I see that in a recent issue of Consumer Reports, they concluded that the 5-blade Gillette Fusion razor didn't do any better than its less expensive competitors. I have a story about that.

I used to use the Schick Quattro, with its 4 blades. It did a pretty good job, although after a couple of weeks it would start to pull the hair more than I liked. I always laughed about the 5-blade Gillette Fusion, because the concept seemed so utterly ridiculous. It was just like the old SNL sketch about a 5-bladed razor: "...and the 4th and 5th blades? They don't do anything, but aren't you glad they're there?"

Last fall, I received a sample Gillette Fusion in the mail. I figured this was a great opportunity to prove to myself how ridiculous the 5th blade was. Eventually, I did give it a try, and to my surprise it was much better than the Quattro. It did a better job with stubble, it didn't pull the hair, the cartridge ejection mechanism is much easier to use, and the shaft is lighter in weight while still having a nicely high-tech feel.

I switched back and forth over a period of several weeks, and I'm embarrassed to admit that, for me at least, the Gillette Fusion is a much better solution than the Schick Quattro. I've switched completely.

I'm amused by the advertisements for "AT&T, formerly Cingular." They might as well tell the whole story: "AT&T, formerly Cingular, formerly AT&T, formerly Cellular One."

How much lower would my cell phone bill be if they hadn't had to redesign their logo, their building, their stationery, their business cards, their collateral material, and their advertising so many times?

Usually, brand loyalty is the driving force behind keeping your name unchanged. Is there really enough negative market energy behind those old names that it was worth the trouble?

I saw a television commercial over the weekend for a new allergy-related nasal spray called Veramyst. I was struck by one of the disclaimers that flashed at the bottom of the screen:

The way Veramyst works is not entirely understood.

I love that. It's completely typical of the pharmaceutical trade today. "We don't know what this does, but please buy it and shove it up your nose. Maybe we'll figure it out later."

Let's hope that it doesn't work by killing the brain cells that trigger immune responses.

After kind of a dry spell, in which I had drifted over to Leno, I was drawn back to Letterman this week. There were two things about last night's show that struck me.

The first one is the ventriloquists. I know they have made a big hullaballoo about "Ventriloquist Week" for quite some time, generally turning it into a farce, but in my opinion, they should make this an annual thing. These guys are some of the most talented performers in the business. Willie Tyler and Lester -- I can remember watching him on the Flip Wilson Show almost 40 years ago, and he is still as entertaining as he ever was. I'm really looking forward to Jeff Dunham and Walter; I've caught his schtick on Comedy Central several times.

The second one is Dr. Phil, making yet another appearance with Letterman. I really like the interplay between these two guys. Dr. Phil has a good comeback for every barb that Letterman throws. But the high point of the segment, for me, was when they talked about Letterman's concerns about his son. I thought it revealed an openness and a tender side that Letterman rarely shows.

I drove from Seattle to Portland yesterday down Interstate 5. I think it's cute that Washington has signs on the freeway saying "Stay Right Except to Pass". It's cute because, apparently, Washington drivers are completely unable to read them.

I've never driven in a state where the simple technique of interstate driving is so utterly and completely ignored. If you drive in Oregon outside of the "urban" areas (Portland, Salem, Eugene), you'll find traffic in the right lane, with folks pulling in to the left lane to pass, and then returning to the right, just as God intended. Not so in Washington. Those who wanted to drive just a bit faster than traffic had to weave dangerously back and forth between the lanes, while Mr. and Mrs. Oblivious sail along for miles in the left lane.

Get a clue. Outside of urban areas, you should never be in the left-most lane of an interstate unless you are in the process of passing someone. Notice that this means you must be going FASTER than the car you are trying to pass, another tidbit that escaped many of the drivers I saw yesterday.

I've been participating in mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups for a very long time -- more than 25 years. In that time, I have learned many very good things, and I've read many very stupid posts. I have seen quite innocent comments explode out of proportion into completely unnecessary flamefests that have resulted in years of hurt feelings. Some of this comes from poor communcation skills; some of it comes from language differences; some of it simply comes from differing personalities.

Here is a list of some of the things I've learned that can make a newsgroup or mailing list experience more pleasant for all.

