Personal Dork Assistant

Such Great Heights

Back in Rowland Heights for a few days on the way back home. Auntie seems to feel obligated to keep us entertained, which is how we ended up at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. It's a fine testament to the power of televangelism. Kinda like how Notre Dame or Chatres were testaments to the power of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, except they have more parking in the O.C. Was more impressed with the innumerable marble plaques honoring donors than the gleaming steel and glass structures. But maybe I'm prejudiced because the Hour of Power used to be on Sundays just before the football games, so I couldn't wait for the damn Hour to finish. I would've loved a Crystal Cathedral T-shirt, but I'm resolving to spend less money on frivolous things, and giving a televangelist 20 bucks for a shirt would definitely fall under "frivolous."

Talk about glass and steel, we drove over to the Cerritos Public Library. Apparently the city gets a ton of sales tax revenue from Cerritos Auto Square, and the library showed it. There's a big tropical fish tank at the entrance, complete with a couple of mini sharks at the top of the food chain. Dark wood in the periodicals section, gleaming chrome and steel in the stacks. A couple dozen computers at the Internet station, with Aeron chairs for butt comfort. It's a little perverse in that the only way for a city to provide decent services is to build as many malls as possible and maximize housing prices (thereby minimizing the number of people and maximizing property tax revenue). Cerritos (61%!) also happens to be one of the seven LA County cities with a majority Asian population.

Did get a chance to hit Frank & Sons, the legendary twice-weekly LA collectibles show in a non-descript warehouse just down the road from where we were. Unfortunately, the Darksteel single prices were still way over-inflated, and it was almost dinnertime and starting to rain, so we couldn't stay long. I could've easily skipped dinner and spent all night there, but there was the thing about being polite guest and all that. Dad probably suspected the same, which was why he insisted on coming along.

I've only driven through this part of Orange County on freeways, so it's a little different to be sitting in the car driving along all the big avenues that I've only known as exit names. Makes you realize what a vast wasteland the whole place is. Plot after plot of planned communities of low-slung single-family homes, separated by mini-malls and not-so-mini-malls. I'm surprised they're still finding space to build. I guess the prices are high enough now for the builders to take the trouble to grade the hills and build houses up there with views of... um... the vast wasteland of blahblahblah. On the other hand, the houses do make perfectly nice cocoons. They had the chance to customize their home as it was being built and pay for some upgrades. I would've loved to have been able to upgrade some of the Home Depot-special junk they used in our house. All the cul-de-sacs and twisty lanes keep traffic down and quiet, but it sure makes it a pain to navigate, since you're in for a big loop if you miss your one turnoff point.

A few of the neighbors were washing their cars as we drove out. You know you're in a nice neighborhood when one garage had a S and a Carrera, while next door held an A4, X5, and LS.

Moronicity (iPod Mini Bureau)

Let's not even count the hordes of nay-saying nabobs that came out of the woodwork when the Mini was announced. So what's the first thing you do when you debox your $250 (before taxes) toy? Rip it apart, of course!

I do have lots of close up pictures and can take more as the Pod mini looks like it's not going back together. I am an industrial designer who is use to professionally disassembling things like this and I have never been unable to get something back together. I screwed up on the iPod mini though; big time... twice! It's really tightly packaged and very very delicate.

Congratulations, you have a 250-dollar... something not useful. It doesn't even make a good paperweight or doorstop because it's so damn tiny and light.

The Motley Fool clown didn't want to believe the press release touting 100,000 pre-orders. So he went to the Apple Store, which had sold out of all the colors except silver, only because it's the color they stocked the most. He saw six Minis sold in the fifteen minutes he was in the store. So he had both hard numbers and anecdotal evidence of iPod Minis flying out the door, but that's not good enough for him.

Interestingly, Fool.com discussion board polling provided a stark contrast to my in-store experience. As of this writing, only one of 96 respondents, a Mac user, reported buying a Mini this weekend. How could that be?

Clearly, it's too early to tell if the Mini's premiere was a flop. And we won't know for sure unless Apple publishes numbers. But between my in-store experience and the unscientific poll, it appears the hype may have been just that.

Somehow he comes up with the conclusion that the Mini intro was a flop, based purely on a tiny biased sample of a poll on an Internet message board. I don't even know how his in-store experience supports his conclusion when said experience showed the store almost sold out of iPod Minis, at a rate of 24 an hour. What a maroon.

