Dave Garrett

The "apocalyptic Y2K pronouncements" were indicative of an abundance of caution, which is a good thing. If the shit had hit the fan and the worst-case scenarios had previously been downplayed, can you imagine the uproar that would've ensued? Anyone who's ever been involved with supporting mission-critical, high-availability systems (network, mail servers, financial systems, etc.) will tell you that no one ever says "hey, great job you're doing keeping [Critical System X] up and running", but if one of those systems hiccups or, God forbid, goes down, the backlash is swift and fierce. Communication and having properly set expectations are key when such events occur. There are very good reasons why support staff for such systems tend to prefer a conservative approach.

Yeah, I know it's "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes", but long after having first read about the well-known mondegreen of that line, I can't help but hearing "the girl with colitis goes by" now.

Most consumer-grade Windows laptops suck, with the exception of the high-end models. The business-class ones are in general much better built, and are free of crapware (although as was pointed out earlier in the thread, most decent-sized companies usually build a standardized custom software image so they have complete knowledge of and control over everything installed on a computer at initial deployment). If you want a good Dell laptop, best advice is to keep an eye out for off-lease business machines in the Latitude family that are refurbished and sold at a discount via their factory outlet: http://www.dell.com/us/dfb/p/latitude-laptops?~ck=anav

(h/t @SethMacFarlane)

My wife once was given a cruise by an employer. That was a once-in-a-life for both of us. About 15 years ago I won a cruise after the business card I dropped in a fishbowl at a restaurant wound up getting selected. I thought it was a joke at first when they called to inform me I'd won. My wife and I went on the cruise, and although I'm not sure we'll ever do it again, I'm glad we were able to have the experience once. Some folks really become enamoured of it, and it becomes a lifestyle to them.

I've worked with a lot of consultants on ERP systems (Oracle and SAP) in the past few years, and a significant percentage of them favored MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops, but they were all running Windows virtual machines within OS X using VMWare or similar tools. Of course, you still have to pay for a Windows license to do this, and I'm not sure how acceptable the performance would be with large SPSS data sets in such a scenario, but assuming those aren't insurmountable hurdles, you'd have all the advantages of a Mac while still being able to run most any Windows program without worrying about compatibility issues.

Yeah, this definitely sounds like a Windows and not a Chrome issue if it's happening across multiple browsers. Since Chrome's been unstable recently for you, a reset/reinstall wouldn't be a bad idea, but it's almost certainly not going to fix the font issue if the font issue's showing up in IE as well. Some additional details as to the malware that was removed might be helpful - if you didn't capture the info on the screen in IE that notified you about it, you may be able to run a report out of Norton directly and Google the malware specifics to see if anyone else has reported font problems in connection with it.

This is primarily about italics, but the entire thread is worth reading for other suggestions: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=408393 Since you mentioned that your computer "seemed to have restarted", do you by any chance have Windows updates set to automatically download and install? Wondering if this was triggered by a security update, as has been reported on occasion by other Chrome users.

I've had a similar problem in Chrome (display fonts all defaulted to italic), and Googling "chrome font problem" turns up many, many reports of people with similar issues. I tried all sorts of recommended fixes, and none of them worked, but the config change detailed in this brief YouTube video appears to have fixed the problem for me on the affected computer. May not fix your problem, but it's worth a try as it's a simple change. http://youtu.be/cHHBnHRcOjQ

Alive but in somewhat fragile health after a stroke in 2007. Her older sister Alice just died in November at the age of 103! http://www.vulture.com/2014/07/decline-of-harper-lee.html?Src=longreads

An interesting article about tipping from a couple of days ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/business/dollar3-tip-on-a-dollar4-cup-of-coffee-gratuities-grow-automatically.html I'm starting to see the iPad + Square reader-based POS terminals mentioned in this piece more frequently, in many cases at businesses where you might not automatically be inclined to tip (ice cream parlors, or restaurants where you order at the counter and the only "table service" is the cashier bringing your food out). One thing I've noticed is that many older people seem to hold firmly to the belief that a 15% tip at a restaurant is more than adequate for excellent service, as opposed to a minimum baseline. I usually tip 20%, or a bit more for outstanding service.

What the game-clinching INT looked like from multiple POVs: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/02/sports/football/wilson-saw-a-window-to-victory-but-butler-stole-the-show.html?smid=tw-nytimes

So those are not the original colors just cleaned up? They're actually altered? Not knowing the original, I have to say that I love these colors, but also getting the whole digital "tampering" thing, that's kind of a drag as well. The version of Star Trek you're watching on Netflix are the blu-ray special edition versions with the replaced special effects. They retain the original intent of the fx from the series, but they have all been redone using CGI. All the outer space and planet shots have been replaced, they also replaced some of the horribly bad matte paintings from the original series. This was mostly done because the nature of how these FX were done at the time would have made the scenes with effects look far worse than the scenes without when it comes to picture quality. Most people don't even realize it's CG because they kept the "late 60s cheesy look" so it would match. Probably worth mentioning that the physical blu-ray discs give you the choice of viewing the eps with the original SFX or the redone versions. Having read various analyses of the changes, I understand why they felt it was necessary to redo them, and the enhancements aren't as frequent or numerous as one might expect, but more often than not when I pull out the blu-rays I've wound up watching the original versions as those are the ones I grew up with.

RIP, Herr Froese. Listening to this now in remembrance:

Amazon has had the complete series bundle (all 18 boxes) on sale for just over $180 on at least two occasions before. It usually happens sometime between Black Friday and Christmas or shortly thereafter, so if you want to get them all at once at around $10 each, it might be worth keeping an eye out for price changes.

This has been circulating on Twitter, usually accompanied by the expressions of shock, horror, disbelief, outrage, etc., that one might expect. A bit of Googling reveals that this isn't a new development, and isn't limited to Arkansas:

I'm interested in this one as well. I'm both a Sinatra fan and a Dylan fan, but in my experience a lot of hardcore Sinatra fans seem to really dislike Dylan much more than Dylan fans seem to dislike Sinatra. I haven't been able to get motivated to check out the ongoing thread at the Hoffman forums yet, but there have already been negative comments about Dylan on the Sinatraphiles mailing list, solely in response to the album's announcement.

Gizmodo weighs in: http://gizmodo.com/dont-buy-what-neil-young-is-selling-1678446860

Interesting piece from the NYT earlier this week on why players that shine in college may not succeed in the pros: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/sports/ncaafootball/split-wide-from-nfl-the-college-game-is-no-minor-league-.html I think Jones would be better served by at least another year in college, but who could blame him for entering the draft after winning a national championship in his *fourth college start*. Absolutely unprecedented.

floccinaucinihilipilification http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/floccinaucinihilipilification

I've known Jews of a certain age who despised the show for depicting the Nazis as bumbling idiots and refused to watch it. The actors in the key German roles were all Jewish, and some of the actors were not only WWII vets but had been in concentration camps prior to the war themselves. From Wikipedia:

When I was much younger than I am now, that would have been a close approximation of my daily breakfast as well, frequently accompanied by pain au chocolat. Now it's usually a banana and a cup of Greek yogurt.