Dear Bison: March 2006

[Redd]

Dear Bison,

What were you looking at when your avatar photograph was taken?

[RayPowers]

Dear Bison,

I am a fairly successful thirty something. I work three jobs, so to speak. My primary job makes about $80K, My two side consulting jobs make about $50K and $40K respectively. My wife makes around $40K. So, for a family of four (we have two kids), we have about $220K yearly, which is nothing to sneeze at. Somehow, we still end up short on money on a regular basis, but thats not the real issue.

The real issue is I don't want to HAVE to work. I am ok with working, but I don't like the daily grind, and I want to work when I am in the mood to work and have the passion. As such, I took some time, and figured out that I could "retire" if I could hit a magic number of $3 million.

How do I get there from here? As you can assume from the three job thing, I already am in the zone of "work too much, sleep very little." There has to be a smarter way to do this.

Ray

[MDoranD]

Dear Bison,

What are 3 random things that we should know?

MDoranD

[acoustix]

Dear Bison,
You have probably answered this before, but where does you screen name come from?

[TimM]

Dear Bison,

Let's say there was a device that could make an exact copy of a person, down to every last detail, but in the process the original would be destroyed. Would the original person's consciousness continue to exist in the copy? Or would the original consciousness be dead, and the copy have a new consciousness that merely thought it was the original (because it has the same memories).

[Chris Daddy Cool]

Dear Bison,

What is the best way to get a short story or maybe a play published?

Chris

P.S. How do I convince bakkubakku that playing video games instead of playing poker is not going to pay for his college education?

[NoahSD]

Dear Bison,

How can I get a summer computer programming job without much programming knowledge? I'm a sophomore Math + Physics major, and I've taken a class in C and one in Java.

[bogusaccount]

Dear Bison

Hey, im 20 years old and still a virgin. None of my friends are and its really getting me down these days. Im a decent looking guy and dont have trouble talking to girls, but when it gets time to seal the deal, I get extremly nervous and actually have the same feeling one would experience during a public speech, namely a fight or flight reaction. I think I then sabotage myself. This is really bothering me lately and I was wondering if you have any advice at all to help me get over my irrational and irritating (and embarrassing) problem.

[Gunny Highway]

Dear Boson,

What are Google's internal revenue projections for 2006? [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

[Green Kool Aid]

Dear Bison,

I am currently taking five courses as a sophomore because none of the classes were/are too demanding. However, one of them (outside of my major) absolutely sucks and I want to drop it. However, I don't want to end up with the "W" on my transcript that comes from dropping a class after the drop deadline. If I am taking 4 classes after I drop this one class, will the one W look that bad on my transcript?

Thanks,

Green Kool Aid