Usually my commutes to and from work every day occur during rush hour, which means struggling to squeeze into a train not really caring where you end up as long as you’re on board. Today, however, I got out of work a little bit early and was able to do something I have always wanted to: sit at the very front of the train looking out the “windshield” if you will.

For my non-NJ/NY readers, the PATH is an underground rail system that connects New Jersey and New York at multiple points. The main areas it services are Hoboken, Jersey City and Newark in New Jersey, and Midtown and Wall Street in New York City.

It was pretty exciting to actually see the tracks and the tunnel and how the PATH train navigates through it. Every 50 or so yards there are two light bulbs, and they are colored in typical traffic fashion, red, yellow and green. All the lights are set to red but when the train approaches them they switch to yellow. Thus, the train moves cautiously along but is able to stop at the next light if need be. There is one long stretch where the tunnel protrudes out into the distance as far as the eye can see, and this was the only time when the lights were actually green (train gets up to 45+ mph).

The tunnel was pretty well lit for the most part, with faint white overhead lights throughout the entire tunnel. Except for the part of the tunnel that is under the Hudson River, there were escape shafts every few hundred yards or so. One thing that did surprise me as the train cruised along was the amount of trash that littered the tracks. I even saw a McDonald’s bag at one point, and if you think about it that could be months or years old; gross!

As we were approaching the station the train crept along slowly until finally we had a red light about 65 yards out of the station. After about 10 seconds of waiting another train pulled out of the station (this was the only other train sighting while in the tunnel), and after it had left sight we waited about 15 seconds and proceeded into the station. Just before pulling into the station there is a traffic light shaped box hanging from the wall that says “Track” at the bottom, and the 3 lights are all the same color but only light up as 1, 2 or 3, obviously whichever track the train is assigned to pull into.

All in all it was a pretty cool experience and I recommend it to anyone on a PATH train who notices the front of the train is vacant. It’s pretty neat to see how something that you use every day works. About halfway through the ride I thought “wow, I should be videoing this,” but the thought of arriving at my station and being greeted by Homeland Security doesn’t seem to enticing to me.

Well known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov cites Russian military experts when he says the looming US military attack on Iran is to be carried out during the first week of April, specifically beginning at 4 AM on April 6 — Good Friday. The attack is supposed to last 12 hours, from 4 AM to 4 PM local Iran time.

The attack plan, dubbed Operation Bite, contains about 20 targets for bombing, mostly uranium enrichment facilities, research centers and laboratories. Attacks will come from numerous US military bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, US aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, and US Naval forces in the Mediterranean.

Several Russians with close ties to the Kremlin are pretty sure of this, but of course one has to take it with a grain of salt, although Russia says it is seeing a buildup of US military forces along the Iranian border.

First off hold the phone, launching any attack against Iran would be illegal in every corner of the globe. Bush has sought no authorization from the US or the UN. Secondly, what the heck are they doing? There are wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s no need to start another one between them. I really hope this is an unfounded rumor, or, if it is true, the US will back out of it. This would be detrimental to peace and stability in the world and would increase terrorism throughout the world, particularly against Americans.

After a weekend trip to the famed black market strip in New York City, I have contrived a list of five things you can do to ensure you come out in one piece.

1. Get there early.

The later you get there the worse off you will be for a couple of reasons. First, parking will be ever more difficult to come by; who wants to walk 10 blocks to arrive somewhere and walk around some more? Secondly, when there are fewer people walking the street during the early hours vendors are more eager to sell things, and thus are easier to bargain with.

2. Don’t keep all your money in one pocket.

Whenever my girlfriend and I go we split up money between us. She’ll typically hold $20 or $40 and I’ll hold the remainder. As she’s the one talking and trying to bargain, she pulls out her money and the vendors can see that’s all she has, so they’ll be more likely to give it to us for the lower price we desire. If they see you whip out a load of cash they’ll try to rip you off even more.

3. Never make eye contact.

Anyone who has ever walked down Canal Street knows it feels like you’re a celebrity being mobbed by paparazzi. Everyone is trying to get you into their store, yelling items and prices your way in hopes of getting some sort of response. Avoiding eye contact with them will limit this harassment and allow you to make it from point A to point B easier.

