Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 22 and This Week in Crime: Double Secret Probation

Remember when a Reston business illegally sold power amplifiers to Red China, which if it actually had oil instead of a billion workers happily filling the shelves of Wal-Mart with low-cost tchotchkes for Right-Thinking Americans, would be accused of using said power amplifiers, whatever they are, to build a nuclear weapon or weapons of mass destruction or a deadly remote-controlled blimp or something else that Will Not Stand, necessitating a 100-year war in a sandy country, but since they do and they are, we'll just slap the company here with a fine and hope they don't make our currency implode by continuing to buy our increasingly worthless debt by the wheelbarrowful?

Wow, that was a mouthful. Anyhoo, the company, Wavelab Inc. of Reston, got probation and a $15,000 fine.

WaveLab Inc. was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, after pleading guilty back in March to a single count of unlawful export of electronic components.

In court documents, the company's chief executive, Walter Zheng, admitted that WaveLab shipped hundreds of power amplifiers to China even though it knew the technology had military applications and required an export license that WaveLab lacked.

Maybe we're not the most savvy of Wall Street types, but we didn't even know companies could get probation. We thought probation was for folks who shoplifted at the Target or something, not a building with cubicles and a chain-smoking secretary out front. Does the company have to go to a seedy building once every other week and meet with a coffee-mainlining probation officer? Is it forbidden to leave the state, except for certain family events? Or is it even more insidious than that?

Reston's Vibrant Economy, Part 21: Somehow Ed McMahon's involved in all this

Reston's vibrant economy certainly knows how to capitalize on market trends. We're now apparently the place the phone rings when someone gets a foreclosure notice on their particleboard McMansion in West Spittle, Ohio:

I'm spending the day in Reston, VA at one of the big offices of Fannie Mae. Employees here are volunteering at a call center for a foreclosure phone-a-thon being run out of Cincinnati, OH.

A phone-a-thon? Sounds fun! All we need is a washed-up game show host! Sounds like we're in luck!

I know everyone is gasping today over news that Ed McMahon is over a half a million dollars behind on his mortgage, but he's really not all that different from these callers, give or take a few million dollars in income. Ed needed to sell his home in order to pay off his loan, but nobody's buying. Same story everywhere.

Everywhere? It couldn't happen here! And if Ed had any common sense, he would have sunk his residual checks into stucco and mauve wood trim, and he'd still be on easy street!

We Get Letters: If a Starbucks Opens in the Middle of a Giant, Does Anyone Hear the Latte Machine?

Sean weighs in with one of those if-a-tree-falls-in-the-middle-of-the-forest questions:

I have a question that I feel only you can solve or explain. The North Point Giant is completing a major renovation which will include a Starbucks within the store. However, there is already a Starbucks within the North Point Village Center less than 50 yards from Giant. My question is why are there going to be two Starbucks so close to each other? Is the stand alone Starbucks closing?

We visited said Giant earlier in the week, and the Mini-Starbucks inside is now fully operational, generating a constant stream of foamy beverages for its clientele. So, too, is the regular Starbucks that's about 50 feet away. So what's the difference? Does the original one, with its abundant outdoor seating, cater to North Reston's idle flaneurs, while its smaller sibling serves the diaspora of Giant's former Tall Oaks clientele, so pressed by the added drive time that they don't have time for the full-service experience whilst picking up their Super G cola? Is one store the vente store and the other one the grande store? Do they both have the same watered-down, has-been CDs on offer, or do they split the lame jazz vs. lame pop aficionados?

We have no answers. Just more questions, an endless Mobius strip of lifestyle-branded drinks, stucco facades and earth tones. Mostly earth tones, though. Mostly earth tones.

Tall Oaks Shopping Center Parking Lot Overflows; Also Hell Freezes Over

This box of Japanese Choco ThinThin "chocolate for girls," as noted on the oddly inappropriate baby-blue packaging, were the spoils of our investigative journey to the new Fresh World Supermarket in Tall Oaks Shopping Center this weekend. During one of our rare expeditions out of the secure undisclosed location from which we do our "reporting," we saw such wonders as live eels and crabs in a seafood section that looks more like an aquarium than a grocery store, seaweed soup packets that proudly proclaimed they "contain no sand," and -- most shocking and out of place of all -- the parking lot bordering Tall Oaks' stucco wasteland filled to beyond overflowing.

