Wet and dreary day here. Today I found a permanent solution to the email problem which I've been struggling with, and that doesn't require me to use a different email program. Thanks to my friends on the Netscape client team who called me several months ago and asked if there was any reason why they should restrict SMTP access to port 25 and IMAP to 143. I said yes, sometimes people have to legitimately work around firewalls and routers. Thank your favorite diety that they listened to me. I doubt that McSoft email software will let me do non-standard stuff, but thankfully Netscape does. So I'm back in business.

Today's abomination is the request to bail out the airlines. Certainly they're taking a financial hit as well as a confidence hit, but this is after all supposed to be a free market. Amazing all the requests to the federal government which are passing without any detailed review. Most of these requests are costly endeavors which will do nothing to prevent the type of situation we had last week. Costly in terms of money and in many cases personal freedom. These requests wouldn't see the light of day during normal times, but the authors know this and are ramming them through when there is little or no oversight or tough questions. This has nothing to do with not being united. Short-sighted solutions which don't address problems adequately don't get better over time. But once enacted, it's darn near impossible to reverse them.