1. It is not necessary to reply to every message, nor even to most messages. Do not think of the group as a chat room; think of it as a daily newspaper that happens to have lots of guest columnists.
2. A message should provide some value. Messages like "Quite right" and "Me, too" and "Probably so" and "Nuff said" do not provide value. It is arguable whether THIS message provides any value...
3. Assume the worst when writing a message. Read every message you write BEFORE you send it as if it had been written by your worst enemy, and see how many things could be misconstrued. Corollary: almost everything can (and will) be misconstrued, usually in the most unflattering way possible.
4. Assume the best when reading a message. Since most people will not heed rule #3, you should search for the positive connotations in most messages, not the negative ones. A person who writes an opinion you happen to disagree with is not your worst enemy, even when they express their stupid opinions very strongly.
5. Every newsgroup and mailing list has its culture. Some groups are inherently friendly to newbies and stupid questions. Some groups react quite violently to them. Some groups silently tolerate top-posting. Some groups react quite violently to it.
6. Watch and observe a new group or list for several days before making your first post. Learn who is helpful, and who are the troublemakers. Learn which kinds of posts receive scorn, and which receive assistance.
7. Usenet is not a real-time medium. Unlike forums and mailing lists, Usenet is not centrally managed. When you submit a newsgroup post, it gets sent ONLY to your news server. From there, it gets forwarded to the next server down the line, whenever those two servers make their next regularly scheduled connection. That server forwards it on to other news servers. There are hundreds of thousands of news servers around the world, and it can take most of a day before your post makes it. And THEN, some human being has to fire up their newsreader, fetch the new messages, and read it. When they respond, their response goes through the same tortured, windy path as your original. Bottom line: do NOT expect two-hour turnaround to your requests for help on your homework.
8. Don't take it personally. Many readers -- especially younger folks -- tend to read assertive or critical messages as if they were aimed directly at them. In virtually every case, this is not true. We've never met; I have no clue whether we would like each other or not, but whether we do or not is irrelevant. Until proven otherwise, we are professional colleagues trying to further our collective knowledge, not children trying to establish social supremacy at the lunch table.
9. No one knows everything, but some people do know more than others -- sometimes a LOT more. There are a surprising number of people on most lists and groups who truly are world-renowned experts in their field. Posts from those people deserve a little extra consideration, especially since they often do not follow rule #3 above. Do not dismiss a controversial opinion without first figuring out whether the speaker deserves consideration. By the same token, do not take every post as recognized fact without first figuring out whether the speaker deserves consideration.
10. In the world of Google, newsgroup and mailing list posts now last forever. Be careful about stating your own personal opinions as if they were facts. By the same token, do not be irritated if someone posts a seemingly trivial correction to your message. Next year, some innocent newbie will go searching for information on the same topic, and it will be much better for him or her if all opinions are represented.

I encountered a blog this week that has caused me great confusion. I cannot tell whether this is the work of a paranoid lunatic, or a piece of performance art. I strongly suspect it is the latter -- a great joke on the technorati, hoping to sucker people like me into offering unneeded reassurance and helpful advice.

http://www.tagmeme.com/exmachina/subhack/

If it is a joke, it is one of the most elaborate I have ever encountered, and she suckered me in completely. If it is not a joke, then the author needs some professional counselling and a better grade of drugs.

You decide.

I have two comments about the reaction of the radical Muslim world to the Danish cartoons of Mohammed.

My first comment is to repeat that gem of grade school, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." You're entitled to dislike those depictions. You're even entitled to be offended by them. But let us remember that no one was harmed, no one was killed, and no property was destroyed by the publication of the cartoons.

My second comment is to point out the utter irony of the reaction. Those radical fundamentalists who are rioting, pillaging, threatening, and encouraging harm and death are doing nothing more than validating the depiction in the cartoon. When someone sees you or depicts you in a particular way, and you find that depiction disagreeable, the proper reaction is to step back and ask yourself, "Why do they think that? Are they wrong, or am I actually showing to the world a face that I do not want to show?" When Mr. A says to Mr. B, "you're too violent", and Mr. B responds by knocking Mr. A to the ground, Mr. B has not done a very good job of contradicting Mr. A's assertion.

I'm pleased as punch to announce that I've been named a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) again this year, for the 11th consecutive year. I'm an MVP in the "Windows DDK" area. That stands for "driver development kit", which is what I use to write device drivers.