Looks like I'll be back in town in time for the opening of the flagship San Francisco Apple Store. Do I want to stand in a long line for a free T-shirt that'll be too big for me anyway? Hopefully they'll have discounts or something.

Posted by mikewang on 11:48 AM

Meet Mr. Placebo Effect

The insidiously vague ads for real medicines allow the unregulated supplements to play an FDA-approved substances, at least on TV. Worked for Enzyte. Their ad made me thought it was a real drug, and apparently millions of people bought into it. Now there's Avlimil, too. Of course, for it to be effective you have to be on a continuous regimen for months, and they would be happy to set up a regular delivery (and credit card charge) schedule for you.

Immersing himself in market research and trade shows, Warshak zoomed in on several categories that held promise. Viagra's effectiveness on male sexual dysfunction convinced him that a product was needed for men who aren't dysfunctional, but who aren't the sexual dynamos they once were.

Garden State Nutritionals, a New Jersey company, devised the formula for Warshak. It included legendary sex-drive boosters from around the world. Warshak dubbed it Enzyte. It hit the market in the spring of 2001.

Man, Pfizer must be slapping themselves in the forehead. All that trouble to develop new drugs, when they can just outsource to some NJ company who can whip up a magical formula to cure anything that ails ya. At least they aren't slaughtering tigers or anything like that, I guess. Although tiger penis would count as a "legendary sex-drive booster," but it's probably too expensive as a raw material. I now have a guess for what they do with all the dangly bits left over at the SPCA, though.

Fragging Alone

Sure, Penny Arcade often gets smarmy and too-l33t-for-thou, but occasionally their views on computer gaming coincide perfectly with mine, which always comes as a pleasant surprise since I'm not actually much of a video gamer.

"Gabe Heaven" consists of a barren world, devoid of life, populated by yourself and an army of robots whose behavior you control. Is that about right?

I do hate it when they take my heaven and name it after themselves.

American Dreams

Yes, even illegal Mexican immigrants have figured it out: California's cost of living is insane, especially if you want to buy a house, or four, for that matter. I've been warped by California's costs so much that I just can't get my head around the idea of a house for $70K.

"There are better chances here to save money and buy a house," said David Carranza, 24, a former college student who now works for $8.25 an hour at the Glad plastic wrap plant. "In California, everything was so expensive. But here, we have a better opportunity for a better future."

I don't think it'll have a big effect here, though, as there's plenty of foreign money floating around to pick up the slack (or inflate the bubble, depending on your view), thanks to falling dollar exchange rates. I don't foresee too many Chinese folks migrating to northern Arkansas. Funny how under-educated illegal immigrants have more financial common sense than most Americans. Work hard, save up, avoid debt, and take care of the family. Good to see hard work and frugal living pay off in improving upward-mobility stats.

It is a story illustrated in the latest census data. USC urban planner Dowell Myers, in a study to be released Tuesday, said that foreign-born Latinos are experiencing a degree of upward mobility not previously detected by demographers. "They're turning the corner — and it's a big corner," he said.

For example, 32% of the nearly 1.8 million Latinos who settled in California in the '80s — such as the Carranzas — were living in poverty in 1990, compared with 23% by 2000. Likewise, Latino immigrants from the '70s had a poverty rate of just 17% by 2000.

What does this do to the home country, though, as towns remade by remittances become ghost towns as younger emigres decide to stay in el norte.

n00Bz

Went up to Rowland Heights on Thursday to visit Uncle Jiang. When we visited last time the lawns and trees at the hilltop development were still dusty plots and saplings. Only thing that grew faster than the trees were the prices of the houses. He wanted to get a computer and get on the Informational Superhighway. I'd been putting it off for a while, but it's a chance for dad to visit his friend, so we made what I thought was going to be an overnight trip. Got there about noon and went out for some really good beef-broth noodles. Sure, all the shops and restaurants are in these awful pre-fab SoCal-style mini-malls, but the food's 100% authentic. The trick is to make a flavorful broth to infuse the noodles with flavor, without using cheap tricks like salt and MSG.

