Once Again I ask...: ...why does it have to be so hard? Twice now I have been at the point of buying a laptop. My first shot was at eCost.com where they had this sweet little refurbished Toshiba on sale for about half the price it would have been normally. So I went through all the ordering rigamarole, got an email confirming my order, then happened to go to the site to check the status only to find they were out of the item and had cancelled the order. If I hadn't happened to check I'd still be waiting for it in the mail.

So today I hit best Buy and come close to picking up an HP 1170 that I had my eye on when I notice there was a Fujitsu that offered more for less. The sales dude says it's a relatively new model, and I don't recall seeing much of Fujitsus before, so I think, OK I'll just head home and look up some reviews to make sure it's reasonably good quality. Seems OK from what I read, but one key thing for me is that I must be able to get a port replicator. So I hunt around Fujitsu site for a compatible port replicator. I follow one multi-page path and it ends up at a monitor stand. Alrighty. I follow another path and it leads to port replicators for various models, none of which are the one I'm looking for. I suspect they may be compatible but I can't tell for sure and I'm getting just a bit too frustrated to deal with it anymore.

So now I'm digging around on the Gateway and Dell sites to see what I can come up with. It's like I'm trying to spend a couple thousand dollars and no one will take it.

When Cat Lovers Go Bad: There is a fascinating look at the artistic output of a man as he descends into psychosis, all the while painting cats. Oddly (or perhaps not), the pre-psychosis work is utter tripe, but the post psychosis work is stunning. If you don't see Van Gogh in this stuff you must be blind. It's all part of a site called The Neuroscience Art Gallery - Art by Psychotics. There's also the suggestion the Bosch may have been psychotic. Look around.

Thou Mama: Get insulted by the bard. [Thou] leathern-jerkin, crystal-button, knot-pated, agatering, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue, Spanish pouch! or [Thou] vicious mole of nature! or Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!.

Fear and Loathing in Beijing: A brief description of the security measures in Beijing for the president's visit (last paragraph).

Another concern was surveillance. Bush is staying in a hotel, and administration officials plan to follow measures similar to those they used at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Shanghai during the president's trip in October, setting up tents in the hotel rooms to keep paperwork out of the range of cameras and playing country music during sensitive conversations.

Good grief. Tents and Country Music at the Ritz-Carlton. I can just see the mobile home and pick-ups with gun racks parked out front.

Latest Noise: G Love & Special Sauce. A fun and funky combination of folk music and hip hop (yes, really). Try Philadelphonic.