The MVP award is given to folks who help propel Microsoft towards its goal of world domination, either by writing books, by giving lectures, by leading user groups, or by answering questions in newsgroups and web forums. My specialty is the latter; I have a disease which renders me unable to prevent myself from answering questions in technical newsgroups.

It's an honor, because you can't "apply" for membership; you can only be named an MVP if other MVPs nominate you for the award. The toys are pretty cool, too; I get a free copy of MSDN Universal, access to private MVP newsgroups, and a $150 shopping spree at the Microsoft company store.

So, thanks very much, Microsoft. I appreciate it.

You know, whatever you think about William Shatner's acting ability, this guy deserves a lot of respect. He has suffered the slings and arrows of critics and satirists, managed to overcome the burden of being typecast as James T Kirk, one of the most familiar and recognizable figures in pop culture, stuck with it, and kept on practicing his chosen craft. On Sunday night, he received recognition from his peers through his second Emmy award. That represents a strength and persistence that few of us possess.

Well done, Bill.

Here's a photo of the dangers of not understanding physics.

And here's a good example of bad translations: Star Wars III: The Backstroke of the West.

Saturday Night Live this week was a rerun of the show earlier in the year hosted by Paris Hilton. Even though we might give her a bit of extra time since she is hot, I think her 15 minutes are nearly up.

However, this show does have one of my favorite SNL sketches in a long time: the Phone Sex sketch. Hilton is the infomercial spokesperson for a phone sex business called Exclusive Connections: "We know what kind of guy is calling a sex line at three in the morning." Turns out each of their phone sex operators pretends to be a character from the science fiction genres that, in reality, WOULD be of interest to people who call a phone sex line at 3 AM. Tina Fey does a great job as Princess Leia, with the cinnamon bun hair-do:

Caller: Call me a nerf-herder.
Fey: Know what you are? You're just a stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder!

Amy Poehler is a Level 8 Dungeon Master:

Poehler: What's that, baby? You're a Level 5 Chaotic Evil Half-Orc? Oh, that makes me so hot. I'm a Lawful Neutral Druidic Monk with +5 melee range, Boots of Levitation, and big, sharp Vorpal Sword. I want you to cast a saving throw, baby! Cast it!

Rachel Dratch is dressed up like a Lord Of The Rings elf:

Dratch: You've been a bad Hobbit, haven't you? Bad Hobbits go straight to Mordor.

This whole sketch was dead-on. I laughed until my sides hurt. I know it was just a sketch, but I can't help but think this concept would make a fortune in the real world.

WOW. I watched a new episode of South Park tonight. The episode focussed on the boys trying to become talent agents. As their only client, they gain a Chinese woman named Wing, who does dreadful renditions of "classic" songs like "Morning After" and "Dancing Queen". From the sound of the voice, I assumed that it was one of the two creators singing nasally in falsetto.

Then, just after the credits, they put up a slide suggesting that folks go to www.WingMusic.co.nz to find out more about Wing and her music. I assumed it would be a joke site, so I popped right over there.

Much to my shock and surprise, this woman is a REAL PERFORMER. She is a real Chinese woman, now living in New Zealand, who has actually put out 9 CDs. Her songs are all every bit as dreadful as the songs on South Park tonight. She is clearly the next Yoko Ono. In fact, the Dancing Queen the played tonight is the lead track on her latest CD!

Even more astonishing, this woman mentions on her website (apparently with pride) that her music is being used on an episode of South Park. I cannot guess whether she is clueless as to the point of South Park, or if she actually understands that she is a model for William Hung.

My congratulations to the creative minds at South Park. That is a gag of the first division, and I use the word "gag" carefully...

I'm just now watching another episode of Saturday Night Live. Now, I appreciate most of the current cast members; I think there is an enormous amount of talent there, and they have more hits than misses. However, someone needs to tell Horatio Sanz that he is not funny. He has no sense of comic timing at all. And while there have been some wonderful scenes on the show when cast members started to laugh out of character (David Spade losing it in front of Chris Farley doing "Matt Foley", for example), but Horatio loses it so often, he just looks unprofessional.

I just read a most amazing web site.

Tonya Harding, Oregon's reigning queen of trailer trash, has announced that she will be participating in a professional wrestling match with a transvestite. This, of course, is entirely in character for Tonya, but this is NOT the "most amazing" thing I want to share with you.

