This seems familiar: http://lablit.com/article/86
Though the semantics are usually different, but I can recall a few times explaining geek things in layman's terms and having people actually be interested. Usually not, but it happens.
This is a free neural net library:
http://leenissen.dk/fann/index.php?p=download.php
http://fann.sourceforge.net/fann_en.pdf
We're hiring another developer here at zappos. No need to know perl, just need to be smart and able to handle weird people, like me. (poke, poke).
I'm doing pretty well with the IBM Biz Partner right now. Plus, aren't they based in NV?