so what was afoot?

it goes like this. we took the plunge and bought a 42" plasma from gateway. (yea yea i know the videophiles all poo poo it) we hooked up our xbox, our ultimate tv and our hp media center. then we get all kinds of crazy switchers and cables so that we can have whatever is going into the gateway back out to a 15" flat screen monitor that we used to use with said media center. then we hooked up a crazy japanese infrared tennis game to an av switcher box and a wireless mini cam which is pointed at our front door. needless to say since then there has been a lot of dinking going on around the house. b. ps_ see i told you my definition of something big was pretty lame in the grand scheme of things...

i'm an RPGer & i'm proud.

a moniker i didn't think i would ever don. but this old dog is loving her new trick. say it with me people... b.

bartleby.

what a gas. crispin at his finest. i swear i love that man. although now the husband enjoys running around the house saying "i prefer not to" everytime i glance at the dishwasher or kitty litter pan. b

potter.

finished ordr of the phonenix last week. i liked it. a lot. i flew home from gnomedex with nelson from google sitting next to me. he had finished it recently as well and commented that a couple hundred pages probably could have be nixed as they didn't really contribute to the overall plot at hand. the thing is at the time and for some time after i had to agree, the book did seem way too long. but then it occurred to me that maybe i didn't want the book to end so fast. it's a bit of an escape living in the land of wizards and muggles, journeying to hogsmeade, hiding out in the forest behind the school, and watching poor neville finally kick some bootay. at 860 ppgs i'm sure it's the longest book that a lot of kids have read yet. funny thing is i picked up dune to read afterwards (i think i read it every 18-20 mos) and just 20 pages into it i feel like i've read 10 x that much. herbert is dense. good dense, but nonetheless there is no speed reading with this one. so the distance from 1 to end is pretty relative in the literary space. b.

new obsession.

it's all her fault. b.

big things are afoot

in the house of b. hence the lack of regular posting. hoping to share more soon! b. ps_ what's a big deal to me is probably pretty mundane to everyone else so don't anticipate anything too exciting. wow, my ps_ is longer than the post.

best place on earth.

true to my current takashi murakami obsession i picked up two of his books. i also spent some time browsing the magazines and cutie-pie school supplies. good lord i wish i could read kanji characters. b.

friendster.

in having such a good time adding friends and reading up on people who are way more interesting than i am. i asked for my first intro today to someone i'm connected to via four degrees of pete. i'll keep you posted on how this all works out... b.

flash mob: redmond.

thanks to scoble for throwing together a flash mob on friday. and true to his observation i like many others was on the seattle side of the lake. here's hoping i'm in the neighborhood for the next one. b.

friday.

i've got a lot of catching up to do. posts to follow once i have some dinner and pop in a dvd. b.

too darn hot.

mid 90's in seattle. too hot to move. think. blog. gnomedex recap and more as soon as there is a break in the freakish weather. b.

just in case...

you're in a movie or meeting and don't want to disturb others. b.

dan gillmor

the rise of personal publishing. journalism's new world ubiquitous networks new choices for reader/viewers/listeners anyone can publish powerful tools for exporting, publishing empowers not just the "former audience" but.... doh - slide changed! 7 november 2000, hong kong being in hong kong, between refreshing the home page of cnn and listening to an audio stream of npr i felt like i was getting great coverage. i was "rolling" my own news. convergence we started with old media we added new media then we added we media doh - slide change (slow down my man!) media in the digital age 11 september 2001 first t.v., then the websites, then the blogs, email lists. getting news...in real time. 14 september 2001 an afghan-american speaks - email making rounds in the web... showed up on salon.com "bottom up journalism" december 5, 2002: trent lott's nostalgia for segregation mainstream journalism ignored it basically - it was the webloggers who made them pay attention. made them realize it was a story - a national story. february 1, 2003: columbia -- 1 space shuttle columbia is lost - real time blogger following columbia -- 2 weather radar appears to show shuttle debris columbia --3 in email list a prediction was made as to what had happened - turns out the guy was right journalism has been a lecture we say, "this is the news" you buy what we sell -(or you don't) journalism becomes a conversation... or maybe a seminar we tell you what we have learned. you tell us if you think we are correct. then we discuss it. self-correcting, to an extent a foundation principle: my reads know more than i do my readers know more.... and this guy probably wishes they didn't: joe nacchio: former ceo of qwest at pc forum conference whining about the price of stock company buzz bruggeman: sends link to doc and dan re: stock sale by joe nacchio my audience learns more reporting and distribution via tools/toys rss - newsreaders search tools - feedster for example, technorati social software - wiki inviting the audience big media ask the readers the self assembling newsroom mutimedia blogging new media and trust what is true? how can reader/viewer verify? - kaycee nicole - drudge - rumors move at the speed of light, corrections follow slowly retreat to quality? "we can fact check your ass" - ken layne democracy and an informed public concentration of media is a danger fewer voices vanilla journalism wall street's pernicious influence but "big media" does vital work investigative journalism covering the city council ear to the community new model: nano-publishing gizmodo shout out! new/old model: the tip jar back in iraq 2.0 engaging the community comments - invite reader participation; learn from them - bbc's editorial control give readers their own weblogs - salon - reverse cowgirl et al. THE BIG PROBLEM: how hollywood, governments see the internet: (picture of the television: i.e. lock it down) intellectual property rights digital content: who sets the rules? rest of the world is following u.s. lead dmca digital millennium copyright act; wipo; eu follows, then leads copyright holders assert absolute control threats and suggestions stifle research microsoft, other tech companies, are helping the control freaks copyright extensions why worry? new media entrants may be thwarted. more power to incumbents less useful information for citizens help dan with his book: dgillmor@mercurynews.com b.