In honor of that announcement, "The Edge," which is the daily humor section of the Oregonian, is having a contest where people can submit up to 3 Tonya-related limericks. I found it difficult to stop at only three.

Before I submitted my limericks, I wanted to check the spelling of her name, just so I made no mistakes. In Googling her, I came across Tonya's own personal web site, www.tonyaharding.com.

The web site includes a couple of nice photos, but there are two things on there that I find most amazing. First, she actually claims to be "the most influential person in Figure Skating", AND the second most influential person "in all sports history, second only to Mohammed Ali".

Can you imagine THINKING such a thing, much less posting it on a public web site? I'm completely agog.

Adding to the fun, later on there is a quote from an Oregonian interview in which she outlines her lofty goals for her life. She wants to make enough money from boxing, she says, to "go hunting and fishing, and every once in a while put on a really pretty dress and go to dinner at a place like Applebee's or something."

Now, wouldn't you think that the second most influential person in all sports history would be able to aim a little higher than Applebee's?

I want to feel sorry for Tonya, really I do. But every time the flame of publicity is just about to flicker out, she herself dumps another gallon of kerosene on it.

Here are some clues for Oregon drivers, for those who seem to lack them.

• By the time you get to the end of a freeway on-ramp, you should be going freeway speed. Actually, this seems to be less of a problem in Oregon than it is in other states (example: Colorado).
• I'll allow an exception to that rule for trucks and RVs, many of whom simply cannot accelerate that fast.
• In Oregon, the second right turn lane has exactly the same rights as the first right turn lane. That means that you CAN turn right against a red light from the second right turn lane.
• Unlike California, however, you CANNOT just turn into whatever lane you feel like taking. The curb lane must turn into the curb lane. The second lane must turn into the second lane.
• Folks, cars are NOT that hard to turn. Many people execute a turn by starting to turn the wheel as soon as they move off of the line at the intersection. The only effect this has is that you cross into the oncoming traffic lanes. No one should ever impinge on an oncoming lane like that. You should not start turning the wheel until you are almost halfway into the intersection.
• There's one weird little exception that is unique to Oregon, as far as I know. You can always turn against a red light when turning into the curb lane on a one-way street. This includes turning left from a two-way onto a one-way. Although counterintuitive, this is LEGAL in Oregon. In fact, there is a diagram of this move in the Driver's Manual.

I'm amused by the jargon-filled sentences one often finds in technical journals. I especially like to drop them in casual conversation, completely out of context.

There was an article on star formation in Scientific American some time in 2002. They reprinted it this month in their "resubscriber's bonus issue". It includes a great quotable line:

The logarithm of the metallicity falls off linearly with distance, with a slope of -0.07 dex per kiloparsec.

I don't know how I'm going to work that in at my next cocktail party, but I hope to slip it in right after "furlongs per fortnight".

So, what is the deal with the sudden spate of spam offering me pseudo-Rolex watches? In a matter of a week or so, I went from getting 0 per day to hundreds per day. Is this the Internet equivalent of the shady street corner character, opening his trench coat to show me an array of cheap knock-offs? I can understand the Viagra/Cialis spams. The profit margin on those pills has to be high enough to make even a small spam hit rate into a major profit center. But fake watches? I don't get it.

We Americans are so easily duped. The price for regular unleaded at my local gas station has dropped from $2.029 to $1.929 over the last two weeks, and I found myself thinking, "what a bargain!" On the other hand, I did three business trips to Europe this year. When I visited Edinburgh, a city I dearly loved, I noticed that gas was priced at 89p per litre. After a little number crunching, I realized that was just over $6 per gallon. I didn't get much sympathy from my hosts when I whined about paying $2 per gallon.

Thanks to senseless and ongoing blog spamming by the fricking bastards at www.diamond-online-casinos.com, I have modified the blog software to reject any comment that contains the word "casino". I apologize in advance if this blocks a legitimate comment. If that happens, I'll adjust the heuristics a bit.

They are the slime of the earth. I hope the spammers will one day wake up and realize the despicable nature of their chosen profession, and move into one with a bit more honor. Like career pedophile.

Here are some MORE clues for Oregon drivers, after some experiences this weekend.

