Greg In The Desert

• YouTube – Leo Laporte Blows up at Mike Arrington on the Gillmor Gang – June 6, 2009 – Leo Laporte calls out Mike Arrington of TechCrunch after Leo got mad at him for implying that his opinion of the Pre was effected by the fact he had a free review unit.
• Bachelorette Contestant Has Rio Rancho Roots – Albuquerque News Story – KOAT Albuquerque – The season premiere of ABC's hit show 'The Bachelorette' aired Monday night.
  One of the contestants on the show is a New Mexico native looking for love on this season's bachelorette.
  Greg Bilbro, 31, grew up in Rio Rancho, where his mom Haz Brown still lives.
• Police: Handgun handed off at airport, gets on plane | Philadelphia Inquirer | 06/04/2009 – A U.S. Airways employee was being questioned by authorities this morning after a bag containing an unloaded gun apparently circumvented security and made it onto a plane at Philadelphia International Airport, police said.

  A passenger waiting to board Flight 1195, destined for Phoenix, noticed another passenger handing a carry-on bag directly to the airline employee, said Officer Christine O'Brien, a Philadelphia police spokeswoman.

• ABQJOURNAL NEWS/METRO: El Nino Might Drench Your Plans in New Mexico – A rapid warming in the Pacific Ocean during the past few weeks led climate watchers Thursday to issue their first forecast in three years for an El Niño, a climate pattern that favors wet weather for the Southwestern United States.
• Ex-State Dept. employee arrested for spying for Cuba – Washington Times – A former State Department official and his wife have been arrested on charges of serving as illegal agents of the Cuban government and conspiring to provide classified U.S. information to the Cuban government.
• Family wins $6.5 million settlement from city – Six-year-old Adrian Trevino was asleep in bed next to his 3-year-old sister, Aletse, when he was jarred awake by loud noises outside his window: a helicopter flying overhead, yelling, then rapid gunfire.

  Just as Adrian sat up in bed, a stray bullet pierced his Maryvale home and struck him in the back, permanently paralyzing him from the belly button down.

• MacGourmet organizes and helps find new recipes Review | Software | Mac Gems | Macworld – If you’re a recipe geek and need a place to store, organize, and categorize your current and potential meals, look no further than MacGourmet. From the program’s recipe box metaphor to its flexible visuals, plug-in architecture, auto import functions, and smart searching, this is one of the most versatile and extensible programs available for any cook.
• Fatty foods — not empty stomach — fire up hunger hormone | Science Blog – New research led by the University of Cincinnati (UC) suggests that the hunger hormone ghrelin is activated by fats from the foods we eat — not those made in the body — in order to optimize nutrient metabolism and promote the storage of body fat.
• TidBITS Media Creation: iMovie ‘09 8.0.3 Adds New Hidden Features – Apple released iMovie '09 8.0.3 this week, a seemingly minor update that "addresses general compatibility issues, improved overall stability and fixes a number of other minor issues." However, I've discovered that this small iteration turns out to have two new features, along with some other undocumented changes.
• Don’t expect DEA raids on N.M. medical marijuana dispensaries – The nation’s top cop said Friday that marijuana dispensaries participating in New Mexico’s fledgling medical marijuana program shouldn’t fear Drug Enforcement Agency raids, a staple of the Bush administration.

  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking in Albuquerque during a meeting focused on border issues, including drug trafficking, said his department is focused “on large traffickers,” not on growers who have a state’s imprimatur to dispense marijuana for medical reasons.

• Buyers flock to cheap foreclosed homes – A Glendale home that sold less than two years ago for $259,000 sold again three months ago for $113,000. A Phoenix home that fetched $190,000 two years ago just went for $45,900. A Queen Creek home sold for nearly $275,000 when it was built in 2005. Last month's price: $78,000.
• Bomb threat prompts search at Dobson High – Police searched the school buildings and fields this morning before students arrived for school. Bareiss said the school day proceeded as usual.

  "I think this is a time of year when students get spring fever and may think this is a joke," Bareiss said. "It's not a joke, and as a district it's our responsibility to take every threat as real."

• Costco Homes in Tempe to close – Costco Homes in south Tempe will close July 3.

  ]The Tempe home store, which sells furniture and appliances, is one of just two Costco Homes in the nation. The other one, in Kirkland, Wash., also is closing.

  "Costco Home has been a valuable experiment for us," Costco's CEO, Jim Sinegal, said in a news release.

  "The current economic slowdown and resulting weakness in the home furnishings business in particular have led us to conclude that the single-format Costco Home concept does not fit into our long-term expansion plans."

