Okay [somewhat] back to normal around here, how about you?  I've spent the past couple of days in Vista working on a new project for Aperio, really cool.  I wish I could tell you about it and I will as soon as I can; In the meantime I'll tease.  I also managed to work in a ride today (31 miles, loop including bike path to Oceanside and along the beach, nice, except it was 55^o, brrr).  I'm getting nervous about my trip to Brazil next week - why? don't know.  Fear of the unknown, I guess :)

Be careful what you wish for: Obama to inherit economy in worst crisis in 70 years.  "Barack Obama's presidential election victory comes with an albatross of a prize -- an economy beset by a stubborn housing slump and the worst financial crisis in 70 years.  Consumers and businesses are sharply reducing their spending and the government is awash in red ink."  What's needed now is optimism and confidence, both of which Obama seems to have in excess supply... 

Corporate sex: GOOG pulls out of YHOO.  So the purpose of this [temporary] coupling was purely to piss off MSFT, right?  I bet GOOG enjoyed the fling, while YHOO wishes they had married MSFT when they had the chance... 

All you global warming alarmists take note: 2008 Atlantic hurricane season 'lowest in 30 years'...  (Of course, Ike did destroy Galveston [at left].)  What does this mean?  Nothing.  Statistically one year is just a blip.  Nothing to see here, move along... 

Headline of day: airline crew duct-tapes unruly passenger to her seat.  Sadly there are no pictures. 

Album of the day: Fireball, by Deep Purple.  Yeah, Richie Blackmore could play.  The original album had seven tracks, but the 25th anniversary version on Lala has sixteen.  I'm in the minority among critics but I love The Mule; an electric cello, how cool is that?  YMMV :) 

Joel Spolsky makes a bunch of mistakes but it all works out: The Unproven Path, about his and Jeff Atwood's project stackoverflow.com.  Of course he did the one thing you must do to succeed, he had good programmers.  That would be more like The Proven Path. 

Michael Crichton has died.  One of the most amazing authors of all time, his "hits" included The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Binary, The Great Train Robbery, Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, and [the appropriately named] Next.  He will be missed! 

I've been investigating "cloud" computing service providers lately, so I received Microsoft's announcement of Azure with great interest.  As usual with Microsoft, reality had trouble escaping from the hype.  Ted Dziuba performs a public service by straightening out the confusion.  "Fortunately for Microsoft, decision makers don't choose a hosted application platform based on specifications. They choose based on the number of stock photos of clouds and the amount of sans-serif blue typeface you have on your webpage. In that regard, Redmond is the clear winner."  Unfortunately for Microsoft, I don't value pictures of clouds very much.  I think we're going to use Rackspace :) 

Mary Jo Foley asks Show of hands: Who wants multi-touch on a PC?  "Multi-touch is one of those fun, gee-whiz technologies that demos well.  It was definitely one of the stars of Windows 7’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC) keynote debut last week.  But, as I asked earlier this year, who really wants to have to touch their laptop or desktop screens to perform tasks that are easier and better done with a mouse and keyboard?"  I totally agree.  This is a dancing bear. 

The Vestas Sailrocket is the fastest sailboat on the planet.
Wow!