what is the brandname of the ultra-expensive gas stove that basically stays hot all the time? I think it's made in England.

It's not Viking? Those are made in Mississippi.

When I lived in Chico, it was common knowledge (so, possibly not true at all) that about one person a year died on the train tracks that ran through town. I can certainly remember one who was just a drunk kid who couldn't quite make it home one night and lay down on the tracks. There was no derailing or anything.

By the way, I have a Rio MP3 player that I don't use at all. Don't know what the memory is, probably smallish. Free to a good home if someone wants it.

But I ripped all my CDs way before I got one, so I guess my barrier to entry was low. Once you have ripped, though, it's not much work. And the ripping effort is on par with playing the CD once -- so your ROI appears pretty quickly.

The ripping CDs thing... I dunno. I don't play CDs off my computer, usually. But maybe I should, and get with the ripping and burning and whatnot. And then there's all the fiddling and playlists and blah blah. I don't mind just playing CDs.

Allyson -- You work at the Jet Propulsion Lab, Don't you? Did you see this story about a book about the JPL?

Vikings are the expensive American commercial-turned-residential stoves. Agas are the British ones that are always on, which makes more sense given the British climate and household heating. I think you can get coal-fired Agas, or could until recently.

It seems like Metra trains kill several people each year here. Some are suicides and some are accidents. It's not unknown for pedestrians and bicyclists to try to cross the tracks near a train station in front of a train, not realized that the train is an express train that's going 70 mph instead of a regular train that's gonna stop at the station.

there's all the fiddling and playlists and blah blah

There's no mandatory fiddling, honest. I fiddle and playlist because I like the idea of playing all the LotR soundtracks in one shot, in sequence, or having all the 80s music I like in rotation for a whole week.

But you don't have to. You can play by album just like before, or by artist or genre without playlisting or fiddling at all.

50% of the conversations I've overheard between strangers today have been about the not!suicide. One of them seemed to be between lawyers who will be working on the case. Not sure in what capacity -- them talking about the company's exposure in the case made me think that Metrolink might be their client.

Apparantly New York is the best/fastest at cleaning up the mess and resuming normal subway service - I've heard it takes them about an hour.

Just as long as nobody sets fire to our only A-train control room, we're good.

Aga stoves. Want.

Also -- I don't get how they're a lot of work.

You are talking to someone who doesn't play many of her cds because that would involve turning on the cd player, switching the non-remoted tuner to the cd channel thing, putting in or taking out cds and finding the remote. I am lazy, hear me snore.

There is not a cd burner in the house (unless...well, no, I don't think my laptop has one.)

The ipod in theory would make it possible to avoid such. But it would never get set up.

Instead, I listen to a lot of radio. Or nothing.

There's no mandatory fiddling, honest.

Anyone else picturing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"?

....just me, then.