Not surprisingly, I believe this is a common issue with companies whose HR departments are overloaded with applicants. I had a similar HR experience when applying to Riot Games. I'd passed the initial online assessment they use to presumably establish you are minimally educated, then received an email from the recruiter with a potential phone screen date. I promptly replied back, but didn't receive any confirmation until a couple days later, but only after I sent a follow up email. Also unusual were the times she was sending me emails - anywhere between 8pm to midnight.

The phone screen was equally unusual. She called me several minutes late, then gave forewarning that she would likely have to cut the phone screen short and complete the remainder at a later time because she needed to deal with another candidate who got lost coming into the office. Sure enough, she discontinued after about 10 minutes, and called back about 20 minutes later to finish the phone screen.

After the phone screen, she estimated that I would likely hear back from them by next week whether I would move to the next phone screen. I waited until the end week and sent a follow up email, and when she finally emailed me back, it had sounded like she completely forgot to pass my resume along altogether! She apologized for the delay and assured me she would get back to me soon after personally following up with the relevant hiring managers. Not surprisingly, I didn't hear back from her, so I waited a few more days and then gave her a call. I was as cordial and polite as could possibly be, but she didn't sound very happy to hear from me and promised she'd contact me soon, which never happened.

Needless to say, this was the most unusual hiring experience I've ever been through, and my initial enthusiasm has dampened significantly. I honestly would have preferred if the process ran smoothly and I was fairly certain I didn't get the job, but it has been confusing and frustrating at every step in the process.

I used to think so as well, however:

1) The vast majority of titles today are developed for consoles that are 5-6 years old. Today's gaming laptops will be able to handle these games equally or better than their console brethren for a long time, and the upgrade cycle is much longer than it used to be.

2) When the time comes when you need to genuinely upgrade your graphics card, it's probably a good time to upgrade everything else in your system as well. Getting a new system upgrades everything all at once.

3) Some laptops (Sager) are actually built to be user-upgradeable.

4) Laptops offer obvious portability advantages, even if it weighs a ton. I can't even count the number of times I've moved my laptop from my main gaming desk/monitor setup to my living room and hooked it up to my home theater system to play console-style on my plasma. Having a blu-ray drive is icing on the cake.

5) Having a battery plugged in has saved me from power outages on a few occasions.

Seeing that it can help you find out how you've sinned, I'd like to see a penance calculator in the next version. For example: you could enter that you watched a naughty movie, and it would respond with 10 Hail Mary's per girl with a 5x multiplier per cup.

...by avoiding non-porn sites altogether!

Also related, the only thing keeping me from switching to Chrome is the inability for plugins to arrange tree-style tabs in a vertical manner. I can't go back to browsing with top-horizontal tabs, even on a non-widescreen monitor.

this is /. we need a device that would increase our chances of sex in private places.

Actually, that's being called into question now. Toyota owners with "fixed" pedals are starting to report that the problem still persists. Failure analysis experts are starting to support the notion that electronics are at the root of the problem

There couldn't be any more relevant if Earth someday no longer becomes viable, which isn't an unreasonable scenario.

I'm jealous that you were even able to tilt the camera. I unfortunately decided to play the console version which had 1 horrible over the shoulder camera angle. Needless to say, it wasn't remotely the same game and I sent it back pretty quickly.

I too work in a similar environment where the programmers are next to non-technical people, and in my experience background chatter is much, much more distracting than your favorite music playing on your headphones. I'm the type of person that needs absolute silence to work, so naturally I've tried every possible way to drown out people's voices, including playing music. Having music playing was not the ideal situation for myself, but it was certainly less distracting than the constant conversation mixed in with obnoxious laughter. I ended up buying a pair of gun range earmuffs and now wear them regularly in the office.

As a current Notes user, now I know who to blame =)

Agreed. It's important to remember that Google is still a fairly young company, about 11 years old. As time goes on and the company expands, it will continue to look and act more and more like the more traditional, established large corporations out there. The attitude of idealism and experimentation will increasingly have to compete with the concrete necessity of keeping stock holders happy and dealing with the growing number of legal issues that naturally come with expansion.

Working out is indeed extremely important, but what a lot of people don't realize is that your weight is determined by 75% diet and 25% exercise. 8 years ago i was 5'9" and was extremely skinny at 125lbs. I've maintained a weight at around 170-175 for the last several years mostly due to changes in my eating habits. As a fulltime software engineer who only works out 2x a week now, I maintain my weight mostly through several key points that other people may have already mentioned: 1. Cut out all refined carbs/sugars. Stick to whole wheat grains and brown rice. 2. Minimize, but don't eliminate, fat intake. Obviously this means staying away from fried foods, but you can get healthy fats from sources like fish, nuts, olive oil, and vinaigrette salad dressing. 3. Make sure you eat a good amount of protein (the exact amount will differ according to how much activity you can actually do), but protein builds muscle and will help you to feel full longer. 4. Don't let more than 3 hours pass without eating something. This usually means you'll eat 5-6 meals in a day. 5. ALWAYS have a substantial breakfast. This will jump start your metabolism for the day and actually reduce the likelihood you'll overeat later in the day. Of course, if you can find time to exercise when you can, you'll have the best results. Otherwise, following these guidelines should make a pretty big impact by itself.

Sounds good until the pirates start showing up with even bigger weapons. Remember that they aren't an underfunded bunch and escalation will happen fairly quickly.

"Go to College" is a legitimate answer for anyone who wants to earn themselves a better life. Why would you hold yourself back from doing so just because someone has to do the menial job? Sure, somebody has to do it, but it doesn't have to be you.

The system will always be unfair in some areas, so why not spend the time to educate yourself on how to achieve a better life with the system you've got?