The NWS no longer issues county-specific warnings. They still announce things like county names and regions, but that's only so people know if they're in the warning zone or not. The warnings themselves are shaped and sized according to specifically where the severe weather event will be. Take a look at the warning map on your local NWS office's website the next time they issue one.

I think it's a problem with your computer. I have the first generation Sprint-branded Centro, and it begins charging immediately when I plug it in to any USB port. I've tried it on my (Windows) desktop, (Mac) laptop, a USB AC adapter for an iPod, and even a powered USB hub that wasn't actually plugged into a computer. It worked every time. Either the specific port(s) you're using have something wrong with them, your phone has something wrong with it, or maybe if you have it from a different provider it's crippled (like how the AT&T Centro is EDGE, whereas the Sprint and Verizon models are 3G).

Are you talking about refunds in general, or refunds from Sprint in particular? I have been a Sprint customer for seven years, and have sent in five rebates in that time. I only received a check back for two of them. Two they claimed to never have received, one they said was postmarked a month after I sent it. All of them were sent in within a week of purchasing the phone, before the deadline, and were filled out perfectly and included all the required paperwork. This doesn't seem to be an isolated thing, either. A lot of people have trouble getting Sprint to honor rebates.

In September 2003 when Hurricane Isabel hit NC/VA, we lost power about six hours in, came back on after three days. Cable TV/Internet went out two hours after that, came back on around the time the electricity did. Cellular service was down within 24 hours, came back up 36 hours later. Still working during those 36 hours of cellular downtime, and in fact through the entire hurricane and aftermath without any interruption whatsoever, was our landline telephone service. Say what you will about landline service being obsolete, but you can't tell me it isn't a rock solid system that's designed to work through situations that would render cell phones useless.

Want to be the most popular guy at the airport? Throw a plug strip in your laptop bag. After turning two plugs into seven, all the tech addicts on the flight were buying me drinks. Good times.

If you really want to piss people off, use a busy ATM, then pull up just two feet so the rear driver side passenger can use it after you. You wouldn't believe how many people flipped me off and honked at me for pulling that one.

Not always. I thought it did, but apparently that's an option. I bought an N router, expecting it to be an N router, but it only works on the 11 US-standard 2.4 ghz channels. It won't give the full N speeds either, i'm stuck right around 100 to 120 mbps most of the time.

Does anyone else miss the old pressure-based trackpads? I had one of the original Toughbooks and it had one of these, I could use it with a stylus. Made my Photoshop work so much easier without having to buy (and then travel with and try to use in space-restrained situations) a separate drawing tablet. You'd think Apple, trying to sell to the artistic crowd, would offer this as an option.