For fast note taking I still rely on a pen and a paper notebook. Anything worth really keeping gets rewritten in Yojimbo. I also use Yojimbo if I am taking notes in a slower paced setting.
http://www.barebones.com/products/yojimbo/

I went to the polling place with two other people. They were the only two people in front of me in line. ;)
Smooth process. Ballot was 1 long 2-sided sheet.
I asked a friend that lives in NC and was told that long lines in other states are likely due to 10+ page ballots combined with large turnouts.

I was happy to be reading /. on my lunch break and see PDL mentioned. I use PDL and am glad to see it get some notice.
I am disappointment in the comments so far though. The anti-Perl froth is strong in this thread and I am not sure why?
Here is my point of view:
        -Use whatever programming language suits you and your task the best. Maximize for total productivity which is a function of both of these things in varying degrees.
        -Perl suits me best, personally, as a comfortable tool This is kind of squishy...it just feels right to me. MANY MANY people agree with me. But maybe you don't. meh.
        -My tasks involve (a) parsing data from a variety of sources and (b) number crunching. Perl is already fantastic at (a). PDL makes Perl fantastic at (b).
        -The people behind PDL use it for even more numerically complex tasks than I. Check out the docs and mailing lost archives and see. http://pdl.perl.org/?page=mailing-lists
        -If you are already writing code in C, Python, Fortran or whatever else than you should stick with it. Moving over to PDL just because it exists doesn't make any sense, of course.
Now, as a Perl and PDL user could someone please explain to me the string visceral reaction shown by people in these comment threads whenever it is mentioned? Did Larry Wall challenge you to a bar fight once or something? (Probably not, I met him once and he doesn't seem like a bar fight kind of guy.)

Since I know members of both the Ruby and Perl community I can pretty much guarantee CPAN is the far more
functional and stable body of code!

I have personally seen python run very very well on an open-mosix cluster.
I have no idea of python's inherent support for multiple processors but
with open-mosix it migrates the jobs to the different processes for you anyway.
This use of python with open-mosix is fairly common within various high throughput computing
niches. Or at least it was. I haven't worked in a scientific workplace in many years.

Trebek, if you are selling penismightiers I'll take a dozen!

Netbeans is the best IDE I have ever used. Netbeans is written in java so it will run on multiple platforms. While it has lost some
"street cred" to Eclipse it is still wildly popular and attracts developers to volunteer their time to add support for many languages.
Plus, Netbeans in and of itself is a development platform which can help you create some very nice apps.

A "trifecta" is a wager whereas you win money if you correctly bet on the way the top three "performers" finish. So, suppose there is a horse race and horses Joe, Bob, and Sam finish 1,2,3 and you bet on Joe, Bob, and Sam to finish in that order YOU WIN!
The "trifecta" bet is used in greyhound, horses, and jai-alai. There are variants such as "boxing" and "wheeling" but these are advanced lessons...

Why Math by R.D. Driver is an excellent book which is accessible to anyone with basic arithmetic skills. This book really drives home a deep appreciation of the power of Math!