It's fine. The average boss works 312 times harder than their average employee, so it's all good.

It sure does bring back memories. I was on LambdaMOO for a while, also worked with Pavel Curtis much later at a different job. Did my years on MUCKs and MUSHes, too. It's amazing how much this stuff is both ancient history and recent history all at the same time.

Under a competent administration, it likely would not be a terrible idea. Under this administration, and under these circumstances, however, it's nothing more than a distraction.

Oh cool! Now we have two reports that draw opposite conclusions, so we can just pick whichever one we already agree with and ignore the other. Sweet!

I am an adherent of Emacs "org-mode" ( http://orgmode.org/ ) for note taking. I use it almost exclusively.

Org mode is insanely powerful, but like everything in emacs, it has a steep learning curve. Still, if you're taking a lot of notes, I fully recommend it.

I'm going to invoke Poe's Law on this reply because I can't possibly imagine anybody actually believing this. But, just in case you're serious (surely not)...

Yes, actually it is our responsibility to care for each other. We live in a society. I pay property taxes that go to my local schools, and even though I have no children I am glad (and proud) to do so, because other people's children go to those schools. Those other people positively impact my life by contributing to society. Those sick people, should they be given treatment and become well again, also positively impact my life by contributing to society.

You do not live in a bubble, man!

Man. Memories for sure. I got my start with Linux as a freshman in college in 1992. I happened to be living in the same dorm building as Matt Welsh, a major contributor to the early Linux documentation efforts. He hooked me up with a box of 3.5" floppies holding SLS Linux with the 0.98 kernel on it. Good times.

Well, for some value of "Good times" :) I think being extremely young and naive helped me keep up the energy to play around and be adventurous with Linux, as unstable and fluid as it was in those days. I probably would not have the patience anymore. I guess that's why I'm perfectly happy with Ubuntu now. Too many memories of recompiling the kernel to get the newest (and hopefully less buggy) ethernet or Tseng Labs ET4000 X11 drivers!

I have to agree with some of the other commenters -- it really is an excellent film. I think it's a testament to how engrossing it is that when I got to the infamous scene, I wasn't distracted or amused by its association with all of the YouTube clips I'd watched, because I was fully engaged with the film and the story by that point.

And yes, I would likely never have seen or even heard of this film without the YouTube parodies. They made at least one DVD sale right here.

Where the heck is the "-1: Pedantic" button when you need it?

Wonderful! You're in exactly the same situation I was in about two months ago, when a friend recommended that I pick up a Xilinx FPGA board.

I'm a programmer, I'd never done any kind of electronics before. I fooled around with the FPGA for a bit, but found the whole idea baffling. I'm used to procedural logic, asynchronous design, calling and returning from functions, but this FPGA beast was fully synchronous. All functions defined in my HDL were executing at the same time! How odd! Well, on second thought, of course it makes sense. HDLs are languages for defining circuits, not programming. That spark of realization drove me to go back to basics and try to understand exactly how to define a circuit using digital logic. It's been addictively fun. It sounds like that's sort of where you are now.

The most important thing to remember in all this is that all circuits are analog. It may say "digital", but that's just a convenient abstraction. Fully grok the fundamentals of analog circuits before you try to understand the digital.

For books, I have to second or third or fourth "The Art of Electronics". The other inexpensive but fun book I've used when learning was "Starting Electronics", by Keith Brindley. It's small, but an easy read, and leads you through a bunch of breadboard experiments.

Finally, experiment! Go nuts! Get a cabinet of basic parts and a breadboard. You don't even need a fancy regulated power supply, just grab a 9V battery, a 7805 voltage regulator and a couple of capacitors, shouldn't cost more than a dollar or two for parts and spares. Just start playing. If you burn out an LED or two, who cares, they're cheap! Grab a 555 timer, and some 4000 or 7400 series logic, TTL (the 74LS00 series) or CMOS (the 74HC00 series), and start playing. Learn how to interface TTL to CMOS, you can find that with a simple Google search. Hunt down your local surplus electronics shops, start stripping boards. It's all putty in your hands! I hope you have fun with it.