I have always said that I would not ever own a video game console. My wife has said likewise. So why is there now a Wii sitting under our TV?

This past weekend, I attended (and, indeed, was part of the planning and execution of) the Toastmasters District 53 fall conference in Saratoga Springs, NY. As you might expect from such a gathering, you find a large number of people who are dynamic speakers and leaders, and who are not afraid to speak their minds on any topic.

Reading today's newspaper, I saw something interesting. There was discussion, as has often been the case lately, of the swine flu. The discussion wandered into how there is a shortage of vaccine.

The RSS feeds on this site are now live. While there is no visible link to them just yet, your RSS feed reader and/or RSS-enabled browser (e.g. Firefox + Sage) should be able to discover them just fine. There is an RSS feed that corresponds to the main index, one that corresponds to the full index, and one that corresponds to each tag. Go to the HTML index page for each individual RSS feed.

Does the title of this article sound ridiculous in this day and age? It should. The situation that lead me to it cerainly was.

Let me begin by saying that I believe that vaccinations to various diseases has been one of the greatest inventions that medical science produced in the 20th century. Sure, some will say "but we're now in the 21st century" and surely, this is true, however, just because something is old does not mean it is bad. You do use fire, after all, don't you?

Some of you may be aware, and others not, that I am a member of a chapter of Toastmasters International, a club which assists its members in public speaking and leadership skills. The particlar chapter to which I belong is based in my workplace, and so all of the members of this chapter are my co-workers. On Wednesday, I presented, as one of the advanced speech projects, a demonstration of Ubuntu Linux, to a mostly non-technical audience.

A couple of weeks ago, while my wife and I were out and about on other business, we found ourselves looking for someplace to eat. Passing by all of the ususal bad choices, she said, "I would really love a good burger." As we rounded the corner off of Western Avenue onto New Karner Road, she happened to spot a new sign on a strip mall that looked like the icon above, so we pulled in.

Welcome back.

As my readers (both of you) will have observed, my blog has been out of commission for almost a month. You will also have observed that, coming back up now, it looks radically different. There is a good reason for this.