CBC and Wargames

For those of you that actually know me and don’t just lurk on my blog, you know that one of my favorite movies is Wargames (and the Karate Kid, damn you Will Smith!). Anyway, a few nights ago, I couldn’t sleep, so I started watching some news video on Yahoo! News and stumbled upon this story (sorry if the video is no longer there). Interesting story about a Russian space rocket part landing in Canada. At around the 0:50 point in the story, the reporter talks about a conversation he had with NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). There’s a representative image of NORAD on the left of the video screen.

Whoa.

That looks an awful lot like what I remembered from Wargames. Here’s a screengrab from the NORAD set of Wargames from Wikipedia.

Despite the $1m cost of the Wargames NORAD set (according to the Wikipedia entry), it really looks nothing like the real thing, according to the NORAD website’s image gallery. Here are a few samples.

And I thought I only liked the CBC for Hockey Night in Canada…

Thank You Yahoos!

 

Thank You Yahoos!, originally uploaded by Kelly Hirano.

Yesterday at work, a wonderful thing happened. Again.

Every year, Yahoo!’s around the world get a holiday present. In the past, the present has ranged from a custom Yahoo!opoly game to a Yahoo! blanket to a jacket to a sleeping bag. What I don’t think many people realize is that this gift isn’t from the company, it’s directly from our founders, Jerry and Filo. In fact, it’s so direct that they walk around the campus and hand out these gifts directly to employees. Say what you want about their leadership of the company, but their generosity and genuine concern for us is awesome.

Last year, every employee was given $100 to donate to charity. Given the company situation, economy, etc, this year that number was reduced to $50. However, given around 14,000 employees, that’s around $700k that various charities will receive that they wouldn’t have received otherwise. Thanks to some internal campaigning (and knowing that Chuck once worked on this project) I selected a few teachers from DonorsChoose.org to receive my donation. There are so many charities out there, but with DonorsChoose you know your money goes directly to a teacher who has a specific desire to make the lives of their students better.

Given all of the bad press that gets out there about Yahoo!, positive news is always nice. Thanks, Jerry and Filo!