Well, it sure messes up my scheduling this time of year!! CEOs tackle tech sweeps week. Like TV broadcasters, tech companies tend to schedule their major announcements around the same time. But there's reason behind the seeming madness. [CNET News.com] And Michael Kanellos offers a haiku that condenses the overall message:

We add more value
To back-end infrastructures
Please talk to our reps

Heh!! That sums it all up pretty well...

4:01:54 PM  #   your two cents []

Kill me now: The Lord of the Rings: the musical.  [Guardian Unlimited]
4:00:10 PM  #   your two cents []

Roland Piquepaille points to Scientific American's Sci/Tech Web Awards -- their 50 top sites -- and picks his own top four.
11:58:22 AM  #   your two cents []

Techie question for anyone so inclined to answer such: If I am getting the DOS command window showing up in my recently-used programs list in the Start menu on XP, and I haven't been using the DOS window, should I be worried? I haven't encountered this before... I am wondering if it indicates I might have been hacked, or if it is being used by some other program. A related odd issue -- if I open any page of Technorati, my PC disconnects from the internet. Anyone else experienced this? OK, is my PC being controlled by aliens through the Technorati page? I fear another clean install looms...
11:52:49 AM  #   your two cents []

Irish bloggers get-together: info here!
11:33:47 AM  #   your two cents []

If you're paying taxes in Ireland and got share options in your company and, like most share options, they have tanked, you should know that this weekend is the deadline for taking advantage of a tax relief feature that Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy put in the budget just for people like you. While this would apply to anyone in this situation, people working in telecoms and tech are probably most likely to have been affected and to find this useful. Anyway, if you don't know about this, better call your accountant and Revenue fast. But don't ask me for further details; I don't know much more than that. You've been warned.
10:34:03 AM  #   your two cents []

Defective Yeti has a good guide to blogs listing blogs of all sorts (blogsorts?) in some useful categories. If you've been trying to explain to someone what blogs are, this would be a good place to send them. Plus there's lots of sites listed that I've never visited, so it makes a nice explorer's map, too.

10:27:08 AM  #   your two cents []

 New Scientist: "The first complete skulls of a bizarre 'horned' kangaroo are the star finds in the cache of fossils newly unearthed from caves in the Nullarbor Plain, Australia."
10:16:13 AM  #   your two cents []

Gloria Borger. "For most folks, no news is good news; for the press, good news is not news." [Quotes of the Day]
10:11:22 AM  #   your two cents []

Way Out There in Arp 299, a Factory for Supernovas. Radio telescopes have observed the fireworks of stars exploding at such an extraordinary rate that astronomers are calling the turbulent region a "supernova factory."  [New York Times: Technology]
10:10:35 AM  #   your two cents []

Would Hegel have played "Pac-Man"?. "Lucky Wander Boy," a novel about a video gamer's quest for meaning, gives humorous insights into minds shaped by the Mario Bros. [Salon.com]
10:09:15 AM  #   your two cents []

Danny notes that "Everybody else pads out their blog with their life, so I might as well join in", and proceeds to tell us about "incredible, dressed-like-Lara-Croft-only-with-chains-on semi-naked babelicious freaks". Oh, and baby cutons. Brilliant as always. [Oblomovka]
10:08:03 AM  #   your two cents []

MacCentral: iTunes update disables Internet playlist sharing. [Hack the Planet]
9:57:18 AM  #   your two cents []