Best of luck, Jeff, and congratulation on the lady babies!

An interesting side effect of having lower levels of light is that the LEDs that indicate (e.g.) that the monitor is turned on become proportionally much brighter. The blue LED on the front of my monitor becomes a super-bright point light source, and I've had to cover it with a yellow stick note. Couple of other notes ... there might be a difference for those who wear glasses, which can enhance glare. (Especially if they're micro-scratched.) And per Craig's note, older eyes have their own set of issues. Anyone who has early-stage cataracts (i.e., if you're in your late 50s or beyond) will likewise experience various diffusion effects that make it harder to deal with high-contrast light sources -- which is one reason why night driving becomes so much harder. It's definitely worth experimenting with different levels of ambient light, different brightness levels on the monitor, etc.

>I lost hundreds of hours to Battlefield 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Forget the tech, I want to know how you find time to do games and still get so much done, dang.

I'm sorry, a scooter is not the vehicle for a mid-life crisis, whatever level of geekdom one aspires to. Mid-life crisis is about fast, reckless, unafforable vehicles that the purchaser mistakenly imagines will make him seem hip to younger women. IOW, a motorcycle. (I should know this, I've had several mid-life crises already.) Joe, Clifford re: the Segway. A brilliant observation that Raymond Chen blogged: "I used to own a Segway. I was floored by the engineering achievement of creating a device that combined the speed benefits of walking with the exercise benefits of driving, and for just the cost of a used Honda!" -- cited by Raymond Chen [http://bit.ly/iXwLqx]

>"$35 for a small book filled with lots of pictures and whitespace. Publishers really need to have a reality check about their pricing structure." This is an interesting attitude, namely that value of a book is measured by how many words are in it.