According to this article, which has calculated the full cost (so far) of the recent bailouts, the total includes the 700 billion dollar bank bailout of Fall 2008, the 816 billion dollar bank bailout of last month, 3 trillion from the FDIC over the last two years, and another 5.7 trillion pledged, another 780 billion (at least, but I’d say 1.5 trillion) to be passed very soon (God forbid it!). That brings the total to… <one sec please>… <carry the 1>… <divide by 0>… <plus the square root of negative 7>… 9.7 TRILLION dollars. Or, as I like to put it.

$$$$ 1 GAZILLION DOLLARS $$$$

Is your Adobe Acrobat Reader too slow??? Mine was. Until I figured out that the reason it was slow was because it had to load a zillion stupid and mostly worthless plugins. I found out that you can solve this problem by moving all the unnecessary plugins from the “plug_ins” directory to the “Optional” directory in the “Reader” path (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 8.0\Reader).

Here is what I left in my plug_ins directory:

[Update] I attempted to open a password protected PDF, and my Adobe reader went to lunch. So… after a few failed attempts at restoring whatever plugin is required to open password protected files, I downloaded foxit reader and removed Adobe’s. Life is so much better now.