PhreePhly

Are you running Win7 64-bit? I believe the Acrobat 7 printer port driver has 16-bit components, and will therefore never run on Win7x64 except if using XP-mode (which is basically a virtual machine).

No, I don't NEED it, just irritated that I can't use what I already paid for, and it's an arm and a leg to upgrade it from Adobe. I'll go with the freeware. To be fair, Acrobat 7 was released Jan. 2005, well before the move to the x86-64 by Microsoft.

Acrobat 8 works just fine on Win 7-64bit, have used it for years. Even works on Windows 8. Someone up thread made a great point, however, and that is do you need Acrobat? There are a number of other PDF creation and printing options out there that are much cheaper. I use Acrobat only because it is standard at work, but there are much cheaper solutions out there that are just fine.

Really, I'm almost into my 4th year with the same battery? Do you get frequent power outages? Also, when it does go out, do you call Verizon or buy and replace yourself (as I said, I haven't had to, yet.)

Yea, I have the 75/35 plan along with the TV. Absolutely love it. My actual download speed is closer to 84 Mbps and the upload sticks to the 35 Mbps.

Bill, I was thinking the same thing when I read that. Having spent time with some of those financial chicks, many of them were extremely shallow and focused on one thing...money. Granted, that is not all of them, generalizing is bad, but if Shah is claiming there aren't any hot engineering chicks, he must not get invited to the good parties.

Well, you don't know me, so you certainly won't hurt my feelings. I would really appreciate you defining the "physical and psychological pressure" I was put under. What sales pitch do you have in mind? What kind of sales pitch is going to magically make young students in jr. high and high school suddenly think that differential equations, statics, structures, thermodynamics, fluids, heat transfer, etc. are really cool, fun and easy to learn? Guess what, they're not. And only a certain type of personality is going to enjoy it and learn it. I honestly think you are living in some fantasy world. What is your solution? How would you change the engineering program at a University, such that the engineering student learns all of the basic required skills in a 4 or 5 year program, but not have to carry such a heavy unit load per semester? You're trying to pour 100 gallons of water into a 20 gallon bucket without spilling any water. You can't do it.

Hazing? Absolutely not. It sounds like students who were not prepared for the curriculum, combined with being away from home for the first time and not having great self control. The candidates that did the best in most engineering disciplines were usually transfers from the community college system, who were a bit older and had worked part time to get themselves to the 4-year school or, like me, lived close enough to the school, that I commuted from my parents house and was required to work on the weekends to earn spending money for gas and insurance for the car. I had multiple scholarships that paid most of the tuition, so I graduated with no student loans. In order to keep those scholarships, I worked my butt off and partied little...until the summer break [Reply]But I can't tell you how much of that is due to students not being capable of doing the work Vs. how many students are discouraged by the instructors or unreasonable work load of 18+ credits per semester. Pretty much answered above. I honestly didn't find the workload that unreasonable. I have contemplated going back to school many times for an advanced degree in engineering, and the workload is the least of my worries, My workload today is heavier than what I had at school, with the added bonus of the liability of carrying a PE. [Reply]What I can tell you is this, if you are an immigrant odds are you will graduate with an engineering degree. And this appears to be the latent prestige which is associated to the field from the parents view of the field as well as limited choice due to finite ability to network. Which is fine IF! 1) These students stay within the US when they graduate. They may be offered a better life if they return to where they came from. Note India and SEA. 2) We continue to have a semi liberal immigration policy. I don't buy the immigrant argument. Bottomline is that only a small percentage of the population is cut out to be an engineer. The discipline is a hard one, no different than Med school, theorectical physics, etc. You become an engineer because you like to solve problems and you have an apptitude for it. You certainly don't go into it for the prestige, or at least most engineers I know, didn't.

Unfortunately, this is very school/program dependent. When I went through the program, we started with only 23 candidates and graduated 13. My professors were very accessible. Granted, that was 20 (oh, GOD, was that really 20 years ago) years ago. Now, I believe the program regularly starts with 80+ candidates and I have no clue how well the interaction between professor and student is.

Graduated 1990, BS Chem Engineering, starting salary then was $38,000. Was making $50,000 within 2 years. Shah, $36K in 2002 was pretty low. This might be part of your disillusionment with the engineering practice. I know I miss the types of bonuses my sales and finance buddies saw throughout the years, but they certainly didn't start where I started. I do think that being and working as an engineer takes a certain mindset, and doing that day in/ day out may take a toll on some. Probably why engineering school is so tough and professors expect you "to figure it out" on your own, 'cause in the real world you will need to do the same.

Sad to hear. Rick was my AFF instructor and AFF 1 Main side. Blue Skies Rick!

Yea, I'm sure under the microscope, my tongue is riddled with scars There is a reason we split (thankfully not infidelity or something like that) and that won't change, but I really do want him to grow up healthy and with with an understanding about relationships that is not based on seeing his parents fight all the time. Congrats on your success and I hope for the best for my son.

Oh, I can see that. It certainly would be much easier without my son. I would have been able to move away, start anew, etc. But, given the choice to do over, I would still go with having my son. There is nothing to compare that connection to.

I am currently going through a divorce from my wife. We have a 5 year old. We've been separated for the past year. When we began the process, we both agreed that we wanted to minimize the impact on our child. If we want him to grow up a responsible adult, he needs to know what being a responsible adult looks like. We have joint custody, we work together to cover scheduling conflicts, and most importantly, never use him to get at the other. We talk often regarding school events, go together to meet the teacher on parents night, and most importantly, make sure he understands that our living apart has nothing to do with him.

"http://daringfireball.net/2010/02/flash_hardware_acceleration"]Not entirely I don't think. Well, that's Gruber defending his baby. While the hardware accelaration for video, specifically H.264, is new across the board, general Falsh sluggishness is due to Apples poor 2D API's as well. Also, the plugin interface NPAPI for Safari is much slower than ActiveX in IE, so the Windows version has an advantage there.