For those not too young to remember, Bill Clinton's reelection was guaranteed by the Democrats using the same tactics to get Bob Dole on the Republican ticket. This tactic is distasteful no matter who tries it. What would be intensely hilarious to me would be for Palin to win in 2012 after such meddling. Here's a warning to those Democrats who would stoop to such tactics: She has more support than you think. A true grass roots push coupled with a group of idiots voting outside their party would be enough to tip the pot. How 'bout instead of being dishonest, people, try to find a better candidate than Obama. If he can't win without subterfuge, he doesn't belong on the ticket. Though legal, this is no more morally sound than the Watergate breakins during the Nixon administration.

Not been keeping up with the current healthcare insurance bill, have we?

The Challenger disaster was a personal tragedy for many of us. The shuttles represented the resurgence of hope that we were experiencing after 2 decades of societal insanity (60s and 70s). If you're too young to remember or not from the US, the whole nation mourned for quite a while. Having a video that you took of the incident would be akin to keeping a memento of a loved one that you just lost, a personal reminder of what was lost.

You forgot. We had a "season change" back in 2004 when those 3 hurricanes blew through. Their paths crossed over each other to make a nice asterisk right on top of where I live.

I've had very similar experiences with pianos. I'm by no means a master. I don't even consider myself proficient, but the opportunities that I have had to play a really excellent piano made things totally different. From the weight of the keys and their responsiveness to my touch to the acoustic quality and shape of the box surrounding the harp, everything sounded and felt different. I've only been "lost" playing piano twice in my life. Once was on a high end traditional full grand (can't remember the make). The other time was, to my surprise, on an simple Yamaha full keyboard (a high-end electric one with only 2 "voices"). It felt and sounded as good as the grand to me. I was shocked that an electronic device could really produce that sound and have such a velvety feel. It was a dream to play.

If instruments with that level of quality were accessible to everyone I believe that the amount of truly inspiring musical compositions would begin to soar. My piano play began to wane after those experiences simply because everything else left me flat. When you truly enjoy the experience of playing a quality instrument and the instrument itself is not fighting against you in the production of a really beautiful sound your creativity level goes way up.

With the studies out that have definitively proven the link between playing music (including singing) and the increase in abilities in language, math, and science aptitude I begin to wonder if more common access to high quality instruments would help to improve the math, science, and language problems we now have in the education system. I would certainly help reduce the amount of pop-noise that pervades our society today.

PI is a formula that describes a relationship of measurements regarding a circle. The problem being that we know imprecisely the results of that formula without knowing the formula. The search for a repetitive pattern (to help define the formula) in the result is, thus far, proving unproductive. I would wager to guess that, at over 2.5T digits, a found repetition will still not help. Typically, an answer for something this daunting will be far simpler than expected and come from a kid or young adult from the least expected country on the planet. I look forward to that jaw-dropping, Homer Simpson quoting day.

2004 - Central Florida - 3 hurricanes

Lost electricity, cell phones ran out of juice. Before that, though, the emergency responders had allocated or saturated the cell capacity.

Land lines stayed up for a month while we had no appreciable cell service or electricity.

Unfortunately, Verizon has started using the home owners electricity to "power" the land lines.

What a cluster....

I found this. It's a product release announcement.

"Dude, I think I smoked the last plant... ...bummer"

Thanks for the review Adrian! I'm also a .Net 2.0 programmer. Being employed doing 2.0 full time makes it hard to bounce around the net trying to find cohesive 3.5 examples and explanations (that aren't just hacks.) This looks like a good place to do the concentrated study that I need.