:: Thursday, March 22, 2001 ::

 

10:05 p.m. Well, it's about an hour and counting and the huge, multi-ton Mir is due to crash into the sea. Or at least that's the plan. I've got a web page open and that red-circled behemoth looks as if it's on a direct course for Australia.

It keeps moving every minute or so, and I wonder if there are people out there in the ocean, with cameras poised. I've got to do some more web searching to find out.

What a time we've been having! The stock market is crashing back to earth and even more terrible -- a whole lot of Oscar scaffolding came crashing down today. Will it never end?

Actually, I just checked and I think it's officially down ... and it's too bad that the websites with any real access have also just crashed my browser. Yes, Netscape is down. Dang.

Ok -- I'm back. The web just isn't ready for the big time, yet. The ideal, for me, continues to be many views from many sources all open at once on a desktop, or a TV screen, or a wall of TV screens. I'm ready and waiting for that future to happen, and not a minute too soon.

As it is right now, I'll just have to wait. Soon, there will come the salient image that we associate with the final moments of Mir, and the photographer will have been paid and Time Magazine will have next week's cover.

But I'd like more, and sooner. The bigger the media gets, the harder it becomes to get anything. Plus, all the Thursday shows were reruns, and last night's Survivor was a filler. We get so little.

And today I did sort of a bad thing, and I have to confess. I'm on the world's strictest budget, eating gruel and all, and I was over at Amazon, just for old times' sake, doing some "research" on my new most favorite author, Rudy Rucker.

Really, he's amazing and I'm really really enjoying his first novel in a series of yay! *four* called Software. I'm reading it really really slowly, too. So, you know ... I was just looking around at the next in the series and ... my hand sort of slipped and I hit that One Click (tm) by mistake, sort of.

I suppose I could send it back.

But it's been a little stressful around here lately, what with the sky falling and all, and it's been a real comfort to have a good book to read. All I really have to do is to skip a meal or two and I will, in total good conscience, have paid for the book. Books.

More than two.

It was the only way to get free shipping, which you have to consider if you're going to realize any savings over going to the store and carrying them home yourself.

Ok. Three. And that's it. Unless you also count the used, out-of-print one, which was a huge bargain at $4.65. Can't beat that.

Sigh. Maybe some money will fall from the sky. It could happen.