my question to dvorak.

ps_ if you were at gnomedex i wasn't just giving john a hard time. i sincerely wanted to know if there was some new exciting technology he likes. i was happy to get a sincere answer and a tip on a really cool new toy i need to check out. b.

need more credit.

yowza. b.

john c. dvorak.

chris doing an intro and pointing out a recent article with dvorak's take on blogs. the switcherooski - making powerpoint your friend go to google and put ".ppt" and the word slides - do a search download the slides that sound interesting - example "user-centered applicance computing: appliance data services" from stanford and hp famous predictions oh my - i'm sort of brain fried after keeping up with tim. i'm just going to sit back and listen to this one. b.

tim o's suggested reading list.

the structure of scientific revloutions, by thomas kuhn the innovator's dilemma, by clayton christenson the cathedral and the bazaar, by eric s. raymond code and other laws of cyberspace, by lawrence lessig the cluetrain manifesto, by chris locke, doc searls, and david weinberger small pieces loosely joined, by david weinberger down and out in the magic kingdom, by cory doctorow (* currently reading this on my pocket pc - he has a free download from him blog) b.

tim o'reilly.

so tim sent me a quick e-mail yesterday. wow. i'll definitely put that in my save folder right along with the voice mail i got from wil wheaton last year. color me *star struck*. tim o'reilly: the open source paradigm shift. paradigm shift - a change in world view that calls everything you know into question. slide one: the pc paradigm shift (hardware) commodity hardware with an open architecture - ibm beats apple low cost and a pure play commodity hardware business model beat proprietary add-ones - dell beats ibm and copmaq companies stuck in the old paradigm die off: digital, data general, prime even open architectures have proprietary componenets - intel inside. lesson number one: open architecture/hardware beats proprietary. lesson number two: there are little pockets of proprietariness (intel inside). slide two: the pc paradigm shift (software) sofware decoupled from hardware lock-in and competitive advantage move to software - microsoft beats ibm lesson: understand this paradigm shift. slide three: paradigm failure at work! linux critic: "there is no user-friendly applications on linux" linux advocate: have you seen the latest release of gnome, openoffice, or the gimp? what's wrong with this picture? slide four: user friendly applications on linux (or bsd) google, amazon.com, paypal, yahoo get local maps - if you use these you are a linux user! slide five: what's wrong with this picture? these applications are being created by open source developers and run on an open source platfrom, but .... most are fiercely proprietary source code is not distrubted (and it wouldn't be useful to many developers if it were) licensis triggered by binary software distribution have no effect the value in these applications is in their data and their customer interactions more than in their software slide six: the internet paradigm shift an open arichetcture inevitably leads to interchangeable parts - commodity softrare competitive advantage and revenue opportunities move up the stack to services avole the level of a single device. information applications are decoupled form both hardware and software lcok in is based on data and customer relationships noe proprietary software intel is still inside but so cisco and eventually others there are lots of choke points for proprietary advantage even in a open system. the internet application platform commodity intel hardware the internet protocol stack and utilities like vind lamp -linux -apache -mysql -php (or perl or python platform agnostic client front ends slide eight i'm an inventor. i became interested in long term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished not the world in which it is started.: - ray kurzweil. slide nine: beyond licensing: the three c's the three deep trends: commoditization of software user customizable systems and architectures network - enabled collaboration slide ten: software as comodity open source promotes competition and drives down margins linux on intel gives 10x savings apache means web serving is not a revenue opportunity my sql threatens to do the same for databases open