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The night is young
At least I hope so. Here in the West it's only 10:05, but in the East it's Monday. Australians may be having Tuesday now for all I know and in Japan it's either Friday or last year. Another week, another dollar, I always say.

While good folks sleep, Webmasters play. Their press releases fly thick and heavy through the night -- were I to reconnect right now, my in-box would explode! By morning megabytes of ghostwritten fibs from CEOs will join with more Viagra spam and ads I always trash. Is this a great Internet or what? I can hardly wait to get an Internet-enabled phone so I can read this crap instead of drive.

Not everyone in Mac-Land plies the fiber-optic now, however. Somewhere down in Nashville, Shawn King is sitting in an IHOP writing on a napkin. He chuckles sardonically as the waitress fills his coffee cup. She just thinks he's weird and that she's lost a tip, but Shawn has figured out a way to build a Mac Life blurb entirely out of sponsors' names. His waffle has gone cold but he is pumped and doesn't care. When I post the Wednesday info I will edit out the names and find the thing has disappeared. (Send me the waffle and we'll talk.)

The cereal is cold and wet
First I fill the metal bowl with organic puffed wheat. Then I add the milk, holding down the rising mound until it's dunked. Finally, I add a quantity of sugar (secret, to be sure) and carry all to my computer. No, I am not going to feed the PowerMac. I am reading the Monday morning comics at the Houston Chronicle Web site and the cereal is for me. I really should reconfigure my custom comics pages, though. When I first set them up, the Chronicle didn't have Boondocks. Maybe they still don't, but somebody else might. Boondocks rules, of course. It's the only strip besides Doonesbury and Zippy that isn't under the thumb of the Talibush. Oops, hey! What's this?

Actual recorded dialogue: "Hey Apple, we want an Apple Store! Pick any place you want! Heck, we'll give you the land! Yeah man! Apple? Hey, wait a minute, we're not finished here! WAIT! ..."

I take a risk and check my email. That's odd, only 7 new press releases. Maybe nothing's happened or no one has anything new to sell. Wait a minute, a message from Martellaro: it's snowing in Colorado, 5+ inches and still coming! I'll bet people are dancing in the streets, if they have any streets at 9,000 feet. Water is water, you know, and snowfall is the best kind for soaking in and doing some good. Colorado's drought is potentially worse than New Mexico's because they can't even spell "drought." Down here all we've ever had is drought: little drought, big drought, old drought, new drought. Drought, drought, drought. Drought is normal. Up in Colorado they think turning off the water while they brush their teeth is a big deal. Heck, I read where things were so bad in Denver, residents were asked to water lawns only every three days. "Oh, the humanity!" Down here, if we see anybody who even has a lawn, we shoot first and ask questions later.

Speaking of great sacrifice, I've decided I'm a writer. Larry Ellison said that being a writer was worse than being a coal miner. I guess he knows what he's talking about, right? Who am I to argue with a billionaire, anyway. What? No, no, no: Larry Ellison, the oracle CEO. Yes, that's right. Steve Jobs' best friend. What? Oh, I don't know. He must have started out in the anthracite mines and worked his way up. Literally.

Bring out your dead
My brother in Austin finally bit the bullet, burned the card, bought the Big Kahuna: a very fine 1GHz dual-processor Power Macintosh G4, all spiffed up with a full gig o' RAM. He only just recently said he wanted to buy some land, but it looks like he's gone for desktop real estate instead. He has a growing desktop publishing gig and needs this computer, all right, but what will he do with the old PowerBase? Set it out on the curb with the other detritus? It isn't dead, though. Maybe he should use it as a server and become an ISP: RobboServe!

Anyway, he's ahead of me now. He's always been ahead of me, geek-wise, and now he has the Big Iron. That's what Unix guys always call their email servers, in case you didn't know: "Big Iron." Can you imagine ever calling a Windows server "Big Iron"? No, of course not. Windows are made of glass and little boys throw baseballs through them. What a silly name, "Windows." If anyone had asked me what to call an operating system, I'd have said "Fang," maybe. Or "Schwarzenegger."

O.K., I'm done. Now it's really late. I read all the funnies for tomorrow, surfed around to see if anything was new, and finished my cereal. The only really nifty thing I saw today was in the local paper, anyway:

"San Cristobal Ranch Academy now offering horse breaking by staff and students. Fees negotiable. Contact Mike at 505-xxx-xxxx."

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr (creator of Fotofeed's daily image from New Mexico) can't be reached today because he's sleeping in. In the meantime, visit JHFarr.com and tell your publisher friends to do the same.

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May 6: "Sagebrush Saga" Apr. 29 "Universe of Lies" Apr. 22: "Earth Day All the Time" Apr. 15: "Oh, THOSE Taxes!" Apr. 8: "Turn Left at the Llamas" Apr. 1: "April Drool" Mar. 25: "Tuzas on the Curb" Mar. 18: "Holy Ghostbeak" Mar. 11: "Lord of the Turkeys" Mar. 4: "The Heart of the Matter" Feb. 25: "New Stuff: Browsers, Servers, etc." Feb. 18: "Mascot Lore & More" Feb. 11: "Killer Email & Wiccan PotLuck" Feb. 4: "Meanies, Guerillas, & Subscription Copycats" Jan. 28: "Full Moon Frenzy, w/ PowerMacs" Jan. 21: "iMacs & Webmaster Schadenfreude" Jan. 14: "Was It Only a Week Ago?" Jan. 7: "Useless Column" Dec. 31, '01: "I Want a Refund"

AUDIO CREDIT: embedded 44k file, European Birds -- Sounds and Sonograms.

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