Deranged and shopping.
There's nothing like yanking fragile strings to get a day off so you can have a four-day weekend—and then spending that entire weekend sick and deranged. I slept through New Year's Eve, dragged my ass down to the outback to see my folks late on New Year's Day, went on an ill-advised shopping outing with my sister, her husband, and their younguns on Friday, spent Saturday lost in a fever amongst the sofa cushions at the IHoB, and recovered somewhat on Sunday—but courted relapse by stumping around an outlet mall for five hours. Not counting two hours of driving.

As a result of these shopping outings, I now have three pairs of jeans that don't fit like burlap sacks, a killer backpack/carryall that looks like a Lego® block, an (original suggested retail price: $150) Armani digital wristwatch that is functionally a step down from those little clocks you used to stick to bathroom mirrors (it keeps track of the date for some reason, using the exact same code as the $1.00 sticky versions, but you have to jab it in the side with a tiny sharp thing in order to make it display it every other second, and then jab it again five times—progressing through the sequence for setting the date and time—to make it stop), and a happy Doozy. So it was worth it.

Unfortunately, I felt well enough to go back to back to work this morning. I still have a cough and my head is hugely stopped up, so basically I'm right where I was last Wednesday.

Now, the good news: Virtual/projected keyboard due any minute now. Bulky mice and keyboards were barely an upgrade on the old punch-card systems. This technology, when it hits third-generation, will be truly amazing. But first we have to put up with a projection system that doesn't work so well in daylight.

The big considerations for where this is headed: Why does it have to project just a keyboard? Why can't it project a web page or an e-mail message or a picture and let me interact with it like I would with a PDA or a touch-screen? Do I really want people other than myself to see what I'm doing? Will it be available in 3-D? Why can't I use it to make a 3D image of my dog? Can I point it at my head and make it read my lips? Can I make it paint my face like I'm wearing makeup?

Friends and neighbors, the first release of this will be what Pong® was to the video game market. If you're a lucky bastard with a spare dime to invest, um, now would be a good time.

Also I have determined by direct experimentation that the second-generation Stikfas® do not suck.

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