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Man, what a boring day! It isn't all happening, in fact, nothing seems to be happening. And yes, I am still on my old drive. A recovery of the new drive is pending, but boring, so I won't say more about that...
Powerline: What does success in Iraq look like? They show you... 
Rand Simberg pens an Ode to Laziness. His real subject is Fred Thompson ("As an engineer, I'm extremely impressed with his efficiency"), but he memorably quotes Robert Heinlein: "Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." I like that a lot.
Robert X Cringley gives us The Big Picture following Apple's announcements at Macworld. "So Macworld was just another step in a very measured plan to establish global media dominance for Apple and probably for Google, too." He makes two interesting observations, first, that special small core-Duo processor that Intel made for the Airbook wasn't just made for the Airbook, and second, there will be collateral damage to ISP's bandwidth from downloadable HD movies.
 Last summer the "Wal-Mart PC" was announced; a cheap little PC from Everex, running Linux instead of Windows. Well, it sold out. And has since spawned a bunch of $200 competitors... Is this the future of the desktop? Not clear, but once side effect from the rewriting of desktop apps in Ajax is that Windows is no longer as important as it used to be.
BTW I've read that the most contentious Wikipedia page is this one: Comparison of Windows and Linux. There's a three-cornered battle between fans on each side and those who want a dispassionate analysis. To me it comes down to the network effect of Windows' dominance, and the software that only runs on Windows; the technical merit is irrelevant. You can debate all you want about 110v and 220v power, but if your house has 110v plugs, what kind of lamp are you going to use (pun intended)?
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The problem with my new 250GB drive was worse than I thought. After futzing a little bit to try to get POP to work in Outlook, I rebooted. Er, I tried to reboot. I received the dreaded "error reading boot device". I know what this really means, it means the boot record is messed up, and it also means I am reloading the entire drive again. Sigh. So the data on the drive is good - I was able to back up Documents and Settings (where all my volatile files live) using a TrueImage recovery CD, reinstall my old 100GB drive, restore the volatile files, and poof! I'm back on the air. But I still have a whole recovery session ahead of me... well, that's what football is for, right?
