One of my readers suggested that I take a vacation. That sounds like a great idea. I'm gonna slow down a bit, look critically at myself and the blog and get ready for the New Year. Oh, and catch up on email. That's the real reason I've been unhappy lately. Seasonally affected email disorder or something. I'll try to keep my link blog up, though.

One piece of remaining business, though. Our last geek dinner. We're moving it to Chaat Cafe on 3rd Street in downtown San Francisco. 6 p.m. Thursday night. Lots of interesting people (and some not-so-interesting people like me) will be there.

Open to everyone. Let's kick 2004 out the door properly!

Fortune Magazine: Wby there's no escaping the blog.

"It's all about openness," says chairman Bill Gates of Microsoft's public blogs like Scobleizer. "People see them as a reflection of an open, communicative culture that isn't afraid to be self-critical."

And if you aren't self-critical, your readers will whoop your behind. As I've learned several times over the past week or so.

Adrian Sutton: Microsoft is Still Not Cool Scoble.

"Sigh. Talk about taking credit for other people's work. I'm certain the same application could be created on Linux, Solaris or Mac OS X."

Ahh, at a higher cost. Which is the whole point of why Windows is used so many places.

But Adrian's right. I wish I knew who developed the kiosk so that I could give him/her kudos. It really is a cool application and I bought more music today than I otherwise would have.

Nick Bradbury is donating everything he earns this week to disaster relief.

Evelyn Rodriguez, one of 1010 bloggers I read, gives her personal account of being slammed by a tidal wave.