There's now something called Iridium Openport, which is a satalite ISDN that's always on, but you have satalite expense. Works well enough the TS Kennedy.

I had to take the test, and I laughed as I got that question wrong, but no one cares. They hire a contractor to create a test, it's only reviewed by pointed haired managers, accuracy is optional. Just because it's there doesn't mean it's official belief, just that the agency creating the test put opinions down.

Ironic. Kennedy just gave enough money to the Mass. Maritime Academy (Buzzard's Bay) to get them to rename the training ship to the TS Kennedy (I liked Enterprise better...). Mass Maritime Academy is one of the most green schools I've ever seen, they even have a wind turnbine. To keep from energizing downed power lines, the turbine is shut down whenever the electicity goes out for saftey reasons. When the chief of the ship wants to know if they lost shore power, or if it's a problem with the ship, he looks out the window to see if the turbine is turning or not :)

I'd use all three lines to right down my waist size, inseam, how long my penis is, that i'm not circumsized, my religon, what type of food i like, how often I date, number of serious relationships, etc, and if they confront me about providing the wrong info, hey, invasion is invasion.

When on my family's 800 acre ranch, driving around, do i have a reasonable expectation of privacy? I'm not even so much as in public view, which everyone keeps mentioning. If i'm going to bury a body in the middle of private woods, they need to have a warrant to track me. Personally i just want to track the cops, and see about handing out speeding tickets to all the guys that pass illegally, speeding, and then just end up pulling into a fast food place to get a meal.

I work for the maritime administration in the gulf, pirate aren't really a concern here. Too busy of a shipping lane, with too many patrols from the coast gaurd and navy. Most of these would be just outside US internation waters, pirates would have to be based inside the US to hit them in short range craft more commonly used.

are we putting money on if they learned from the hubble mistakes?

I'm a lefty, and in the 'chicken scratch' category. I have noticed one thing, every left handed person I see that writes with a normal angle / bend of the wrist has messy hand writing. Those that write with the wrist bent and the hand pointed down have neat hand writing. On a side note, I'll know if anyone ever tries to forge my signature, because it's never the same twice :)

Know a DBA that wrote the software Target uses to keep track of every single purchase made by people using credit / debit cards. This database does not get emptied, they will always know everything you bought, it can even report your buying habits for toothpaste to try to predict how often you visit the store...

Common thing along the gulf after the last few hurricanes and weeks without power is for people to install propane generators (which you can even order from lowes) if you live within an area that has it piped to you. Most expensive thing is usally the labor to have it installed with cutoffs, etc. I've seen total packages up to 15K that can run an entire house, A/C (we don't even have furnaces down here), washer, dryer, you name it. But I'm sure if you could get a smaller one and only connect it to certain circuits in your house, again labor would be the big cost if you want it professionally done, which I reommend if you want it to automatticaly start vs just dealing with extension cords. I've always had pretty big commercial grade UPSs that I put any computer equipment on, most generators just don't run clean enough for a pc power supply

I work with Marine Engineers that are trained to fix problems knowing they won't be able to order spare parts out at sea. Reminds me of a quote the Chief Engineer for the TS Kennedy is always saying. "The difficult we do now, the impossible takes a little more time". No doubt space engineers can hold up thier end of the bargain.