The clientele would probably worry the black T-shirt crowd or our enlightened neighbors to the west, but Fresh World appears to be doing what Giant couldn't -- packing them in. Now if that golf shop would just open, we could get a new set of clubs and wrap live eels around them for some real fun on the greens!

Tall Oaks Resurrected: Beef blood and golf clubs, the two great tastes that taste great together

With Tall Oaks awesome new Fresh World grocery store slated to open May 16, Reston residents got a behind-the-scenes look at how the international-themed store will begin a stucco-themed rebirth of the shopping center poorly signposted wasteland.

But first things first: Apparently, the awesome postcard campaign to win over Bloom wasn't a complete success:

Fresh World was selected to fill the space vacated by Giant in November, and Dallon Cheney, KLNB Retail's principal broker, explained why KLNB selected that store serve as the center's anchor rather than another grocery store. Cheney said although the community had requested that Bloom fill the space, the store turned them down. He said KLNB had been in negotiations with Fresh World at the same time.

Cheney said KLNB was very impressed with Fresh World's store in Springfield and they are confident that it will be a good addition to the community. He also said if the Reston store has the same sales as the Springfield location, they would be doing three times the business that Giant was doing and twice what a Bloom store would have done.

In your face, Bloom, with your handheld checkout scanners and your bleach-tainted pork chops and... whatnot! But what of the rest of the shopping center, which currently resembles a scene from the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, only with better parking and more stucco?

He said they have been speaking with many coffee shops and other similar businesses, but so far they have not had any luck. However, he said they plan to revisit many of those businesses after Fresh World opens.

Cheney said they have also been attempting to negotiate with banks, a yoga studio and a golf store, and prospects are good for the golf store. "We're feeling very optimistic," he said.

Yep... we just picked up a quart of pork blood and a new set of tees. Now watch this drive!

Reston's Vibrant Economy, Part 20: What's a million measly customers?

Sprint Nextel-N-Bob's Kansas-Style BBQ continues its downward slide into awesome right-sizedness, losing more than a million customers and $505 million as it whiled away the first three months of the year, forwarding each other repetitive Footloose-themed blog posts about its awesome headquarters relocation to Kansas and apparently letting more than a half billion dollar bills flutter away in a gentle spring breeze after someone accidentally left a window open or something.

We may not be sophisticated daytraders, but generally we know it's probably time to panic when analysts say things like this:

"This is a nightmare game of whack-a-mole where new problems keep popping up faster that you can address," said Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett.

But everything's gonna be fine, because they have, as they say in the movies, a plan:

Sprint, which acquired Reston-based Nextel Communications for $36 billion two years ago, may sell Nextel for a fraction of that price, according to one Wall Street analyst.

So here's the plan:

1. Buy failing telecom provider for $36 billion; watch its market value crater and sell for a pittance at the absolute bottom of the market
2. ???
3. Profit!!!

Another half-billion here, another million lost customers there, and they'll get Step 2 figured out.

Reston's Vibrant Economy, Part 19: Like Office Space, only without Milton, his red stapler, or anyone else for that matter

It sounds like there's a lot of empty office space out there:

In the first quarter of 2008, developers delivered about 3.2 million square feet of office space in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region but managed to lease only 1.3 million square feet.

Further out in the I-270 corridor, Prince George’s County, Reston Herndon, and along Route 28 south, tenant demand has slowed. “It’s still growing, but more slowly,” Hartley said. “And competition for tenants is rising.”

Reston Town Center just brought three buildings on line and has another on the way, Hartley added. Those buildings are 70 percent leased. Six new buildings are going up in the Dulles Corridor. Hartley believes competition will heat up in this area.

If by competition, you mean "lots of fluttering banners saying "FOR LEASE," that's probably true.

But don't worry about those empty tall buildings. Worry about the foreclosed mauve townhouse down the street because.... it could kill you.

The phrase “bloodsucker” is being bandied about in some conversations about the foreclosure crisis in Fairfax County, but not in the way that one might suspect.

According to the Fairfax-based National Pest Management Association, an unexpected consequence of the rising number of foreclosures in Fairfax County is the number of unoccupied, unkempt properties and their potential for breeding mosquito populations that could heighten the risk of West Nile virus cases this summer.

Alarmist? Perhaps, but no more so than the annual spate of "the iced tea you drink at a restaurant could kill you" stories you get on the news every night.