• There are a number of mountain highways in western Oregon, crossing the Coast Range. These highways are usually one lane each direction, with the occasional passing lane. Many drivers are apparently confused about the purpose of the passing lanes. Few things irk me more than the driver who travels 50 MPH when the road is winding areas, accumulating an impressive tail of cars and trucks behind them, then revs up to 65 MPH for the passing lane, but backs off to 50 again once the passing lane ends. Dude! Get a clue! If you want to travel 50, that's just fine, but stay at 50 once you hit the passing lane. That way, those of who want to travel faster won't be climbing up your rear end when the lane ends.
• As cranky as I sound, however, I'm not going to comment on drivers with cell phones. I've been known to use one, and I'll continue to do so. Common sense is the rule.
• It is interesting to notice, however, how many of the truly dangerous drivers are smokers. This was pointed out to me in a ticket-avoidance class in California long ago. People who smoke clearly do not care about societal restrictions and warnings, and that naturally manifests itself in their driving. Speed limits are for mortals, right?

I beat a personal best this morning when I heard someone give a 13-word drink order at Starbucks: "Triple-shot grande decaf non-fat with whipped two-pump white chocolate mocha".

I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on them. The Starbucks culture encourages it, in the way they repeat the orders in exactly the right syntax. After all, it takes five words just to get my iced tea ("iced venti unsweetened black tea"). Plus, when you're spending $3.50 for a cup of coffee, you darned well ought to have it exactly the way you want it, even if it takes a whole paragraph to describe it. It just struck me as funny. I can order a complete lunch at Wendys using fewer words ("number one, with cheese, biggie-sized, iced tea, no lemon").

I had a new experience earlier in the week.

One of the "cheap prescriptions here!" web sites spammed by blog. They posted an 80-line advertisement as a comment to one of my messages trying to sell items to enhance portions of my anatomy, along with dozens of links to their web site.

I followed the web links and found the parent site. I sent nasty e-mails to their President, webmaster, sales, and tech support e-mail addresses suggesting that some alternative methods of marketing might produce better results without alienating people so much, but the e-mails all bounced after a few days.

I don't have any automated tools scanning the comments. I hope this doesn't become a habit.

Here's a test of English grammar for you. Parse or diagram this sentence:

O beautiful
For spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

We sing that proudly and clearly, but the syntax has always bothered me. Where are the subject and verb of that sentence? Answer: nowhere. In fact, the only verbs in the entire first verse are "shed" and "crown" As near as I can tell, that first sentence consists of an adjective and four prepositional phrases.

The second verse DOES have the required subject and verb ("feet beat"), as does the third verse ("heroes loved") and the fourth verse ("dream sees"), but I maintain that the first verse of our beloved anthem is a sentence fragment.

Purists will, of course, challenge me for attempting to parse what was clearly intended as imagery-filled poetry. They're right.

While investigating this, I learned a fascinating tidbit: this poem was not immediately associated with the melody we now hold so dear. In fact, in its early life, it was often sung to "Auld Lang Syne", and the combination actually works very well. Try it!

In my last message, I mentioned how funny it was to hear the phrase "Republican front-runner Arnold Schwarzenegger". I have to admit that pales in comparison to "California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger".

I'll have to reread Revelations, but I'm sure this is one of the signs of the apocalypse.

Wasn't this in Nostradamus?

When the gap-toothed weightlifter
Rules over the land of the golden sun
Humanity slides into oblivion

"Republican front-runner Arnold Schwarzenegger": now there's a phrase I never thought I'd hear on NPR.

The virus problem has grown to ridiculous proportions.

In the month of September alone, my procmail filters have stopped 23,000 virus-laden e-mail messages addressed to my personal mailbox. I was trapping 150 megabytes a day until I decided to route them directly to the trash can.

150 megabytes a day! That is at least an order of magnitude above our normal e-mail volume. No wonder the Internet is slowing down.

I am a generally helpful guy. I have a genetic defect that makes me unable to resist answering technical questions. This leads to my spending 15 hours a week on Internet newsgroups when I should be doing things with my family. It has also led to my being designated a "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional" (MVP), which the fabulous prizes that go along with it, so it isn't entirely bad.

