Slowly but surely, me and my life are returning to normal.  I went to bed last night, normally, slept and woke up, normally, and worked all day, normally.  Still on meds, still weak, but much better.  And of course, changing the light bulbs in the lanterns felt very normal, especially when I had to prune one of my trees to reach one.

Okay, so who won?  That will be on everyone's mind and lips tomorrow, and I think Sarah won, but I'm prejudiced.  I think she's great, and I think she did great.  Biden was Biden, a career Senator who doesn't think too far beyond Washington D.C.  Palen was a breath of fresh air all the way from Alaska.  We'll see how it is spun - at the end of the day, a VP debate is a chance for someone to stumble, but not really a chance to gain - but I think this was no tie. 

Tim Oren: Which can you trust, congress or markets?  "Now that the first version of the financial bailout bill has failed in a display of partisan incompetence, some have been taking time to actually read what was almost passed. Far from a 'clear bill' to reassure the nation and markets in a time of crisis, it was larded with the type of earmarks that has become a hallmark of our degraded national legislature."  Disgusting.  I'm glad it failed, and I hope it continues to fail and they give up entirely.  Good riddance. 

So I hear Bruce Springsteen will be the halftime act for the next Super Bowl.  Too bad...  I love the trend of bringing back old rockers for these shows (Tom Petty was great!) but I never liked Bruce, sorry, and I can't look forward to this. 

On the other hand, Led Zeppelin are re-forming and touring!  (With drummer John Bonham replaced by his son Jason.)  They have to be my favorite band of all time.  There I said it.  And my favorite song?  Whew, tough...   I am not going to pick Stairway or Kashmir, I'm going to pick...  The Rover.  If that driving beat can't get you up a five mile ascent at 10%, nothing can. 

[ Update: after posting this, listened to Physical Graffiti all the way through, first time in a long time.  The physical mental emotional tightness and power is excellent.  A great band at the top of their game.  Dare I say it?  The best rock album of all time. ]

Popular Mechanics has five lessons from the newly reopened I-35W bridge in Minneapolis.  Reading the story, they failed to note the most important one; economic incentives for building contractors work! 

Here we have three things we want to see in Windows 7.  I've said it before, and I repeat: for Windows 7 to be successful, it must do exactly one thing; Windows 7 must run faster than XP on all the hardware out there which is currently running XP.  That's it. 

You are thinking this is a watch, maybe a nice watch, and you are not wrong, but this is also a key, a really nice key, for a car.  The $37,900 Jaeger-LeCoultre timepiece doubles to unlock doors and enable the start button of the new Aston Martin DBS.  I'm thinking as long as you get the car, you might as well get the key to go with it.  Right? 

Rogers Cadenhead on parent's night out at the ol' alligator farm.  "When I'm looking for a relaxing night out with the missus, nothing puts me more at ease than letting my children roam around after dark in a place where they're not at the top of the food chain."  :) 

John Gruber completely debunks the Adobe / Flash on iPhone rumors.  "Think about it: If there were a Flash player for the iPhone, you could write games and other software in Flash rather than in Cocoa Touch. And you could sell games and apps directly for the Flash player, completely circumventing the App Store. Does this sound like something Apple would allow?"  No.  Not for one second. 

This picture of a guy with a whale is...  amazing.  Could be the most amazing picture I've ever seen, where "amazing" is truly construed to mean leaving one in a maze.  Just absolutely boggling.  [ click to enlarge to whale sized ] 

Here's another amazing picture, in an entirely different way; the crew working on the International Space Station, with Earth in the background.  This looks exactly like a scene from a science fiction movie.  [ click to enlarge to Earth sized ] 

Despite my delight with all the ridiculous little startups they feature, I am afraid I'm going to unsubscribe from killerstartups.com.  Five a day was good, fifteen, too many.  They probably think publishing info on as many sites as possible is good, but I'd rather leave the filtering to them, and look at less crap.  

A good lesson to keep in mind whenever I try to figure out whether you would think something was interesting...  if I have to ask, I already know the answer :)