Well, I'm baaack to blogging.  This is all done under the influence of strong drugs, you have been warned.

What do you do when all hell breaks loose in the world while you're sick?  You can't really comment on all that, right?  Right.  Well, you can comment on bits of all that.  The critical sections, you might say :)

I like this one from the WSJ: Congress lives up to its 10% approval rating.  I'm guessing at least 90% of us agree. 

I thought Slate summed up last Friday's debate perfectly: Tie goes to Obama.  Each side thought they won, but the undecideds in the middle thought Obama won, so he did. 

Here's some important analysis: how has the financial crisis affected the wine world?  At least some of the media are staying focused.  The answer: "bars, restaurants, and nightclubs have seen a sharp falloff in business, and many proprietors report that the customers who are showing up are purchasing fewer alcoholic beverages and less expensive ones. At the retail end, however, wine sales appear to be galloping along."  So be it.  Did I tell you about the Sea Smoke Pinot I had last week?  OMG. 

Something really great did happen on Sunday: SpaceX made orbit!  At 4:14PM PST their Falcon-1 spacecraft blasted off from their base at Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean, and 2:35 later the two stages separated, perfectly, at 3:05 the fairing separated, perfectly, and at 9:26 the second stage engine was cutoff, perfectly, leaving the spacecraft nestled in Earth orbit.  (click the link for video, it's cool.)  Congratulations to Elon Musk and his entire team, this is fantastic.  It presages a whole period of privately financed space exploration, I am sure of it... 

Actually next up is the F9, which has nine of the engines in the F1, and which can transport as much as 23,000lbs into orbit.  Orders for berth space on launches are going to be coming in now, and you can just imagine people being part of the cargo.  Of course that would [probably] require the capability to bring the spacecraft back, something SpaceX will do, but have yet to demonstrate.

The big winners in October so far are clearly Chicago and L.A., which each have both of their teams in the playoffs.  New York, oh for two.  San Francisco, zippo.  Neener neener.  Actually I must tell you that while I wasn't really paying attention, there was some great baseball last weekend, spilling into Monday, as the White Sox survived three must win games in a row, just to make the playoffs.  I'm rooting for them, well, until they meet the Angels.  And the Cubs have to be your sentimental pick, right?  I'm rooting for them, well, actually I'm not because too bad for them, they start out against the Dodgers.  Freeway Series baby, it will be great... 

Look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's Fusionman!  That would be Yves Rossy, who Engadget helpfully point out is not Buzz Lightyear, flying across the English channel in a jet-wing.  "When asked if he was worried about risk, Rossy replied, 'I'm not worried about risk, I manage risk.'"  Sounds like a Wall Street investment banker!  At an estimated $190K, I can see quite a market for these things... 

Happy Birthday, Google!  They turned ten...  quite the tween.  I can still remember when I was working at Intuit, in 1999, at the old Sun campus in Mountain View, and there was this cute little startup called Google across the parking lot which used to have lots of parties.  Little did we know...