Yesterday I spilled a little bit of bottled water on the keyboard of my Apple iBook. The iBook crashed with a kernel panic unlike any other I have seen since the days of the Amiga.

I had about 4GB of data to upload today for several projects. My DSL at home, while reliable, is only 256k upstream. After hours of waiting, I loaded the files onto my laptop and went to Borders Books. I guessed that T-mobile had installed an actual T1 line and I was right. Full 1.5Mbps uplink, so I was able to finish all of my uploads in about 2.5 hours.

Supposedly the State of Georiga passed a law authorizing a new “Share the Road” specialty license plate for cars. A bike messenger in Canada who won the right to deduct extra food expenses as “fuel.” Supposedly he uses more than 4,000 calories a day.

I sold my last television on Craig’s List this week. It was a tiny 11 inch that I got from a college roommate who upgraded. It’s heavy and doesn’t have much value, so I decided to try and get rid of it on Craig’s List instead of eBay or GoodWill. I listed it for $10 and indicated that they must pick it up as I wasn’t interested in boxing and shipping it. Within two or three hours, someone e-mailed and said they’d take it. That was really easy and there were no fees.

DragonCon last weekend was a blast! The very best part was that the folks at needcoffee.com put on a “Gonzo film festival” that was just terrific. What a rush for 300 people to scream “and knowing is half the battle – GI JOE!” or sing along with one of the counting songs from Sesame Street.

I was just looking at my electric bill and noticed my cost per kilowatt-hour is up 14% from this time last year. That’ s not my “consumption” or number of hours used… that’s the cost for the same amount of power.

I’m not a home décor kind of guy, so before I saw the giant IKEA store opening downtown, I hadn’t given much thought to them – but my trip to the store was quite an experience.Contrary to my preconceptions, not all of the furniture is particle board – some of it is real, unstained, untreated wood. The building is twice the size of the largest Home Depot and has two floors of showroom. It also has two parking decks and a regular parking lot. The showroom has small mock-up homes that served as demonstrations for how someone can live in small spaces such as 550 square feet.

Just a quick update on the lack of blog entries recently, and some hints to things to come…

Some jackass hit my car’s fender while I was shopping. They either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Two weeks ago I got an MP3 player. Most of them on the market are made by Sony, but since my $2000 Sony Viao laptop failed after less than 60 days and Sony refused to fix it, I refuse to do business with them. I got a “Memorex” player for $23 at Target. It works [...]