Llwellyn

Breaking a long vow of silence (well, just a long absence) to say congratulations and that Gabby, you and all of her other support freakin' rock! I'm always happy to hear about success stories! Good luck with the half in May, too! That's 10 more miles than I've ever gone at once, and I haven't even run 'em yet (done 2 walking 5Ks)!

Yes, there is a huge shortage right now. Something like 4 out of the 5 main manufacturing plants are in areas of Thailand that are suffering from massive flooding right now. They expect to be offline for months due to evacuations and the resulting cleanup that will have to be done. There won't be much, if any, new hard drive stock hitting the market for the time being, so existing prices are going through the roof minute by minute. I was trying to decide on a new external drive for backup, and now I'm just going to wait until after Christmas to do it. I'm planning on getting CrashPlan anyway, I'll just rely on the online portion for now until I buy the new drive.

Wrapping up an information systems security AAS degree to bring my total to 4 (3 AAS, 1 BS). Current semester: Tactical Perimeter Defense and Windows Server 2008. Next semester: Hardening Infrastructures and a practicum in ethical hacking and defense.

And, for the record, I am none of those az-es.

92 in a 65 by Indiana State Police. I got the ticket for the whole bid, too, since he wasn't pleased in the least. I even pulled over before he even started his car and had it in gear... didn't earn any brownie points. I knew I was tagged. Cost about $125 total at the time. The same ticket now would be an automatic license suspension and almost $1000. I've only been pulled over for speeding two other times; once was right after I had my license. A cop pulled me over at 4:45 in a school zone where the school got out at 2:15 and said there were still "kids everywhere" so the zone was still in effect. Indiana law stated at the time it was only in effect during the posted times. He actually gave me a written warning and told me he was "letting me off easy". I got pulled over at night doing about 70 in a 55 on US421; one of the local cops loved to sit in the driveway to the county landfill and grab people as they slowed down for the 4-way stop at IN32. He gave me a verbal warning and was really just concerned with my safety due to the fact it was deer season. He stressed the point that at 70mph you're outdriving your headlights by a good number of feet, and that you'd have Bambi in your front seat before you saw it coming at that speed. I've only been pulled over once since I've been in MD (12 years) at all, and that was for a burnt out license plate light. That one cost me almost as much as a speeding ticket, because the fix-it ticket requires a state certified shop to verify it's working again. Because of the timing, I had to let them do the replacement too, so it cost me an hour of shop labor to change a light bulb. You can certify the repairs are done at certain police stations too, but you only get 7 days and they are only open during certain times, so I had to let the shop do it since I was working 12-hour shifts the whole week. I've since seriously chilled my driving to the point where I only do 5 - 10 over tops, and I'm usually doing exactly the limit these days. It saves gas, and it's actually less stressful.

Sorry... after that, I got nothin'. Couldn't get it out of my head after I read the thread title, though, so you all get to suffer!

CLEP tests are great and they do save time and money. Just ensure that if you are planning to transfer out of your institution to finish a degree that the receiving college accepts the CLEP credit the same way yours does. In some cases, like for the English CLEP, they are not accepted or only accepted with the optional essay portions. Every individual school determines the equivalencies for the CLEP tests according to their own policies. This is the case in Maryland especially, where the two English tests without essay give you credit for ENG 111 and 112 at the community college level, but the universities will not accept it even with the essay portion. It transfers as a low-level English elective, and you still have to take freshman English at the university.

Hell yes, if you can afford it, go for it! I had to pass up a local groupon for 2 hours of skeet shooting and a top shelf Scotch tasting last month, and I'm still kicking myself for not being able to spare the money. It was half price, so about $79 for four awesome Scotches at one of the nicest DC clubs and ammo and everything included at the country club. Way above my usual social affinity as well, but I don't care what anyone else thinks, so it's all good.

A good bit of the functionality in the iOS releases after 3.x don't apply to an iPhone 3G. Some of the new functionality is available on the 3GS, and all of it is available on iPads and iPhone 4s. Things like multitasking are not available on the 3G. Here is a chart for the 4.0 release, and assume that anything newer than 4.0 is for the 3GS and 4 only. http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-20008524-233.html There were no folders enabled by default on upgrade, you'll have to try dragging and creating them yourself. That's the first main thing that is available in 4.0+ that wasn't there before on any model and the easiest to test. If you are really updated to the latest version, and you can't do some of the things in the chart that you should be able to, then you possibly do have an issue and I'd check the Apple forums for possible solutions.

This used to happen to me all the time, at least once a month. It hasn't happened in a long time, or at least I haven't recognized any place new in a long time. The funny thing with me is it was always places, and not people. I'd dream of a place, and it was usually devoid of people or had something really weird going on that distracted me from who was there, but then I'd get to the place in real life and unmistakably recognize it despite having never been there. I dreamed of the place I met my childhood best friend (it was happening that early on and I remember being able to recognize it, and how weird it felt) and the place where I've now worked for 11 years. Most of the places were random though, places I've run into while out driving for fun or found while exploring parks and stuff. It's an uncanny feeling for sure.

I want to extend a huge thanks to CB as whole for reading the thread and taking this into consideration, and a huge thanks to Pam for allowing me to post about this here. For those of you that donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You will be receiving a personal message from me as well in the next few days. We set an event record for the amount collected at just over $262,600! It was an amazing evening and I can't wait to try even harder next year!

I've just started going to a local gym. Planet Fitness just started moving into this area, and I know a few people who were going to check them out. A couple of friends use a place called 24-Hour Fitness too; not sure if it's a chain or not. This place is a bit on the expensive side compared to the chain, but it's worth it for the convenience factor, and the equipment is great and the staff are quite friendly and helpful. I also have access to about 75 classes weekly, all for free if I wanted to take advantage of them. I stop by after work, and when my classes start for summer and fall, they are Monday and Wednesday 6-10, so I'll be going after class. The gym is open from 5AM until 11PM Monday - Friday and like 7AM - 6PM on the weekends. I try to do about 3 miles walking on the treadmill, and then I do their "express fitness circuit" before I leave at least twice a week. I'm slowing working into trying other machines, but I tried to do a recumbent bike last night and only made it 5 minutes before I cramped up so bad I couldn't pedal anymore. I'm going to have to ease into that for sure. I've got a lot of weight to lose before I can run safely, but there's still plenty else to do that helps. I'm down almost 40 pounds since December and 15 pounds since February. Plus, working out just feels darn good! It helps get rid of stress too.

I'm 31, and I'd still go by "their roof, their rules".

I'm going to bump this a single time (hope I don't get in trouble). I'm 24 hours out from the event now, and I sincerely appreciate everyone who is taking a look. It's looking to be a fantastic Relay this time around, and we're hoping to break all of our historical records! We have 1277 people on 138 teams signed up, and we've collected over $216,500 so far! That's 20+ more teams and over 100 people more than last year's event at this time, so I'm definitely keeping my hopes up.