Swapping Hard Drives
I have two primary computers at my day job. One is an every day machine that I use for programming, email and the like. The other is a test machine. The test machine gets restaged all the time. That means, I take it back to the day the operating system was installed in order to make a good test system. That helps eliminate conflicts with all the normal stuff on a day to day work machine. This arrangement has been great except for one thing. My primary machine has a fan this trying to go out. It sounds like a cement mixer. I finally got sick of it today. I swapped computers. Normally, that is a pain because I have one all set up the way I like it and the other is basically blank with some utilities on it for software packaging. However, nearly everything that has to do with configuration and setup is on the hard drive. I swapped hard drives and now I'm off to a quiet afternoon.
Now, their are a few things to keep in mind when swapping drives. These two machines are basically identical so the drivers and settings should be compatible. Some things are still different. The machines have two different serial numbers. The machines have two different MAC (network card) addresses. Little things like that all over the place. It is kind of like a person's memories. Most of your memories are kept in specific parts of the brain. If I wanted to switch bodies, all  I should have to do is figure out a way to move just those parts of the brain, or even just the information on those parts of the brain to another.
I read a short story (they made a modern Outer Limits out of it) where people could go to this place. They lay down on a table. These little micro bots crawl all over them and take a reading. More little bots across the universe create an exact duplicate including memories and current thoughts. Then the original is destroyed. Of course, the process screws up and a live person on the table has to be killed to maintain the balance.
I'm not the first one to swap out a hard drive apparently. The differences are funny. The keyboard repeat rate is different. Where the hell do you adjust that?

Contractors
I'm a contractor with a large company. I need to keep an eye on this article.

"The Idaho Statesman is carrying the story of 33 local Boise HP contract workers suing HP From the article: . They claim that they were expected to perform at the same level of expectations as HP workers and thus should be given the rights and privileges of HP workers. HP claims the suit is without merit.""The suit seeks to represent 3,000 workers in Boise and elsewhere in the company and could involve as much as $300 million, according to the complaint." SlashDot