Tall Oaks Un-Giant To Open in May

Somehow forgetting to credit our own awesome, world-exclusive scoop, the local newspapers finally figured out that Tall Oaks Shopping Center is getting a new, international-themed grocery store, complete with beef blood and pork blood and whatnot.

Because the old media, ink-on-dead-tree types tend to do things like "ask questions," though, we now know more about the awesome new grocery. First of all, "El Grande Supermercado" translates into "Fresh World." The grocery store won't have a pharmacy, but it will open in May, as a flapping sign along Wiehle Avenue now suggests.

"Fresh World will carry things that you couldn’t find anywhere else," said Dallon Cheney, principal at KLNB, the leasing agent. The store specializes in seafood and fresh fish and its aisles are arranged by international foods. Super Ee, Fresh World’s parent company, currently owns a store in Springfield and there are plans to open more in Virginia and Maryland later in the year.

And like the Easter miracle of our aforementioned, world exclusive scoop, Fresh World could transform the vast stucco wasteland of Tall Oaks into a vibrant, bustling retail destination.

KLNB principal Dallon Cheney said several merchants near Fresh World's location in Springfield have been “so impressed by Fresh World” that they have expressed interest in opening locations in Tall Oaks.

The remaining vacancies will likely fill up also now that the center has a new anchor store, said David Ross, president of Atlantic Realty.

To figure out what stores would make the best fit, a community meeting is being planned to gather input.

Awesome. We love input. Like the input provided by this commenter:

i had a feeling the store that was interested in moving into that empty Giant space would not be your typical grocery store. The MO has become for an old, decrepit store to shutter and then the foreigners move in. They open an oriental grocery and tons of people flock to them. of course, most of those ppl don't speak English and/or are rude.

Guess we just met the Welcome Wagon.

At Tall Oaks, Hope No Longer Blooms Eternal, But a Grocery Store Still Returns from the Dead (OMG a very special Easter Restonian World Exclusive!)

It's only appropriate that on Easter, we discovered that the awesome empty Giant at the Tall Oaks Shopping Center Stucco Wasteland will soon be (ahem!) resurrected as another grocery store. Only it's not one of Food Lion's bleach-and-NASCAR-free Bloom alternatives. Instead, according to two festive multilingual signs in the windows, an "international" grocery by the name of El Grande Supermercado will soon take its place.

Thanks to our extensive language skills, we can ascertain that the store's name translates to "The Big Supermarket." There's apparently another iteration of the chain within spitting distance of the Mixing Bowl in Springfield and another on Gallows Road somewhere near Falls Church. They don't have a Web site, but fortunately, we can always count on the intelligent, well-travelled users of the Internets to give us the lowdown, in the form of the picture above and the thoughtful, in-depth review below:

Wtf. There's an "El Grande Supermercado" (which translates to "The Big Supermarket") in Springfield, West Virginia (the city we're staying in). Ha!! …okay fine…I thought it was funny.

-10: 35 pm

Omg! My mom just ate a peanut butter M&M. If you know my mom well enough, you'd pretty much know that she never eats anything "unfamiliar" LOL.

OMG! LOL! ROTFL! We totally feel like we've already been there now.

(Shout-out to an anonymous commenter for the tip.)

Just Call it No Oaks

Hey, guess what? Just four months after Giant vacated Tall Oaks Shopping Center Stucco Wasteland, the center may be on the verge of announcing an awesome new anchor tenant. Here's the thing, though: It probably won't be Bloom, it might not even be a grocery store, and it'll likely require a few teensy tiny site modifications to make the shopping center more visible from Wiehle Avenue, like cutting down a whole slew of trees.

KLNB Retail's Julie Cyphers, who oversees the leasing of Tall Oaks, said she “anticipates there being [an announcement] soon,” but would not elaborate because nothing has been signed.

With that store filled, Cyphers said she is optimistic about the remaining vacancies in the shopping center, which combined with the Giant space total 49,366 square feet of empty space, double the amount of occupied 24,634 square feet.

“We're talking to a number of folks,” she said about the center's other vacancies. “I feel like we'll probably pick up speed once the anchor store is in.”

After courting Bloom with an awesome postcard campaign and meetings with RA officials, it looks less likely that the awesome, less NASCAR-intensive Food Lion variant, is a viable option.

“There are some hurdles with Bloom,” said [RA CEO Milton Matthews]. “They would possibly want changes to the interior and exterior.”

Furthermore, Bloom's negotiations for new locations typically last a year, Matthews said.

