We were living in Lubbock at the time and the apartment complex we lived in offered a few rooms to victims of the storms. From what I understood, it was rent-free for at least a year as well as some monthly benefit expenses and such to help them get on their feet either in town or for them to go back to New Orleans. By the time the families arrived fully we were already moving out of state, so I never had the chance to speak to any of the displaced families. I thought it was quite a nice deal for them given the circumstances, but within the first few weeks of the move some odd things began happening at the complex. Fence boards from the fences dividing nearby apartment complexes began going missing, while at the same time more and more makeshift BBQ's began happening. There seemed to be much more loud night time activities that previously. Being a college town, a rowdy Friday, Saturday, and even some Thursday nights are a normal occurrence. These, however, seemed to be less like parties and more like people just being loud for the sake of being loud at 1am on a Tuesday. The news stories aren't necessarily wrong about the hardships that some New Orleans residents experienced, but from my perspective all I see is the wasted charity given to those that felt entitled to it.

I don't live in the area anymore, but being a fresh college grad near that area around '05 it was hard finding work due to job requirements. I had no real-world experience, only a 4-year degree and a knack for computers and networking. No one was willing to train or even give an interview until I had 5+ years of server admin experience. The end result is that I moved out of the area and haven't thought about going back since. Maybe the older, established companies need to loosen job requirements and train good employees if they want people to work for them instead of the startups.

While your comment is funny, the truth hurts. For the longest time my wife (then girlfriend) kept two phones, one on AT&T and one on Verizon. Because of her family on Verizon and me (and my family) on AT&T, it was cheaper for her to have two phones to talk to both sides than have an "unlimited minutes and messages" account on one service. YMMV.

I was in the same boat with you, but since MLB.tv offers a YEAR of games for what one month of cable or satellite costs I've cut that cord and haven't looked back. Supposedly the Xbox One will have all live streaming NFL games, but I haven't seen it in action yet. I hope more leagues go the way of MLB.tv- I gladly pay for the games I want to watch without getting all the extra channels or insane pricing for such little use.

Agreed. It's $7 for adults, kids 5 and under are free, and you can bring food in yourself or get reasonably priced food at their snack shack (which has 10x the items of the regular theaters). For my family of four that's a total price of $14 before food for two movies and I don't have to worry about ruining someone else's experience, because it's almost all families anyway!

At the regular theaters the price is closer to $40 on tickets alone, not to mention (young) kids aren't necessarily welcome anyway. I may be the smaller demographic, but apparently there are enough of me out there to keep these drive-in's alive.

I'm in just about the same boat as you, being product evaluator for the company. What's funny is that the iPad has actually made it easier for our field guys to do their work. The most they do is key in a few numbers, print and/or scan a few pages, take photos, and possibly map shapes via GPS. Doing this kind of work on a laptop is doable, but tedious. The iPad has made a one-stop device that is portable, easy to use, and has a shallow learning curve.

The Surface RT on the other hand doesn't play well with the scanners we have, doesn't have 10m GPS support, and in general is hard to use fully without the "keyboard" it came with. It's the 2013 equivalent of a netbook, with less compatibility. Battery life was great, but I think that was due more to non-use than use. It's been on my desk since we could get one and no one has taken it for more than a weekend. The only question I have after each evaluation is "did you like using it?" to which the response has been a resounding "it's kinda cool, but I don't see it replacing my android/iPad".

Anyone who is using an iPad for full-fledged document, spreadsheet, or powerpoint creation is either unprepared or extremely advanced. No, it's not a great device for creation. But it's a great device for quick edits, consumption, and presentation.

As for the androids, it'd be nice for the manufacturers to standardize things like keyboards. Half the time I have to google image search the keyboard layout because it isn't exactly the same as the device we have.

Microsoft is late to the game and trying to use their last bargaining chip- the Office Suite. The problem is that many iOS and Android apps exist for that already and do everything else better. Too little, too late.

This may not be a great solution for you, but if you have an iOS or Android device that can spoof your location you can catch all the MLB.tv action by "putting" your device in a different state. As an A's fan living in Texas the out-of-market restriction isn't an issue, but now that 2/5 of the AL West is in Texas it may become burdensome.

I subscribe to MLB.tv for ~$120/year. This covers spring training, the regular season, and some of the post season. The rest of the post season was available last year for ~$5. I'm not sure how much money the MLB makes off of this, but I prefer this service over paying for cable or satellite and then the sports packages on top of all that.

MLB.tv apps are available for all of my iOS, Android, XBMC, and computer. This service I GLADLY pay for over the $50+/mo cost of Cable TV for only a handful of games.

I believe the NFL is still in agreement with dish over the "Sunday Ticket", otherwise their might be some hope to catch the one NFL game a week I care to see.

Live sports are getting there, but just not at a quick pace.

This, 100%.

When Ubuntu went to Unity is when I went to Mint full time. When Mint went to Gnome 3 is when I went to Mint XFCE full time.

Why is it so hard to understand that the desktop environment is probably about as good as it will get? I probably sound like a stick in the mud, but the biggest annoyance in UI the past few years has been putting the ribbon on everything and tabs on top, at the top. The last one is the single reason I don't use Chrome on a daily basis and the former is the reason that I do any and all .doc and .xls work in OpenOffice.org.

The only interface enhancement that has blown my mind in the past ten years is the way my Apple laptop handles multi-touch in the trackpad. One finger for cursor, two for moving 360* in pages/apps, and three for dragging. There aren't any accidental swipes down or across the page like I have on my Win7 laptop and it's poor implementation of touch-sensitive areas.

For the desktop, I've found Mint XFCE to be a speedy, awesome, no-unneccessary-frills alternative. It's awesome.

That right there is the problem. Not the phone, but the users. As a previous poster stated (and the article mentioned), the only people buying a new Blackberry are the ones that already have an old Blackberry. RIM needs to start thinking about what they can offer to consumers (and business) that no one else does. They don't have the app market, music/video store, or appeal that both Apple and Android have.

What RIM needs to do is go to the carriers and give them whatever cash is left to allow BB phones a 100% truly unlimited-in-ever-sense data plan. A few years ago when I was shopping for data plans, the iPhone "unlimited" was somewhere around $30/mo, and the Blackberry "unlimited" was $50-60/mo. This may be the fault of the carriers, but it hurts RIM nonetheless. If WinMo and RIM want to compete they need to offer what no one else does: unlimited data.

Oh, and they need to stop forcing that sh!tty BB Enterprise Server. We're not paying an extra $60k/year to duplicate the functionality of our current mail server.

Did you follow the eBay link? The remote is $18, not the player.

Yes, if the oil was obtained on U.S. soil.

That is a selfish viewpoint, but I don't expect Iran to look out for us over themselves.

We are all running out of time and these guys are making obscene profits as is. I live in West Texas and see this on a daily basis. Other than safety, there is little account for responsible spending. Example: workers that used to check and maintain the pumpjacks are promoted to "manager" and told to call a consulting/maintenance firm to do any repairs, costing a ton more than just using the person that was hired to do the original job.

If they obtain it from U.S. soil, refine on U.S. soil, and sell on U.S. soil there is no reason for a spike for the U.S. caused by world factors.

I disagree. We are slowly migrating to using iPads (and Android tablets) in the field for many of our users. They still have the ability to use a laptop, but 90% of what they do can be done on an iPad (including printing/scanning). Part of our business involves getting signatures from customers out in the field. Carrying a laptop and signature tablet is more cumbersome than the iPad. They still have laptops, but those are more stationary than anything else these days. I think you are going to see iPads more and more in business, especially for those that hate lugging around a laptop.