I hate salesmen. I had two salesmen visit from a computer manufacturer on Friday. They tried to convince me that I need to buy stuff from them. What gets me though are the slimy tricks that effective salesmen use. The first is the whole "if you don't need to buy anything, then you must be some kind of loser" routine. "What?" they say. "Your department doesn't need a supercomputer? Maybe you just don't understand the needs of the department? Is there anyone there who has a clue?" After asking a bit about the visualization needs in the department, they tried to convince me that we should buy hardware that will let you wear special glasses visualize molecules in stereo. "It only costs $45,000 per workstation!" I felt a lot better when he said how much it cost.