“We don't want to wait a full year,” he said.

Yeah, that would be a bummer. Of course, those issues might be the same for any grocery store, and we all want easy access to leaky jugs of 2% milk and hilarious seasonal novelties, right?

Tara Coonin said she hopes above all else that any new tenant in Giant's old space would indeed be a grocery store.

“As long as it's a grocery store, we don't care. That's just my worst nightmare because that space would be perfect for a large gym,” she said.

We certainly don't want Tall Oaks' massive, empty parking lot filled with 'roid rage-fueled pickups, do we? So that brings us back to those, um, tall oaks:

Coonin said negotiations with Bloom raised this concern as well, with Bloom concerned that the center simply wasn't visible enough.

Part of the solution may be removing some of the trees behind the stores on Wiehle Avenue, a move that the RA would likely support.

“The association owns a lot of easements, we're committed to them getting more visibility to the stores in there,” Matthews said.

The RA actually supporting the wholesale removal of trees? Check the sky for flying pigs. And bring on the Agent Orange!

Reston's Vibrant Economy, pt. 17: How the Reston Home Depot singlehandedly solved the global warming crisis

Reston's awesome Home Depot(tm), which is a great place to wander around and stare randomly at various home-improvement implements like doors and huge sheaths of siding (hopefully they're up to snuff in the Cluster of the Year(tm)!) and terlets and whatnot before buying a tacky potted plant and a box of Tic-Tacs and slinking out the door, apparently just singlehandedly solved the global warming crisis, with a little help of coal-plant loving Dominion power:

Jenna Caudillo of Falls Church, Va., today purchased the 1 millionth compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb sold under Dominion Virginia Power's discount program for the energy- and money-saving bulbs. Caudillo purchased the bulb at The Home Depot in Reston.

"At our house we try to do little things to reduce the impact on the environment and save money," said Caudillo. "We have found replacing regular bulbs to be a simple and cost-effective way to reduce our electric bill and help the environment without any noticeable change to our lifestyle. And of course, it helps to have the discount, too."

Problem solved! So feel free to drive your Escalade to the Home Depot parking lot, crank up the AC, and leave it idling while you go inside to buy a new charcoal grill or six.

Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 16: When power amplifiers are banned, only criminals will have power amplifiers

A Reston company pleaded guilty to illegally selling technology with military applications to China.

WaveLab Inc. pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria to unlawful export of electronic components.

In court documents, the company's chief executive, Walter Zheng, admitted that WaveLab shipped hundreds of power amplifiers to China even though it knew the technology had military applications and required an export license that WaveLab lacked.

The company has agreed to forfeit $85,000 (€55,134) _ roughly equivalent to the profits from the sales. It could be forced to pay a fine of up to $500,000 (€324,317) when it is formally sentenced on June 6. A man who answered the phone at WaveLab said everyone was too busy to talk and hung up.

Shocking. Dismaying. Downright unpatriotic. What the hell is a power amplifier, anyway?

Meanwhile, the usual suspects lost wheelbarrows full of money this last quarter: Millennium Bankshares Corp. lost $9.9 million in 2007, which sounds pretty bad until you realize that Sprint Nextel, which will soon be renamed the Kansas Down Home Cellphone, BBQ and Whatnots Corp., lost a staggering $29.45 billion--that's billion, with a "b"--in the fourth quarter alone. They should probably check all the desk drawers before decamping to Kansas. And Albert Lord, the trash-talkin' CEO of Sallie Mae, had his salary cut from $3 million to a mere $1.25 million. But Sallie Mae only lost $1.64 billion last quarter, so those performance incentives ought to be kicking in just about any time now!

Restonian on Your Side(tm): Consumer Watch

Should we be concerned that every one of the gas pumps at the Exxon on Wiehle Avenue has a bright red REJECTED sticker on it, courtesy of the state department of Weights and Measures?

More to the point, should we be concerned that the gas station is still open for business when every one of its gas pumps has a bright red REJECTED sticker on it, courtesy of the state department of Weights and Measures?

That is all.

Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 15: Corn fritters (or buyouts) for everyone!

After months of speculation, it's official: Sprint is movin' its headquarters to Kansas.

It was unclear how many employees at the Reston campus would be affected by the relocation, as the company is offering voluntary retirement packages as part of its plan to reduce staff worldwide by 4,000. Yet the wireless carrier said Sprint will continue to maintain sizable operations locally, reducing the number of office buildings it operates from nine to seven.

