While Gretchen and her folks are having fun in the city of San Francisco, I'm stuck at my desk manually restarting Apache every ten minutes. So, what else can I do but do a little blogsurfing?

I had to laugh at the straw geek. He's having problems with his cable modem. I haven't been on one of those since I left Des Moines back in June. They've got a fractional T1 coming into our building, so that's been good enough for me. I pay out the nose for my higher cap, but – I could find no quicker way to download porn.

Looks as though that AnalogX guy has posted a new tool to his site. While it's a free utility, you can't download it; I'm pushing for a 32-bit binary. The VIN decoder is something “that allows you to see information about your vehicle.” Now, this isn't a CarFAX competitor, folks. It's just generic information detailing region, country, manufacturer, model, year, assembly plant, and serial number. Print one out for your automobile and hand it to your mechanic the next time you have to go in for a checkup. It'll freak him (or her) out, guaranteed.

I know that Mr. Weinberger is infatuated with the Blogsticker Giveaway Bonanza, but I'd like to see colors other than… mustard. What say you, Gary? I was looking at who else was bumperstruck. I love Anita Bora's blog design. It's so Nuevo Art Decoish.

Hey, could Chris be ANY angrier?

Cool! Bill Says This blogged a link to one of my favorite coffee resources: CoffeeGeek. Mark Prince (the portal's purveyor) and I have been exchanging e-mails for months. He helped me find my Bodum Santos. Which, admittedly, I used this morning to make 6 cups of Peet's Kenya blend. I'm not doing very well with my New Year's resolution, am I? Oh well, if I don't tell anybody – then nobody will know. [Bleep]. Did I just blog that?

Why the hell doesn't Cringely have a Weblog? Wait a second. I just pondered something. Are you pondering what I'm pondering? Narf! Is it “We blog” or “Web log?” And did you know that Weblogs wobble (but they don't fall down)?

By the way, you might have noticed the “Credit Clicks” section of the right-hand sidebar. I put a link in there to Evan Williams's Blogger.com. He's the guy who really got me going with this stuff a few months ago. I met him face-to-face when he was clearing out his old office space on Townsend. From him, I purchased a few motivational books and a power strip. My stereo thanks you, Ev.

Note to self: next time someone offers to buy Lockergnome, let them do it so that you can buy it back for 1/80th the price.

Ha ha! The ultimate Winer has a nice little META tag. Name? allMicrosoftHacksDisabledForAllTime. Content? TRUE. Now that's pretty funny. Does it actually work, though? When his MailToTheFuture feature hits 88 messages per hour, you're going to see some serious shit.

Is it just me, or does Dan Bricklin look a lot like the Chemistry teacher everybody had in high school? Hang on. Let me have another sip of coffee and I'll reload his picture. *gulp* Yeah, the dude so reminds me of Plank's constant.