Open Thread – 9/6/2010

Following the best laid plans of mice and men, I woke up yesterday morning to a dead router.  No lights-no connectivity.  Everything I do is wireless, so I plugged the modem into the computer just long enough to confirm that the electronics store was open and walked 3/4 of a mile to get there.  This weekend only, it was closed until noon.  Grrr!!  I walked home, rested until noon, walked back, bought a router, returned home and installed it.  Sadly as soon as connectivity was restored, Microsoft Update went to work in the background, and when I rebooted for the router, the update was installed too.  In the process, the two conflicted and wiped out my Antivirus definitions too.  It took me hours to recover the system enough to barely direct connect to the Internet, and download new virus definitions.  I spent two more hours chatting with a nice fellow from India, who could almost speak English.  We finally got the router working properly, and I crawled into bed, without replying to comments or returning visits.  I hope to do better today.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 4:05.  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Bloomberg: President Barack Obama, focusing on ways to spur economic growth with less than two months to the congressional elections, will urge Congress to permanently extend and expand a research and development tax credit for businesses.

This is a good idea, but it needs to be coupled with grants for independent research.

From News Hounds: In honor of Labor Day, a special Cost of Freedom “business block” on Fox News made a special effort to attack unions. Actually, substitute host Stuart Varney didn’t just attack unions, he accused Bruce Raynor, of Workers United, of siding with “our enemies.” Why? Because Raynor supported the Obama administration’s report to the United Nations “equating the difficulty of organizing a union here in America to a human rights offense.”

The US has treaty obligations to allow workers to freely unionize, so Republican roadblocks are a human rights offense.  But Fox was right.  Obama was siding with Fox’s enemies: American workers.

Cartoon: from Cagle.com

This day, thou shalt not labor!