This particular comic caught my attention:

PHD Comics: Deadline

I remember that happening a lot in college in computer science – especially in my junior year when at the height of the Dot Com boom, all these people (including some wearing scrubs) decided they wanted to become database experts. As a result, the servers kept falling over, and in two separate classes that I took in Fall that semester, people could not submit their final projects until early in the Spring semester.

Extensions are not always a good thing.

Lehman Bros. bust hit San Mateo County hard
San Mateo County has been stung by the recent Wall Street investment crisis, absorbing about $150 million in potential losses that could result in public school budget cuts, delays on road and Caltrain improvements, and scaled-down city services.

…

Funds from these cities, school districts and special districts were pooled together in San Mateo County’s $2.6 billion investment portfolio. Critics have said the county needs to hire an outside expert for this portfolio.

Jean Holbrook, the county’s superintendent of schools, pegged countywide losses at $37.4 million for kindergarten through grade 12. The San Mateo County Community College District, whose three colleges serve 40,000 students, lost $25.2 million. The countywide school insurance fund lost more than $550,000.

“It’s hitting at the same time that we had a late and inadequate state budget,” Holbrook said. “Those losses are impossible for a school district to absorb. This is not money just sitting around in reserves. It’s used for our ongoing operating expenses – paying salaries, and making the payments on buildings and facilities.”

The Sequoia Union High School District, which includes schools in Belmont, Woodside, Atherton, San Carlos, Redwood City and Menlo Park, was hit especially hard by the bankruptcy, losing $6.6 million – more than any other district in the county, said spokeswoman Bettylu Smith.

…

Church and other supervisors are considering whether to limit the amounts invested from each issuer of commercial paper and corporate bonds, from 10 percent to just 2 percent of the county pool. The Lehman Bros. portfolio accounted for 5.9 percent of the county’s investment fund.

This is rather unfortunate. Given the precarious position that most schools are in already, this is just more bad news.

Today I received an e-mail from HSBC stating that the interest rate on my account was dropping to 3.0%. While that’s not news I wanted to hear, I applaud them for being upfront about it. Some of my other accounts have dropped the interest rate in half without any notice.

On Friday, at around 1030am, the security lines at Terminal A in SJC were so bad that they backed up into the ramps descending from the parking garages.

Did you know that there’s a secret security line that’s only open between 5am-11am and has no one in line (because it’s secret)?

Just walked a little further outside to the International Arrivals building. If you have a boarding pass already, and have only carry on luggage, apparently they will allow you to enter and be screened there.

I walked by Friday and then doubled back to re-read the sign stating the rules. A TSA agent noticed and actually tried to flag me down to enter because I guess there was no one there (I was trying to leave the airport though… not enter).

Pretty neat. But only between 5am-11am according to the sign.

Bill Would Limit Customs’s Laptop Seizures – Yahoo! News
Democrats in Congress are proposing legislation to limit the authority of customs agents to search and duplicate Americans’ laptops, PDAs, and other electronic devices at border crossings.
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The move follows the release of documents showing that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency broadly expanded the authority of agents to search and duplicate materials from travelers entering the country without the requirement of reasonable suspicion.

Two Democratic senators, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Maria Cantwell of Washington, have cosponsored a bill that would require customs agents to establish a “reasonable suspicion of illegal activity” before searching the contents of laptops or other devices carried by U.S. citizens entering the country. The measure would also limit the amount of time that officials can detain laptops and other devices without a court order and forbids the use of race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin in search selection. A similar bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives.

Now this is a bill I can support!

A Goodbye to Shea Stadium From the Cockpit – NYTimes.com

“You are so low and close you can see it and almost smell it,” said Glen Millen, who estimates that he has flown into and out of La Guardia 1,800 times since he began flying for American Airlines in 1986.

La Guardia is one of the few airports in the country where pilots use land markers instead of instruments to guide their landings, along with Seattle (a shopping mall) and Washington (a river). Shea Stadium, which from the sky looks like a blue circle with a green center, is a primary runway guidepost. For one of the more common landing routes, pilots are instructed to follow the Long Island Expressway until they arrive at the eastern side of the stadium, at which point they bank the plane left around the outfield wall and head straight for Runway 31.

Among pilots and air-traffic controllers, it is known as the “expressway visual approach.”

[snip]

Until the 1980s, when radios that were used in cockpits to pick up transmitters began to be phased out, some pilots would tune them to the local broadcasts of the Mets’ games during landing and take-off.

“You would dial in and you could hear your plane fly over,” said Sam Mayer, a pilot with American Airlines since 1990. “There were guys who would goose the throttles to make a louder noise so they could hear themselves on the radio.”

I never knew that Shea was a landmark for aviation. How unusual.

I’m glad was able to go to Shea one last time earlier this summer before it is demolished.

To the right, you can see Citi Field being constructed. While the brick work is nice (reminds me of Camden), it’s not as iconic as the blue-ness of Shea.

I’ve never been to the old Yankee stadium, and apparently I never will!

When I saw this photos yesterday on a blog, I thought it was a mashup of Internet memes. Apparently, it’s a real photo!

A demonstrator holds up a sign behind US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (left) and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke during Senate a hearing at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Bernanke has said the US economic outlook may be “quite adverse” without a stabilization soon in troubled financial markets.

What? No Fail Whale?

It looks like I need to take a vacation in Early-Mid January. “need” is due to the fact that my vacation day cup runneth over, and that school is out during this time.

I’m open to recommendations. Ideally it would be a place that has service via American Airlines so I can use my increasingly devaluing miles. I’ve ruled out London (though I love that place) due to British pound depresses me, and that it gets 1.75 hours of sunlight.

Thoughts?