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Whenever someone gives me their 2 cents, I give them back change.

Echo what doc said. I have 3 cards: debit, shared card with my wife, and my "working" CC. 99.9% of the time, I use my working card. If it's something my wife normally takes care of, I use her card — which is her main card. I *only* ever use my debit card at ATMs, and only those that I've checked for card-skimmers or other sketchy signs. My wife and I pay off both our cards each month and when we travel, we let the company know. They have a good fraud detection unit — at an airport once, the clerk fat-fingered a $4.95 charge into $495. It never went through, however, because my company called me up as soon as they saw the charge. They called me because it was outside my normal pattern. When I was doing work in Taiwan, I'd sometimes get calls at 3AM because they saw my card used halfway around the world from my normal address. Also, if you're paying for stuff online, make sure the site is using SSL encryption, with a valid certificate, and has been verified by something like Verisign, etc.

Let the traumatizing begin...

Doesn't surprise me. Fast Ad Hoc queries are a holy grail in databases. If you're using a fast database backed application, guarantee that someone has optimized the hell out of the backend by intelligently arranging their data, optimizing query choke points, and making assumptions about the nature of their data and the needs of their users.

Sorry to hear you're leaving. You were fun to talk with (you know, when I talked ).

Biggest takeaway was the clarity of differences between Facebook, Google, Windows, and Apple strategies. Facebook — focused clearly on mining social data for directing ad revenue. Moving platform to mobile and possibly fragmenting the social plumbing into disparate apps. Windows — they're still a desktop company with a desktop mindset, trying to play in the cloud. Best thing going for them is legacy and XBox. Apple — iOS, best line of laptops. Google — They're focused on creating the infrastructure that plumbs the internet and enabling app developers to focus on business logic as opposed to infrastructure concerns.

Personally, I didn't like the experience. As an aside, I may or may not have talked to a google employee at Google I/O who said she didn't think Glass was useful or have much of a point.

xf: mizhi

Put a giant fence around that sh!thole and mount the guardtowers with the weapons facing IN.

Well... technically, all beers are full of chemicals. That said, bourbons are my thing these days. Recommend Angel's Envy and Bulleit Rye.

Sup Norman. Go apply. http://fearless-assa...ations-join-us/

So, as I said in game, my vote is with USMA. I think that either academy is a worthy pursuit, so it ultimately comes down to what kind of experience you want. From the USMA, you will get a commission. From the USMA, you will also get a security clearance (as all officers are required to have a SECRET clearance). This can help grease the skids for certain kinds of jobs in the civilian sector (should you ever leave the Army). I'm fairly sure that you don't get either a commission or clearance from the USMMA — I could be wrong on the clearance though. From the USMMA, you get certifications as a Deck hand or Engineer for powered ships. When you're an officer, at some point you will be leading Soldiers. Most likely you'll first be a Platoon Leader, then move into an XO position (or staff at a higher HQ), then Company Commander. For many — myself included — Company Command is THE place to be. It's the most rewarding job, you are responsible for so much that it can be overwhelming. It's tough, but even having been out for 1.5 years now, in the civilian world I still draw upon the lessons I learned while in command. Note: I did not go to the USMA. My commissioning source was through ROTC. I've known many USMA officers though, and most of them were excellent. I can't speak as much about the Merchant Marines, so if someone else can shed some light on that, chime in.

Welcome. Vyder doesn't shoot people. He slides the knife in, nice and slow.

Congrats dude. You need to get your tubes tied. Stat.

I'm always reading about 5-7 books at a time. My wife would say that my 3 vices are coffee, coffee, and books. In my life, I've gotten rid of about 10-20 books total. I don't know how many I have, but it takes a u-haul van packed to the roof to move it all. The rest are arranged on my bookshelves in the following categories: philosophy, religion, civil rights, science fiction, history, military history, geopolitics, linguistics, language learning (Chinese, German, Serbian, Arabic, Korean — I only really speak Chinese), fantasy, leadership, management, nutrition, fitness, web development, software engineering, project management, machine learning, mathematics, programming languages, systems architecture, computer architecture, and odds and ends. It's getting a bit easier to manage the influx with e-books, but I still like to buy hardcopies of the books I really enjoyed. I tend to mark them up with notes in the margins and I started keeping a notebook for some of the more intellectual and practical books. I am a huge freaking nerd. Currently reading: "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" by Bart D. Ehrman "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler (<--- It sounds silly, but one of the core lessons is that we read books differently depending on purpose. He talks about 4 levels of reading that people use to read a book.) "The Wolf in CIOs Clothing: A Machiavellian Strategy for Successful IT Leadership" by Tina Nunno "The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves" by Stephen Grosz "What Is Called Thinking?" by Martin Heidegger (<--- This one is kicking my ass. Only other book that's made my mind work so hard was "The Modularity of Mind" by Jerry A. Fodor) "The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization" by Peter M. Senge "Mastery" by Robert Greene "Machine Learning for Hackers" by Drew Conway and John Myles White Re-reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig Here are recent books (finished in the past couple of months) I would recommend: "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking" by Oliver Burkeman "Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought" by Jonathan Rauch "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi "You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself" by David McRaney "Taiwan: Nation-State or Province?" by John F Copper