4. Set a price and stand by it.

Often times you’ll see something you want and upon asking a price, are blown away at the outrageousness of it (sorry, that cardboard Gucci knockoff just isn’t worth $80). When you see something you want ask them a price then respond with a counter offer. Once this counter offer is set they will try to meet you halfway, do not fall for it, stick to your price. Bottom line is they need your money a lot more than you need their product, so 9 times out of 10 they will give in to your demands. In the rare occasion they don’t, walk next door and try your luck there.

5. Buy only what you came for, then leave.

With all of the cheap prices on tons of items it’s easy to get caught up in the ruckus and go on a spending spree; don’t, in the end you’ll end up with a bucket of cheap goods that you will not want a day later, and half of them won’t even work.

In celebration of its 10-year anniversary, Yahoo! Mail has announced that starting May 2007 they will be removing all caps on storage and allowing all users (free and paid) of its service unlimited space. Yahoo! Mail is currently third in terms of free webmail space at 1 GB, MSN Hotmail is second at 2 GB and Google’s Gmail is first with 2.8 GB.

Yahoo! Mail first launched in 1997 with 4 MB of storage, and upgraded to 100 MB in 2004. Soon after, they raised the limit to 1 GB in 2005. Premium (paid) subscribers are currently allowed 2 GB of storage.

I think this is a fantastic move on Yahoo’s part. While it probably won’t be enough to convince me to switch from Gmail, I applaud Yahoo for recognizing that this was clearly where the industry was going and taking the first step. Gmail and Hotmail would be wise to follow suit, particularly Gmail if they want to start to chip away at Yahoo! Mail’s 250+ million users.

The individuals in charge of presidential hopeful John McCain’s e-campaign changed his MySpace layout today, but unfortunately for them, they forgot to read the fine print. They used a template from Newsvine Founder and CEO Mike Davidson, but forgot to a) give him credit for the template, and b) host template images on their own server.

(picture courtesy of TechCrunch)

As you can see, Davidson wasn’t going to stand for not getting recognized for his work AND having to pay bandwidth fees for McCain’s MySpace page, as he changed one of the images to say “Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage…particularly marriage between two passionate females.” Pretty genius if you ask me.

Was he wrong to pull a fast one on the McCain team like this? Surely he could have easily contacted McCain’s campaign and asked for them to adhere to the guidelines. So I guess it all depends on the intent of those who implemented the layout; if they knowingly took out attribution and used others’ bandwidth then they were in the wrong and deserved it — online resources aren’t free. However, if they didn’t and this was accidental then Davidson is in the wrong and acted a bit harsh without trying something else initially.

Up until this point British Prime Minister Tony Blair has remained relatively diplomatic about the fact that Iran captured 15 of his marines and soldiers four days ago. However, in a show that his mannerism is beginning to change, today he warned the Iranian government in Tehran that if they did not free the captured soldiers then this situation would move into a “different phase.”

Iran allegedly captured the solders because they had intentionally intruded into Iranian waters, or at least that was the story over the weekend. Now, Iran is saying that they are interrogating the soldiers to see “whether or not their intrusion was intentional.” Who knows what they’ll say today or tomorrow.

My guess is Iran will back down and free the soldiers. Sure, they’ll hold them as long as possible and try to look like they’re not folding, but in the 11th hour they’ll return them to Britain. They really don’t have any other option, unless they are in fact trying to start a war.

Capturing the solders in the first place was a bad move on Iran’s part, there are around 10,000 British solders in Iraq (my guess?), not to mention 140,000+ U.S. soldiers who would certainly support them. Thus, starting any military conflict with Britain would be worse than with the United States, because if you fight with the US you are fighting them alone, but if you fight with Britain you also fight with the US and possibly more countries since international sentiment would be on the British side.

