...because the Internet is already my primary source of information and is rapidly becoming the only source of information that counts. Read this to see why your reliance on Mainstream Media is soooo five minutes ago.

These people are also crazy:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/12/21/national1342EST0572.DTL

Here's the story of a family who is suing Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart sold their daughter the shotgun she used to kill herself. Tragic, yes. Worth of litigation? Hardly. The family's claim is that Wal-Mart “should have known” that the girl was going to do something bad with that shotgun because (a) she assaulted a Wal-Mart employee (come on, who hasn't?) and (b) the Wal-Mart pharmacy had information on file about her prescription meds for (wait for it!) being crazy.

Here's the deal: some people are nuts and some of those people are nutty enough to do bad things with shotguns. Improve gun control laws. Be better parents. Or even (gasp!) allow for the possibility that this poor soul actually wanted to and decided to end her own life. At least she didn't take anyone else out along the way.

Respect her decision, and stop trying to blame those cheap bastards at Wal-Mart.

These people are crazy:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/11/16/national1426EST0601.DTL

They want us to stop eating fish. They liken it to eating cats and dogs. Frankly, I'd eat member of PETA if it came right down to it. Perhaps a little PETA on pita. With a nice Chianti.

I say: Wear fur. Go hunting for sport. Eat anything below you on the food chain, including people of limited intelligence who have little better to do with their sad, tofo-eating lives than to push a dubious moral agenda on the good folks at Neiman Marcus and various sushi houses around this great meat-eating country of ours.

Seriously, people. Fish are fish. And, as it turns out, fish are both yummy and good for you. Deee-lish, Noo-trish, as my grandmother used to say.

Trina's blog is now available in XML. Check it out:

http://www.trinachow.com/blog/rss/trina.xml

Be happy, Omar.

-dick

...by the way, if you vote “Yes” on all the propositions, you'll be a democrat. Voting “No” on everything makes you a republican. Ain't that funny? Or sad, maybe.

Freakin' two-party system.

Well. I've spent some time now reading through the various voter's guides that the good men of the Office of the Post have left at my doorstep, and I daresay, I am well read and ready to exercise my civic obligation on or possibly before November 2nd.

I've put together a nifty little spreadsheet, which you can find here, which has information from various political parties and other organizations about how these parties and organizations would have you cast your vote on each of the approximately 5000 propositions and referendums on this year's ballot.

There is a column for you to indicate your intent on each proposition, and the spreadsheet will automatically re-color itself to tell you whether you are a tax-and-spend bastard democrat or a bible-thumping republican gay-basher. Sweet!

These days, I'm riding Caltrain to work everyday. It's awesome. I am invulnerable to traffic on 101.

So, I spend the train rides playing around with .Net. I'm learning a lot. Right now, I'm writing an app that creates a web page for me to control my Media Center. You can view all the music files and make them play (on the media center, not on the computer where you're running the browser). It's cool. It uses .Net remoting and DataSets and lots of other wicked stuff.

I think up new features at night and write them, 40 minutes at a time, on the train. No feature can take longer than 40 minutes.

This morning, I wrote search. Tonight, maybe I'll hook up Play/Pause. Or maybe Shuffle. Who knows?

(c) 2004 Forty Minute Software, Inc.

My new Dell 4600 is the cat's pajamas. That is, if the cat in question is actually a giant robotic tiger-lizard and the pajamas are flaming high-tech ninja pajamas forged in the fires of Mount Doom by mutant pajama-elves from the future.

Seriously. I love this computer. Visit http://www.dell.com immediately and order something nice for yourself.

Buying experience: Excellent

Computer: Ass kicking

Shipping: Free and unbelievably fast. I actually received the computer the morning before I ordered it.

Set up: Trivial.

Wiping the disk and doing a clean install of Windows XP: Mostly Easy.

Re-installing critical drivers: Superbly easy, and possibly the best thing about buying Dell. Also an excellent reason to avoid buying Toshiba.

You are crazy not to be running WindowsXP Service Pack 2 (XP SP2) right now. Crazy, I tell you. The pop up blocker in IE 6 alone is worth the price of admission. Which is free, by the way.

Go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com right now. Do it. Right now. I'll wait.