AdamSmith

Could not agree more. I likewise, three years ago -- after wrestling mightily with a hateful MS Vista system -- went to MacBook Pro. Have not had one single solitary problem with malware incursions, system or application software upgrades (just asks "Do you want to?", then if you say yes, it happens -- no mystifying 20-questions folderol), or anything else. As some journalist recently said, Jobs and his crew took the infuriating and made it routine. Or, as another commentator quipped, how many consumers buy a washing machine, wanting the option to upgrade to a more powerful motor?

Agree with all the peacekeeping sentiments expressed above. Why poison the air in one's own home. (Or, M. Python to BBB's remark: "What a giveaway!" )

Well, dunno, but I do at least have a modest - though expanding - pot belly. Hmmm...

Seconding RA1's advice, some three years ago I had an HP laptop suffer a physical disk crash. Not caused by malware, so who knows if this is applicable. But my point is to report the GeekSquad at the local Best Buy did a great job of recovering all the data onto 5 CDs for something like $79, or maybe a little more. A real bargain, for my money. And within 24 hours, if memory serves. Just one of many reasons Best Buy thrived as Circuit City died. (Needless dig at a chain I really couldn't stand.)

Absolutely. A closer look at no. 8 would also be enjoyable.

Couple more free associations (as 'twere)... ...one, remember also the nice tabloid pic of Wills caught taking a whizz off by the edge of I think a polo field, the royal member in no wise concealed by the narrow fence post he was not very carefully hiding behind? ...two, whom do you think would be more fun in the hay, William or Harry? I'm not all that crazy for Harry's looks (although his recent top-gun photos in front of his Apache helicopter are kind of hot, come to think). But I suspect he may be a wilder ride between the sheets than his bro. Wot say?

Agree essentially with everything here. (Easy position to defend, no? ) No, Barney didn't get everything right, as TY and KY note. But then we have hindsight, while he (as also Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke) found themselves whirled in the blender and had to navigate as they could in the moment. As one NPR commentator said during the meltdown, Paulson regardless of his or Bush's philosophy had to join the "church of what works now." Anyway, yes, my couple of random, brief, encounters showed Frank to be same man in person as on the public stage. Refreshing. And that he was both scary-smart (Paulson's words for him, in fact -- Paulson's high regard for BF in HP's memoir was striking) and, I think, always honest, puts him among only a dozen or two Congressmen today. P.S. If you haven't seen it, Google up his interview with O'Reilly a couple of years ago. Hilarious, and deliciously/appropriately insulting, in giving as befits how he got.

Talk about a manufactured need. OTOH, wish I had thought of it!

LOL. You remind me of a similar category: 1. Venomous serpents. 2. Nonvenomous serpents. 3. Serpents in general. (Trouser snakes excepted!)

Absolutely to be avoided! When I visit the old homeplace these days, the maternal unit has gotten into the habit of cooking sweet-and-sour chicken using a bottled sauce that is 85% corn syrup. Urgh. Also agree that Jehovah's Witnesses et al. are right up there with spiders.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Another nice site for photos of Asian guys... http://asiancock.tumblr.com/archive

There is also the delightful British sign-off "toodle pip." http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/toodle_pip

Actually they taste OK, as long as you don't look at them! Yes! I hate being made into a graven image. (Must be something from my childhood religious upbringing. Or at least mama's attempt thereat.)

Perfect! I think I can finish this one for you... 2. "No kissing." 3. "Versatile top." Yeah, right!

All together now: Craigslist = Flakes. Old topic, I know. But every time I've pursued somebody on CL, either they don't answer, or they answer, then flake out some other way. Like not showing up, or not answering when I get to their place, or turning out to be a weirdo in person. Of course I understand the M4RN/Rentboy/etc. pickin's where you are may be slim. And nothing ventured... One thing I find is that if there's a phone number, that always seems to work better than email. Especially with the non-pro-types likely to use CL.

1. Hotel food. 2. Unintended acceleration. 3. Anything with Ben Affleck in it. Next? (...with props of course to Lurker's vastly successful long-running thread Over There!)

Interesting note just posted by Andre that he's back working, on a European tour. First stop, Paris... http://www.message-forum.net/showthread.php?80963-Andre-touring-Europe-summer-of-2011&p=721500&mode=linear#post721500

Adding my best wishes to mend fast. Lying around in one's sickbed is such a waste of libido!

The rumors of my demise... So sorry to have gone AWOL. And grateful for Lucky's poke here. So to speak. RA1 has it right. The city indeed offers too many distractions. Four nights out of the last seven (if memory obtains!) found someone or other under my roof besides me. All right, under my covers. Grateful too for marcanthony's existence proof! I neglected to say how much I enjoyed finally meeting you, marc. So many thanks to Cooper for the introduction. I promise not to be such a stranger here.

Not to deny Barack his substantive achievements, many of them against grim odds, thus far in his term. But I am with Lucky in that this case seems one more instance of Change turning out to be More of the Same. Tangentially, odd how little remarked it is that Obama has radically stepped up airborne-drone assassinations of suspected terror leaders way beyond what Bush authorized. Whether we like the end result or no, the issues of process, national culpability, founding ideals, etc. remain. Not to mention how often there seems to be collateral damage, the euphemism for civilian bystander deaths.

One must now suppress three or four remarks.

I thought we had finally gotten the ergot out of the bread supply. Oh, well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot

Puts me in mind of one of my favorite SF pieces -- Stanislaw Lem's novella "Golem XIV". About a supercomputer constructed in the mid-21st century, intended to be a military strategist but which achieves consciousness, then reconstructs itself to become vastly more capable and independent than its builders intended. It then gives an amazing series of lectures that upend mankind's conception of the nature (and "purpose") of evolution; of the "use" of intelligence from evolution's perspective ("the meaning of the transmitter is the transmission", not the other way around); of the coming necessity for mankind to choose between remaining an emotive species and dead-ending there, or forsaking emotion for intellect in order to continue evolving; and finally expounding on its own coming self-evolution to higher zones of intellect, which will require ever higher levels of energy to power its thinking, likely its move from the quantum/luminal structure built by its designers, into first a brown dwarf star (thinking by means of controlled refracting of light and heat there), then ultimately into a black hole, to "think with all the power available in the Universe" and, possibly, to discover what lies beyond the singularity. Mind-bending. http://www.lem.pl/english/works/novels/golem-xiv http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV

All good points above. One observation about an additional tactic (not based on scientific survey, just 30 years' personal experience): Massachusetts patrols tend to be fairly liberal about speeders, except for a number of well known speed traps. But Connecticut takes advantage of this, in being much more strict in the first place, then in the second place putting patrolmen with radar guns at just about every significant road crossing between the two states. You really have to remember to slam the brakes as you approach the border when traveling southbound.