"I can see par-a-dise by the dashboard lights." Meatloaf, 'Bat Out of Hell' Aside from the fact that all the songs were good on that album, I have very fond memories as Meatloaf was on SNL the night that Christopher Lee was the host.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

Bought everyone in the pub a drink Regularly, even while not drunk. Swam with wild dolphins Sorry. I've had them put on impromptu shows while I was at sea. Climbed a mountain Favorite form of recreation. Even climbed Mt. Fuji and Victoria Peak (Hong Kong). Taken a Ferrari for a test drive Ferrari, no. US Navy Destroyer, yep. Qualified helmsman, quartermaster, and navigator, including underway refueling here. There's nothing like taking 8100 tons of metal from zero to thirty-two knots in less than 1000 feet. Gas turbines rule! Been inside the Great Pyramid Never made it as far as Egypt. Held a tarantula. Yes, and many more species besides. I like spiders. Taken a candlelit bath with someone Yep. Said ‘I love you’ and meant it Yes. Hugged a tree Hugged, admired, told it how nice it looked. And I'm no eco-freak. Done a striptease Nope. Seen more than my share though. Bungee jumped Never. The engineer in me lacks faith in the materials. Visited Paris Japan (five cities including Tokyo), S. Korea, Phillipines, Tahiti, Guam, Hong Kong (favorite city), Thailand, Maldives, Oman, Djibouti. Nope, don't see Paris in that list. Watched a lightning storm at sea Lost count of the number I've seen them. Beats the heck out of the display on land. Funnel clouds are even more impressive. Stayed up all night long, and watch the sun rise Too many times. Seen the Northern Lights Yes. Gone to a huge sports game Zero interest in sports. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa Never been to Italy. Grown and eaten your own vegetables All the time. I don't care much for store bought. Wood is frequently tastier than store bought. Touched an iceberg Seen them, never touched one but we don't get that close. If'n we do, well we'll need a new captain, navigator, etc. ;-).

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

Now that's interesting, Willem. My two non-computer hobbies here are reading everything I can lay my hands on that isn't nailed shut (and looking for the claw hammer if it is) and ... cooking!

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

1920 x 1440 x 32 bit @ 120 dpi. The G400 rocks!

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

I've got CD-R's, DVD-R's, and a goodly chunk of hard drive space littered with virtual machines, each with a particular OS-browser-version combination here from my InetPub days. It's no way to run a business, but we do it.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

Sorry, missed that one, and yes, I am being serious. I've heard of it though.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

Agreed! I liked Elf Bowling as well as Elf Shuffleboard. I still have them AAMOF.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

I'm glad Jeremy. You picked a good one as well, one I'd recommend in a heartbeat. Great panel, great components, great warranty, and worth every penny. Now if I just had the pennies, you just might pry my Sony CRT from my fingers, then again maybe not. No way can I afford an LCD at the resolution I like to run.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

Initially that brought a chuckle until I recalled all my years of pain in Internet Publishing and it's actually the honest truth {sigh}.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

{Rolling eyes} Would you have been happier if I said 'Apple and others' or perhaps 'IBM and others'? Sheesh.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

And you can bet your best computer that they have internal econometric studies which estimate overall sales by pricepoint. If it were my firm, I sure would or even conduct the studies myself.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

You can monitor it on the crack groups on UseNet. I used to monitor all those groups, the 'hacking' groups (I'm a hacker, they're vandals!), and their various underground boards all the time. If you do security work it's nice to have a clue at what you'll be seeing shortly if not immediately. I'm surprised that the crack wasn't posted before it went Gold. That's happened on more than one occasion, actually that's the more usual case by a long mile and not just to MS.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

They did try the ASP route for a bit and it failed miserably under the load, was regularly hacked, and otherwise was a maintenance nightmare. So, they went back to using the original Perl-based code with upgrades. Now the Live! variant is a completely new critter and I'm completely underwhelmed as it is sloooowwwww with little in terms of enhancements that I can see. I get a lot of cups of coffee while waiting for page loads here in Hicksville. Reminds me of an article that a friend of mine, Betty Clay wrote: "What To Do While The C-64 Loads." God, am I dating myself in this article or what? Not as bad as when I talk about punch-cards, sliderules, or JCL.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