Could've gone to the City of Industry Fry's (complete with cool industrial theme) and got our computer there, but I wanted to show off the Apple Experience, so we drove all the way down the Pomona Freeway to the Santa Monica Freeway to the Apple Store at The Grove. I'm all for urban redevelopment, and it's a great idea to integrate the LA Farmer's Market into the mall, but boy downtown traffic sure's a bitch. Spent some more time dickering over which model and even whether he should get a Mac at all. It's all about tradeoffs, of course. The iMac's compact and easy to use, but it's a bit outdated considering its price tag. There is more software avilable for PCs, especially Chinese stuff. Plus he's not going to have convenient tech-support, since his son's the typical PC-using guy. On the other hand, we stopped by at uncle's house in Irvine on the way down so I could patch up their PC again, so I'm not going to deal with that anymore unless I'm paid.

The good vibes from the store won him over and we walked out the door with a 15" iMac, Airport card, and a Base Station (with modem, just in case). The 17" was probably a better deal, but he was content with the 15" screen and he won't notice an extra 250MHz anyway. Now there was the painful task of heading home into the teeth of LA rush hour on the San Bernardino and Pomona freeways. A smooth cruise into the heart of Los Angeles is now a painful stop-and-go crawl back to the suburbs. Stopped by Fry's along the way to pick up some extra memory (I almost paid the 300% markup at the Apple store, but then they said "installation extra" and I was like "fuck that"), and even then I missed the turn-in and had to make a five-mile loop because the road dumped me right back onto the freeway going in the wrong direction. Went out to eat at a nice seafood place after we got back, before I could even unpack the computer. Looks like we're staying the night.

Michael was back from work when we got back from dinner. Obviously, he was curious about the big iMac box in the living room, and it was good for me to have somebody slightly clueful around to fill in their setup info. The iMac setup managed to fit on the dresser table, and auntie thought it was cute, which made for a good first-impression. I bought the ABS-with-modem because I didn't think they had broadband, but when I turned the iMac on it picked up the Linksys wireless network automatically (which suitably impressed Michael). Should've figured that a young Asian male wouldn't put up with dialup. Good thing we went out before I had a chance to rip everything open. Bought the wrong memory, too, because I forgot that the user-accessible slot only took SO-DIMMs instead of the regular sort. Looks like another trip tomorrow.

Managed to get the basic installs done before going to sleep. I don't do well in strange beds, so I didn't get much sleep, but when I got up early dad was already going over the basics with 江伯伯. Actually, I was kind of annoyed with that since I has my way of explaining things and dad has his, and there's nothing more confusing than two people talking in your ear simultaneously. But then he is dad's friend and it ends up as less work for me, so I kept my mouth shut and stuck to fiddling with the settings.

Headed out to the Pasadena Apple Store to return the base station. The Grove store was out of the iLife '04 package when we bought the computer, and they assured us that we could get it from another Apple store. The fat-ass graybeard at the Pasadena store insisted that the upgrade iLife packages are much too precious to be handed out to buyers from other stores. Bastard. Went to Yoshiz for a quick Japanese bento-ish lunch. Not that it was great food or anything, but it was a little Tech nostalgia. At least there was an obasan at the counter, and there were actual Japanese-speaking customers coming in for lunch.

Got the right memory module at Fry's, and grabbed Bejeweled while I was at it. Figured a slower, simpler game would work better for 江伯伯 than dad's favorites like Tetris and Scrabble. Set up the games and the browser bookmarks and let them have at it while I killed time. Stayed another night because there was much to do and because I was frankly too tired to drive that night. They were nice enough to buy us some fresh underwear and toothbrushes, and a fresh change of clothes sure helped me sleep better.

When I got up, he's already been playing with the computer for a couple of hours, with dad's help pointing things out and writing down cheat sheets. Got online banking working, too, after a few phone calls. By that time, it was time again to go out for lunch (dad paying this time). And only after one more run through all the installed programs did we finally set on out to San Diego, where we promptly run smack into an accident-induced traffic jam. Oh well.

All in all, the iMac was probably the right computer for him. Unfortunately for Apple, the number of un-computer people who have unlimited budgets for a stylish setup but don't care about speed probably doesn't amount to much more than 3%. Maybe they'll have more luck selling iPod Minis.

