I wonder what important developments were kept out of the spotlight yesterday during all the death hoopla. It seems to me that all kinds of tomfoolery goes on when things like this happen and we find out after the fact.

In regards to the traffic issues, MSNBC had an 'auto-start' slideshow going on the homepage in primetime last evening, so it would seem they brought a lot if not all of this on themselves...

Hopefully, this will somewhat apply to the toilet that is Camden, NJ. More specifically, my hope is that 'razing huge sections' equates to 'extensive fire bombing'. I am not advocating loss of life or anything, but that whole area is in need of a reboot.

Our controller was already having sugarplum dreams about how he could 'navigate us through this'. I am pretty sure our CEO was fitting a noose for himself as the conversation took place. I'll let him find out about this one on his own though. If I tell him, I'll wind up backing out of the office slowly like Constanza exiting Steinbrenner's office.

Seriously though, when I was told of this, my mind was a jumble of the bureaucracy and heartache this would cause. My hope is that gov't agencies like the IRS and Treasury are give the task of auditing the FRB, but that's OT here....

Strictly speaking from the Verizon side as I have no experience with AT&T or their networks (directly), I would like to see something like this tightly integrated with their other offered services. I am an extremely happy FIOS customer and while I am happy with the services, I see the potential for so much more. For example, I lamented to my wife this weekend (to what I am sure resulted in behind the back eyerolling) that I should be able to pull up the box score for the Phillies game I was watching. Consoling and/or feeding the baby diverts my attention and I missed some scoring. I felt I shouldn't have to grab the bberry or laptop to find out what happened, I should be able to overlay real-time stats on the screen with the game still visible.

I bring this up as a corollary to the gaming discussion. I would use this service if it was a) offering desirable games I could not play on the Xbox 360 or XBLA and b) possible to pull up and play the games through the TV. Obviously, your home PC would be running the game, but the STBs already have USB ports in them to allow a controller to be used. We use the Home Media option on our DVR and the PC integration part of it is clunky at best (ex: I was disappointed to have run back to the PC to fire up WMP to stream music and you can't stream video unless your have Windows MCE). If they are able to make some strides with that aspect of their Home Media offering, this could be a solid win. It will be interesting to see how 'polished' this is when its offered....

I like to think that on some alien interwebs there is a demotivator picture of the spacecraft in the bubble as shown in the article with a caption of 'You're doing it wrong' or some such other witty tagline...If there is intelligent life nearby and its paying attention we are likely the source of some epic laughs. Maybe that's why UFOs are always flying so erratically...its the lulz...

This was my first thought too (well, the first one was about how lazy the 'odds are 1 in a million' comment was). Rock @ 30K mph > human flesh/sinew/bone. Pics or it didn't happen...

Anyone familiar with Micro League Baseball? We played this incessantly in the mid to late 80's as kids. It was a visual DOS baseball game, but you play as the manager. We kept notebooks full of stats, outcomes and whatever else we thought to log. Come to think of it, we kept notebooks on our Tecmo Bowl leagues and our backyard wiffle ball games as well. Did anyone else do this? I would live to find which one of us kept them (you know the old school black/white marble 'composition' books). It would be neat to see what we felt was relevant to record at the time...

Since the only show they offer that I know and/or care about seeing is South Park and I watch that online cuz the wife HATES it, I kinda forgot about Comedy Central. I think the main reason really is that they are not offered in HD around here (FIOS). Do many of you have it available in HD? I very rarely scan through the non-HD offerings...

I have been contemplating a move somewhere abroad myself. Its been in my thoughts since election night really. I am not an Obama hater, but I have drank the kool-aid either. The guy is very charismatic and a great speaker, but I don't feel he or his administration have a tight enough handle on what it takes to run this country. Since the Republicans have no apparent candidate that can pose a credible threat to Obama in 2012, he will likely be a two-term president. I don't think we will recognize this country when they are through.

Anyway, back on topic, I think that US jobs have been too expensive for years and that's largely attributable to the ridiculously high cost of healthcare. We have a HSA-based coverage plan now, so a portion of our healthcare costs are paid through a debit card until the deductible has been met (luckily, the deductible costs are picked up by the company). As a result, we get the bills for all the healthcare we receive as opposed to the random few that slipped through in the past. I wonder when reviewing them how the values placed on services/drugs/equipment are arrived upon. I know I am making an oversimplification, but it seems that they just pull numbers out of the air and then double them. Like an unscrupulous car mechanic telling an unsuspecting and uninformed motorist that a $50 part actually costs $500. The alternative it seems though is price fixing which can send quality of care spiraling down, so its a slippery slope for sure and a dilemma that has no win/win outcome IMO...

So this is what happens when you don't push the button....got it.

I remember reading somewhere sometime that the rejuvenated human body could subsist for 200K years+...Unfortunately, I have no links or empirical data to back that up, so take it for what it is, essentially heresay, but it is thought provoking....

They also want their lucrative Y2K contracts back as well....Oh wait, that was me...

We've so many things to learn from our red neighbor. I hate to put my tin foil hat on this early in the day, but I oft wonder how much data has been retrieved/analyzed/hypothesized upon that we (mouth breathers at-large) have not been made aware of. There are some tantalizing possibilities with Mars, both to learn of our past and to help forge our future. Like Buzz Aldrin, I think whomever the first Mars pioneers wind up being, they should not plan on returning...

Without giving the scientific method a nod, it easy to say 'of course there's water on Mars...duh!', but I still await the slam dunk chemical analysis. Too many things fool the eye from a distance, like so many men/women from across the room...