Oh, I am so much of a snob, it's painful. I buy online only because nothing in the stores is worth a crap. I have several different coffee making utensils, like a ceramic filter holder that sits on top of the cup, a water heater with 1-degree accuracy so I can heat the water to the perfect temperature, an espresso press that I use at work, and a Japanese hand-powered bean grinder, because there's so much darn Zen in grinding your own beans by hand. I prefer the Italian roast to all others, although a really good but not burnt French roast can be a pleasure as well. I've tried the flavored varieties, but I always come back to un-flavored. As far as beans go, the Arabica is the one I most commonly drink, only because it is the most common bean to be found in these here parts, y'all. The Kona bean is interesting, but I'm not keen on the flavors. The Kenya AA is a darn good bean as well, but my favorite (currently) is the Jamaican Blue Mountain bean. When I make my single cups of coffee by pouring 209-degree (F) water over Jamaican Blue beans ground moments before and letting the water drip for several minutes through an oil-absorbing filter to remove the majority of any bitterness, my wife calls me a snob. I love it. :)

Amen, brother! I'll be 56 this year and I have about the same number of years of coding in my history as well. I'm sure I'll be a coding fool until they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands. :)

The decision, obviously, is on you, but I found myself in a similar situation several years back. I have 28 years of experience, and I realized that getting a degree after so much time working without one would demonstrate dedication and tenacity, and not just serve to satisfy a qualification item. So, I hooked up with WGU. They are 100% online and utilize a competency-based system (pass/fail) instead of the legacy graded system. Along with the fully-accredited degree, I received several certifications (some which amounted to squat) and it makes my resume look pretty darn impressive. If you investigate and decide to go with WGU, drop me a line so we can say I referred you to the school. :-D

Sander Rossel wrote:

the 80's database

I remember a few back then, only one relational db though. That was Uniplex. Late 80's. The big ISAM db I saw many places was BTrieve. Then there was the Borland project called Paradox. You know, I'm glad I've stuck with relational databases.

Oh. My. Effing. Gawd. I am now going to go into the bedroom, lay myself down, and proceed to pass out of existence. :laugh:

Noob question of the day: What is "CP"?

Hrm. Automation Direct looks more like an industrial automation supplier (automated assembly lines and its ilk). Didn't see much in the way of a source for the hobbyist.

Well, I didn't know that (about the Spanish Prisoner con). Thanks for the link! :)

I think Bernhard had his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek. :laugh:

Cool, man. Email or IM me when it gets published. Regarding the 1st love thing... I think the first love in programming has to do with where you came from. My head was full of BASIC when Pascal came along, so it was the first language that did NOT require line numbers, used Types, and had easy access to pointer arithmetic (vs PEEK and POKE...arrrrgh). Because of these advancements (at the time...) I was enchanted. Yeah, so then I later found out about C and a host of other languages, and some of those became favorites for a while, but Pascal has stayed around the longest. :)

Yeah. My first love was Pascal on the Apple IIe, but my first *mistress* was 6502 assembler. Never coded assembler for money. It's always been for fun. :)

:laugh:

Yeah, I just realized the big mistake I made...I was thinking about 10 years ago! OMG! :wtf: How lame is that?

I was reading and answering comments from a fellow author when he told me that he had fallen in love with technology. And, by "technology", I assumed he really meant "programming", as that is his forte. So that got me thinking about my "first love" in relation to programming. I was a BASIC programmer, and had some significant experience with Z-80 assembly programming, when that sultry vixen, Pascal, blew me a kiss. Holy moley! I was smitten, but good. Everything (and I really mean *everything*) took a back seat to Pascal for a while after that. Now, 20+ years later, I survive in this world by coding tsql or C# bits to keep my employer afloat. Pascal and I have maintained a furtive relationship over the years. I have all the Borland releases on floppy, one Inprise version of Pascal, and now Embarcadero's XE4. Only the Embarcadero version is in use. Yes, I use Pascal for my fun-time programming adventures...still! What a babe. :)

Yep. I was in a shop whose flagship product was built on VB5 and C++. Ah, those innocent days of youth... I was also just beginning to poke my nose into .NET and Java. Weird, I know, but I had just been dropped into a project which had a Java client pulling data from a .NET web service. Thems were fun days! :)

Got an email for participating in a CodeProject Internet of Everything survey 2014. (link: [^]) Clicked the link. Got "Server Error in '/' Application." Looks a lot like an IIS error. Been trying to click through for a while now. The details are sparse, but it may help: Runtime Error Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine. Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".

Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.