Oaktown Represent

Got up bright and early for Grand Prix Oakland. Barely had time to shower, shave, and grab some cards for Randy to sign. He was a regular in LA in the good old days and I have just about everything of his before Tempest already signed, so it's cool to get some of the newer cards signed off, too, although the gaps in my recent collection is too big for me to have everything. The GP promised to be a long, long day, and even with the venue next to Chinatown, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get away for eats, given my record of time-outs in Mirrodin sealed. Thanksfully, Ba Le was already open and I grabbed a ham&pork sandwich to go before heading on the freeway. Regular people had better things to do than to go out on the freeway at 9am on a Saturday, so it was a smooth drive all the way. Parking was expensive, but there was plenty of it, as the hotel is connected to the Oakland Convention Center and its parking facilities. The venue was basically a big huge room with lots of tables and a couple of stages. Not pretty, but there was plenty of space and the pros from WotC (hi Larabee) were in charge with manpower help from MatchPlay.

Deck registration didn't start until 10am, which gave me a chance to go across the street to grab a latté and their last scone, but 276 players and eight rounds of swiss is going to make for at least 10 hours of work. Unless I suck and wash out early, of course. Too bad the only typical sealed deck tournaments are pre-releases and PTQs, because it's by far my favorite format. Just sit down, build, and play. In PTQs you have to register your deck on paper before they'll even give you land, which I'm not really comfortable with (that lack of practice thing again). I had a couple of ridiculous bombs, but I should have splashed red more heavily for creature removal. I ended up siding in a couple of red cards every single round. Ironically, I ended up winning game one more often than not.

I hate it when my opponent mulligans and beats me anyway. Had the Oblivion Stone but had to blow it to stabilize, so I couldn't get any card advantage out of it, and he outraced me. He pretty much stomped me in game two. Almost stopped the bleeding, but then he got the Spikeshot and put me away. Used the Stone to better effect in round two. Had it in my opening hand in game one and sandbagged it until I had eight mana so I could drop it and blow it all in one turn. That move crushed his game and his spirit. Dropped the Stone early in game two and managed to save a couple of my guys while blowing his away. He definitely wasn't expecting to see killer rares at the losers' table.

Third round was your typical Magic match. I steamroll him first game when he gets a lousy draw. He steamrolls me the second game on my lousy draw. Third game was actually good, even though I was a little short on land. He beat me down with my slow start, but I got the indestructible Gargoyle hitting back and the Angel joined the party, too. I was seriously outnumbered though, but I played the Oblivion Stone to control the board just as time ran out. Had five turns to either win the game or draw the match. I could've blown the Stone and wiped the board which would guarantee a tie. Instead, I let him attack me down to one life in the hope of counterattacking for the win. I knew he had direct damage in his deck, because he's zapped me with it before, and sure enough he had the Barbed Lightning to put me away. Stupid plays like this kills me in poker, too. It's funny how hold'em is now the preferred between-rounds/after-hours entertainment at Magic tournaments.

At least I didn't let the bad loss get me down, or at least my deck didn't get down, as I got the cards and rolled my next three opponents 2-0. All of the dropped their heads when they read the Angel's text box. Theoretically all you need to get rid of it is a 4/4-killing Instant spell while the Angel is tapped and hope that the Angel's controller doesn't have another Instant to play in response to untap the Angel. Nobody managed it all day, though, even though I didn't have many Instants in my deck, as I was usually careful to play a spell after attacking in order to untap her for D. Also got to eat my sandwich and get cards signed in the downtime.

It's always a good feeling to lock up .500 at a PTQ, and even more so at a Grand Prix, with plenty of out-of-towners visiting with their juicy rating points. Joe's from SoCal, which is almost local by GP standards. He had a lousy land draw in the first game and I ended it quickly. In the second game he gets his land and his R/G deck starts dropping down beefy creatures that I was hard pressed to stop. The Angel came along to allow me to at least hit back and then untap for defense, but she could only bounce the attackers, not take them out. I attacked one more time, taking him down to 2 life, but I was out of spells to cast so the Angel remained tapped. I did have a regenerating Troll to block one of his two potential attackers, so I would take 5 damage with 9 life left. Of course, he had the Barbed Lightning, too, which zapped me for 3 and tapped the Troll, too, so that was that. Third game was another race, as I took my lumps early until the Gargoyle and the Angel came in and smashed back. Played out weenies to untap the Angel and chump block. He hit me down to 1, with more creatures than I can block next turn. He was at 9, but this time it is I with the Barbed Lightning, and Gargoyle + Angel + Lightning = W1nNar.