• Whole Health Source: Reversing Tooth Decay – What about humans? Drs. Mellanby set out to see if they could use their dietary principles to cure tooth decay that was already established. They divided 62 children with cavities into three different diet groups for 6 months. Group 1 ate their normal diet plus oatmeal (rich in phytic acid). Group 2 ate their normal diet plus vitamin D. Group 3 ate a grain-free diet and took vitamin D.
• The Pragmatic Studio | iPhone Developer’s Roadmap – So where do you start on the path to learning how to create iPhone applications? Well, that depends. There's no single book, screencast, or training course that suits everyone. You'll need to take honest stock of your current skills and choose the appropriate resources. Here are some pointers to help you get started:
• Hulu tries HTML encoding trick to protect streaming content – Ars Technica – The discovery was made by TunerFreeMCE's Martin Millmore, whose media center software makes it possible for users to watch video feeds from a variety of sources in one application (similar to Boxee). Millmore noted on his website that new Hulu content contained a string of URL-encoded characters that are byte shifted from the original characters. "They then run the character stream through a series of JavaScript functions to convert it back in to plain text before pushing it in to your browser using DHTML," Millmore wrote. "That's quite a lot of effort just for fun, so I assume that is to stop screen scrapers from parsing content."
• GE and Intel to unveil health care partnership| Reuters – U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co and Intel Corp, the world's largest chip maker, have scheduled a joint press conference for Thursday, and are expected to discuss an alliance in health care, according to a source with knowledge of the plans.

  The companies' respective chief executives, Jeff Immelt and Paul Otellini, are scheduled to discuss their tie up at an event in New York.

• Windows 95 almost had floppy insertion detection but the training cost was prohibitive – One feature which Windows 95 almost had was floppy disk insertion detection. In other words, Windows 95 almost had the ability to detect when a floppy disk was present in the drive without spinning up the drive.

  The person responsible for Windows 95's 32-bit floppy driver studied the floppy drive hardware specification and spotted an opportunity. Working through the details of the specification revealed that, yes, if you issued just the right extremely clever sequence of commands, you could determine whether a disk was in the floppy drive without spinning up the drive. But there was a catch.

• Local Pistachio Farmers React To Recall – Albuquerque News Story – KOAT Albuquerque – Pistachio farmers in southeast New Mexico are angry over the Food and Drug Administration's warning that people should stay away from the nut.
  The warning comes after a salmonella scare at a pistachio plant in California, which accounts for about 99 percent of all pistachio harvesting in the U.S.
  Marianne and George Schweers own Eagle Ranch Pistachio Grove in Alamogordo.
  They said they have been busy doing damage control since the FDA's general warning to stay away from all pistachios.
  "We are not involved at all," Marianne Schweers said. "By painting with that big broad brush then people are really not looking to see the address on the bag."
• Current affairs, future outcomes? – t seems the real cost of building the [Eclipse] FPJ never dropped below $2.3 million dollars, even during the 'volume' days last summer. Current best estimates are that the bird will cost something like $2.5 million to build in low (1 per week) numbers, possibly dropping a little if the rate rises. The killer appears to have been the totally unrealistic number of build hours being spent on each one. Consensus is about 4,000 hours per aircraft, without fixing squawks. No matter which way you try to do this, you need to sell FPJ's at something north of $2.5 million to make a profit, and closer to $3 million to offer an ROI to the moneymen.

Today we got the news, 100 – 200 people will be laid off (or redeployed as they like to tell us) at Intel’s Fab11X, Rio Rancho. I won’t publicly discuss more than what the local news is reporting only that the management just got the directive and they haven’t quite figured out how they are going to go about it. We should know if we are in or out at the beginning of Q2 2009.

Also see local TV station coverage KOB, KOAT and KRQE

Update 1/28/08: 500 are being cut from the Chandler, AZ site.

• KOB.com – HP to break ground on Rio Rancho center
• Intel feels pain from dropping revenue, WiMAX investment
  This morning, in advance of its official earnings announcement next week, the company released preliminary earnings figures that indicate the situation has gotten worse over the holiday season. It now looks like Intel's revenue came in another billion dollars below the November estimate, or nearly $2 billion below what the company was predicting in October. The $8.2 billion it expects to see represents a 20 percent drop from the prior quarter, and a full 23 percent year-over-year. The same factors that were blamed in the November announcement are fingered in the preliminary earnings report. Gross margins dropped to roughly 55 percent.
• Rio Rancho Police Launch Online Crime Alert And Mapping Service – Albuquerque News Story – KOAT Albuquerque
  The service provides mapped neighborhood crime data in near real-time and is available now.
  The service is free to the public and allows citizens to receive automatic daily, weekly or monthly e-mail alerts if and/or when a crime occurs near a location of their interest such as home, office, or school. Citizens can also review reported crime activity on a map for any location within Rio Rancho boundaries.