No Furnace, Day 3

I live in a house with a forced hot air heating system by natural gas, and at 4 AM three days ago, the circuit board that controls the fan died.
It’s a semi-old system, we think it was installed around 1990, so getting parts is a challenge because the circuit board manufacturer has changed the design.
Thus, it’s a guessing game which new version is compatible with my system.

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Problems Solved

I’ve been having a weird problem for weeks, if not months, with Visual Studio .NET, my main development environment.
VS.NET crashed every time I tried to open a file from the IDE.
This is more than a minor nuisance, since there are times you HAVE to open a dialog window; for example, if you want to add an unregistered reference to a project. It had become such a vexation that I was ready – more than ready – to replace my PC.

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To the Trash

I’ve been increasingly irritated by the spam mails from John Kerry, which seem to be more frequent now that the Electoral College vote has been made official.
Conspicuously absent from any meaningful participation in the election protests, Kerry now seems to feel he has a right to lead the loyal opposition through four more years of George Bush.

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Sociopathy and Rules for Living

Bonnie and I were talking today about the new book, “The Sociopath Next Door”, by Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Martha Stout.
In her book, which is due out next month, Dr. Stout says that 4% of the population, or 1 out of every 25, are sociopaths: people who display 3 or more of 7 characteristics, such as deceitfulness, the ability to sham emotion and a lack of remorse.

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