I also get a lot of requests for free technical support, mostly because of my involvement with the S3 Savage driver for XFree86. My website is linked from a lot of graphics web sites, and that puts me high on the Google hit list for Savage questions. Many people do not bother to read the part about Linux, so I get a lot of marginally related Windows questions as well.

This month, I had an e-mail exchange go horribly bad. I got a question from a hysterical, hypersensitive, 48-year-old former elementary school teacher who decided to misinterpret my response in the worst possible way. The exchange just got worse with each exchange. It is an excellent example of how e-mail can cause disasters, as well as being a fine case study in the differences in communication styles between men and women.

It makes for an amusing read, as long as you keep saying "thank goodness this didn't happen to me": www.probo.com/timr/Deed.html.

Just to prove my point about the KGW 11 o'clock news, I used a stopwatch to time the news-to-commercial ratio. It wasn't as bad as I thought: 22:20 of news to 12:40 of commercials. One third of the newscast is commercial advertisements.

The interesting thing, to me, is the way they have it laid out. The first 15 minutes has only one interruption. That means the last 20 minutes, which has weather, sports, and fluff, is more than 50% ads.

I'm going to start shutting it off at 11:20. I don't need to be pummeled with car ads.

The 11 o'clock news on the local NBC affiliate, KGW channel 8, has started an annoying new tradition that really ticks me off.

They've always had a very high commercial-to-news ratio, but now they've taken it a step further. At 11:26 PM, they break for a 2-minute commercial break. When they come back, they do a single tidbit of fluffy feel-good news -- your basic public interest story -- for a full 50 seconds, and then they break for commercial again! This time, they take a full 3-minute commercial break, after which they do their 15-second goodbyes, and flow into another 3 minutes of commercials before rolling into Jay Leno.

Did you count that up? In the last 9 minutes of the newscast, there is exactly 65 seconds of content, and all of THAT lightweight.

I changed to the channel 8 news when the local CBS station (KOIN) hired on a bozo-and-bozo team (Jeff Gianola and Kelly Day) to do their evening news. I might have to consider switching again.

I could use your help.

I like ambient music -- the kind of quiet, ethereal, continuous, melody-free stuff that is designed to sit in the background. I know a lot of people can't stand that, but that's why there are so many different kinds of music.

I would like to get a CD or two for my office, but I don't know who to get. I don't know who is good and who makes weird junk with barking dogs and squeaking doors. If you know something about the ambient music scene and could offer me some advice, I would appreciate it. Email me at timr@probo.com.

Weblogs are harder than they look. I honestly thought, when I started this about six months ago, that I would be able to make an entry every day. I managed to keep that up for about three weeks, and to my rather great surprise, I ran out of novel and interesting things to day.

I suppose the point of a weblog is that I should be expressing my opinions even when they are not "novel and interesting". I'm embarrassed at how few postings I've made recently. I must try to do more...

I'm lusting after Dell's new Inspiron 8500 laptop. They have one version with a 1920x1050 15.5" LCD display. Ah, man, how many DOS command shells could I spread across that sucker? Makes me drool. My Pentium-II 266MHz seemed like such a great buy, but four years later it kind of limps along...

Letterman had pseudo-psychiatrist Dr. Phil on his show last night, and the world is better for it. It has been a long time since I laughed that hard. Letterman has lampooned Dr. Phil's television show virtually every night for the last six months in his "Words from Dr. Phil" show, giving little snippets taken completely out of context, in which he generally makes Dr. Phil look like an idiotic country bumpkin.

I admire Dr. Phil for having the gumption to appear on the show after all of that abuse, but he proved that he can dish it out as well as he can take it. Letterman tried to get him to admit that most of the people on his show are just bozos who need little more than a swift kick in the pants, but Dr. Phil had a good answer for every barb. I enjoyed it.

Two men who know how to laugh at themselves: it was glorious.

Interestingly, part of Dr. Phil's advice mirrors one of my own little nuggets of philosophy: You only get one trip through life. If you aren't having a good time, you ought to go do something else.

We replaced and upgraded the operating system our main gateway server today. We had made a LOT of customizations to the old Red Hat 5.2 system, so we expected trouble. Fortunately, we had been planning this for months; the machine has been going flaky for quite some time, and it is difficult to keep up with all of the security updates. Thanks to all the planning, the upgrade itself wasn't too bad. We had been running it offline for a couple of weeks, and thanks to all the preparation, it only tooks about 4 hours this afternoon to do the switch and clean up all of the leftovers.