If you are depending on thermal conduction to the case to cool your drives, you are already in trouble. In an external eSATA/Firewire/USB case, yeah, conduction is an issue for drive cooling. Inside a computer case, the air-flow is 'supposed' to be taking care of heat build-up. There are a few notable exceptions to that (laptops being huge here when I worked on them), but I can see using this solution to drive noise. Rubber grommets would also work. The US Navy uses much the same thing to reduce noise conduction in submarines ans some of the modern surface ships and what they work with is a heck of a lot bigger. I know! Submarine main engine turbines in nuclear submarines are huge. In the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, everything down to the smallest motor/pump is mounted on rubber stand-offs from what I heard.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

Yes, one must be accurate in one's classifications. One of the early lessons they teach in economics. I'm a troll. He's a spammer ;-).

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

I like it! We'll call it Gerrans' Law in your honor as it's a truism here. My most valuable software doesn't have a license/software product key at all and I've accumulated quite a bit over the years. All my Mike Lin and SysInternal's utilities are the mere tip of the iceberg.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

Amen! I'm kicking the tires on v.2 here on my IIS 6 server before installing it on my hosting provider. Now I have to find CP and evaluate it as well. I thought I had evaluated them all. Never thought of looking at what we use here which is damned good forum software. Fast, responsive, and nearly ideal for what I want to do (a navy online community).

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

Actually I feel the problem here is that we 'know' what we are doing so it is completely 'counter-intuitive'. I agree, it does suck from our perspective. Hell, I could whip off a complete site in Dreamweaver MX here in the time it takes to get one page update (28.8 kbps connects here in hicksville). Okay, I'm be a bit over the top there, but it's durn close. FP 2002 would take longer, but again not by much (gag, blech!). Still, for a free domain name, fifty 2 GB mailboxes, and a few whistles, it's okay. I sure wouldn't pay for it without more compelling/much improved software though. For a few bucks for registration, $29.50 per year for hosting (datapacket.net, my provider now which has all the bells and whistles and I've been with for over two years), and installation of something like CommunityServer 2.0, you can actually do much better than the premium rigs that MS is trying to sell. {Shrug} That does take a modicum of ability to utilize in comparison though. We are not the target audience here. SOHO/SB is the target. They ain't IT people, they don't have IT people. End of story. I've got phoenixlords.org a my reserved domain name. No idea what I'll do with the site but it's a cool name (it was my guild in Diablo 2/LoD) and I am doing more than a bit of non-profit work these days in consulting.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

There are one or more sets of focusing (magnetic) rings for the electron beam on the CRT. I doubt that they, themselves, are going snarky but more than likely the circuitry is going. It's not something you can, or even should, service yourself. Getting nailed by 5 kVDC (5000 Volts DC) is not something to chance. I'm one of the few (all eight of us in the US Navy) that have lived through getting nailed by 20 kVDC and the only one not to have a pace maker. Might explain my scrambled brains/nervous system. Leave it to a Pro or just get a new one. LCD flat panels are pretty durn cheap right now, have fast response times (high frame rates), and will run you about what fixing the durn CRT would cost. BTW, I'm still in CRT land, although I wouldn't call it stuck. They'll pry my Sony Multiscan G400 out of my cold dead fingers!

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"

What you are probably going to see in a service pack rollup instead somewhere on or after the release of Vista. Frankly, MS hasn't got a choice here and it has nothing to do with the lowly consumer (peon) user out there. It has everything to do with the simple fact that there will not be either medium business or enterprise buy-in for Vista until they EOL ('End Of Life') existing machines which simply can't run Vista and have not been fully depreciated either. Should MS try to shove Vista down their throat, they will get a huge push-back which will result in one of two things. Mass law-suits due to software assurance contracts that are fundamentally worthless or mass desertions to some form of *nix. Toss-up on that prognostication but it could be a really good year for Ubuntu ;-), SLED 10 or similar solution. People that do not work or consult in this space forget that much of the OS upgrade process is tied to the depreciation cycle time. Microsoft is well aware of this economic fact, they just haven't come up with a 'solution' yet. They will. They have to.

-Bri "The most deadly words for an engineer. 'I have an idea.'"