Had to teach progamming class at a tire plant. Our classroom was over the vulcanizing oven, so not only was it hot, but smelled of burnt rubber and sulphur. Just a little a taste of hell I never want to experience again.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10214556-27.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5 A quick view of the day's top selling tracks reveals several at $1.29 (which earlier today were under a dollar)

My daughter is off to college next year. In checking the school's suggested configuration for a laptop computer, I was pleasantly surprised that her current refurbed-and-outdated-yet-still-works-fine Dell Inspiron more than meets the bill. Meanwhile (w/graduation less than 90 days away), I keep hearing "all my friends are getting Macs for college". Most college students are going to twitter, facebook, download music, and basically do stuff that could be done on a netbook. A Mac is overkill, but oh-so hip and trendy. What will my daughter be taking? A well-equipped mid-range dual-core HP widescreen laptop that is magnitudes more powerful than her current laptop and the school's requirements. Heck, I even ordered a custom skin for it (using one of my photos and http://schtickers.com/ which is great by the way!) and the price? less than $550 with tax, s&h and everything else, including the skin (and no rebates to deal with either).

Enterprise management tools -- not bundling. Lots of IT admins and managers I speak with would love to make Firefox (or something other than IE) their enterprise browser, but they can't unless they have a good way of managing in the enterprise. Firefox's lack of enterprise management tools is a glaring strike against what is otherwise a far superior product compared to IE.