My daily commute is no picnic, but the past couple rush hours have been particularly painful.

Yesterday, I encountered a mighty case of road rage. While I waited at the stop light that spaces traffic merging onto the expressway, this guy decides to simply fly past me on the shoulder to avoid waiting. I nearly plowed into him because he was cutting over just as I got the green and began to accelerate. I had to slam on my breaks, and I honked at him. So he gives me a 1 finger salute between the headrests. Then when he pulls into the lane next to me, he does it again. We separate in traffic but then 15 minutes later when he ends up next to me again, he AGAIN flips me the bird! And he's the one who violated the traffic laws.

Today's adventure wasn't quite so confrontational, but just as frustrating. I hear just as I am pulling onto the Kennedy that it's 90 minutes from downtown to the airport (my office is the exit before). So after going a mile in 30 minutes, I see a pickup truck that's dumped a load of drywall in one of the center lanes. And drywall screws. Everywhere! And two men frantically sweeping them from the center lane of the expressway. So I figure, OK that's the bottleneck and it's clear sailing from here. But I continue to crawl. Another couple miles or so and a car is stalled, partially blocking the left lane. OK, that's the bottleneck. But no, that wasn't it either. I never did find out what it was because I crawled all the way to my exit.

If only I could afford a helicopter...

We are currently wrapping up a war in Iraq that was started because our President felt that their (still unsubstantiated) weapons of mass destruction posed a threat to our national security and that the Iraqi people needed to be liberated from Saddam's evil regime.

So why is it then, that North Korea admits to having nuclear weapons, after already backing out of nuclear proliferation treaties, testing long range missiles, etc. and we're calling this a regional issue. North Korea wants to hold talks with the U.S., but the Bush administration keeps trying to pawn N. Korea off on China, S. Korea, Japan et al.

Oh yeah, and North Korea's leader seems to be insane as he's currently extracting all triplets from their parents because he fears they will topple his regime.

Ever wonder why some bottles of wine cost $5 and others $500? The New York Times offers an explanation of why wine costs what it does.

I guess I hadn't given it much thought, but everything from the quality of the cork used, to whether the aging barrels are reused, to the yield per acre of grapes factor into the price. So, too, do the good old rules of supply and demand. And wine is also priced to some extent in order to create a perception of its quality. As the article explains:

Price also plays into the perception of value, said Vic Motto, a senior partner at Motto Kryla Fisher, a wine industry consulting company in St. Helena, Calif. "If I made the best wine in the world and charged $1 for it," he said, "no one would believe it was the best. They'd say it's a great bottle of $1 wine."

Now if only they'd explained why the same bottle of wine that is $15 at the liquor store is $50 at a steakhouse...

Rumors that Apple is negotiating to buy Universal Record from Vivendi circulated across the web yesterday. At first, this sounds like strange bedfellows. This rumor, along with Apple's upcoming download service that's supposed to launch at the end of the month and the next generation iPods really could push Apple to the leading edge of the music industry. Maybe Apple's onto something...

While Apple has supposedly gotten a good response from the major labels to this new service in part because the fact it'll initially only be available to Mac users (only 3% of the computer population), Apple's pursuit of Universal means that they would have a 100% committed label as part of the new service in case the others get cold feet or want to back out early on.

Such a service needs content to succeed, and depending on the labels is a risky proposition because there is an obvious disconnect between what the major labels are willing to offer, what music consumers want and what the artists deserve. I believe that the rise of Napster, iMesh et al was due to this fact. But rather than respond by offering the consumers what they wanted, the labels decided to go on the defensive, blasting the mp3 format and blaming music sales decreases on illegal file swapping. And now Apple may just have positioned itself to become the hub of digitally distributed music, giving music consumers, artists, and the labels what they want accessed through their iTunes software.

iTunes is part of Apple's iLife software suite. They've been positioning their products, at least when targeting home comsumers, as the digital media hub.

Apple is beginning to grasp how different technologies are finally converging in ways that are easy to use and make sense. It used to be that a camera interacted with film and the drugstore. Your stereo interacted with cassettes and CDs. Your video camera with the VCR and TV. Each their own little domain.

But its changing, and Apple's bringing it all together. They're not going to take your vacation pictures of videotape your family events, because that's personal to you. But they can provide the music and movie content pipeline!

How long before we see iTunes servers connected to our home stereos and serving up music to our iPods, iCar and who knows what else. And then it could replicate it all with movies. Could digital entertainment be the killer app that brings Apple to the forefront of the consumer market again?

Apple may just be positioning itself as the next great home entertainment electronics company. Apple is known for their product design and ease of use, both common compaints with many current home electronics. Combine these qualities with the newly emerging digital entertainment formats, and Apple could well be poise to become the next Sony.

I've finally got access to MovableType again after nearly a week with no weblog access. Seems my web host had to rebuild a couple of its web servers off of backups, and didn't bother to reinstall all the PERL modules. I had this same problem with them when they migrated my site to it present server a few months back. What really pisses me off is that they don't bother to send out any sort of email explaining that they will be doing work on the servers, that things may not be all working, etc. and give an ETA for having things fixed. I may have to do some research about new hosts, because while the price is good for the features I get, there have to be other options.

Anyone know of a good host offering a package comparable to 250MB disk space; 5GB bandwidth; PHP, CGI, etc. and capable of running MovableType for less than $100/year? Let me know.