Mmmmmmm. Beetles.

Are you the guy who stole my credit card number? I'm sorry you didn't get much more that a hotel room you booked online and some flowers ordered... both cancelled now, alas. It's been fun moving all my auto-billing arrangements to the new card, and an eye-opening experience otherwise. Who spends $250 on flowers? Idiot.

I've discovered rice tortilla chips at BevMo -- quite tasty. Still exploring, and have yet to get to Trader Joe's for their rice chip (thanks, Gretchen). But I'm sure you're interested in my peccadilloes, so I'll keep you updated ;)

Now that I have received and re-experienced Munchos, I'm on to a new snack obsession, and that's rice crackers. They have them as part of the snack mix on United Airlines -- little triangular crackers that are way crispier than wheat or corn crackers. I have tried the Asian snack mixes but those don't get it right -- they're sweet, not salty. Who can hook me up with rice crackers?

Applicant must be able to sit 50 to 75 percent of the time.

Ever wonder about the next generation of panhandling sites? I did too...

I am now One Of Those People. The people with the shrieking baby in the back of the plane. Why don't those people shut up that baby? Why did they bring the baby on the plane? What is wrong with those people?

When you are One Of Those People, you suddenly learn the answers to those questions, but you find you are unable to explain those answers to the People Who Hate Those People. I used to be one of you. Now I'm one of us.

I am sorry.

What's better than 3 hours at SFO? 3 hours at SFO with a baby! Pray the return flight is not so plagued with error (that is, my wife's inability to misread a 4:15 departure as a 4:35 departure).

P.S. If you don't check in 30 minutes before takeoff they won't let you on the plane now! Travel sucks!

"Hi, I'm calling from the Time-Life Lie-bary..."

One telemarketer needs some training...

Everything you ever wanted to know about buying technology for business can be found here, in my monster Business Buying Guide (10 parts, trickling out over the next few days/weeks) at ZDNet. Check it out!

A pretty big honking interview with me appears today on Lexis Nexis's "The Scoop." What insights I have, there you'll find.

Just thinking out loud here...

The RIAA had a 2001 operating budget of $44 million (according to some website... these are ballpark figures). That budget is drawn directly from music sales and represents a percentage of the gross. In 2001, music CD sales totalled $12.9 billion. That means that for every $18.98 CD you buy, you are contributing almost 6 1/2 cents toward a potential lawsuit against you for sharing that music. Wild...

Now this game is a lot of fun. You'll figure out how it works.

Here's a fun little experiment: Replace the battery in your cordless phone with a new one, but reverse the polarity. The smoke that comes out of the phone is fragrant, like a salmon steak cooking on a hibachi. Try it with roasted vegetables.