A new hard drive and two version upgrades later, and Microsoft Outlook Express managed to retain all 2785 emails from my old, dead, drive? A-mazing.

She’s back! After two months of checking, just in case, only to be met with the same kind-of depressing Vignette, today Anne Sussman is back! Oh, happy day!

I give to you a Kestrel’s Nest exclusive: How I Spent My Birthday Weekend, by Eric Wagoner (Age 29). Consider it a warm-up for my submission to BEHIND THE CURTAIN: a day in the life of webloggers. Pictures for that were taken the day after my birthday.

I felt like I was driving through Mirkwood on my way to work this morning. It was mighty foggy, and the mists were clinging to the trees. I passed several huge circular spider webs, easily four or more feet across, hanging from branches that hung over the road. I kept my eyes peeled, but I didn’t manage to spot any elves.

Yesterday it was my birthday
Hung one more year on the line
     I should be depressed
     My life’s a mess
But I’m having a good time

So true. So very true. Except for the whole “I should be depressed, my life’s a mess” bit. That’s not true at all.

The “most surprising birthday present” award goes to CafePress -- the make-your-own-shirt-mug-and-mousepad virtual store. They sent me a check for $10.75 for referals. I’ve got a store there that I use mostly for making T-shirts out of cool pictures I find on the net. I find a graphic, say “that’d be cool on a shirt!”, make the shirt, and buy it (if I’ve got the money). Friends of mine have set up their own stores, too, and used me as a referal. Thanks to their sales, I’m nearly $11 richer. Say… that’s enough for a T-shirt!

I missed this last week: a NASA report conjectures that a space elevator is could be only 50 years away. Amazing. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy deals with space elevators in a spectacular way. Of course, his trilogy dealt with many subjects in a spectacular way: economics, sociology, science, politics. If you haven’t read them yet, you should.

The USDA regulates the size of holes in swiss cheese. The current minimum hole size is too large – high speed slicing machines have problems with the cheese, so the USDA is considering making the minimum cheese hole size smaller. They’re taking your comments through the end of the day. The article tries its best to make it sound like this isn’t just a frivolous government program, but I didn’t buy it.

The Brunching Shuttlecocks give us the surprising answer to the question How many Austrian women’s prison wardens does it take to change a light bulb?

I’ve been laughing – out loud – for the last couple days over the gagsta rap found over at MC Hawking’s Crib. Hawking’s Old Skool astrophysics writings were a major reason why I went into the field myself. I just have a BS degree in Astrophysics, but Hawking’s got all of them. Several times over, I’d imagine. He’s written books. He starred in a movie. Now, he’s doing gangsta rap. There’s three MP3s there, so you can check him out yourself. WARNING: It is gagsta rap, after all, so expect a ton of cussin’ and offensive lyrics.

Ah yeah, here we go again! Dn! This is some funky st that I be laying down on your a**. This one goes out to all my homey’s working in the field of evolutionary science. Check it!