Some of the Europeans I've run into say that Amtrak's on-board experience compares favorably to what they get in their countries, even if the trains are slower.

As someone who's travelled on more than his fair share of trains in Europeland - at least on the west coast, Amtrak trains are super-comfy. Big seats, loads of legroom, decent food (on the last trip - previous trip a few years ago involved a fossilised, tepid space-burger).

Best of all, there's often a carriage specifically for viewing the scenery going past. Of which there is a lot. Possibly including someone describing the scenery going past. I learned a lot about Mount Saint Helens that way. (Main reason for choosing trains - I fly a fair amount also.) Way better views than, say, the Eurostar - where you never even glimpse the sea you've been under.

I vaguely recall the WiFi working when I went from Seattle to Vancouver BC. Not terribly fast, but enough to email friends and family about the delays. (A swing-bridge had got stuck in the 'open' position, and the train had to wait for half an hour or so. The driver had then disappeared somewhere to get a sandwich, causing another ten minutes delay.)

Amtrak is great fun (some of the announcements on that Vancouver trip were gloriously surreal) but it's hardly an efficient means of transportation. I got the train from Seattle to Portland once, and realised it's a similar distance between the two cities as it is from Brussels to Paris. I used to catch the Thalys between Brussels and Paris - in the time it took to go from Seattle to Portland (including a freight-train-induced pause in sidings), I could have gone from Brussels to Paris to Brussels then back to Paris again.

Here you go.

It's not too hard to spot the ISS going overhead when the conditions are right - it's like a fairly bright star going at a fair speed across the sky. It's visible for just minutes at a time - it's sufficiently close to the Earth that you'd definitely need a hefty world-wide network to communicate directly.

(NASA ISS sightings site here.)

Someone comes along playing the sound of a drone on their smartphone and you realized what a waste of time and money it was.

Here you go! Down near "Sound can be a "two-sided coin" in war, he argues."

User: GuardianLTD
Password: 123password

It's the Grauniad. It was more likely to be '123passwrod' [sic].

But then I just realized it's "booK" with the letters all mixed up.

I've always assumed it's some weird endianness issue. Which doesn't bode well for the actual e-books...

You can still pull the plug from the electrical socket. They haven't figured out how to fuck that up....yet.

My school acquired a weird IBM Aptiva thing somehow in the early 1990s (I think it was won in a competition?) - and as is inevitable at a school, someone copied some games on to it. I forget the exact game responsible, but it was non-obvious how to exit - and with an increasingly irritated teacher looking at us pupils, the sensible thing seemed to be to power-down and restart. Push power button on computer, it turns off, push power button again, it turns back on - resuming to the game we rather needed to exit.

Right, go for the nuclear option - pull the plug from the socket. Plug back in, power up, shitting hell it's just resumed to the game again.

I never said they were? The guy specifically mentioned them being Minor League Hockey....

The Aeros are most likely leaving Houston though :(

Cause if so, here's an article from August 2012, pretty much detailing the exact same thing ...

Either way, cool beans!

Well, that's not entirely true. There's been huge improvements for bikers in general by the upgrades and construction of miles and miles of bike trails. Here's some more info on those trails. You can get from most suburbs all the way to Downtown by staying on (nicely maintained) trails these days, which is pretty nice.
Now as far as public transport is concerned, you're somewhat correct in terms of the quality not being very high, nor extensive. We have one measly light rail track, but completely focused on connecting downtown Houston with the very close-by Medical Center. Apparently they're looking at adding a second route at the moment.
However, don't forget that in a city as sprawling as Houston, connecting suburbs is a nightmare. We're spread out over roughly 600 square miles. That's a LOT of land to cover for any kind of public transportation. Cars are a daily part of life in a city like this. No car almost equals no job nor social life around here.

Still think this should've gone to Houston. Search google, there's a TON of dark fiber already in the Houston area. With a bit of help, that could've been a great infrastructure right there. Oh well, guess since Austin is the hip place to be in Texas, we just get bypassed :)

There's some pretty decent views on the way, too - the train runs right next to the sea for a significant portion of the route.