The thing that amazes me about this is the amount of guru mungling that I had to do. Very often, when I have finished with some delicated computer operation, I wonder what "mere mortals" do when they have the same kinds of problems?

I suppose they just throw them out and start over, which, considering the amount of trouble we have, might not be a bad solution overall...

I am saddened by the loss of the space shuttle Columbia yesterday morning. My sympathy and condolences go out to the families of the seven astronauts who lost their lives.

It is my fervent hope that we do not have another 18 month gap in flights while NASA investigates the failure. (Strictly speaking, I don't think they can do so, since we still have human beings up their in the International Space Station that will need refueling and replacement.) The astronauts all know that their job is dangerous, although their families might not see it that way.

I just hope this ends up being an unforseeable accident caused by a series of unlikely events, and not the result of incompetence or bureaucratic insistence. If the root cause was, in fact, stuff falling off of the external fuel tanks and damaging the wing, I suspect there are a number of good ways to solve that, including something as simple as a discardable shield to protect the delicate ablative surfaces during launch.

I really enjoy Late Night with David Letterman. I must, to keep watching it when I really should be in bed. I've tried to think about what it is about him that keeps me up late. It probably isn't the guests; all of the late night shows have the same guests, often on consecutive days.

To me, Letterman is at his best when he interacts with the audience during "America's fastest growing quiz sensation, Know Your Current Events." His broad knowledge of trivia means he can almost always find an interesting question to ask of any audience member.

"Will It Float" is a very strange phenomenon. Conceptually, it is a stupid idea, but it seems to be working very well. I suspect it is just the surrounding hype that makes it fun, but fun it is. However, I think the grinder girl's 15 minutes are up.

"Is This Anything" is another segment that hits more often than it misses. It is amazing what some people will do to get on television.

On the other hand, it is long past time for both "Psychic Sandwich" and "Beat The Clock" to go. "Beat The Clock" just grates on me; it isn't funny, it isn't suspenseful, and it is downright mean to the "contestants". If there were a point to it, it would be different, but it's nothing more than existential silliness. Maybe there's a Zen aspect to it that I am missing. And perhaps someone can explain to me why "Intuitive" Debra Lynn keeps coming back for more "Psychic Sandwich" abuse. It took her three or four tries before she figured out that the object of the game was to pick the NAME of the sandwich, rather than the MAKEUP of the sandwich. So much for intuition.

I miss Biff Henderson locating the viewer mail cities on his big map.

Nathan Lane and Martin Short could liven up a mortician's convention. Wouldn't you love to be stuck in an airport for a few hours with those two?

I do wish he would introduce the band once in a while. We know Paul, of course, and we've heard Anton and Felicia mentioned a few times, but the rest of the group is anonymous. I've even sent this in to "viewer mail" once or twice.

Mother Nature is playing quite a set of tricks on herself here in the Pacific Northwest. As I mentioned below, we've had a series of rather nice days, clear and bright, with temperatures in the 50s. As a result of that, many of the trees and bushes have actually started to bud.

Today, of course, it's hovering in the low 30s, and should drop below freezing some time during the night. I think many of the trees will be getting "nipped in the bud" tonight.

"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." How old do you have to be to remember the series of commercials that included that line, and the product it was advertising?

I saw a great e-mail signature today:

I solved my Windows XP problems by installing Service Pack Linux

It is difficult to think of profound things to say every day, so I will spend a couple of days saying things that aren't so profound.

The entertainment rumor sheets over the last week or so have been saying that Ian McKellan, who does such a great job as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings juggernaut, had been signed to replace Richard Harris as Albus Dumbledore in the next Harry Potter flick, Prisoner of Azkaban. Today, the Oregonian reports that the rumor is being denied.

That's a shame, because McKellan would be perfect for the role. Gandalf is rather similar to Dumbledore in many respects; the fact that McKellan does so well in LOTR should boost his rèsumé power a bit. Further, if you saw what a good time he had hosting Saturday Night Live last year, you know that he has the sense of humor that is so critical in playing Dumbledore.

Well, the human race managed to make it through another year without exterminating itself. I hope that the warmongers in our government decide to take serious steps to insure that we at least get through THIS one.