unix/linux/internet architecture makes "plug compatible" software the norm proprietary alternatives must become free (as in beer) to compete - usually bundled with added value components. slide eleven: customaizability at work: commodity components provide platform and infrastructure on which additional software is built for use in delivering services, not for sale internet era applications are updated daily, not yearly interfaces are built with dynamic data not just software - you might call this "infoware" dynamic languages like Perl, PHP, Python are key to daily update: managing infoware interfaces and gluing together software components. slide twelve: why the p in LAMP matters so much von kempelen's mechanical turk slide thirteen: network enabled collaboration usenet: the real mother of open source the adhocracy - like - minded developers can find each other and work in ever-shifting groups (reference to down and out in the magic kingdom) software development teams can be distributed, even internationally users help to build the application slide fourteen: what's more.... collaborative techniques are increasingly being applied to proprietary software collabnet with a large enough development organization, OSS-like behavior emerges asp.net open source behavior has nothing to do with licenseses. slide fifteen: collaboration at the data layer some things to think about: clay shirky's "listening to napster": napster/kazaa users build song swapping network as byproducts of their own self interest google leverages millions of independent linkers via pagerank algorithm. scoble example. i can link to something and then it shows up on google thereby contributing to changing the web. more people have "contributed" to amazon than to linux! slide sixteen: businesss model thoughts for commodity software ibm websphere, macos x = compaq ??? = dell there are many possible "intels inside". not just LAMP, but: J2EE and .Net platform = web services (digital identity, location, search) aggregated and sold by subscription, not by the piece ian murdoch - progeny. our expertise is in assembling distributions slide seventeen: hidden service business models in open source software not just "professional services," but services delivered to end users UUnet, not RedHat - greatest open source business success to date BIND - monopoly in disguise sendmail and apache - not software sales but email and web hosting google, paypal, amazon et al - the next step on the path to a services-based software economy. slide eighteen: building the internet operating system here are some ofther parts of the puzzle: peer-to-peer and ad-hoc networking wireless "social software" cell phones and other mobile devices pervasive computing grid and on - demand computing "software above the level of a single device" these thing should be on the radar of all developers! slide nineteen: two types of platform one ring to rule them all! or small pieces loosely joined (aside: shout out to david weinberger) slide twenty: small pieces loosely joined an arhictecture of participation means that your user help to extend your palatform lowe barriers to experiementaqtion mean that the system is hacker friendly for maximum innovation interoperability means that one component or service can b e swapped out if a better one comes along "lock-in" comes because others depend on the benefit from your services, not because you're completely in control slide twenty-one: embrace the new paradigm use comomodity software componde3nts to drive down prices for users give customers increased opprutunity for customization - plug-replaceable standards-compliant components - extensible architecture - scripting cuspport look for hidden service business models leverage collaborative development processes and participatory interfaces slide twenty-two: watch the alpha geeks new technologies first exploited by hackers, then entrepreneurs, then platform players two examples screen scraping predicted web services wireless community networks predicted ubiquitous wifi slide twenty-three: "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet." - william gibson (aside: gosh my fingers hurt) b.

chris' birthday!

just watched a "behind the computer" special on chris pirillo in celebration of him turning 30 today. hopefully he'll get it up on lockergnome.com later - y'all need to see this. b.

jim louderback.

