John Griogair Bell - Arlecchino Malbenvolio

The hard drive in my laptop died two weeks ago. I have experienced first had just how much of my daily life revolves around having a working machine on which I’ve stored most of the evidence of my intellectual life.

If I had not recently started to do backups, I would have been lost. I don’t know what I would have done as I would have lost years of work and materials that I’ve saved from my life.

So, create a backup your machines early and often. Become obsessed with backups.

I have not felt so disconnected with myself since my old Newton died. I have never managed to include a PDA in my life since that loss.

My purchase of a support contract proved itself to have been a great investment as well.

The patron gods of computing smiled on me this day. Now, I have to come to grips with the fallout from the last two weeks, but nothing nearly as horrible as it could have been.

Erica and I were ing a grocery this morning and I noticed there’s a whole new kind of bandage, the foamy gel ones, that I hadn’t noticed before. Then, Erica showed me another new product that she noticed.

There is a brand of tampon called Ditties which have printed on the wrappers inspirational messages. Fortune cookies for your bootie, so to speak. An example on the box was, “Don’t just change your tampon. Change the world.”

With your Ditties in one … hand and a Venus razor, to unleash the goddess in you, in the other … Zowie! Look out world!

On a serious note, this reminds me of the premise in What The Bleep Do We Know?! that the things we think about ourselves are not just mental constructs, but change our actual chemical and physical beings. So, you know, it’s funny, but it’s also serious too.

Now, back to the lighter side, I expect the next new product to be individually packaged doses of Viagra to have “uplifting” messages printed on them, like “Keep up the good work!” and “Score one for the team!”