That's why I drag around a 35 amp hour 12 volt battery when camping (it gets used for fans, lights, laptop, bug zapper, electric blanket, and air pump among things). I admit that I'm not backpacking, but creature comforts became necessary when I started to take my 2.5 year old twins camping a couple of years ago (mostly by myself, wife has a small business and works most days). I set it up with 4 cigarette lighter ports (10 amps each, 30 amp on the main).

I've used it to jump start my car on a number of occasions (mostly while not camping), and in the house for lights and fans during a couple of long power outages.

It's nice have a portable, capable battery with an extensive set of 12 volt accessories.

I recently gave up on CNN.com because every story is a video (but not marked as such, some articles are clearly marked as videos), and they are all auto-play. And they have video ads that play on the front page.

Every day it seems that the world is moving towards Idocracy, I love the movie but hate to call it poignant. It's like a documentary from the future.

What would be the best way to setup a "more difficult" to bock ad service?

Could one use cloud services, and have the clients issue DNS sub-domain entries (content.CompanyName.com) pointing to the service which then provides the images? Of course the IPs could be blocked relatively easy.

What about providing companies that want to serve ads with a small web server that you control that serves the ads (it would appear internal, just sub-domain)? It would reside outside the DMZ, so security concerns on the companies part could be mitigated.

I don't mind static image ads (although I hate it when I purchase something on Amazon and then get served Amazon ads for the thing I purchased). But if it is not static then I despise it.

That's as bad as the colorblind son in Little Miss Sunshine.

Sucks but I can understand the very stringent entry requirements for military pilots.

So it goes - Vonnegut.

I'm 40 now. I remember the late 1990s when I was young, as was everyone around me, and at a non-public facing reinsurance company, we had extra staff just doing pie-in-the-sky stuff no one was ever going to see. We got a lot done via inherent competence, I realize now that we were lucky, and we had budget.

In the early 2000s I led the design and development of a SOA rewrite of an existing VB6 app. We had an iDeisgn consultant come in for a week to get us started which was invaluable; but it was through luck, intuition, and a great team that we were successful.

Now I'm on an architecture/strategy path with good leadership (time for training, sandboxing, prototyping). I now realize that every project needs a seasoned lead for component/interface design, UX/unit testing, hardcore analysis, and general direction setting (as well as a solid QA team to find problems). Skimp on any of that, on a medium/large project, and luck is the deciding factor to success.

Oh, and learn the business. Send ideas to upper management. Really think about the business. It can be interesting, and good for the career.

Carter is cool in my book. He had the guts to promote conservation, way ahead of his time.

Clinton had the benefit of a great economy. Bush Jr. was... inept. He served his purpose though, splitting the Republican party. Obama seems to be trying the same for the Democrats, but the two parties still have a solid lock on the political process, which is the problem in my opinion (not that any third party has put forth a good alternative).

I didn't mean to imply that Canada had less resources. It certainly should have resources comparable to the United States.

I love your emphasis on YET...

I've been to Montreal, had a great time even though I was working. I was staying a block from the hockey stadium during playoffs (I didn't even try to get a ticket). It is a vibrant city, much more so than St. Louis, Missouri.

More thoughts.

Why has the United States led the world in terms of moving forward (technology primarily - our social policy history is terrible)?

I posit that it is because we formed as a nation that could do anything. And we are a young nation. After the war the rest of the world was rebuilding or just continuing (status quo). The United States has/had a "move forward" attitude. We invented the internet, holy shit!!!!! (ignoring Al Gore of course)

At this point we are no longer a young nation. And we are caught up in the trappings of the powerful, those with all of the money. The Supreme Court itself has made this assertion. Hubris...

Bites you in the ass is poignant. We are being driven into the ground. I hate to say it, much less living it.

It's funny how much some people respect President Reagan. Actually, it's not funny. It is sad.

And you didn't even mention the War on Drugs, the sole reason the prison population bloomed during and since his presidency.

And what recession? The DOW is at an all time high?

They count of course, I was just speaking to the United States experience (rather than writing a full blown essay...). Australia's economic zone (East Asia) was "subdued" by the war. Tough to be a major world power when your trade partners are rebuilding.

And Canada has always had a smaller population and less natural resources, which the US is particularly gifted in.

I think the style of leadership/government/freedom was a huge part of our success during the decades following the war. Central America, South America, and Southern Africa all stagnated, and they didn't get destroyed either. The US was very stable after the war.

Our social policies were crap (and still are in a few areas), but we were exceptional in moving technology forward. The Japanese recovered quite well, but their fiscal policies will bite them in the near future. The US's fiscal policies will do the same at some point for sure.

I appreciate your comments, very well said.

But, the American prosperity after World War II was due to the fact that the rest of the world had basically been converted to rubble and it takes a couple of decades to rebuild after such destruction. America lost a lot of young men, but our infrastructure was intact after the war.

I agree with everything you are saying, just pointing out why we had 50 years of growth and prosperity. We built industry, everyone else had to rebuild.

But what about driverless conversion vans, they can have a soft, roomy bed (and privacy)...

A driverless RV would be a thing of wonder.

Imagination Land and the recent Black Friday trilogy were good.

But Key and Peele are where it is at with regards to Comedy Central lately.

It has to do with the survival pressures that are being experienced. If they are relatively static over time, rote learning (or instincts) can provide survival.

Homo Sapiens moved about and had varied survival pressures, to which they adapted. Higher intelligence was one of the adaptations, as was bipedal movement.

DNA expresses a variety of aspects leading to its own survival, be they sexual, defensive, or offensive in nature. DNA survives, the individuals carrying it do not.

This is why I have a dash cam. Aside from evidence it can capture some very cool road trips.