I live just south of the border in Mx & rely on over the air broadcasts from the US and the internet for my TV (limited) watching. Digital broadcast TV is actually higher resolution than cable these days, but I rarely watch anything except the occasional news or sports event. I primarily rely on RSS feeds for the nightly news and bittorrents for any TV shows I can't live without. Instead of Roku or similar I use an $80 Android TV box [^]. You can find similar on eBay or Amazon, but at a higher price. The advantage of the Android box is that it is basically a tablet that uses your TV as the screen. You can use any Android app, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, torrent & podcast clients, Skype, etc. You can use an app on your Android phone as a remote control or a wireless mouse/keyboard. I use a combination of RSS feeds[^] and podcast subscriptions to automate the downloading of my selection of audio and video entertainment. Almost painless once the feeds are setup!

Shot peening is normally used to put the surface layers into compression which improves fatigue life through fewer stress reversals. Peening of welds is generally frowned upon due to inducing localized brittleness which may induce cracking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peening[^]

Not really relevant now that you have replaced the spring, but another aspect of dealing with forming spring steel is hydrogen embrittlement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement[^]. I have experienced this problem in aircraft production - took a lab analysis to discover the cause of the sudden fractures and a vendor change to solve it.

I would recommend trying the $0.50 foam ear plugs as a first purchase. And they are comfortable enough for me to wear all day. I get a headache wearing any kind of a headset for more than a few hours. Analog cancellation (i.e. foam plugs, headset cups or ear buds) work instantaneously. The foam attenuates the higher frequency sounds as well as active headsets & probably get 50% of the low frequency sounds compared to an active headset. Active headsets work great on repetitive wave forms, the lower the frequency the better. But they don't do that well with random noise like people talking. It needs to "listen" to the sound wave and then calculate a cancellation wave, which does not work if the wave form has changed in the mean time. Before you say "your" active headset works on the random noise, re-read the above - it is the analog ear bud or cup that is killing most of the random noise.

My choice is Avant browser - it has three (Chrome, IE, Firefox) rendering engines built in. You can switch between engines if a page does not display properly. Once you find the engine that works, you can designate that engine as the default for that page. When I started using it several years ago, it was clearly faster. I have not noticed much speed difference lately, but I have not paid much attention either. Lots of options, etc. All in all, I think it is the most flexible browser available.

First you need to decide how you are going to use the phone; As a smarter version of a dumb phone? Go with a 3.5 - 4" screen. As a simple PDA & phone? - get a 4.5 - 5" screen. As a substitute for a tablet? - get as large a screen as possible, they are offering up to 6" screens now. In general the bigger the phone the easier it is to use the "features" and the battery life is actually better because of the bigger battery. But the trade off is a heavier phone and the awkwardness of using a phone as big as your head! I have a Chinese Note II clone with dual SIM's and find it a good compromise size. Big enough to use as a tablet, small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. But heavier than I would like.

Due to the legal environment today, any company, large or small needs an Employee Manual that spells out the relationship between the company and the employee. It is far more involved than simple internet policy. The courts have held that a company is responsible for an employee’s activities on the internet, which is why you will normally find restrictions on what an employee may or may not do on the internet. A company can also be held responsible if an employee gets drunk at a company sponsored event, etc. The company needs to establish policy’s that cover non-discrimination, sexual harassment, work hours, overtime, benefits, sick and pregnancy leave, intellectual property, travel reimbursement, etc. Even if there are no benefits beyond those legally required, it needs to be spelled out so there is no ambiguity a lawyer can use against the company later. A decent employee manual will run fifty pages or so. Much of it is CYA on the company’s part, but necessary. Outlines of acceptable employee manuals can be found on the internet. Here is a link to a Employee Manual[^] template from the Small Business Administration.

Getting a formal education is more than learning specific skills - it is also learning the structure and "short hand language" of your field and getting a broad exposure to aspects that may not be applicable to your current interest, but may be useful later. A formal education will also hopefully instill the ability to speak and write in a cogent fashion (with a minimum of "geek") when communicating with non technical people. Would you entrust a project to someone who's proposal is filled with miss-spellings and grammatical errors? I have met a number of smart, self taught people that had no chance of advancement because they lacked the skills needed to communicate with the next level of management or customers. A final argument for checking the formal education box is that most large organisations plus any (large or small) that do government contracting use it as an initial screen. No degree, no job.

There are a variety of reason for a company to record hours; If they have government contracts (or are a subcontractor) it may be a requirement - which would explain why the company itself doesn't review the data, they are just checking the contractual box knowing it will be there if they are audited. They may be trying to build a data base that can be used in the future for planning/scheduling/estimating. They may have planned to collect several years worth of data before they used it. Or the guy that had big plans for the data has been promoted / left the company and forgot all about it!

IMHO, MS's offering is too little too late to be a major market player.

I use this handy little program that treats the Cap's Key as a Shift key, but lets you use Alt Caps when you really want Caps. http://www.worldinabox.co.uk/BoldFinger/[^]

Part of the problem today is that they have abandoned Flow Charting of the task before even starting to program. A Flow Chart may not provide the same skills as assembly language, it clarifies the task to the point that it can be stepped through on paper to find logic and calculation errors. A good Flow Chart can be implemented in any language.

As jsc42 says, the computer staff was almost exclusively women at that time. I became interested in computers in the mid-late 60's. Two of my girl friend's sisters worked for AT&T in the computer department, one as an systems analysist and one as a programmer. Both had started as operators, they were promoted & trained from within, one of them eventually left to raise a family, the other one retired early. Both were replaced by men even though the company actively looked for women.

An important element in this is the collection of actual time required. Once you/your company has collected a history of MHR's per line of code (or similar metric) you will have a decent method of predicting the schedule/cost of a new project. In the aerospace industry one of the companies I worked for based the estimates on lbs of airframe weight that were new and changed design. They had a thirty year history that was within +/- 20% for estimating new projects. We used the historical record as much to defend our estimates against arbitrary cuts in budget as we did to make initial estimates.

Rage wrote:

have been using Office successfully for the last two years

A little unclear - does that mean they have been using other Excel VBA modules? If yes, I would suggest getting a copy of one that works and look for differences. If they have been running Office, but not using VBA modules, you might try reinstalling office.

Is it possible they custom installed Office and left out the VBA support?

Your interpretation is correct - type it into any spread sheet and you get 9. Not a "proof", but at least a demonstration of common acceptance.

Thanks for the good suggestion - after I read it I tried both formats, but to no avail. Thanks again.

They haven't updated their software since the mid 90's and are upset I can't re-install Q&A without the original copies!

I have a client that was using Q&A until the old computer died yesterday. He has backups of the data base, but not the program itself and Symantec has not supported Q&A for a long time. Can anyone point me to a low cost (or free) conversion utility to read these files? Or a copy of Q&A that I can use long enough to convert them to fixed ascii? I did find Sesame, which seems to have taken over Q&A, but they want $350 for the program - which is a lot to pay for a few file conversions. I also found conversion services, but again a lot of money. Any help appreciated!