Oh, geez, now that I have the Tivo running again, I realize just what I have been missing. Blogging while watching Elimidate. Scary.

Brian Desmond told me to check out the system he uses in his classroom.

Russell Beattie is one guy who openly admits to hating Microsoft. So, when he says "I really need a Tablet PC for reading like this" I sit up and take notice. I'm tellin ya, the Tablet's day is coming and coming fast!

The Text America founder who'll be at the dinner is Shawn Honnick, and others. Now I gotta get a camera phone.

Calling all Seattle Bloggers:

MoBlog Dinner Alert.

This one will be fun. Text America's founder is in town and just asked me "hey, how about a "moblog dinner next Tuesday evening at 7 p.m.?"

If you don't know who Text America is the company that offers free moblogs to folks who have those new camera phones. Hot category. Should be an interesting dinner.

So, let's meet at the Crossroads in Bellevue next Tuesday (August 26) at 7 p.m. -- if anyone needs a ride from Microsoft's campus, let me know. My email address is robertscoble@hotmail.com.

During most of the 90s, every time there was a VBITS (Visual Basic Insiders' Technical Summit -- now VSLive!) in San Francisco, I'd get together a group of folks and we'd rent a bus and go somewhere fun.

One year we went to Yosemite. That's 10 hours in the bus with 40 geeks. I wonder if we should do something like that in Los Angeles during the PDC?

During that trip, the famous Carl Franklin was on the bus and he brought his guitar. Little did we know that we would be singing "my darling Clementine" for three hours straight on the bus.

Now, thanks to "K-Smell Records" you can hear just a small sample of what Carl did on the bus. Yes, he can sing that damn song to all sorts of different musicians, including the Who, Elton John, AC/DC, and even Beethoven. Yes, it's the "Best of Clementine."

It's a must listen. I hear Carl will be at the PDC too. God knows what kinds of trouble we'll get into there.

Rob Fahrni, of the Visio team, fills me in on some more about Microsoft's attitude toward security. He says that coders are lucky to write 10 lines a day.

Jerry Mead: "But it also seems that a fair number of Windows users still can't tell the difference between a dangerous email attachment and a hole in the ground, and that has to change."

Exactly right, which is why Outlook now doesn't let you double-click on attachments that can run code.

He also continues "Surely there's already something in place aimed at hunting down and exterminating these evil little virus-writing bastards? Some sort of virtual Warfarin?"

I was thinking of this today. Why don't governments go after virus writers? Of course, we can't get Saddam after spending $4 billion a month going after him, so I guess we can't really hold out any hope.

ComputerWorld: "The True Costs of Software."

Eric Sink has done an awesome analysis of how to best help your career. He titles it "Career Calculus" and, yes, it includes the best sales pitch for the PDC that I've seen to date.

Chris Coulter explores the "Tablet PC Political Platform."

I know, I know, I'm the last person on the Web to point to the CSS Zen Garden. This is an awesome site that demonstrates how to use CSS to do a variety of excellent designs.

Oh cool, Drew confirms there'll be PDC weblogs.

John Robb is tracking the next generation of Smart Clients (he calls it Web 2.0).

NewsForge: "One of the world's largest IT companies is declaring that the Linux desktop will capture 20% of the market for desktop computers in large enterprises within 5 years."

Oh, someone released an "anti virus virus."

Brian Sullivan asks some questions about "the volunteers" who are helping out on Microsoft's help lines.

Brian, they are all Microsoft employees. So, I suppose you can say we're all getting paid. Although, my check this week isn't gonna be larger because I helped out support on Sunday.

He also asks why we don't have enough support people to deal with the problem. Dude, if every one of our single employees took to the phones there wouldn't be enough people to deal with a problem like this. More than a million people have gotten hit with this virus. We only have 55,000 employees. On Sunday I answered calls for three hours and only was able to help five people (and that was without a break).

Not to mention that incoming calls were overwhelming our infrastructure (which is quite extensive).