I used to work with a bunch of extremely lazy and generally bitter/gossipy women in a law office. As the only male, and their personalities being completely unpleasant, I didn't interact a whole lot and mostly just kept to myself.

I'm not sure a bikini bar is the right place to test out tipping theories. The whole dynamic there is completely different.

Did everyone miss the second half of the title here? If you want to be remembered.

Yeah... I'm not sure why being transparent about your desire to do better is a bad thing.

I guess it depends on what you'd define as "secure" but I have a hard time saying someone with a year's savings and "marketable skills, experience, an education, etc" is somehow not financially secure.

My 401(k) contribution is 12% pre-tax, and I personally save about another 10-15% (depending on the month/year) in a savings account. This is out of my total salary, not a percentage of my "disposable income."

If I'm somewhere I plan to be for a while, especially on a crowded night, I'll often drop $10 on the first drink tip. It's amazingly effective.

I've used Smugmug and Flickr as well, just didn't list them in the original post.

Try out Piwigo if you can. Gallery was finicky about its templates and upgrades, which was always a pain for me - I tended to not apply upgrades rather than dealing with how things broke when I did apply them.

Well, hey, you've got to make the choices that are right for you and if that eliminates pets and kids, so be it. You may want relax the pet thing since there are lots of breeds that are allergy-friendly, but that's kind of an aside.

As an amateur photographer, I've been dabbling with a number of different hosting options. Tried Picasa Web Albums, and Photobucket. I have a GoDaddy hosting account and tried a few of the pre-packaged galleries - Coppermine, Gallery3, & a Wordpress scheme. I tried a couple of the apps that will generate stand-alone…

I don't have all the answers but to address a couple things:

On a daily basis, one. I carry a smartphone. All other devices are only carried when circumstances dictate they're needed, not as a matter of course.

If you need a power tool to clean your shower, you're doing it wrong.

I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, there's just about nothing more maddening than getting your shiny new build all put together and humming, booting it for the first time, and finding out that your NIC isn't recognized, so you can't download functional drivers.

Wait, software tied to hardware (e.g. Soundblaster software) that isn't available on their website?

You basically cannot build a DIY laptop. There are too many proprietary components in order to fit it in a mobile chassis - virtually everything in a laptop is custom produced for that particular model of laptop, outside of the CPU/memory/hard drive (and on some laptops, those can be soldered into the board).

In RE: the drivers, the easiest thing to do is just download the latest drivers before you start building, such as on your old machine or work machine or whatever. Slap 'em on a USB drive, and you're ready to install right out of the gate. That prevents you from having to fiddle around in the middle of your build.

Photography is a good travel hobby if you've got any kind of artistic inclination. A camera is easily portable to take with you, it can combine some athletic activity such as hiking or just long walks. Many communities have local photography groups, either discoverable online or by looking up a local photo shop.

I always thought the LastPass UI was just terrible.