It depends. SSL, the protocol, itself does not cost money. You can easily use your own server key and self-sign the certificate. All this really does is tell a browser is that "Yes, this website has verified that the certificate they presented has been signed by them and they are who they say they are." It's useful for testing and also if you don't have a need for verification by a trusted certificate root, such as Verisign. What costs money is the verification by a company, such as Verisign. The certificates you get can be signed by third party entities. Thus, your certificate can be signed by a company like Verisign saying that, "Yes, we verify that the certificate presented to this browser, with the signatures, is in fact a genuine certificate that we have signed." You can, in fact, have certificate chains. So if you have a certificate that has been signed by Verisign, but then you can use that certificate to sign other certificates. If a user indicates that they trust Verisign, the fact that your certificate (that was signed by Verisign) is used to sign another certificate establishes a chain. As to the performance issue. In years past, SSL was a pretty CPU intensive process. Most operators would only encrypt the parts that needed it. With hardware these days, it's not such a huge overhead. This is why Google or Facebook are fine with using SSL for their entire sites. In the past, they too didn't use SSL for everything.

Salsa. 10-12 Serrano chiles 4-6 Jalepeno peppers 4-6 Habenero peppers Cut the stems off, roast over a fire. In the mean time, blister the skins off of 8-10 tomatillos, 3-4 tomatoes. Lightly roast onions and garlic. Toss the tomatillos, tomatoes, onions, and garlic in a blender with some cilantro. Blend until chunky. Take the peppers off the fire when lightly charred. Toss in blender. Blend. It sounds like it would be exceedingly hot, but it actually goes down with a sweetish, lemony taste. The heat doesn't come until later.

I take it black... like my men. (Great movie) Seriously though. Depends on my mood. I start the morning with a basic brew of Folgers run through a French Press. Splash some whole milk or creamer in it. Mid morning, I'll have an Americano with a splash of milk Afternoon pickup is usually 12 ounces of Keurig style coffee. A 4 ounce preparation followed by an 8 ounce preparation. Before you say it. Yes, this is a lot of caffeine. On the other hand, it's not the highest rate of consumption I've ever been at. When I was deployed, I once calculated about how much caffeine I was taking in a day and it came to between 2500 and 3000 mg/day. For comparison, a 6 ounce cup of coffee (drip brewed) is about 150-200.

Yeah, but it had piss poor reception and shitty battery life... My very first phone was a clamshell Motorola. Used to keep it in my back pocket. Guess who fell on his ass ice skating?

"The most wondrous thing in the world is that although, every day, innumerable creatures go to the abode of Death, still man thinks that he is immortal."

Oh, I'm sure there are at least a few gay dudes here, no need to act juvenile about it. Just try not to think of hot man-on-man action while steadying your aim. In any case: Get married Have kids Own a house Serve in the military Command soldiers Jump out of a plane Launch software products Earn a PhD Publish research Write a book or two Become VP of Engineering or CTO Start a company Travel to Mexico, Canada, China, Russia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, England, Czech Republic, Alaska, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and Finland. Watch my girls grow up and become adults. Read a Chinese newspaper without reaching for my dictionary. Bench 315+lbs (max is 290 so far), deadlift 405+ (max is 395), squat 315+ (max is 285). Run a marathon. Still recovering from surgery, so hope I can pull this off in the next few years. Learn home distillation.

As a frequent traveler to Taiwan, I can confirm that Stinky Tofu (臭豆è…) does, indeed, deserve the title. A bus stop I frequently used was next to a place that sold stinky tofu, and it, quite literally, smelled like the most vile excrement you could imagine. That said, if you can get over the smell, it's actually quite tasty.

Yes, but the Fins were f***ing badass against the Russians in WWII.

Superhero: Hulk or Colossus Villain: Ra's al Ghul