I love this. A great fable, well told, with the added benefit of being true.

Fascinating. This is *got* to have some connection with the ball room dances that evolved from much older forms - waltz for example - where there is an emphasis on leading with the ball of the foot instead of the heel.

I have no idea how much they put in my kids-size blizzard (the smallest one). They use a malt dispenser gizmo mounted on the blizzard mixer. The next time I try this, I’ll have to pay attention.

BTW, I’m with you on the quality thing. Favorite brands: Burberry, Barbour, Filson, Schott NYC, old school stuff. A little on the pricey side, but their stuff lasts forever and never goes out of style.

What changed my life - clothing wise anyway - was when Mrs. Overclock and her sister introduced me to four season color analysis - the idea that your hair color and skin tone fit into four broad categories of color palletes labelled winter, spring, summer, and fall. Once I realized I was a winter pallete - black, true…

I’m going to pass along a tip THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Go to Dairy Queen. No, really. Order a Butterfinger Blizzard of the appropriate size WITH MALT POWDER. Stand by to be AMAZED.

Thanks! Somehow my searches on Amazon never turned these up.

I own a couple of laptops - a MacBook Pro and a Lenovo - that I use almost every day, as well as an iPad and an Android tablet, and (somewhere around here) a Chrome Book. But a good spiral-bound notebook (I like Red n’ Black) and a decent ball point pen (Fisher Space Pen) still work better for me professionally than…

For years I used gel pens because (I’m told anyway) the gel ink is more difficult to “wash” off checks and other documents. The downside to gel pens is the ink evaporates. That’s why they come with little plastic blobs on their nibs that you have to pick off when you start to use a new one. Then, weeks later, the ink…

The last high-technology professional conference I considered going to - and decided *not* to in part because of the price - was US$7K for four days. As others have said, this one doesn’t sound unreasonable.

Same here in Colorado, just today.

Great information. I just froze all three. Cost to me here in Colorado: $0. Took about four tries to get Experian to work (“Cannot complete your request at this time” or some such). The other two each worked the first time. I was suitably paranoid about recording the PINs. Thanks!

You gotta wonder how many times on the Enterprise someone sat down on a couch and accidentally disintegrated someone because a phaser had slipped between the cushions.

This is a funny thing to notice, maybe. But in that lead image they’re exhibiting unusually good trigger discipline, which would be completely appropriate on handguns that have no trigger guards (which always struck me as a really poor and unrealistic design by the prop people, going all the way back to ST:TOS).

Yep, riding without a helmet feels good. No question. But I’ve had some get-offs - including one that totaled my beloved Honda CBR1000F, left my head banging on the curb of the median at speed, and resulted in titanium holding parts of me together - that I doubt I would have survived had I not had a helmet on. So…

There are some people who would be surprised to hear that. :-)

The first decade or so of my career was spent working at a university as a staff member and faculty member. The next decade or so was spent working in Big Science. It wasn’t until I started working in commercial R&D that I realized organizations *need* to have a dress code. While I would like to believe we’re all…

Maybe twenty years ago I was a section head at a prestigeous national lab with maybe fifteen or twenty people reporting to group heads - really technical leads, not managers - who in turn reported to me. A young woman in one of those groups wore a jumpsuit that would have been totally okay had you not been able to see…

Me too. The exhaust actually works for me.

That was basically exactly what happened. :-)