Of all the stories that I have seen in the papers recently, This is the one that feels the strangest.

I live 30 minutes from San Jose. I was listening to local news when the first reports came in on this.

Each time they updated it, the story was different.

At first, no one knew she had jumped.

Then the passengers knew she had jumped but the pilots didn't.

Then the pilots knew but they didn't report it until they landed in San Jose.

Now this story says that the pilots radioed in and told people about it.

Also, in the local news story, there was no mention of landing in Sacramento.

The flight from Roseville to Sacto would take about five minutes... barely enough time for a pilot to decide to land, unless he turned back and landed. but this was NOT mentioned on last nights news.

Last nights news also reported that the woman's husband was at the airport to meet her. I can't imagine what he must have felt like when told that she jumped from the plane.

Let's try to follow this one. There is a link to the San Jose Mercury on the front page of Rumor Mill. Can someone remember to check it for follow ups on this story.

David Packard used to be an assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan years. I can remember the time he came to the Naval Postgraduate School to talk about funding.

Packard is hard of hearing. At the time, he was using a device that was shaped like a horn. He would ask a question, and then put the small end of the horn to his ear. When he had heard all he wanted to hear. He took the horn away from his ear and asked another question.

Talk about controlling a meeting!!!

Needless to say, Packard is rich enough to afford any kind of hearing aid ever made. I can only speculate that the reason he chose this kind is because he didn't want to listen to "useless chatter".

The reason I mention this is to let you know that there has been a long and almost inbred connection between HP and the Defense Department.

I also know that Roseville used to be a hub of intelligence activity. The CIA maintains several hotels in the area for their people. I used to know the names, but have forgotten them. I wonder if there is some kind of R&D Center in Roseville.

Roseville is East of Sacramento on the way to Reno, NV. It is basically a bedroom community for Sacramento, which is the capital of California -- (in case our foreign readers didn't know this.)