microsoft bob and chris pirillo = separated at birth. goals of project home media server- music (mp3, wma, etc) video -tv -dvd photos network around house why build your own: up-sampling beyond 480 p - dedicated sealers cost more than $1,500 up to $30,000 all your music in one place avoiding drm issues street cred system board and case (aside: i'm completely in over my head at this point) shuttle sn45g motherboard and case combined 1 pci. 1agp slot nForce 2 chipset no integrated video fan compact design cool looking processor and memory AMD athlon -2700 512MB PC2700 DDR -corsair -cas 2.5 i love that satisfying snap sound! audio integrated nForce 2 audio optical out for home theater optical in decent sound saves isa slot other options audigy 1 external USB options graphics and tv ati all in wonder 9000 s-video, digital output time shifted recording tv looks good options nvidia persona cinema 2 radeon 9800 not an option hdtv decode still "emerging" (aside: oh my gosh it is freezing in here.....) networking options 100 mbps switched ethernet dlink isa 802.11g other options -802.11b - slow for video -802.11a - dying from home power line and pna -viable but slow hint* keep a little tray for all the screws while you're building hard drive and dvd maxtor diamondmax plus 9 160gb - get biggest hd available - space for two drives in shuttle - firewire drives also an option - maxtor/wd tivo spec plextor dvd+rw - cd rw - dvd burning too - +r making inroads - burn proof - consider combo drive from pioneer and sony keyboard and pointing devices logitech wireless gyration mouse ati remote snapstream remote software ati pvr software - flexible - wizards - easy to use snapsteam - $50 - networkable/hpc - controls sat and digital cableboxes intervideo winpvr2 - new version on the way EPG ATI -gemstar guide II conclusion you can build the home media server/network early in cycle components are improving easier to tie it all together added flexibility give it a try extreme tech is there to help - all reviews at www.extremetech.com in build it section. b.

day two of gnomedex.

sorry for the lack of coverage after kevin's presentation. it went straight from there to dinner to movie night to bed.... b.

kevinu's on.

go kevin go kevin go go go kevin! telling a demo hell story from his windows 3.1 days. b.

rob malda.

slashdot. dev team = 4 editorial = 2&3 lots of double and triple duty. with 300,000+ hits. 15 boxes. when a box dies it's dead. would love to have 1000 boxes like google. i'm much better when my contact with people is via electrical impulses - "cmdr taco" q: was is the pro-ms and anti-ms population on slashdot? we are like a little snowflake....myriads of opinions and communities. hey we use windows to game. i don't like what they do in the industry. but i think you are asking about the general reading population. a lot of the folks who post tend to be very angry, and vehemently anti-microsoft. about 60 - 70% of the folks who come to slashdot use windows. "it's funny how some people will send me mail and apologize for sending it via outlook, and i'm thinking hey ' as long as you're not sending me ads for viagra or other stuff' i'm a-ok with whatever tool you use." andover buys /. because the business aspects of the site was weighing us down. we took on corporate sponsorship. we weren't into selling ad space. we want to create an area for thousands of people to communicate. and so that brings us to 1998. the whole .com thing collapses and we're still here! haha! we win! q: where does the money come from? advertising is a major thing. osdn - the open source development network. "obviously a name thought up in a board room and not from the heart". q: what does the future hold for /.? well i'm hoping for a rocket car and a gold house. but actually you can check our bug list - which is also our feature list. www.slashdotcode.com - you can contribute your own code. we want to give some new features to our subscribers. the score of comment is essentially the sum of the moderations. only 1% of people who come to slashdot post comments. would love to have an absolute rating system. q: what is your growth pattern? we have cyclical growth. not a lot in the summer, but a big boom in the fall. especially when college students get their broadband. right now we are doing 2.6 pages a day. before iraq we were doing about 2.1 before sept. 11 we were doing 1.6. so it tends to grow 10 - 20 - 30 % per big event. so 98-99 we were doing about 500k. q: what are the ethics of /.ing a site? what kind of dicussions have you guys had around the morality of the /. effect? it's harsh. horrible things have happened. but that said when you put a page on the internet you expect people are going to come to it. we tend to think people are happy when we point to their site because they want it to be seen. "i'm full of giggles" - cmdr taco q: do you send out advance notice to the site owner? nope. q: what do you see as the potential for growth on the desktop for linux? i think it has a lot of issues and i think mac beat them to it. linux is trying to do it.... but mac already did. that said i have gnome running on boxes i have kde. because i can have my clusters etc. i think linux certainly can still do it. i think they will always appeal to people who are on the extreme side of eff. but as far as an actual linux desktop - it looked like there was a time when it would be mom and pop usable. i still don't see that happening. it keeps feeling like we are on the cusp of it happening. i think linux is definitely stronger on the server market than the desktop. that said i think price is an issue. $100 on a $2K machine okay - but with desktops running $200-300 it seems ridiculous. best quote: "i'm really a.d.d. - that's why slashdot stories are only this long - after a paragraph i'm on to the next thing." b.

dang.

missed eric sink's (who is not a legend) presentation. had to work on a demo for later today. arrived just in time for q&a. what's the learning curve for vs.net? can a vb6 app be ported? success in deploying vs.net web applications? vb.net vs. csharp.net? version control? and we're ahead of schedule! b.

my conference buddy.

at the jupiter blog conference it was michael - here at gnomedex it's sam. b.

thanks to shannon.

i discovered i'm an giant ant! and
You are Sandy! You're hard core and know karate!
You can handle almost anything, but sometimes
get a little carried away...

