Working in a place where people are probably closer to normal computer users, they mostly have no idea what Windows is. They have no idea what an operating system is. They may know that a Mac is different from a PC, but that's about it.

Seeing as white SF has been getting their black and brown people out for decades, I doubt this will help them.

Was a lifelong SW fan. Saw the trailer for TFA and... I just didn't care. That was odd as I had continued to watch (and sometimes be frustrated with) the prequels and the Clone Wars series. TFA *looked* like Star Wars, but I just didn't care, so I never watched it.

A friend highly recommended Rogue One, which I thought initially starred the girl from TFA since they look alike at a very casual glance. It seemed like mediocre generic scifi until about 2/3 through. Neither of the two primary characters seemed to have any personality; the only ones I thought were memorable were the blind guy and his warrior buddy. Those two were fun.

The only distinct impression made by it was when the scrawny, powerless main character (I don't remember her name), bare fist punched out an armored Storm Trooper. That had me doubled over with laughter at how bad it was.

This is the movie that's supposed to be the best of the new SW. So, no thank you.

Having just bought some things, I'm concerned, of course. Not to mention, newegg isn't remotely as good as they once were. Hell, I bought something on eBay and he shipped it two days faster and will get to me a week earlier than a similar order from newegg.

What are some good alternatives, outside of eBay and Amazon?

I can also think of a legitimate use: if you have a selection of ads for the job in question that are tailored to appeal to typical potential employees in those age groups. To stereotype (since, necessarily, this would), maybe your young ad emphasizes the cool work environment with bean bag chairs (ha), while an ad for older workers emphasizes a strong benefit or relocation package. If they _legitimately_ want to diversify their workforce with people of different age groups, and have pretty good proof that they don't deserve to be sued, I think that's a good strategy. Or design ads that appeal to all of them equally and stop it.

Or you end up with a situation like this: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

For those who don't want to click through, they opened a school for deaf children in Nicaragua in the early 80s and the children attending invented their own sign language, since there wasn't a national one yet.

I can totally buy this, 100%. I was in the first class at my college required to buy laptops, in 1995. I can definitely say that even before Youtube or facebook, we were frequently websurfing or chatting with each other or playing little games during class. I think it was a good thing for us academically as we progressed that we reached classes that had not yet really attempted to integrate them into the curriculum and most of us stopped bothering to tote them around. (Well, and technology was progressing at a fast enough pace at that point that they were really hunks of junk by the time we graduated. Woo, 486! Woo, 540 meg harddrive!)

I have a 2.5 year old daughter and a four month old son, and I'm doing my best to play with them; I do most of my "gaming" (quotes because I don't consider most smartphone stuff really gaming) on breaks at work or while sitting with my arm around my daughter trying to get her to stay still long enough to sleep or when up in the middle of the night nursing my son. (Yes, go ahead and make jokes about no women on slashdot.) My husband and I had been still getting in some table top gaming with friends after our daughter was asleep, but it's kind of gone down the tubes at the moment. Someday I hope to even make it to Origins and/or GenCon again, but it's not going to be soon. I can't wait for them to be old enough to play that kind of game, too; somewhere I have a copy of Fairy Tale, an RPG for ages 3 and up, essentially Pretend with some light rules.

I was on a proton pump inhibitor for some time, and it helped amazingly. And then in came out that they are linked to greater rates of osteoporosis, already much more likely in women. So instead I ended up with taking a Zantac 300 (twice the highest OTC, I believe, at least at the time) every night before bed, before I finally found a permanent solution. I got a divorce, and suddenly my stomach acid problems went away... Oh, and even with mainly taking OTC short term acid medications (read: eating Tums like candy), my father ended up with some vitamin K issues, I think it was? He ended up with shots to bring things up to normal. I think it was Vitamin K, but whichever vitamin, it was one that is mainly gained in humans from eating meat, and he apparently had brought his acid so low that he wasn't breaking down meat enough to have adequate levels. (Note: this information is obviously second hand, so there might be some Telephone effects.)

... a C-section. I'm eight months pregnant, so this is kind of upwards in my mind (because, well, it scares me as a possibility and my baby is measuring big, so it IS a possibility), but even without VR, women make it through having a c-section all the time, with a spinal block in place to numb the whole area. Heck, women who are much braver than I am actually watch the whole thing in a mirror. (That one still just leaves me aghast that someone can pull that off.) Admittedly, they have a big goal in doing so - being able to interact with their baby as soon as possible, rather than having to come out of a general anesthetic, in addition to the risks of a general that are noted here.

A lot of what I had done for years (I moved to a new project last year) had to do with database queries and the next layer or two sitting on top of them. Periodically, it was my job to look at what queries were taking too long. While much of the time that involved in database optimization like adding indices, etc, sometimes there was truly horrible code sitting on top of the database. One of my favorites involved a list coming in, and the code created the first item on the list. Then it deleted everything associated with that list and created the first two items, etc, etc. Yuck.

I know there are studies on the changes in the brains of people doing third shift work, who I imagine don't sleep nearly as well as people who get to sleep during the night, since no matter what there are noises. But yes, I began to feel much more like my old self once my daughter was down to waking just once during the night; unfortunately, that was at about a year in, and she only started sleeping through the night more than half the time at at least 18 months. I remember how I freaked out one morning: I had finally gotten enough sleep in one go that I had a dream again, for the first time in months. (Since, after all, in late pregnancy I was waking up 2-3 times a night for the bathroom.)

My husband recently suggested I start making a list of computer games that look like they would be fun so I can play them in 10-15 years... ;) (I have a two year old with a new baby coming in February.) We're going to try to see our second movie at the theater since she was born on this coming Thursday; both Stars Wars movies, which seem like the kind that you just have to see on the big screen.

Rather than make a new comment elsewhere, particularly with all of the vitriol being spewed on this thread, I'll also add that pregnancy hormones really, really suck as someone with an engineer's brain. Imagine that you suddenly burst into tears for relatively minor things being wrong, or occasionally for NO REAL REASON. It's horrible.

Perhaps one of the issues now is that very nearly all depression seems to be treated as something that anti-depressants can take care of. I'm not sure what the ratio of people with "I have a chemical imbalance" depression is versus "my life sucks because, say, I lost my job or my spouse" depression, but talk therapy sounds like it's become a rare, rare creature.

Unfortunately, you also get regular doctors prescribing those anti-depressants, rather than mental health experts. Shortly before my divorce, I was definitely depressed, and my GP prescribed anti-depressants... which became completely unnecessary once he was out of my life. I mean, yes, I had moments of sadness, but with discussion with friends I pulled out of it.

Note: that is not a commentary that all depression just needs talking or sunshine and fresh air and that kind of thing. I fully believe some people have issues that are not due to their situation but to their brain chemistry. I just think we have become very bad at telling which is which. I would think supplementing the use of anti-depressants with talk therapy would be another good way to go, but we don't seem to be mainly doing this.