So my final thought on this is that either Khomeini and Ahmadinejad have nothing better to do in Tehran, or this is another act on Iran’s part to deflect attention away from its nuclear program (we saw this with Iran’s proxy war with Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel last summer). At any rate, Iran is growing less and less trustworthy by the day, and that does not show well for the future…

This one comes via Digg, and while I don’t generally like to take stuff off the front page (I prefer upcoming stories :P) I thought that this one from mingle2.com would resonate with some of my readers, particularly my girlfriend Carin. So without further adieu, ladies here are the top 10 reasons why you should be dating a geek:

1. They’re probably very smart.
2. Geeks are cool now, honestly.
3. Geeks have hobbies outside of computers and are often very good at them.
4. Geek humor is the best humor.
5. They listen to great music.
6. Geeks make good money.
7. Geeks can fix things.
8. There’s never a dull moment with a geek.
9. They’re very well-spoken and articulate with their words.
10. Geeks embody passion, even if only with gadgets.

If I could add one of my own I’d say: 11. Geeks are loyal subjects. Think of how many geeks still hold on to their computers and other gadgets years after they have become “obsolete,” imagine how well we would take care of and hold onto our leading ladies?

I used to enjoy going on MySpace to catch up with old friends, particularly those on the other side of the country. Having them all in one place made it extremely easy to keep in touch with everyone. However, over the past few months the amount of spam I’ve been receiving in messages and comments has been steadily increasing, and the past few days have just been atrocious.

For the first time I am seriously considering deleting my account, even at the expense of losing some long distance contact with old friends. It is just getting ridiculous the amount of spam messages I’m getting and the utter inability of MySpace to stop it — that is, if they even want to stop it.

I don’t see anything changing anytime soon, but I really hope Rupert and the News Corp boys put some sort of effort into bringing an end to this, otherwise it will most certainly lead to them losing a member.

So I’m a little late with this, about 3 months or so, but I finally saw The Nativity Story this weekend. A film about the most famous birth in all of human history, it came originally during the Christmas season of 2006 but I was sadly unable to see it at the time.

The film begins with Zechariah at the Holy Temple in Jerusalem finding out that his wife, who was of old age, was going to have a child — he would later become known as John the Baptist. Then it goes into Mary’s life and her visit from an angel telling her that the holy spirit would come upon her with God’s child. It also shows how Joseph and Mary were the result of an arranged marriage, which I personally did not know before watching the movie. I did know, however, that there was a lot of difficulty between them, particularly at first due to Mary’s pregnancy with Jesus in her womb, and the film did a good job of illustrating this.

It shows how Joseph and Mary ended up in Bethlehem and the hardships they endured on their journey, which ultimately brought them closer together. Finally, it shows the birth of Jesus, and the tremendous occasion it was for all at the time. The movie concludes with Joseph taking Mary and Jesus to Egypt to flee King Herod, after an angel visits Joseph and tells him Herod is coming to kill baby Jesus.

All-in-all I thought this was a magnificent film that I could watch over and over again, and perhaps the most moving one I have seen since The Passion of the Christ. I highly recommend this movie to Christians all around the world, as well as anyone with an interest in Jesus, Mary or Joseph.

Yesterday France became the first country to open its secret files on UFOs after the national space agency announced a web site that documents over 1,600 sightings covering at least five decades. The web site, which will continuously be updated to accommodate for new sightings, gives surprisingly good detail about cases from those that are laughable to those that scientists still scratch their heads about to this day.

Of the 1,600 cases registered since 1954, nearly 25 percent are classified as “type D”, meaning that “despite good or very good data and credible witnesses, we are confronted with something we can’t explain,” said Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer who heads the office for the study of “non-identified aerospatial phenomena.”

When asked questions about evidence of life beyond Earth, Patenet responded “we do not have the least proof that extra-terrestrials are behind the unexplained phenomena.” Although he did add ” nor do we have the least proof that they aren’t.”

The French field about 50 to 100 UFO reports every year, although only about 10% of those get on-site investigations. In other countries such as the US and Britain, data on UFOs is collected outside of the public eye, however information can be requested from the government under the Freedom of Information Act.

I think it’s pretty exciting that the French took the initiative on this one and cleared up a lot of speculation and potential paranoia. With all the conspiracy theories circulating around the globe, and the countless number of films and TV shows that have only fed the fire, it’s nice to actually be able to look at the data and see the truth for ourselves.

At the time of this post I have been unable to access the site, and reports are saying it has crashed multiple servers so you’re on your own with this one. I’ll try to update whenever I can access it, but drop me a note if you are able to get on it before me. The URL is: www.cnes-geipan.fr.