Which Spongebob character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla b.

google: nelson minar.

google: relevance and results. google mission: organize the world's information to make it universally accessbile and useful. our goal is for you to feel the info you find is relevance. the work we do is driven by this mission. google philosophy: work on things that matter. affect everyone in the world. solve problems with algorithms if at all possible. hire bright people and give them lots of freedom. don't be afraid to try new things. "no HAND work" - can't deal with that. let's solve with engineering tools. empowering the folks who work here. great example is google news. started with just one person. when companies get older they often get into a niche they can't break out of - we don't want to be like that. history: google in the garage - started in a menlo park garage simple design. theory #1: better for users. theory #2: we weren't that good at html we believe simplicity of ui makes us very effective. we're there's electrivity there's google. massive localization - 88 languages! burundi; american samoa; gambia jersey.... anatomy of a search result page: news search advertising bragging (how long it took us to find your info) google index: how does it work three component news - rebuilding each five mintues; special crawl just for news results fresh - once a day; sites that change a lot; sites that people care about; some porportion of results to reflect recent main - query comes into the google web server and we have 1/5 of a second to figure out what to return. (image of this process to be posted) index server gets the query first index servers are replicated and distributed pieces of the index scattered across documents servers these actually have the copy from the web again replicated and distributed doc servers do their job and return the data misc servers ad server - query ads; relevant advertising spell checker server- "did you mean....." news server New Technology crawl 4,5000+ news sources clustering tech identifies same story in multiple locations news front page synthesized entirely algorithmically localizing news to different countries google advertising: reason no banner ads: too slow to load ads makes sense when you do a commerce related search you get the choice - the commercial stuff and the research/consumer stuff sometimes search results are not that useful as related to the ads relevancy, pricing, and position ranking = max.cpc x ctr an ads position on the page is determined by performance and price: we reward advertisers with good ads we rank in an auction model the more they are willing to pay often the better the result: cost per click how often people click on it: click through ranking which is the users measure of relevance the combination of the two let you know what is relevant both in the mind of the advertiser and the user poorly perfoming keywords automatically disabled (aside: calling all math majors! you would love to work at google) if an ad is below a .05 click through rate - we just don't show it. advertisers only pay when people actually click on the ad - not just shown for view we have created a market for advertising that helps the users find relevant data and advertisers showcase their products Challenges: billing and syndication ads much be servved quickly and reliably - syndication partners, googl users don't tolerate downtime real-time auction for each ad shown log data is precious - each click is only worth pennies, micro-payment accounting (random aside: how much do i love frank?!) google ad sense we understand a page based on such factors as: keywords frequency of workds font sizes and placement of words anchor text linguistics processing we put all these factors together and some magic software boils it all down to this.... okay this page is about x so the add we serve up needs to be about y. usnews.com is an example. think about adsense targeting. word java: is it drink or programming language or the island? find a second word: cup java + cup equals more than likely the beverage. google datacenters pics to come of these: goodgle.stanford.edu earliest disk cases - legos google servers 1999 google servers 2000 google servers today hardware architechture slide key problem is fault tolerance pcs are unreliable, especially if you have thousands but they are cheap and fast - linux the key strategy: exploit procession power of off the shelf pc hardware, make it reliable in software we use software as the fault tolerant. conclusion: losts of interesting and hard problems focus on users, give relevant results don't be afraid to try new things b.

gnomedex blog roll added.

replacing your regularly broadcast b. blogroll for the duration of the conference. enjoy! b.

