After regaling us with meetings and newsletters telling how well the company is doing, and how they expect business to pick up this year, my company put out a memo this week saying they had no choice but to lay people off or let them go completely.

That's it. They haven't said what departments or branches or whatever will be cut back on. I know I always am busy, but they could cut me and have someone else do my work.

So we don't know until they get around to saying who's cut... Since I haven't been there two years, I don't qualify for the severance pay. Also, if they go by seniority, I'm closer to the new end.

Of course, they have claimed they are going to start doing random drug testing. If they cut a lot of people and keep those with "seniority", they'll be keeping a lot of people that won't pass a drug test. Some of these people make little effort to hide the fact that they smoke pot on breaks and at lunch. If they dump a lot of people, then do testing, they'll be short handed.

I would drug test everyone now. They would save money, because the people who fail can be seperated "for cause" and don't need to be given severence pay and the company would not have to pay for unemployment compensation.

That's whaqt's going on at my work.

Sometimes it's better when your favorite team is on tv, to listen to the radio broadcast. The national broadcasters are really anoying in many sports. When the Penguins are on NBC or Versus, I'm often annyed at the commentary. Steelers games are another where the local radio broadcasting team far outshadows the national talking heads on the TV broadcasts.

Now, you can just play the radio audio while watching it, but it is several seconds out of whack. It's much worse if you have satelite TV, because satelite signal lags even the over the air TV signal.

If you tape both the radio and TV broadcasts, you can sync them up, but you have to wait until the game is over to start watching, and if you fast forward in a commercial, you have to re-sync it each time.

What would be nice is a dvr-radio reciever combo with the capability to delay the radio signal, then if you pause the game, it would pause both audio and TV, leaving it in sync when you start it back up.

Well? Anyone else have any ideas or solutions?

I just bought a new DVD player. Not a portable, but the one for in the living room by the big TV. 29.95 I paid. I paid a couple of hundred dollars for my first DVD player. I paid a couple of hundred dollars for my first CD player in fact.

It boggles the mind how the prices drop on electronics.

I remember paying $279 for a 52mb hard drive... Sheesh... I guess that makes me old...