Here's the official boilerplate from the internal memo.

We will retain a very significant employee presence in Reston. It remains an important source of talent for the company. Very few Reston-based employees, other than some executives, will be expected to relocate to Overland Park. We'll use this opportunity to re-energize and strengthen the Reston campus.

If by "re-energize" and "strengthen" you mean "find plenty of room to hold meetings in empty cubicles." You can read the rest of the internal memo here. Or better yet, just wait for the movie:

Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 14: Kick off those Sunday shoes

Awesome student loan company Sallie Mae, which lost a mere $1.6 billion in the last quarter, announced that it's secured more than $30 billion in financing to keep it afloat. All it had to do was drop its awesome lawsuit with the people who wanted to buy it until they realized it was, you know, hemorrhaging billions of dollars the way most people lose their remotes in the sofa seatcushions. Or was it... personal?

For Sallie Mae's Albert L. Lord, then chairman and now chief executive, the slow unraveling of the buyout became personal. He contrasted his "land-grant" education as "a Penn State guy" to billionaire investor J. Christopher Flowers's Harvard background and said at one point that he would not accept a reduced price. Later, he urged Flowers to reopen negotiations, but Flowers refused.

Now that's just silly. Had Lord been a Yalie, then it might have been personal. And if he'd gone to Princeton... well, let's just say he'd be polishing Flowers' shoes at the moment.

Anyhoo. Meanwhile Sprint/Nextel/Whatever announced it has canned three top execs.

Sprint announced the immediate departures of three top executives, including Chief Financial Officer Paul Saleh.

The troubled wireless carrier said that in addition to Saleh, Tim Kelly, chief marketing officer, and Mark Angelino, president of sales and distribution, had left.

Last week, Sprint announced it would lay off 4,000 employees and close 125 retail stores -- changes it said would save between $700 million and $800 million a year. The company did not say how many of the layoffs will come from its headquarters in Reston.

Hesse also said he would consider consolidating Sprint's two corporate campuses and moving the headquarters back to Overland Park, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, where it was before the merger.

Though the company hasn't said where its 4,000 job cuts will fall, analyst Patrick Comack of Zachary Investment Research said he expects the job losses to be at the Reston campus, which would fold soon after.

"The low-hanging fruit for Hesse is to straighten out the campus situation, which Forsee should have done years ago and was part of his incompetence," Comack said.

Better kick off those Sunday shoes!

Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 13: Sorry for the Salty Language (and the $1.6 billion)

Sallie Mae chief executive Albert L. Lord is very, very sorry about the salty language he used during a conference call last month. And also that $1.64 billion the company lost in the fourth quarter.

On Wednesday, Lord apologized for his conduct: "I can't say it's the first time I've used bad language. It's the first time I did it in front of 500 people," he said.

Then again, if we couldn't find that $1.64 billion we had lying around after looking under the couch cushions, we might use the F-word, too.

Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 12: Pink slips and Little Pink Houses (For You And Me)

Sallie Mae is laying off 14 folks in Reston as part of a 3 percent cut of its workforce of 11,000. No word on whether the pink slips included liberal uses of the F-word.

It's now official: Sprint Nextel is slashing 4,000 jobs and closing 125 stores.

There was no word in its statement about the fate of its headquarters in Reston.

We know what that means!

Reston homebuilder Comstock may get booted from the Nasdaq because its stock price has fallen faster than property values in an exurban subdivision. (Oh wait--we used that lame analogy yesterday, too.) This, after reporting 110 sales of those little pink houses in the fourth quarter -- and 71 cancellations.

On the bright side, Reston's Used Book Shop at Lake Anne Village is celebrating its 30th birthday. Yay! Here's what people are saying:

"People comment over the years, 'I don't know how you stay in business, but please don't ever close,'" said Bud Burwell, who now owns the business with his wife, Susan.

Right now, if we were betting people, we'd give the bookstore better odds than various home builders, student loan companies, and cellphone providers. When the dust settles, it and this august, albeit mustard-yellow institution may very well be the last two awesome Reston businesses standing.

Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 11: At least you won't have to run to Blockbuster to pick up Footloose

Turns out Sprint Nextel's newest awesome plan to solve its cratering customer base and worthless, static-filled phones is fairly simple: they're going to lay scads of people off.

