@scottalanmiller said:

Here in the NYC metro I see cricket get a similar level of attention.

If you are interested in cricket in New York, I thoroughly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Netherland-Vintage-Contemporaries-Joseph-ONeill/dp/0307388778. I'm not and still loved the book.

Is soccer (sic) popular everywhere in the US, or are there certain cities where it's massive and others where it is dead?

I have a glass of wine every night with my evening meal at around six. Then a pint of beer at eight. Possibly a bourbon before bed. I go out rarely these days, maybe once a fortnight, but when I do it's never more than four pints of beer. I'm at the limit of what the UK government recommends, but there seems to be very little evidence that what some people call "heavy drinking" actually shortens life. And it certainly makes life more bearable!

I'm drinking more (and working less) at the moment because we're having an unusually warm and sunny summer here in England and warm weather + cold lager + garden = heaven.

Officially, USA is the second best supported team in the World Cup after Brazil. That's based on ticket sales by nationality. However, many of those US nationals may actually be supporting other teams like Mexico.

Big game tonight! I was thinking of supporting USA in solidarity with my new friends on Mango Lassi, but if you lot aren't really that fussed I might not bother. The trouble with USA becoming too good at football is that the next thing you know we'll have ad-breaks every ten minutes and clubs will become franchises

It should be a cracking game.

@scottalanmiller said:

@Carnival-Boy my five year old is recently addicted to Minecraft.

My lad is addicted (9), but my daughter Evie, who is 6, has yet to get into games. Being able to play Minecraft at 5 is pretty impressive. My lad watches Stumpy Long Nose play it on Youtube more than he actually plays it himself.

Evie did watch me and the lad complete Monument Valley on the iPad yesterday. If you haven't played this game, it is brilliant. It's more about the graphics, design and architecture than the gameplay.

Also bought Shadowrun Returns, Brothers and Trine.

@scottalanmiller not yet. She has to tidy her room first.

Night of the Rabbit on @scottalanmiller 's recommendation, for my daughter.
Reus, for my son.

I don't know what H-1B is, but there's a great article here on US immigration policy http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-immigrants.html which sums up my views on the subject.

I've actually had to do some work as ML is so dead! Where is @scottalanmiller? When he isn't around this place really suffers.

I've never studied the OSI model though, so maybe that would help

Does she have a curios mind? You can divide the world into people who do and people who don't. People who don't will never be able to troubleshoot.

For example, if my lawnmower is broken and I take it to be fixed, when I pick it up I will want to know what was wrong with it and what they did to fix it. I just need to know. Other people will think "it's fixed, what do I care what was wrong with it". I don't need to know what was wrong with my lawnmower, but I have this natural desire to know.

Another example: here at work we have people who have spent 20 years working as a purchase ledger clerk yet have absolutely no idea how a purchase ledger works. They say "I don't need to know, I just follow the instruction manual to press this button or that button. I don't need to know, or care, what each button does". I could never be like this. I could never press a button without trying to understand what the button did. I probably annoy the hell out of people for this. When I pick my car up after being serviced I demand a 15 minute lecture from the mechanic on car maintenance.

Similarly, I can divide the world into two types of users. Those that think "my computer isn't working, I'll phone IT and then go and have a cup of coffee while they fix it" and those that think "my computer isn't working. I'll spend 15 minutes trying to fix it myself and if that doesn't work I'll phone IT and then watch them fix it so that I know what to do if it happens again".

tl;dr....she may just not be made of the right stuff. Alternatively, she may just need more confidence. She may be more confident when you're not around as she might be scared of looking stupid in front of you. Regardless, I don't think a guide will help much.

Does agile beat waterfall for ERP projects? That's a different kettle of fish. There's a lot of debate out there on this subject. I'm really not sure. But I'm going to find out. I suspect agile works best for SMBs, but not for large enterprises.

I'm just starting a 12 to 18 month project to replace our ERP system with Microsoft Dynamics NAV. I want to use Agile for this. We have a core team of nine. There are, of course, loads of software tools for managing agile teams. Trello is a popular one, but I'm not sure it is flexible enough as implementing ERP involves hundreds of different interrelated tasks.

Because Agile came out of the software industry, and because it's so widespread in that industry, people often think of it as just a tool for that industry. But it works with all project in all organisations. I actually use a scrum cum kanban system (scrumban) to manage my IT department, even though I'm a one man band. I have a daily scrum with myself! I don't actually talk out loud as I share an office and that would be weird, but I go through a daily scrum in my head each morning. I use a system I wrote myself on our intranet, which works for me, but doesn't scale well for bigger, team based projects.

I love agile and scrum and kanban. I genuinely believe this stuff should be taught at schools starting at kindergarten. I've introduced it at work with some success. We recently closed one of our warehouses and consolidated the others and aIthough I wasn't involved in this project at all, they used agile techniques (kanban boards, daily stand-ups), although it was all paper based with post-it notes on the wall.

So I'm looking for a tool. Trello is an obvious one, but I think it's probably too simple and limited. Jira Agile may be too far the other way, so I may want something in between. But it looks good so far. I like the ability to create sub-projects and to store file attachments against a task. And the filtering and search features are awesome. And the price for ten users is ace.

I've written ERP systems for a software house, and I've implemented ERP systems for end-user sites, and honestly there isn't a great deal of difference in the workflow. So it's wrong to think that Jira Agile, or any other agile project management tool, is just for developers. So I don't know why you lolled. A quick google shows that loads of companies are using Jira Agile (aka Greenhopper) in a non-development environment.

We'll see.

Er, none.

I'm currently trialling Jira Agile, though I suspect it will be too complex for my needs.

I've not seen (or heard) it. We listen to a load of film soundtracks in the car though. My favourite is probably Shrek. It got my kids into Bowie and The Buzzcocks which is just awesome.

I have to confess, I don't do any of the things listed in @scottalanmiller 's article. I'm a reasonable pro at work but a hopeless amateur at home.

Any recommendations for games that my 9 year old would like and that will run on my low-end laptop (Intel i5 3317 with HD Graphics 4000). He currently owns two PC games, Minecraft & Terraria, which he loves. I'm planning on getting Kerbal Space Program, Worms Revolution, Ace of Spades: Battle Builder, ORION: Dino Horde (he's mad on dinosaurs) & Reus.

I might get Euro Truck Simulator for myself

I know nothing about gaming, btw.