Minimal Blogging Due To Out-Of-Town Family Visitors -- November 9, 2014;

We still have out-of-town company so I am not getting much of a chance to blog. A couple of links to stories that readers have sent me:

BNSF completes North Dakota rail upgrades costing $400 million, including a double track from Minot to Williston. Total investment in the series of BNSF projects was $5.5 billion. I assume Hillary, Barry, and Pocahantas will tell us "BNSF did not build that."

It turns out that Russia and Saudi Arabia are blaming speculators for driving the price of oil down. Bloomberg is reporting. LOL. 

Fast-tracking the world's largest solar array in a US desert.

I'll have to come back to this article later; going through it quickly, I might have missed some of the nuances, but the main story appears to be the whooping-crane killing wind project in North Dakota is back on track.

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Cronuts: A Note to the Granddaughters

The other day I talked about Cronuts in a note to the granddaughters. An alert reader noted a similar article in this month's edition of the Wall Street Journal magazine (with the Saturday, November, 2011, edition). A big thank you to the reader for pointing that out. I would have missed it.

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Technology: A Note to the Granddaughters

Technology really is incredible. The granddaughters had a sleep-over last night. We're having an early Thanksgiving dinner while out-of-town family guests are here and as per tradition, the granddaughters help prepare the pies and cakes and whatever the night before, working late into the evening so they just stay overnight when they are done. This morning, we called their parents to see what was on the agenda and during the phone call my wife (not necessarily technologically astute) and daughter simply pushed an app and they were on Facetime, so my wife could see the youngest granddaughter (age 4 months now). They were on the new iPhone 6 but I assume one can do it on any smartphone (and I assume every other smart phone was able to do this before Apple). While talking, my wife also sent a photo of the girls baking earlier. I find it absolutely amazing I'm the four-month-old was trying to figure how her older sisters got so tiny in that little iPhone window.

But yes, I still use the dumb-phone, the 2000ish Samsung clamshell.