When I was a kid, I had a book on the early development and missions of the shuttle. I remember clearly seeing a device pictured and explained, which was designed to patch over missing tiles. It spread some kind of brownish goop which was intended to take the place of missing tiles, even the black ones in the hot…

I remember when a 30-minute audio cassette could hold a word-processing program.

For my Hackintosh and HackBook, I use Time Machine to my Linux server over Samba (took a bit of hacking to automate, but seems to work pretty well for now). For my wife's and daughter's Win7 laptops, Windows Backup to the same Linux server. Win7Ultimate can backup directly to the network, but 7 Home Premium needs a…

No printer at all, if I can help it.

If your car has side airbags, most seat covers will be dangerous. It will cover the area of the seat fabric which is designed to fail when the airbag deploys, and possibly cause the force of the small explosion to redirect itself in a less-than-safe manner.

Yeah, I've got some post-its on some of the gauges, but they cover some of the other gauges and idiot lights. Oh well, they're probably not important. Anyway, this is a safety feature. What could possibly go wrong?

I was using a few to run the control rods on my RBMK nuclear reactor. I was preparing to test a new set of them hooked up to the steam turbine valves and diesel generators, as part of a new safety mechanism I'm developing. Earlier tests have failed, but I'm sure I've worked out all the kinks this time.

It has, sure, but I'm unwilling to repeat the experience, even given reports that they've gotten better.

That'll just wear out your right arm and make you go blind. If it isn't so cold for shrinkage to apply.

That's likely to get you a free stay at the local hotel with bars for doors and fashionable orange pajamas^H^H^Hjumpsuits.

Yeah, I've had experience with this too. It's not the "cheap gas", it's the ethanol in the gas that kills small engines. In particular, it's newer small engines. Not only does the ethanol attract water into the fuel, but it also slowly eats away at the synthetic fuel lines normally used in engines newer than maybe…

The Clarksonian approach, natch.

Put the eggs into the pot and fill with enough cold water to cover them plus maybe a half-inch. Turn the burner to high and heat to a boil. Once there, turn off the burner, start a 15-minute timer, and just walk away. The eggs are perfect when the timer sounds, no ice or cold-water soak needed.

IE and Winamp on OSX? Get real.

I buy Seagate exclusively. I have approx. 13TB across half a dozen drives, a couple of them more than 2 years old, have never had any problems with them (other than the odd firmware glitch in external drives which disappeared when I made them internal, or the one time I dropped something on one of my externals and…

I had the same sort of thing with a couple of 1.5TB Seagates, under Linux. I had to fiddle with hdparm to toggle the right firmware bits to keep it on. Later, I just made them internal, and haven't had a problem since.

Attention Valve: Please license Thorskan and bring us Half-Life 3.

That doesn't work if you're trying to buy groceries, fill your gas tank, or pay your power bill. But it's not a bad suggestion outside of urgent needs.

Most supermarket dairy sections have at least a couple of varieties of lactose-free milk. Also, from what I understand, any aged cheese has most if not all of its lactose processed by the bacteria in the cheese. If you're eating American "cheese", it's not aged and some varieties claim to put a lot of milk into each…

As well as support for VeriSign VIP Access apps on Android/iOS. PayPal supports multiple tokens or apps registered, and allows you to select the one you have on-hand at login. eBay only supports a single token/app, so choose wisely.