Looks like the citizens of Iran have forced a recount in their recent presidential election. Whether it’s just for show or will be legitimate, who knows. But you have to admire the Iranians having the guts to get out into the streets and face down riot squads to demand action. Especially if you happen to live in NY State, where political news can now be found in the entertainment section of the newspaper.

Some good (and rather minor, but we take what we can get) news in that they’ve decided they don’t need to split up my area code now. They thought we’d run out of numbers by 2010, but now say we’re good at least until 2013. Apparently nobody can afford to have a phone anymore. Even though my area code covers 21 counties with a population of slightly less that 1.5 million people, I’m not sure how we can really be close to using up all our numbers anyway.

You figure there are a possible 1,000 “exchanges” in a given area code (000 – 999). Assuming you don’t want numbers that start with 0 or 1, that’s 800 (there are currently 684). Then there are a potential for 10,000 numbers within any exchange (0000 – 9999). So that’s 800 * 10,000, or 8 million numbers. Even given that, in the US, cell phones have reached the saturation rate (that is, on average, everybody’s got one), you’d still think 8 million would be adequate. Assuming everybody’s got a cell phone and every household (at 2.6 people per household) has a landline, that’s about 2.1 million numbers, with another 6 million or so left over for businesses. And there aint many of them left these days. Though there are at least two businesses that I know of that have bought up (or otherwise acquired; not sure how it works) entire exchanges. In fact, SU has two of them.

There is, however some potential good news on the business front. I think I mentioned a while back that a company that makes transfer cases for SUVs was leaving the area after workers turned down a contract renegotiation. Since then, there were two subsequent votes after new ‘offers’ from the company. The offers were rejected by wide margins. The company had repeatedly lied to the workers in the past, and the new “deals” would have taken away negotiated severance packages (with pretty decent education and training bonuses) while still not guaranteeing the company wouldn’t leave anyway. So the company wanted to string them along for a while, screw them out of their bonus packages, and then leave town anyway. Or, that’s what it sounded like to me, anyway (and apparently the workers, too).

Anyhow, now a wind generator manufacturer is looking at the plant. They say they can easily convert the machinery, and are interested in having pre-trained workers that already know how to use the equipment. It could means thousands of jobs, and I hope the clowns in Albany can do do something to make it happen, ‘cuz we need it around here.

Speaking of jobs, better get to mine.