This. I live in a suburban metro area, but rent out the old family farms. I go down several times a year to check on the farms and do a little work to maintain the properties. Well once upon a time in the woods I came across a camper someone had set up. Called the Sheriff and response time was 75 minutes. I know, it wasn't an emergency call and he does live down the road about 5 miles, but he was out on patrol that day. If it had been an emergency it still likely would have been 30 - 40 minutes before he or the deputy arrived.

At any rate it appears as though someone had been using the old camper to cook meth.

I have my CCW and usually carry a .38 around the farm with snake shot/JHP alternating in chambers and then JHP/FMJ alternating in the two speed loaders.

Down there as part of the county emergency planning they maintain a militia muster of people they would ask/draft into forming a county militia in case of a serious event. My name is on that list as if there was ever something that bad, it'd evac from the city with my family and head to the farm. We have wells and a septic system. Wouldn't be the life of luxury, but would be a life.

I always want my concealed pistol to work. That's why I went to carrying a double action revolver. Simple mechanically, if the round fails to fire, pull the trigger again and load the next chamber. No safeties to deal with and with practice loading time is just as quick with a speed loader.

My revolver doesn't even have a "safety" other than a long trigger pull. And if it does go bang the first pull I pull it again.

Tail of two health plans. I've been "self-employed" after I sold my last company in 2011. I paid ~$100 a month for health insurance including a pretty good dental package. In three years I used it basically for annual check up (covered) and a trip to urgent care after cutting my hand while doing some home improvement costs. Total bill out of pocket: $60 for the visit, $10 co-pay for the antibiotics they prescribed. That included x-rays, cleaning, and stitching the wound. My deductible was $3500, $11,000 max out of pocket on the old plan.

Well I couldn't keep that health plan. Apparently now for someone in their early 30's that was now "Catastrophic only" or something. So I went to the exchange. The most like I had was the "silver plan". Silver plan premium $280 per month, no dental. The "Bronze Plan", $156 per month with no dental coverage. Well week before the wedding the puppy dog decided my finger was part of the treat ball. So I had to go up to the same Urgent care, cleaned, x-ray'ed, and medical superglued cost: well $90 for the visit and $45 out of pocket for the same antibiotics as they weren't covered under this plan. Further more the plan I had under ACA at $6000 deductible and $17k max out of pocket.

And for months all I heard from ACA supporters was how my old plan was "crap" and this new plan "would cover so much more". Well...I wanted to keep my old plan, but we know how well that went.

I'm now on my wife's plan from her work. Cost, about $200 a month to cover me with dental. But we may only have this plan until the end of the year as her employer (a Fortune 300) is figuring it's cheaper to pay the fine and force all their employees onto the exchange. Which scares me how much that will cost us out of pocket for a family.

This. My wife's car is completely keyless. She has to have the fob to open the doors or turn it on. This past winter she came out of work and couldn't get into her car let alone turn it on because the battery in her fob died. Fortunately it was at work and she had a warm place to go back to and call me to bring her the spare fob. If she had been somewhere without such recourse when it was -15 wind chill she very well could have died.

My Chevy Volt has keyless entry, remote start, and a keyless start option, but it still has a physical key. If the battery in the Fob dies I can still get in it. My old Chevy Impala I kept a spare key in my wallet. It wouldn't start it, but would open the door or trunk in case I locked the keys in the car or I could get to the emergency supplies I kept in the trunk.

That's just it. It's a niche tool for certain industries, specially design and engineering firms, who spend a day doing the CAD specs and can let something print over night to see if the latest revision of a design will work in a prototype. For those industries it's a godsend. I can see some garage inventor wanting one to tinker around with. For those purposes it's exactly the right tool for the job.

But for stuff that I often need around the house, it's easier and quicker to run up to the store for me than to print it myself.

Actually the EMP can travel thousands of miles in the upper atmosphere and do damage. Read up on Starfish Prime and some other of the tests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

Treason, no, but Snowden should absolutely be tried for espionage. (I know ironically). But what he's done is no different than John Anthony Walker or James Hall III.

I've said this before, the US Military does obliterating an opposing force quite well. Which serves well when the objective is the liberation of a territory from hostile occupation, where the US can go in, win, and then the local populace can quickly get things back the way it was. It does not do occupation very well nor really has outside of the Wester Hemisphere.

The exception being post World War II with the Marshal Plan. Which planning for that began in 1943 and by 1945 the government had managed to twist the arms of a lot of academics, economists, finance, and high ranking industry officials to spend two years post war to help rebuild western Europe.

I get MLB at bat premium so I can listen to games radio broadcasts even if I'm travelling. Also have subscriptions to The Economist and WSJ Digital...

Maybe it would be cheaper if they just obtained a copy of "The Cardinal Way". http://www.baseballprospectus....

Battery held up fine over the winter, even on the cold days she wasn't burning any gas. I think we've filled up twice since the first of the year.

We did have the 220v charger installed.

If it's ad based, then getting in front of more eyeballs via Android and derivatives is the way to go.

If it's depending upon purchases or in-app purchases then iOS is the platform to concentrate on first.

A friend of mine just bought a Tesla. As far as I know it maybe the only one in the St. Louis area. I recently bought a Chevy Volt. We were at an event and the topic came up. One of the people there asked me why I went with the volt. And the answer was fairly simple:

My wife's commute is 15 miles round trip a day. Maybe 20 if she does some afterwork shopping. So the vast majority of the time it's running on electric. But my Dad lives ~ 70 mile round trip from us. He's older and I'm usually out there once a week to check up on him or help him clean out gutters or whatever needs to be done around his house. I have farms that are 300 mile round trip that need seen after. That is certainly a problem with a Tesla.

Also my budget for a new car was between $25,000 - $30,000. With lower base price for 2014, tax credits, and GM card earnings the Volt fit in the price range and was a little bit smaller of a car than the Malibu Eco, which meant it fit in the garage better. (I really wish we had a 3 car garage, but...)

Finally, there are a dozen Chevy and GM dealers around the city. I'm not even sure there is somewhere here that can do work on a Tesla.

Um, actually the Chinese and NSA go back a long ways as the NSA and China have run a series of listening posts long the former/current Soviet border since the 1970's...