9 a.m. t-2 hours.

the booth is set up. i'll have pics soon. we have four xbox kiosks, which most folks immediately want to know if they can buy. these puppies would look great in my living room is the most common comment. matt from digital media division is showing off the alienware box we are giving away at the party tonight, erikka from mobile devices sent along these amazing jelly pads to put on your car dash, and shawn from msdn is still working his way over to the conference center. max (demo god) is working on kevin's afternoon keynote and i'm just hanging out loving my spot at the front table during the quiet before the storm. nicole has yet to show (my guess is she's hunting down a chai latte....). pics to come!! b.

in iowa hanging with the gnomies.

geek heaven for three days! b.

gnomie.

bags are packed. obligatory assortment of tech toys ready to go. hoping this year's gnomedex kicks off as wonderfully as last year - when i found myself sharing a flight and later a taxi with doc searls. bumming he won't be there this year - but lots of new friends are to be made. (linkage to be added later when i'm not on my pocket pc...) b.

moblog blues.

i realized i rarely moblog when i'm not traveling. i think it's because when i'm at home, i'm not in travel mode and therefore am not compelled to pull out the phonecam. i need to look at life in seattle like i do life in d.c., or pittsburgh, or boston. tourism begins at home.... i could have moblogged the meet-up last week, or the awesome view from dinner last night, or the crazy 17" toshiba i saw today. b.

responsible blogrolling.

michael o'conner clarke has moved to a new home! he sent mail asking folks to update any links they may have had to his site, which reminded me to do a quick b. blogroll check. i would say i visit most of the sites on my blogroll at least once a week, but it's always good to make sure links are current. i guess two of the biggest faux pas (help, french speakers - what's the plural of pas?) in blogdom would have to be blogs that are: 1. completely out of date or have 2. oodles of dead links i wonder what are the other ones. i've read that my rss isn't funky - does that qualify as a no-no? may have to have someone set me funky at gnomedex. any volunteers? b.

bill maher.

live from nyc. freaking hysterical. catch it on hbo if they show it again. b.

murakami.

my new obsession. saw superflat at the walker in 2001. with all the hoopla about his collab with marc jacobs it's fun to see others turning on to him. i know what is on my bday wish list. b.

and the oscar for best sound

goes to pitch black. best alien guts falling on the desert floor sound ever. b.

flashmob.

ok seattle time to get with it. everyone else is doing it. b.

this is why i will move to japan someday.

Fanmouse For those with sweaty palms (for whatever reason), there's a new mouse with a built-in fan from Japanese company ClickNJoy that should help keep your hands cool and dry. Read [Via BoingBoing]...

[via Gizmodo]

meetup.

at the seattle blog meet up. cool to put flesh faces to digital personas. b.

runaway!

our cat ran away tonight. we went for an hour long walk and came home to find the front door wide open. two panicked geeks running around yelling lily for 30 min - not a pretty picture. pt took off on his electric bike and i paced up and down the sidewalk meowing. she finally came home (snaps) and is now lounging lazily in the egg chair. she seems pensive at the moment, musing on her recent adventure no doubt. she's also annoyed that i feel compelled to reach out and pet her every two seconds. kids with fur are still kids. b.

top 3 reasons

i joined sanriotown. 1. i get an @hellokitty.com mail account 2. best windows wallpaper ever! 3. next time i go to japan i get 15% off my admission to harmonyland. b.

out and about.

john's going to the big easy. chris is in des moines. (t-10 days to gnomedex) dave's in the bay area. thousands of ducks in new england. pt is going to japan. i'm on the couch in my swell pj's, wishing i rocked like halley. b.

piggy bank.

i bought a piggy bank on saturday. i then took a backpack of coins from the basement to my local fred meyer in order to feed them to the coinstar machine. let me back up a little bit. when my husband (then fiancee) moved in last year, we put all of his boxes of odds and ends in the basement. where they have sat and continue to sit. we can't get rid of any of it mind you because it's a veritable treasure trove of finds (something amazing gets discovered on a weekly basis). at any rate, one of the items i noticed early on was a haggard green jansport backpack that weighed a ton. "oh that - full of coins - don't bother with it - would take forever to roll 'em up, etc etc)." sitting on the couch this weekend it occured to me to dig up a wheely cart (remnant of my german pocket pc user group trip last spring), strap the backpack to it and strongarm my way up the stairs, through the kitchen and out to the car. 47 minutes later i'm standing in the lobby of the fred meyer finishing up my last handful of coins, hands black, and oodles of european currency in a pool at my feet. seconds later out pops a piece of paper saying $334.00. yowza. we had $334 hanging out in our basement for over a year. it's like christmas in july. now i actually have the money to pay for the new gizmo i've had my eye on. oh and the piggy bank. i encourage everyone to give it a go. b.

rip van goza.

2 days. 40 hrs of sleep. weekend. b.