Sprint Nextel is planning to lay off several thousand employees and considering consolidating its headquarters at the Overland Park campus, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

The Journal quoted unnamed sources and said the cuts were meant to show investors the company was serious about holding down costs. The company has had its “operational headquarters” at the local Sprint campus and its “executive headquarters” in Reston, Va., the former Nextel home city.

On the bright side, getting laid off means you don't have to move to Kansas.

Also, Sprint's awesome Wimax service, which will allow cellphone users to download the above YouTube video in amazing real time, is set for an April launch. How exciting is that, Sprint CTO Barry West?

"People will be excited about our rates. They won't be ecstatic about them because we're not going to give it away," said West.

Now there's some good PR.

Could be worse, though. Things at cross-town neighbor Sallie Mae are going so swimmingly they're basically having to bribe people to come work there. At least if you're a C-level employee, that is:

The Reston-based student loan company agreed to pay John F. "Jack" Remondi an annual salary of $1 million. Remondi also was given a form of stock award that would deliver $2 million for every $1 increase in the company's share price, subject to certain conditions.

Remondi, 45, could earn an annual cash bonus of up to $3 million. His perks include up to two years of housing in Reston and $100,000 a year for personal use of corporate aircraft. If he is fired without cause within a year, he would receive at least $1.5 million in severance pay, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Remondi's $1 million salary was higher than any other chief financial officer's in a survey by the research firm SNL Financial of 2006 compensation at banks, thrifts and specialty lending companies with stock market valuations of more than $5 billion. It was more than double the $465,000 median base salary for the 23 CFOs in that group -- and 150 percent more than the $400,000 salary Remondi's predecessor at Sallie Mae received in 2006.

High executive compensation at Sallie Mae over the years has helped make federally subsidized student lenders a target for politicians.

Can't imagine why. Though we wonder if that awesome Reston housing allowance is for a swinging C-level bachelor pad like this.

Reston's Vibrant Economy Part 10: IPOs, Venture Funds, and a Farewell to the F-Word

Once again, it's time to pull the Boxter out of your carport or your perpetually open garage, because it's time to go back to the crazy, go-go days of the late 1990s!

One of those hip, late 90s venture capital funds, no doubt run by guys with ponytails and black turtlenecks, invested $7 million in Reston's Avail Media Inc., which sounds like it has something to do with video on demand (cough cough hotel room porn cough cough).

Meanwhile, Reston's hottest soon-to-be IPO is NVR Inc.... a home building firm. Good timing, that!

Reston's ICO Communications is at the Consumer Electronics Show, pitching a service that uses a combination of cellular and satellite technology to bring TV to your car. Watching Judge Judy while zipping along the Beltway at 60 miles an hour -- what could possibly go wrong? The service will be up and running as soon as their satellite launches, so watch for a plume of smoke shooting up from Golf Course Island sometime soon.

A company called CRG West bought a 285,000-square-foot data center on Sunrise Valley Drive. It basically sits right on top of the Internet's main pipe or series of tubes or whatever, meaning people inside will be able to pull up this site 0.0345 seconds faster. Yay!

As if moving to Kansas isn't bad enough, Sprint Nextel is facing a lawsuit over reduced retiree benefits. Those $4.99 corn fritter buffets in Overland Park will keep those checks going a lot further, though. But on the bright side, while Sprint Nextel's business is tanking faster than positive comments at a school redistricting meeting, they're doing gangbuster business... south of the border!

The Reston, Va.-based company's clever strategy focuses on building networks in big Latin American cities where the region's business elite congregate. NII rarely bothers to cover wider swathes of the country, beyond transportation corridors, since in rural areas the people tend to be poor.

Another component of its success: traffic jams. The company cites snarled roads as a big reason its customers have so much time to chat on their phone.

Yeah, totally different from the states, isn't it?

Sallie Mae named former bank executive Anthony P. Terracciano its new chairman, replacing trash-talking Albert L. Lord, whose use of the F-word sent the stock tanking in December. Lord is staying on as vice chairman and chief executive, so there's still hope for those boring investor calls! Or at least it'll help keep people's minds off that pesky Ed Department investigation or that lawsuit charging it steered minority students toward more expensive loans. Or that planned $3 billion stock offering. Or... well, you get the drift.

At least they're not moving to Kansas.

Let the panicked consumer stampede begin!

We heard on the TV that Reston's Game Crazy is expecting to get 100 Wiis in stock today. Good luck with that!

Update: If you're reading this now -- instead of having camped out at Hunters Woods overnight -- you're probably too late.