Random

• "One American has died of Swine Flu, but 821 Americans die from obesity every day. Let's close schools 'till cafeterias serve healthy food." ~ Mike Elgan

• I wonder how many people have died in the past week of seasonal influenza? It now appears that a significant number of the Mexicans originally reported to be infected with Swine Flu were actually suffering from other illnesses. ~ link

• This has been a test of the Emergency Health Care System. In the event of an actual pandemic scale crisis we'd get even more irrational. You may now resume living your lives with reasonable caution. :-)

• We bought one of the new reusable Kmart shopping bags. The check-out clerk tried to stuff it into a plastic bag before we insisted that we didn't need the plastic. I'm still not sure if she saw the irony. I think she was just very tired. It was a busy day in the big K -- all of the Western Pacific and half of Japan was shopping there this morning.

• PIBC rents a house house adjoining the campus. It's a very bizarre hodgepodge structure -- but the location is great. Unfortunately, in one of the construction phases they built a kitchen over the septic tank (the house has 3 kitchens). The same septic tank does not really have a large enough outlet for pumping. Can you see where I'm going with this? Yes, the accumulation eventually became significant enough that radical surgery was required. And this morning the plumbers were jack-hammering the kitchen floor so they could get a hole large enough to pump the septic. OOG

• Google is now renting goats. My brother Greg, who has two goats (Sven & Ole) and is always looking for a cyber-business opportunity, might want to try to get a hoof in the door down there in Mountain View. ~ link

• I just ordered my 25 free Google profile business cards. ~ link

• I don't think I mentioned it but the taxi which took us from the airport to our hotel in Seoul last week -- reaching speeds of 160 kph (99 mph) -- was a CNG powered Korean-made Hyundai -- obviously lots of kick and no vibration.