Oops, apparently I forgot the link in my last post. Well that was dumb. I don't still have it, but doesn't look like too many people are watching my blog right now. You know what they need? An "identify me when this page changes" thing. I'm sure that exists somewhere. Suggestions? Please email me!

The other night my wife and I were out walking. We walked past a street and saw lights on a house part-way down. So we decided to walk down the street so we could see the Christmas lights. My wife saw a cat sitting on a driveway and we called to it and it ran right over meowing. We petted it and realized it was literally nothing but skin and bones. Everytime a car drove by, it would run towards the car. We think it was dumped. I took it to the vet yesterday and they said it was probably about 10 years old and it had a heart murmur. They also thought it might have a thyroid problem, where its metabolism is so sped up that no matter how much it ate it would continue to lose weight until it died. (It's only 5-3/4 pounds.) Reminds me of how koala's die... their teeth get worn down so they can't chew up the leaves and if they can't chew up the leaves they can't digest them so by the end of their lives they're eating leaves non-stop but lose strength and die. Anyhow, we could have tests done or just watch it for a few weeks and see if it gained weight. We did, however, have it tested for FL and FIV since we already have cats. We named the cat Tinsel and we'll have to find a home for it pretty soon, but right now we're waiting on the tests. It's also smelly. I cut off a lot of its hair with scissors yesterday and have been trying to get parts of it washed but I haven't tried too hard because it has front claws. Say a prayer for Tinsel.

So you know how you can turn your computer into part of a giant network searching for alien life? Or a cure for cancer? The one I like is Hyperbee. It's not yet live, but it will be a distributed search engine spider. Which could just possibly create the best picture of the entire web yet. I can't wait until it launches.

So AOL is now telling the government that it still can't figure out how to get its Instant Messaging software to work with competitor's programs, like MSN Messenger, Odigo or Yahoo! Messenger. I have an easy solution for AOL. STOP SCREWING WITH IT. A year ago MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger and Odigo could all interface with it and AOL made moves to block it. I don't know why Trillian still works, but that's pretty cool.

Maybe even cooler than tablets... flexible screens. You can roll it up. Pretty neat, that's all.

What? SprintPCS sucks? No kidding.

So Enron pays its top executives hundreds of thousands of dollars to stay with the company and see it through the bankruptcy proceedings, while shafting lots of other employees. And now Congress wants them to testify. Their response? Nah, we don't think we'll testify. I say drag them in by the elastic on their underwear. (The first link is from Slate and also talks about Polaroid, but still pretty interesting.)

The economy's not done being miserable. I know I reported recently about how GM is screwing Ford by keeping up the 0% offer. Well, apparently they're about to collectively further screw the economy as well. As soon as they stop doing 0% deals, they're going to stop advertising. And that won't be pretty. Not to mention that car sales have been propping up the stats to date.

Speaking of cars, Toyota's about to launch a third brand and they're thinking of heavily relying on the internet to get the word out. They say they're targetting the younger crowd. I thought Toyota's (like that crappy Echo) were for 16 year olds who didn't know anything about vehicle style. So who are they targetting with these new cars? Kids who can sign on each week and earn pennies towards the day that they're old enough to start driving?

Kids are using health websites. A lot. I guess it beats "Yeah? Well that's not what my cousin's best friend said. They almost died!" In fact, more power to them. Using the internet to find out if there are any side-effects to all that porn they're viewing.

And Yahoo!'s going to try to buy HotJobs. Which rules because Monster.com was trying to buy HotJobs and I'm tired of big companies swallowing up other companies on the internet and no one at the DOJ saying "Hey... wait a minute." Like AllApartments.com, Rent.Net and SpringStreet.com (all HomeStore.com now). I know Yahoo! buys everything and ruins it (like eGroups), but it would still mean two large players instead of just one large player. Because what the heck does a monster have to do with jobs? Monsters are supposed to be scary (or perhaps just collect screams for their power company) and finding a new job should be promoted with calmness and encouragement, not with monsters waiting to jump out and scare you. Especially stupidly drawn monsters. Disney should sue Monster.com.

I had no idea how huge gaming is. Kind of cool... apparently video games now take about $10 million to produce.

Microsoft has entered into a deal with Predictive to learn more about viewer's habits. Basically, without knowing anything about who you are, they would find out more about what you liked to watch. Ultimately it would lead to commercials more tailored to things you were interested in. It would also lead to onscreen guides that were most likely to show you the types of things you'd like to watch. As long as it was smart enough to know when my wife was using it to show E! and Animal Planet and when I was watching to show HGTV, TLC and Discovery Channel, that would be very cool. Some people say there is privacy issues, but this technology is already being used on the internet. They don't know who you are, they just know what you like and strive to give you more of it. Heck, I'd even be willing to give them more information in order to get even more customized results. Don't show me beer commercials or commercials for United, Sprint PCS or AOHELL.

And Israel has cut off ties with Arafat. I just want to go over to Israel and slap every single Israeli and Palestine right across the face and say "Knock it the hell off!" I'd give Israel 30 days to give back the land they snagged however long ago it was and then I'd claim some of the land for the United States, some from what I'd give to Palestine and some from Israel. And I'd destroy all of their airports and build one big international airport on that land I'd claimed for the United States. I'd make it very commercial friendly so that companies would locate around it giving jobs to Palestines and Israelis. I'm tired of their stupid fighting. And I've been tired of it since before it spilled over into our country (sort of). The word is today that Osama is most likely surrounded and soon to be captured. It's just too bad there's really nothing we can do to him. I think we should put him into a small windowless cell adjacent to a prayer room. People of all faiths would fill the room 24 hours a day praying for him aloud. A translator would make sure he could understand what they were saying.