Random silly thought.

When cows get mad, do they get even?

In a snit.

There continues to be violence in the Middle East. The skies are becoming ever more polluted. The ice caps are melting. Public grade-school education in this country is of horribly uneven quality and declining in many places. Thousands of people across this county are going to bed hungry and barely able to pay the rent. Traffic is a mess around here. We barely have a public transportation system. Spyware, viruses, and phishing are rampant, as is identity theft.

I say this because I know there are many important things to be concerned about, and the very reason I'm in a snit is going to come off as incredibly petty and insignificant.

My laptop died yesterday. More accurately, it stopped displaying anything. The disk drive is fine. Therefore the solution was to swap the disk into a new chassis. (It's not a personal machine.)

Trouble is, the new chassis is only new to me. It's in worse condition than the one I turned in (ignorning the display problem). Here is what is what I have discovered so far:

• The previous owner is bald and had a love for flaky pastries. I have come to this conclusion based on the large number of hairs and sticky crumbs I have found lodged in the keyboard. (The alternative is he/she is bald and has an advanced case of dandruff. Yeah. Humor me.)
• The previous owner has sweaty hands. I spent way too much time with a disinfecting wipe trying to clean out the worn spots on the keyboard.
• The previous owner is a meeting warrior. The battery was in terrible shape for the number of cycles on it. My old battery (which got transplanted into the new unit) has quite a few cycles too, but is still in good health.
• The unit has been dropped several times. Far more times and far harder than I ever dropped mine. This is because the plastic around the external monitor port is chipped away.
• The alt key is coming off. Of course, attempting to vacuum out the crumbs (humor me) and hairs didn't help at all, but the other keys stayed in place, so the alt key was loose to begin with.
• The fan is running hot.
• The unit appears to be having trouble shutting down properly. Of course, I don't have the patience to resolve this in one day. Only time will tell.

Only after this unit breaks down entirely can I go back and request a new one.

It should just work.

When you buy a car, it just works. You put the key in the ignition, fill it up with gas once in a while, and it goes. The manual, which you're supposed to read anyway, tells you what service you need for it and when you need to do it. When you take the thing to your dealer/service center, they can tell you if anything else is wrong. It doesn't matter if you opted for the sunroof or not, or if you added special seat covers or things like that. If you tinkered with the exhaust or something, they could probably partially diagnose problems. But for the most part, it's pretty tough to make serious changes, and if you don't, most of the time folks can tell you what is wrong.

The same can't be said about computers. It's really easy to gum up the works without trying. On top of this, when you buy a computer, you're supposed to know about anti-virus programs, spyware, the relative merits of IE vs. Firefox...and make the programs you really want, work. Oh sure, some of this comes pre-installed for a fee. Or you get trials or sample versions. You get samples of 3 different ISPs' software when all you really wanted to do was go to the Internet. Your anti-virus software expires after a time.

Funny, huh? Not that this is an original sentiment or anything.

Mark Bittman was right.

If you haven't done so already, you must try your hand at making caramel. It is more exciting than watching muffins bake (and I already think watching muffins bake is very exciting). It's really quite magical to watch the sugar transform from simple syrup to golden brown, then to a milky amber as you add the cream and butter. The element of danger makes it all the more fun. Knowing the stuff will be like liquid napalm when spilled on your arm makes stirring it in short sleeves an adventure.

Design this.

A solar-powered 20-second countdown timer to be installed on public restroom soap dispensers. Getting a squirt of soap starts the timer.

Goodbye, Slim.

You have been a fixture for the past 5 years. You were always there, although sometimes you were so skinny you managed to hide in assorted nooks and crannies. Somehow I always managed to find you.

I hope you're in a better place now. Perhaps somebody walked by and claimed you as their own. I wouldn't blame them if they did--you were extraordinarily sleek and endowed with rugged good looks. Perhaps you got swept off the table in a freak dusting accident. Or maybe you got fed up with the clutter and left.

Perhaps you decided it was Mattie's turn to be the favored one. Farewell.

Dear Phishers,

Real credit card companies do not use the word "earnest". Better luck next time.

Love,

It's a great day.

J's birthday present is mailed out. On time, to boot, for the first time in maybe a decade.

The taxes are done.

The rebate for the tax software is done.

The weather is downright balmy. A little soggy, I'll give you that, but I won't melt if you won't.

Now that we're on daylight savings time, we finally get more daylight at the end of the day and it's finally starting to feel like spring.

They plan to release "The Simpsons" movie before the end of the series. Therefore the movie won't automatically mean the end of the series. Therefore, they could plausibly extend the series beyond two more years. Hope springs eternal.

They're going to rerun "Monty Python" on the local PBS station.

It's a great day.