Last time we had a decent CME along with clear skies, I went outside and saw Aurora spread across the sky .. and this was located a 30 minute drive outside of New York City. Grabbed my Canon point and shoot camera and set it for 10 second exposure and this was the result:

http://photo.omnistep.com/aurora11072004/

I heard they were seen as far south as the Carolina's.

Something that big and fragile will have to be launched in still air, but as the ground heats up in the afternoon, there will definitely be thermals popping off. Ridge lift is works down low, but will not likely be used in this mission (that would be cheating!). The thermals, however definitely will affect the flight. Up high (2000+ ft above the ground) there are often large patches of big lift and also sink (1000 feet per minute up or down is typical). The skill of the pilot's ability to read the ground and sky will play a large role in keeping the craft up in the air during the day. He will have to escape the sinking air and remain in the lift as long as possible. The night portion of the flight will probably the easy part - just coast around on battery until the 24 hr mark. The above information is common knowledge to all soaring pilots (which I am also myself). A few of my flying buddies have stayed up for 10 hours and flown 200+ miles on hang gliders - quite a feat accomplished without any motor or batteries. Given some decent pilot skill and the right weather conditions, the solar craft should have no problem accomplishing the task.

I have found the chat to only freeze up when there are multiple FB windows open.

Same thing happened to theplanet.com last year. Transformer went boom, fire, etc. Backup generator was allegedly shut down as ordered by the fire department. This is happening so frequently, it should be included in the disaster planning and standard test scenarios.

How about a nice game of chess?

I still have my POQET PC, which runs off 2 AA batteries and is smaller than the TRS100.

Was too cheap to buy the serial interface cable, so I found the dimensions, etched a PCB connector, dialed into the university network and accessed the internet via Lynx browser. Does that make it a netbook? Actually it was more like a net-palmtop.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/poqet-pc/index.html

That's right.

"The odds are good, but the goods are odd."

                  ~ said by girls in engineering schools.