Way too much on the business too-doo list. Came in at 7AM to start knocking some of it out.

Yesterday a guy brought a rental guitar back. I rented it to him just last month. He wanted out of the contract claiming it's because I rented him the wrong guitar. He thinks his son is left-handed and so does the guitar teacher. Does he eat with his left hand? No. So I ask the little guy to show me how he plays the guitar - both right-handed and left-handed. The first thing worth noting is that he had absolutely no interest in doing so. Ah, I see - it's daddy who wants him to play guitar. So he holds it both correctly and upside down and I watch what he does when he tries to get a sound out of it. I see the problem but I fall short of telling the dad. He's a solid right hander. His left hand is almost useless. He can't do much of anything with it. So they return the guitar and break their contract because I don't have any left-handed 1/2 size acoustic guitars. He's going to the competition to find one. I let them walk away. Why? He trusts the teacher who says the kid is left handed. Nothing I could have said would've swayed him. True, when he holds it upside down his right hand can almost finger a couple of chords. That's why the teacher was convinced. But his left hand is incapable of finding the strings in space to strum. When he holds it right handed his left hand likewise is incapable of fingering a chord. The kid might make a good trumpet player some day but he's not going to be a guitarist. I'm not going to participate in his dad's fantasy.

If this were anyplace else in the country I'd swear it was about to snow. Then again, maybe it will. Wasn't that freak tornado a few years ago at the end of April? Hard to believe that the climb to the 80's and 90's is only about a week away. I'm not a weather man or fortune teller. And it's possible I'll be wrong. We've had rain all the way into the beginning of June before. But overhwlemingly it gets hot around the beginning of the second week of May.

Closed out the month on an uptick. In Silicon Valley everything is tied to the stock market. Stock options are a way of life here. People don't buy stuff if they log onto their monitor in the morning and see red. If they see any green they're more likely to.

Although AOL's massive (!) loss this quarter was mostly due to accounting changes post Enron, I can see method beyond the madness. Remember that these guys live, eat, and breathe share price. If they have to deliver bad news - pile everything bad into that quarter. Delay huge payments until next quarter. You don't hear them announcing more layoffs and vehemently deny the rumours of being forced to sell huge blocks of assets (though cable is an interesting one). My bet is they deliver a Q2 surprise - and it's a green surprise.

The third winner of the nation's biggest lotto (and his wife) filed bankruptcy last year to the tune of $600,000 in debt. This was in the midwest - not here in the west where we see numbers like that to buy a condo. My guess is that they'll be back in bankruptcy court in about 4-5 years.