Theoretically some 6-2 people could make top-64 and advance to the second day, but my tiebreakers were awful because I lost in the early rounds and because of people with early-round byes. That's actually fine with me, since I'm a lousy drafter anyway, so having the best possible non-drafting match-record would be cool. Then I sit down in the eighth round and couldn't draw land to save my life. Hence the "I Hate This Game" t-shirts being sold at the dealer tables.

Oh well, at least I got home at a reasonable hour. Good thing, too, as the second-chance PTQ starts at 9am on Sunday. Dad decided to come along, as he wanted to see what it's all about, plus the venue is near Chinatown, and there's nothing on TV on Sundays anyway. Fine with me, since it's awfully convenient to have someone to fetch food during the round, and I wanted to show him what the blue flower and that white thing were selling for at the dealers' tables. Unfortunately, having a support crew doesn't make up for the lack of supporting cards. Sure, Fireball and Barbed Lightning were nice, but I only had one artifact-kill spell, and my rares were worthless. Smacked into reality in the very first round, when my opponent had the same R/G deck I had, except he had the Shatter, and killer cards like Oblivion Stone, Arcbound Overseer, and Arcbound Fiend. Even when I won it was more due to my opponents' bad draws than anything I did. Made it to 2-2 and decided to play one more to try to salvage a positive record. I even won the first game before being stomped in the second and third to end up 2-3. The day wasn't a total loss, though. As I was getting a last few cards signed, Randy Gallegos asked me to sit for a quick sketch. Apparently he wanted to work on jawlines. So in exchange for sitting still for five minutes I got him to sketch something on my deck box. Not a big deal, really, since he only charges five bucks to do sketches, but bartering is so much more fun than cash.

Mass-Market Independence

Packed the car to the brim with dead trees and headed on home. 11am seems like a good departing time. Miss out on rush hour on both ends, stop in at the La Mirada In-n-Out for lunch, fill up in Burbank and Santa Nella, with a bathroom break or two in between. 500 miles in 8.5 hours, which was smooth, especially considering the car handled like a bloated pig. The traffic was light enough for lots of cruise control action.

The iPod provided the music for most of the way, but the random shuffle went through a bad stretch, so I went fishing through the LA radio stations. Wasn't expecting much, but I picked up Indie 103.1, and it made me stop scanning because they were playing actually cool, smart rock. They played mainstream stuff like U2 (but a deep track, "Bad"), slightly less mainstream stars like XTC ("Senses Working Overtime"), new stuff like Interpol, and their playlist features The Postal Service, which automatically makes them the winner in the second round by technical knockout. More importantly, they played cool music by people I wasn't familiar with. I've become musically parochial because of the iPod, and I need exposure to random bands so I could vulture their CDs from the Amoeba bargain bins when they fade into obscurity.

So I get home and search up their website for some Indie info. Their own Press page gives away the big secret. Turns out the eclectic goodness is owned by Clear Channel and some Hispanic radio conglomerate, of all people. It's an attempt to bring back the Gen-X alternative fans turned off by CC's own cookie-cutter stations by capitalizing on the nostalgic value of the 90's alternative wave, and cleverly adding new stuff that compliments the core hits. Yes, Nirvana is now nouveau-classic rock. They're also trying to take a piece out of #1 KROQ, which is owned by Infinity Broadcasting, by posing an alternative to the alternative station.

Damn, I hate it when I swallow targeted marketing hook, line, and sinker. It's nice to have an "alternative" station that's not overwhelmed by pop-punk garbage and rap-metal shit, though. Too bad their signal doesn't even extend to the O.C. (thanks to Fox everyone can now abbreviate the land or Reagan just like their more glamorous northern neighbor) and the Valley. Well, with Clear Channel, if the shit sticks in the test market you know they'll duplicate the formula in your neighborhood soon enough. Yay.

Bad Example

Yeah, this economic recovery still ain't generatin' any jobs. Even then, the jobs that are being created are usually the infamous McJobs or WalJobs that don't pay as well as the jobs that were lost. Salon jumps on the bandwagon with their own spin on the phenomenon, with plenty of anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately, not all of their exemplars lend themselves to sympathy.

Mark and Jannie Brewer, a couple of 39-year-old out-of-work programmers from near Phoenix, can't wait around anymore. The couple have given up their three-bedroom house with a swimming pool on a golf course and their two Mercedes, filed for personal bankruptcy and moved to Hawaii to live the downshifted life of a couple of minimum-wage beach dwellers.

