It's nice to see that we made the right decision in leaving Denver/Boulder a year ago. Though the Forbes report on the most overpriced places to live includes too many western cities including Seattle, Portland, San Jose, San Francisco and Los Angeles in with the traditional eastern overpriced markets like New York and Chicago. It makes the crunch in Sin City seem not so bad.

Senator Rick Santorum introduced the National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005 earlier this year. The bill would have several troubling effects. These impacts may mark the first time the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association have had occasion to be allied on an issue.

The bill, which Santourm says was crafted with the "jobs of Pennsylvanians in mind," would limit the National Weather Service's ability to provide information to the public. Instead the agency would use its tax-payer funding to create "a set of data portals designed for volume access by commercial providers of products or services." These services, such as Santorum campaign donor AccuWeather, would then provided to consumers through commercial services.

Limiting access to commercial providers would eliminate the provision of data for so much of rural America. Everybody from search and rescue teams to farmers and small town fire-fighters would be at the mercy of these commercial providers for critical, sometimes life-or-death, situations. With the recent fires in Southern Nevada for example, the large weather services didn't have information available. Residents of the farms and rural residences would have had no information to make decisions. In truth we need more information not less.

There are several folks I know who are blogging anonymously or with pseudonyms. One former colleague who has since moved on wrote in their blog that it was a new start in another place because colleagues were reading what was written. With the desire of some folks to blog anonymously or with pseudonyms, here are a few tips:

• Don't use your email address: If your email address on every system you get one on is joesmith123 then don't make your pseudonym joesmith123. This all-to-common mistake makes it very easy to follow people to various message boards where they may have posted about things thinking they were anonymous.
• If you move your blog don't advertise it on the same list: If you were listed on a site with all stories from the Smith family and you list your new site there chances are it will be found.
• Don't use the same tool: If you consistently use one tool (as I do with Drupal) then try something else for your alter-ego.
• Don't post pictures of yourself: Especially if you have pictures posted elsewhere on the internet.
• Don't post at the same time: Don't post to your alter-ego at the same time of day.

Writing anonymously in public can be interesting. If you're normally a pessimist try the optimistic point of view, a liberal can try conservative ideas and vice versa. Most of all, don't post something that will be terrible if it gets tracked back to you. Chances are very, very, good that somebody will link your alter-ego to you if you say something controversial that garners attention. No amount of anonymity will keep you hidden because somebody always knows who is using what computer at the moment.

Pretty good. Leaving Chicago this afternoon I debated taking the standby on the earlier flight. Of course it meant giving up my isle seat for what would likley be crammed in between what Southwest euphemistically calls "Customers of Size". Much to my delight I was instead slated into an aisle exit row seat where I gladly forgo the "reclining" seat for the awesome leg room. I could have easily used the 15-inch laptop instead of the 12-inch but I ran the battery down at the airport choosing to charge the 12-inch instead.

Of course nothing is perfect. Something about being in the row with the teenager who ignores the repeated request to close the window shade is quite annoying. I like looking out the window as much as the next person, but when the cabin is dark but for a single very bright light a few feet away the eyes are playing a constant game of trying to adjust to the light and many other customers are unable to see the movie.

On the topic of teenagers and movies, or teen movies, Netflix delivered American Pie 2 the other day. It is much better than the original and is full of good laughs at the expense of coming-of-age teens.

America West has a great American classics music channel with folk songs, The Boss, The Beach Boys, Elvis Pressley and Lee Greenwood's classic anthem. Less successful is the in-flight entertainment and cafe. First the entertainment system. The last flight it didn't work at all. This time about a quarter of the seats don't work and the screens are in terrible condition. The on-board "cafe" this afternoon was stocked with only a few breakfast meals. None of the lunches advertised. The last trip was similarly poorly stocked with only "snack packs" and not the sandwiches advertised.