Wow, you seem like a fairly cynical guy and honestly, sound kinda bitter; sorry about that, and I'm not certain how much travelling you actually do for your company. All the places I ever worked for gave me the choice of airline, hotel and car (except one, and it was back in the days of Piedmont Airlines) by providing a "per diem" and letting me pay more or less for everything - I could have stayed in a Motel 6 and made money on my per diem if I wanted to - and was allowed to keep the miles as a "bonus" for doing the trip (and I suspect they felt they could pay me just a bit less as they didn't care about the miles but knew their frequent travelers did - so it worked for everyone).

But thanks for assuming that I'm a thief and embezzler; Merry Christmas to you, too!

I think that's probably a bad assumption. Staying within the same chain (in the US, they all have a broad range of properties at various prices, low to high) is very much the same as renting your car from the same franchise, using the same airline for the miles and a CC like Amex or BofA that gives you double miles and other perks (but be aware of your fees). I suppose that if you only travel once or twice a year then grabbing the lowest price you can get seems like a good idea, but when you are on the road a lot, building air miles, hotel loyalty perks (Executive floor access, free food and drinks, reserved parking, free ramp parking, etc.), access to your chosen airlines lounge with free drinks and snacks rather than sitting in seats picking up everyone's colds, picking up free/reduced/upgraded rental cars when on your *own* vacation are all part of the strategy. On the road, you have to think the "long game"; if you start small, just a few trips a year, you are still building your accounts - just my experience.

It's always nice when hack directors decide to "fix up" the writing of gifted authors, or decide that they know better their intent. "Bladerunner" bore no resemblance to "Do Androids..." other than to steal a few great ideas. Can you imagine what a clusterfuck Scott would make out of "Ubik"? It will eventually happen; PKD is just too good for some asshat "artiste'" not to adapt beyond all recognition, time after time. The only person I might trust to do something like Ubik correctly would be Joss Whedon; at least he seems to get the genre and have fun with it. IMO, Scott is just an egotistical fool. Too bad PKD had to sell out; he was just writing too far ahead of his time and like lots of brilliant artists, had a lot of personal baggage.

You know, I like this idea a lot, but I am not sure about it's success. I can see it would be very useful for collecting like information into one place and provide a single point of entry for all information relating to a particular story or like stories (for example, a few days after the Ferguson shooting, a white cop in a southern town shot an unarmed black man he pulled over for a seat belt violation, and the city sat on the information and video for almost a week, which resulted in no story at all, which I believe was the point - who knows about that shooting? What else happened in the world that day that got by *me* in all the noise?). Your Infobitt system would have allowed for that information to be posted almost immediately; no axes grinding, just the facts - unarmed black driver shot by white policeman, city refusing to release any information. Folks who cared would want to know that. I suspect that that people don't want to know about things anymore. I read many news feeds every day and I also read the comments for most articles. It's pretty much a troll and hate fest. In my opinion, the media is used to divide, not unite or inform. The trolls and haters don't want to see facts, they just seem to want to turn the crank a little tighter. Folks like me might be inclined to contribute to Infobitt, but really, who will be reading it? Again, just my opinion, but I think that most folks would have no idea how to use the data collected and summarized, feel even more frustrated and powerless, and spend more time in front of the television. A front-end without a back is not very effective, IMO. Perhaps I am missing the back-end? The tools that allow people to act/react in a significant way to what they are reading? That would be essential to the success of this venture, IMO.

It's kinda interesting; your posts read a lot like the text on a bottle of Dr. Bronners.

Catholics believe in transubstantiation, the literal transformation of bread and wine into the actual flesh and blood of christ, and other christians view it as the symbolic consumption of the body and blood of christ. Cannibalism is a major tenet of christianity, it is the culmination if their ritual, they just don't like to talk about it a lot. Ask a catholic about it, or even ask a non-catholic christian why they symbolically eat the flesh and blood of their savior. I guarantee you'll have an interesting conversation.

Don't over think it - you can't afford to go, but they will pay for training. Find the training locally and forget the conference. Conferences are over-rated and while I wouldn't pay for my guys to attend a conference (especially Vegas), I always paid for training (and even exam costs when I had the budget for it - the last few years I could only cover training). If your job is as good as you say it is, you're a bit crazy thinking about leaving over a conference. A whole bunch of IT sucks hard out there, these days. Just my opinion and I hope this helps - it's what I would tell you if you worked for my office and came to me with this issue.

This plus the microwave weapon that makes you feel like you're on fire for "Crowd Control" - oh, no one would ever use it to "interrogate" someone, I'm sure.

What a sick fucking world we've created, or have allowed to be created by silent consent. Getting tear-gassed in the 60's was all for nothing, we were all just a bunch of idealistic assholes; we shoulda just kept our mouths shut and concentrated an getting rich, then we could be doing the burning and the blinding. What a colossal species fail we are.

I welcome that killer asteroid.

I thought that was supposed to happen when gasoline got over $4.00 a gallon, or Obama got elected, or something...

Just flew to HNL on Delta - no problem at all. Airplane mode and no laptops were the only instructions for takeoff and landing.

Touche'! If I could buy you the beverage of your choice, I would!

I'm guessing you have never sat waiting in a surgeon's examination room. My last visit I had to wait almost 90 minutes with only my thoughts. Mainly, when the hell was he going to come in the door?

Yes, my son and I used to watch that series, what was it, "Spenser"? There was one line he delivered so badly in an ep that it became what is now called a meme in our family, trotted out often in response to various queries; "The day is short; your client's money is long; the question shall be answered." in that clipped monotone that he used, followed by bared teeth.

I do appreciate what Brooks is trying to do. There are a couple of DS9 eps that seem to have his mark on them, one that comes to mind is "Far Beyond the Stars" (I think that's the title) which is one of my favorites, and later on, in the 7th season, he makes his point about racism in America in one of the Vic Fontaine eps, but it feels kinda forced and out of character for the Sisko character. In any case, I just don't feel him as an actor, but I didn't get a "great actor" feel from anyone on that series.

Damn, I meant Terry Ferrell as Jadzia Dax - sorry.

DS9 is, in my opinion, the absolute worst of the entire ST franchise. I have just finished a 3+ year on/off challenge to watch the entire franchise (every series and movie except for the cartoons) - TNG was tiring, Voyager was brutal; oh, man - but DS9 - I gave up 3 times. Bad acting, crappy plots, characters it was impossible to care about - until Vic Fontaine! The bright spots for me were the Vic Fontaine eps; just too little, too late. In my opinion, Avery Brooks and Nana Visitor are total hacks and I kept hoping they'd be killed off early in the series like Denise Crosby (Tasha Dar), another hack actor in TNG. As you haven't seen all the eps, I won't post spoilers, but I will say that every scene with Nicole de Boer (Dax) in it did get my attention.