Barrack Hussein Obama - President of the United States

I want to be in Washington

(Left:my friend Devin Hampton working for the Obama campaign)

My friend Devin from college has really risen in the politcal ranks. From the looks of this University of Washington news article, he's planning some portion of the Neighborhood Ball during the inauguration. Good for him!

But how annoying is it that my friend - Bart - gets to go as well. Bart just moved to San Francisco from Atlanta (where he went to Emory Law School) just before the election. At the time he was pretty apolitical with McCain leanings. I made many attempts to get him on the Obama bandwagon - he is a San Franciscan after all. All of these attempts he dismissed - though he did attend our election watching get together.

Well he gets to go. I am so jealous.

Dems are Back in the White House!

Yep.... that looks about right!

Long Live the King and Queen!

(photo from nytimes.com)

Great book: "Panic! The Story of Modern Financial Insanity"

Just finished reading this book - which is really a series of news stories and essays leading up to, during, and after 4 modern market crashes.

I was too young to remember what the crash of '87 was about. And as a freshman in college didn't really pay attention to the Asian market crash in '98 (too much studying.... yeah right). It was interesting to see the common threads: lots of leverage, poor rick assessments, swarming investors, and the belief that "this time it's different" and that no bubble exists. It was also really fun to remember the silly dotcom madness - when some companies spent over half their cash on superbowl commercials!

To reminisce, here's a few of them:

OurBeginning.com


Computer.com


EDS

Video of Airplane Crash and Rescue in the Hudson

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/01/17/multimedia/1231545530718/coast-guard-video-of-plane-crash.html

Water Landing!

There's been a lot of high profile crashes lately. Today, 155 lucky people survived a crash into the Hudson thanks to a heroic pilot named "Sully". Crazy. Then of course DJ AM and Travis Barker were in one... and I know there was another recently, I just can't remember.

I think I've become more afraid of flying, and I've been doing a lot of it lately. The odds are not that slim that I'll be in some kind of emergency landing.

A few weeks ago on NPR I heard a discussion about installing emergency exit doors in the airport so that passengers can practice opening the door. That's a great idea and I am not sure why airports don't do it. Maybe they don't want to remind passengers of the possibility of a crash.

Anyways - I'll be reading the emergency exit material more closely now. And thanks to the wonderful pilot that saved all those people today!