@silvanov: Your criminal record has way more to do with it than the economy. You can't really blame the economy for the fact that you just look bad to most employers.

@aprude: That's what I do, too. Once you get acquainted with a product's reality, it almost never seems quite as good.

As someone who cooks semi-regularly for a gluten-intolerant friend (because I'm a nice guy) and regularly cooks non-dairy (for kosher reasons), I can tell you that the part you left out was that gluten-free and dairy-free food tastes much inferior to their gluten and dairy alternatives. It's easy to lose weight when…

Totally agree. At this point, they need dual format players to become the new standard, since they didn't manage to kill BR-D outright. Once they've got those, they can use their slightly-less-onerous-DRM policies and cheaper manufacturing costs to obtain dominance. So, ironically, Tosh needs to put out a $200…

Doesn't Sony own a good bit of MGM? That's kind of a big deal - if they can get Sony on with this, they can get anyone. A few more studios, and then re-negotiating for "movies to own" functionality, and you'll be rocking digital distribution as the next-gen "format".

It's appropriate to tip when the person goes and above and beyond in their job, or in a formal-restaurant-type situation where there's a cultural norm to give a tip (at least in the USA). But I'm generally not going to give it to normal service providers who don't distinguish themselves.

I am honestly blown away that you guys chose Leopard as your most-improved OS, given the Vista-esque troubles that a lot of people are having with it.

@trstn: I would assume that it holds true world-wide. Maybe the serving portions are smaller, which would mitigate the problem a tiny bit, but you can't fry stuff and then still have it be healthy.

"For a little bit of prep work on a Sunday"

I'm not a super-serious bread baker, but I've experimented with my (cheap, non-spectacular) bread machine quite a bit. My favorite recipe so far is onion-soup bread. It's a quick one-hour recipe, and it tastes surprisingly good when it comes out. I guess that some people see bread as something you make sandwiches…

Near East rice/cous-cous and Morningstar Farms fake meat are great and easily microwaved. They're also reasonably cheap and plentiful, especially the Near East stuff.

I'm not a big generics fan. Maybe it's just me, but I always seem to find they do NOT taste as good as the regular stuff. I don't drink much soda anymore, but that's a definite place where generics fall short. Generic brand canned vegetables and cereals are almost never as good as the national brands.

I must admit that I'm a little skeptical that some of these people really bring all the pictured items with them - that must be like 30 pounds of gear some of them listed.