Looks like rental rates are expected to stay down for a while. From a presentation given by NAA's Doug Culkin:

"The 'shadow market' competition that followed the housing market bust will continue to be felt in 2010, Culkin said, brought on by failed condo projects going rental, foreclosed single-family homes becoming rentals and a continued lack of job growth. For those on the operations side of the apartment market, next year’s outlook will be more of the same, he explained. 'We are looking at pressures on rental rates [to] remain, and vacancy rates are expected to remain higher than we would like.'"

According to Richard Craver's article Pace Airlines had problems before William Rodgers Sr. showed up and put a stake through its heart, but he certainly didn't do anything to forestall its demise:

"He spoke in a folksy, yet brash tone, adding an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders for effect.

'We're going to create jobs, make money and enjoy life, and honor and respect each other.'

Less than four months later, Pace likely has been grounded for good by Rodgers' management."

Google Docs just keeps getting better. You can now organize and share via a folder system. I agree with this Google Docs assessment by Rex:

"The primary reason I love Google Docs is that I like being able to ask several people to comment on something I’ve written (with each of them having their own comment color) more than the Word way of having copy “edited over.” And frankly, I’ve always thought the tracking feature of Word is worse than an editor’s red pen all over a page. I greatly prefer the wiki-like version tracking method of Google Docs (just click on the time of the last edit and you’ll see what I mean)."

"What’s more dangerous: a playground jungle gym or your office chair? As it happens, one in every 3,759 fatal accidental falls starts from a piece of playground equipment. You’re 85 times more likely, meanwhile, to fall to your death from a chair. That’s one of the many odd pairings waiting to be discovered in The Book of Odds, an online statistical encyclopedia launching tomorrow."

WXII has a story about Unilin trying to renegotiate part of their incentive deal with Davidson County: "Unilin Flooring, despite investing nearly $80 million at its Chair City headquarters, has requested that Thomasville officials waive the minimum job creation clause for 2010 in its 10-year economic development contract with the city."

and

“When we broke ground on this plant in 2004, we had planned to have almost 400 employees by this time and be well into the execution of our Phase 3 expansion,” Lauten wrote. “The reality is that we will employ approximately half that number at year end 2009. … Despite the economic challenges, we are still on track to have invested $80 million at this campus by the end of 2009 as we originally planned.”

"Had the busy Dell spoken longer, he might have said, 'We've also got a bunch of North Carolina taxpayer money that we've decided to just, y'know, keep, so that works to our benefit.'"