Sprint Layoffs, Homebuilding Booms, and Historic Hunter Mill: A Random Jaunt Through Reston News

• Remember that time Sprint Nextel moved its headquarters from Reston to Kansas City, then laid off a whole bunch of people, and if you were one of the remaining people still working at a switchboard or maybe injecting static into people's cellphone calls, you thought you were safe? As many of 2,500 of you might have to think again.
  
  
• Reston-based Northrop Grumman won a $46 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security involving something to do with immigration and customs enforcement. How strapping bombs to dolphins fits into that, we're not sure, but there must be a way.
  
  
• Reston homebuilder Comstock returned to profitability in the third quarter, meaning the national economy is fixed forever and we can all go back to buying particleboard housing in ever-distant exurbs and going to Target to furnish them. Hooray!
  
  
• Because we're in the pre-Christmas lull of feel-good seasonal news stories, please to be enjoying this story about Reston orthodontist Stephan Tisseront buying back kids' extra Halloween candy for $2 a pound. Not bad! Some of the candy will be shipped to troops overseas, with the exception of the Necco wafers, which will be loaded onto Predator drones and dropped on strategic targets in Afghanistan.
  
  
• The Hunter Mill Coat Closet opens this weekend. Last year, the nonprofit organization distributed more than 5,000 coats to the needy, and more are needed for this year.
  
  
• Hooray, Hunter Mill Road is getting historic signage explaining how it's been used as a shortcut since the Civil War. Signs will mark the site of historic skirmishes, speed traps and bottlenecks, the end.