Um guys, if you're trying to cut down on the cost of living, the islands are the last place you wanna be. Hawaii prices made me blanch even after living in California for so long. And what's the deal with three bedrooms when you don't even have kids? Let's not even get started on how the payments on two Mercedes might relate to the bankruptcy.

Between the two of them, the couple owe $75,000 in student loans from their years of technical training at DeVry University, which they now consider useless. To return to work in the technology sector, Mark says they'd need to update their skills yet again to the "latest and greatest," which would mean $5,000 or $6,000 more for classes -- money they don't have. Besides, the couple now believe that, given the double whammy of the offshoring of U.S. technology jobs and the use of foreign workers visiting the U.S. on H1-B visas, they simply can't compete.

Oh, I'd say you can't compete, but it ain't got nothing to do with any damn foreigners. So they thought a couple of years at DeVry was going to set them up for a life of fancy cars and golf-course mansions? The student loans don't make those Mercedes look like a good idea either, and how much do you want to bet that the credit cards were maxed out, too?

Sure, people like that are easy targets for the uneducated Slashdot yahoos to decry as people who deserved to be weeded out because they weren't real geeks. Of course, I could say that anyone who didn't get their education from a small, private, top-5 university deserves to have his job exported to Asia, but that would be unfair and elitist, not that's ever stopped anybody from looking down on others.

The Brewers have been through too much on the downside to try to climb back up to the upper-middle-class lifestyle they enjoyed while writing code for upward of $50 an hour: "We look back on it now, and it's so hilarious to see what we've been through," says Janine. "We would never go back to technology."

Technology probably doesn't want you back, either. Unfortunately, these folks give the free-marketers an easy strawman target, overshadowing some real victims.

"I am one of the many middle-aged people who has just been thrown out. No one will hire you," says the mother of three boys, ages 9, 13 and 15.

The 5-foot-3, small-boned woman is now working as a courier, slinging packages that weigh as much as 65 pounds.

"I'm not a gym person with muscles, so I have to use my back," says Chau, who delivers packages in the San Diego area in a Subaru with 95,000 miles on the odometer, bald tires and shot brakes.

After losing her programming job, she tried to retrain. She heard a radio ad seeking math teachers, and spent $13,000 getting a math teaching credential, since she holds a bachelor's degree in math from the University of Oregon. But it would cost money she now doesn't have to complete her student teaching requirements, and California's budget cuts mean that the demand for new teachers has evaporated. "There's no jobs, and I can't come up with $3,500 because I've maxed out my credit cards," she says

Over-extravagant DeVry graduates is one thing, it's another matter entirely when it's mom working to feed three kids (who are approaching college-age, by the way). And any math major automatically gets props from me. Retraining is all well and good, but once you fall off the tech-training hamster wheel, it becomes impossible to catch up to the latest-and-greatest buzzwords that the resume scanners are looking for, especially when you throw in experience requirements. There's no guarantee that there will be jobs in whatever field you retrain for, either. The hangers-on should be glad that there's no "r" sound in Chinese, because there will be no stopping the yellow hordes if they spoke understandable English.

The Other, Other White Meat?

The true-blue conservatives are bitching and moaning about all the pork-barrel spending by the administration. On the other hand, one man's wasteful spending is another's critical mission. They all complain about the $50K for shiitake mushroom research at the Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center. After all, a fungus named "shi(i)t" is just asking to be made fun of. But damn it, I like the big bags of fresh shiitakes at 99 Ranch for $3.95. Beats the hell out of those boring white button mushrooms. Adds nice texture and flavor to any stir-fry. Although for soups you still can't beat the huge thick dried shiitakes that mom brings back from Hong Kong.

$50,000 is small potat... err... mushrooms, compared to $520 billion for the Medicare drug benefits plan. This was up from the estimate of $400 billion a few months ago, when Bush was trying to ram the program through his own party in Congress. The plan isn't even due to come into effect until 2007, so if we extrapolate based on the current rate of increase in the estimated budget the true cost of the plan will be... [warning: integer overflow error]. Oh well, whatever the actual cost is, I'm tracking the Big Pharma stocks looking for a buying opportunity. You get the government handing over wads of tax (or bond) money to the pharmaceutical companies, who then turn around and give that money back to the stockholders tax-free. What a winner.