Some good news coming out of the BARC meetings today, at least if you're from New England and have a stake in such things: the New London sub base and the Portsmouth Naval Yard aren't going to close. There is at least one reader who's worked at both and can perhaps provide some personal observations. All I can say is that Maine can use all the jobs it can get, and keeping Portsmouth open will help.
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A technology-related question: would I be better off getting Tivo or going with the DVR offered by Comcast?
Now that I'm back among the fully employed, we've decided to put some of our new gains into some sort of DVR system. I mess up the VCR thing enough between missed endings and tape-overs that it seems like a good thing to do.
Tivo would cost $13 a month and whatever we pay to buy the box. Comcast's DVR is $10 a month and is combined with our cable box. I've been comparing the services and can't come up with too many differences, though I think the ability to skip commercials is one of them. Not sure if that's a big deal or not; I'm used to fast forwarding through ads when using the VCR.
I'm tending towards the Comcast box just so I don't have to worry about having to buy new boxes in the future, but if you've got something to say here, please do.
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Not sure why I'm separating things with the asterisks. Do you like it?
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Still plenty of time to vote about what state I should dislike. Knowing some of you as I do and your love of hatin', I can't imagine why the vote totals are so low. Unless you're hatin' on the poll, which I can respect.
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2 comments:
I was certainly pleased to see the PNS and Subase Groton were taken off the list. From a military standpoint, neither decision seemed to make a lot of sense to me. I'm also happy for purely selfish reasons as we still own our house in Salem, CT (renting it out currently) and I wasn't looking forward to the plummeting market value of the home that would surely follow a base closure.
From a jobs standpoint, Groton wouldn't have been hit quite as hard. With Pfizer, Electric Boat and the two casinos in the area, they would have taken a hit but quickly recovered. Portsmouth on the other hand would have really been hit hard. I can't imagine what it would have been like there if the place shut down.
Getting back to my military decision comment, having spent two years in the shipyard undergoing overhaul and having seen similar programs in Norfolk, Bremerton (WA) and Pearl Harbor, I can honestly say that Portsmouth is far and away the best submarine overhaul shipyard we have. They were professional, hard working and dedicated to being a team player. These qualities are lacking to many degrees elsewhere in the navy's maintenance arm. Groton, too, has many advantages both from the submarine education standpoint as well as their model short term maintenance capabilities. This being said, I agree wholeheartedly with the Pentagon's assessment that we have an overabundance of submarine infrastructure on the east coast. While I strongly disagree with the policy, the writing is on the wall and the submarine footprint on the east coast will be shrinking. Not only are many in the DOD advocating an overall reduction in the number of submarines we maintain, but there is a strong push within the Navy to shift more assets to the Pacific, where all the potential action is. The Russian navy is still out there, but the need to maintain a cold war posture against that threat simply isn't there any more. China is the next big beast to watch out for, so more SSNs in the Pacific, especially Guam is the way to go.
It will be interesting to see where they do decide to reduce submarine infrastructure, if they do at all. Perhaps the Pearl shipyard will take a hit and subs will be moved out of Norfolk. We'll just have to wait and see.
The Comcast DVR box is just fine and is very similar to the TiVo, with the differences too slight to make a big impact. Besides, TiVo signed a deal with Comcast this year, so the two will be working hand-in-hand some time in 2006.
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