The DSL authentication server went down last night some time. Wonder how many million people were on the line to SBC this morning. Tech support wouldn't even let you hold on the line. We have too many callers - goodbye. Click. And it made me thankful. Why? I'm not one of the guys who got paged at oh-dark-thirty and had to fix it.

As I survey the wreckage on the tech landscape - I find that there are a surprising number of people like me. Or I suppose that means that I'm a lot like them. I bought some dijeridus today from another silicon valley startup. He makes them out of PVC tubing from Home Depot, and they're pretty cool. Another tech refugee bought the drum store in cupertino. Then there's the Phoenix musical instrument company which I get the great inlayed stuff from - in Santa Cruz.

Those that have been here for a while understand. It truly is the land of dreams. But you have to flow with the tide. Two years ago it was the internet. Five years ago, network hardware. Ten, disk drives and Unix. Twenty, the PC itself. Twenty-five, the chip industry. Thirty, stereos and water beds. We're survivors. Seen 'em all boom and bust. But we're out there every day hustling up the next rent/mortgage check. Ours are a bit higher than the rest of the country so we sometimes have to hustle just a wee bit harder. But I recall several times thinking - these people want to pay me huge sums of money to sit in a corner and write communications software. Cool. They want to pay me huge sums to keep their plasma processing equipment going. Really cool. They want to pay me huge sums to fix their stereos and TV's and oscilloscopes. Cool. All of those days are gone. Today I'm selling guitars and saxophones. Cool. The huge sums were nice while they lasted.

Think the prez was supposed to do a speech and propose what I mentioned yesterday - the perfect police force. Haven't checked in to the media stream today, but that would certainly be ironic.