I'm off galavanting around the country again. The bathroom was starting to get whipped into shape when I left. Nice tile work. One of the workers is also under-employed so I'm told that he'll be digging dirt in my backyard today. Cool. Sure I'll have to pay for it, but I'm not particular how progress is made - so long that ultimately it is. Wednesday the rest of the fence is supposed to get done.

Today I'm on a quest for a cash register.

Haven't seen much news from Kandahar or Cobble, but I haven't really been looking for it either. I've taken mild interest in the Harry Potter opening but only because I want the stock to do well. My options expire in a couple of weeks. Then I need to sell some loser dot-coms to balance the profit and avoid giving Uncle Sam a windfall for a third year. Luckily I've got several losers hanging around and some of them aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Costco and OfficeMax both have cash registers. Now the only question is if I pay $100 more to be able to connect my PC to it. My gut says yes, but then it starts wrenching because I know that it means custom software written by the cash register manufacturer, that will be obsolete or useless before I even get it copied onto hard disk; and in any event the $100 connector will be some hookah dream on Casio's business plan and nothing more. Maybe I'll just stick with the basics for now.