Robert Hall

Wolf Blitzer, CNN

Good question... I've never used my Phoenix home phone publicly, it's not in my name, yet I came home today with two Democratic robocalls--Barack and Michelle's messages, with the local polling place at my Colorado address)--- and two Republican 'vote for McCain or the country is doomed' messages!!! WTF??

How about a road usage tax, based on miles driven, like that is being proposed in the UK? This would impact everyone that uses roads--farmers, truckers, ordinary drivers. It seems like it could be the fairest way to pay for the infrastructure...

I voted by mail a couple weekends ago...very easy and relaxed way to do it..it was a long ballot, lots of propositions and judges for re-election, it gave me time to research everyone online and figure out which incumbents, etc to vote against.. I went into work early today, before 7, going to head home around 3 ish, plan to be glued to the TV from 4-10 or so...probably watch CNN and flip to BBC America and MSNBC occasionally...while watching a bunch of blogs and my Twitter and Facebook feeds... and play w/ the terriers some.

Wow... still over $2.60 in the PHX..

<sarcasm> Yeah, but GM has 3 ton Hybrid SUVs that might get 20 mpg... </sarcasm>

The thing that still amazes me, though, is how the automakers regressed from the '80s....in the '80s, the Big 3 all had cars that got over 35 mpg in the US...some that even got over 50 like my Escort diesel. They could and did build fuel efficient cars here, but threw it all away in the short-sighted pursuit of trucks and SUVs in the '90s...

I wonder if the Nov #s will be worse..

Yeah, Pa has a lot of beautiful areas..I'm pretty familiar w/ W. Pa---Washington County, Westmoreland County, Beaver County, Allegheny County.. E. Ohio has a lot in common w/ PA as far as the geography, not as flat and 'Midwestern' as the western part of Ohio..

I've been over there once years ago...also in NW Ohio to Kenton (where my sister was born) and N. Baltimore (near Findlay) (my folks used to live there, before I was born). It's pretty cool, the high schools in those towns have dedication plaques to my father, who was the superintendent when the schools were built back in the late '50s-early '60s. I like the downtown square and old courthouses usually found in small Ohio towns. I love the rolling hills of eastern Ohio..the Amish country (Holmes County, Tuscarawas County) where I'm originally from, the winding, twisty back roads, the wooded valleys with the fields along the Tuscarawas River, the deep, lush green old-growth forests, the fall colors, the foggy mornings in September... Sometimes I get really homesick for there and also for Steubenville over along the Ohio River where I also lived as a kid...I used to go downtown w/ my Dad and perch on one of the bridges and watch the barges move along the river, moving coal and steel (the mills are mostly gone now). I remember most all the cars were big and American. The '70s were quite a different time and place.

Yeah, I don't think we have seen the worst yet. Whomever wins the White House is going to have a big mess to deal with for quite a while, I'm afraid.

I wonder what kind of numbers the Germans and Koreans will post...

Cause and effect...

Honda down 25.2% also. Saw Ford at 30.2% and Nissan at 33.5% (freep)

No doubt..I haven't worked with 64bit XP, heard it's good. In my work, I've found the production environments tend to usually be IBM, HP or Sun servers with UNIX or Linux because that's where the best performance for Java app servers (usually either Weblogic, Websphere, JBOSS) fronting Oracle tends to be found (OLTP, financial number crunching, data mining, etc). Though the day-to-day development work is usually done on Windows or Macs.

I'm going to have to give Ubuntu a try...have used RedHat and SuSe the most as far as Linux distros go. I've been running Win XP on VMWare on my Mac this year (since there are a few things I have to run Windows to use,).

Saw $2.63 a gallon this morning... bought $45 worth yesterday @ 2.65 a gallon.

A convertible with the 3.6 DI and a 6 spd manual would be sweet..it's too bad GMNA is so stingy with the manual transmissions.

It's interesting how perceptions of OSes have changed through time. When I was in college and grad school 12-15+ years ago, UNIXes (Solaris, HP-UX, BSD, etc) were the only operating systems worth using--for hardcore folk like myself (2 degrees in computer science) it was the most serious way to go---the internet was built on UNIX after all (the routers, mail servers, etc all run/ran on UNIXes). Windows was garbage for the masses, the civilians. My Mom or brother could use Windows. Macs were for graphic artists and other artsy types. Times have changed...Windows has become a lot better, and Macs gained tremendous cred amongst those of us in the life with the introduction of OS X, which has pure UNIX goodness inside with a pretty face. I'm much more likely to use a Mac than putz around with Linux these days, since most of my development is with IDEs w/ Java and Ruby, I don't have to be as OS-centric as it was back in the day.

Yes, that was it...pretty cool rig.

Nah...I just use the two laptops (a Toshiba w/ Win Vista, and a Mac Book Pro). The others I used to use...some are in storage, some are still networked in my home office but turned off... I used the Linux boxes years ago to teach myself how to install and set up Oracle and app servers on Linux.

Mmmm..blueberry. One thing I miss about summer in Ohio was picking fresh blueberries, blackberries, and black and red raspberries. Don't have any of that in the desert.

I use Win XP Pro at work. Have Win Vista Home Premium and Mac OS X at home (main laptops). Also have some older desktops back in Colorado that I don't use much with Win XP home, SuSE Linux/ Win 2k Pro dual boot, Red Hat Linux/Win 98 dual boot, and an old Sun Sparc Ultra workstation w/ Sun OS. Also, two ancient laptops--one Win 2k/Red Hat Linux dual boot, and one with Win 95. I'm a bit of a computer pack rat..never seem to get rid of old hardware.

What did it have under the hood? An SBC? Hopefully it won't be parted out..

Roto Rooter (in lieu of calling a plumber, I recommend keeping Liquid Plumr Foaming Pipe Snake on hand--it's teh bomb! I have 2 bottles of it and 2 plungers in each bathroom, always ready for toilet unclogging action)