Ever heard of the Ilyushin-76TD "Waterbomber"? Neither had I until I read this article.

It's an 11,000-gallon tanker plane; that's almost 4 times bigger than the American Forest Service's piddly 3,000 gallon tanker planes. Hmmm, Definitely could have been useful this past week. In fact, it still could be!

Obviously it's politics that's preventing this Russian built plane from showing up in the US to save lives and prevent property damage.

*Flash-Memory is used in many hand held audio/video devices, USB memory keys, next generation laptop hard drives, cell phones, etc...

I'm getting my tech dose over at Engadget when I come across an article about SanDisk suing 25 companies for patent infringement!?!?!

So it's ashing outside on the job site right now. Don't know what that is? Well I'll tell you what that is ... It's like snow, but with little bits of burnt stuff instead.

Below is a satellite image of the current state of the smoke plumes from some of the fires raging in Southern California right now. I've added a little black dot to indicate where I am.

DOH!

- Omar Z.