid and the Mercury Villager hybrid both have 4X4 options. But they aren't cheap If you live in Colorado, the state gives you about a $2,000 tax credit for buying one, though. I was part of a team of fourth-year engineering students that built a hybrid car in 1992 as part of the Ford Hybrid challenge. 30 schools competed in this first-of-its-kind event. We took all our cars to Dearborn, Michigan in spring of '93 and raced them in a series of events, including distance, speed, maneuverability, etc. We spent $38K on the car and came in seventh. The winner was a Canadian school that spent a quarter-million on their car. It's nice to see hybrids commercially available after working on them as a theoretical project more than 10 years ago. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

$575 for one gig of RAM is a a lot to ask IMHO. That is the current quote to upgrade a Macbook Pro from 2 gig to 3 gig. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

This is from a play that is a parody of muppets, called Avenue Q. Think dirty Sesame Street. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm tempted to just stick to skydiving since it's safer. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

This may be a topic for a different thread, but do you believe that tunnel flying is as dangerous as skydiving? Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I went to Las Vegas for my first three hours because it was the easiest one to get to. I went to Orlando the next five hours because flyangel2 hooked me up with a great coach and a good deal on block time. Now I just go to the one that's 15 miles away, because it's the easiest to get to. Oh, and I have a great coach there, too Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Denver has the worst snow removal policy of any major city that gets snow routinely. Just my opinion. They have no requirement to plow city roads unless snow goes on for 24 hours and it stays below freezing for at least 24 hours. But it does make me glad I don't have to leave the house to work. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Ah, the Americas pageants! The excitement, the scandals, the fame, the downward spiral and the fatale finale. Never seen any of that before. Look for Miss Nevada in the next issue of Playboy. So we reward people for being beautiful and punish them for displaying it. Give the girl a break - she's young and probably isn't smart enough to understand society's hipocrisy. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

It always amazes me when that thing lands. It has about a 1:1 glide ratio. That's almost as bad as a Lightning Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I saw this this morning. The books seem to come out in late Spring, so if I had to guess, we only have a few months - maybe six months at most before it comes out. It can't come too late next year, because they wouldn't want it to interfere with Movie #5 Any guesses on what are the Deathly Hallows? Kinda reminds me of the caves from the last book. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Doesn't that describe pretty much every software methodology? Is your application data-centric, object-centric or user-centric? Erwin, Rational or Paradigm are the standards. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

You missed a real whopper Christmas of '82. This is nothing compared to the twig of '93' Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Sadly, I really did have to do some work Maybe tomorrow Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Yaaawwwn - wow, I must have slept late. It's tough working from home sometimes. Oh yeah, I did get out earlier today and shoveled more than a foot off of mine and my neighbors sidewalks. I guess I'll have to shovel another foot tomorrow Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

I've programmed computers for over 25 years, and I still work a lot with them. Right now, I have an XP Pro Dell, a Mac Powerbook, a Redhat Linux Thinkpad, a Windows 2003 Server Compaq Presario and enough spare parts to built one or two more complete systems. I like the Mac the best. It sounds like you don't need to run a lot of typical business programs, so if you can afford it, go with the Mac. Two downsides to Mac - there's still a lot of software out there that doesn't run on them, and they are expensive. The money you save buying a PC isn't worth the frustration you get from poor quality hardware and bad customer service. But if you do buy a PC, Sony and Toshiba have better hardware on laptops (IMO), although the customer service is poor. I just sent a Dell laptop back for repair because the screen lamp burned out after about a year. When the machine was purchased, Dell promised a 3-5 day turnaround. When I talked to the rep, he said 2-3 weeks. It took about two weeks and came back with a corrupted OS. With the Mac, I bought a three year service plan. They gave me a free ipod mini, and M$ Office bundle for $99. The only problem with it was one key popped off. I took it to the store and they put it back on inside 2 minutes. Mac hardware is very nice and solid. The software is generally pretty good, but I have issues with iTunes. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Exciting things happening in the world of Pine, lately: http://www.washington.edu/alpine/ We need a little drooling icon with it's tongue hanging out. That would also be useful for the booby threads. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

Lots of people use Eudora. The downside is the people that use it are often skilled enough with computers to crack the license code, and therefore not pay for it. It's always been a losing proposition for Qualcomm. Why make people pay for software that M$ gives away for free? Sure, it's better, but most people still won't buy it. Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

My favorite email client is becoming open source: Story here Seems like more and more companies are using open source for a dumping ground when code doesn't turn out to be too profitable. It'll be kinda neat to see the source code, though I can only imagine the suffering I avoided for many years using Eudora instead of Outlook while viruses ran rampant through corporate networks. I took those opportunities to lecture all my co-workers on the evils of Microsoft Anyone else here use Eudora? For that matter, anyone else use Pine? Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD