alhildreth

There are many good search engines I use. Google has improved over the past year or two. I use one called Dogpile.com which combines results from other popular search engines. When I am programming, I use Krugle.com to help with code snippets. AskJeeves was good, but he retired and the novelty of having a butler is gone.

The last movie I saw was Ratatoille -- Cartoon from Pixar. It was ok, and gave me the opportunity to do something the kids wanted. The 12 year old and 19 year old liked the movie. It had it's cute parts, but most of it was predictable. The ending was a surprise - so I would give it a 7 out of 10.

I have had ADSL for about four years now and I am satisfied with the service and speed. I had dial-up for 15 years. At the beginning the internet was text based through the universities here. When we got ADSL, it was faster than cable because ADSL uses a switched network instead of a token-ring type of network. Since then, the cable company has added fiberoptic as well as cache devices at certain points around the connections, so it is about four times as fast as my connection. I probably won't switch, because I didn't like Time Warner Cable and have gotten satellite TV now. Very seldom do I need the speed on the fiberoptic. So...price vs. speed vs. need -- I'll stick with DSL for now. I have heard they are working on improving speeds as well.

I think there are many ways to look at the answer. For someone who needs to get up to speed quickly and pump out a piece of software that does something quickly, I thing a 'Basic' language works well. It is similar to English and gives power to the newbie developers without him/her having to spend many hours of time learning the syntax. From the other end of the spectrum would be some type of Assembly language. It can teach someone a lot and give insight into how the compiler translates to machine language. Especially, when they have errors in the code that they need to fix. But this is not for the weak at heart. It can take many hours to become proficient. Somewhere in-between is where I began -- with FORTRAN-77. It was far enough from English that you felt like you were learning something most other people thought was gibberish. But it was not as difficult as my next class (IBM System 370 Assembly Language.) I still program in FORTRAN when a contract comes up, but have learned most languages follow the same type of rules. I think the hard ones taught me the how and why. The newer one I use (like PowerBuilder, ASP .NET, C#, and T-SQL) give me the convenience of a more powerful Development Environment combined with nice built-in functions of the libraries (like the .NET framework.) Just my opinion...

I believe there is an afterlife. It is up to each one of us to determine how we will spend the time there. Since I believe in Christ and our heavenly father, it encourages me to help others. I have studied many different theories on creation and reason for existance. I am also of the belief that others are entitled to their opinions and that I should respect them for that. I have been taught to present the facts of God to others, but it is up to them to receive the gift of Christ. Christ warns us not be self-righteous -- we are all sinners and I understand I will be a sinner until my last breath. My salvation lies in knowing I am forgiven and that Christ died for my soul.