Just a little snippet in the paper, buried under more Palo Alto folks sniping at their neighbors for not being more civilized. I wouldn't live in that town. But the little snippet just casually mentions that Haliburton is getting an even larger share of the Iraq oil contract. No bid. Ya' know, if I was a conspiracy nut (or a democratic presidential wannabe), I'd be having a field day with this. I hadn't heard they got it in the first place. I was only joking when I imagined the possibility in these pages a month or two ago.

The cartel rep was in yesterday, expecting an order. Like I need any more guitars. Still I did my homework. I sold twenty of his guitars in a year. That's not bad for one product line. I bought a couple more.

Hey mikey - (the accountant); can we afford a couple more guitars? Mikey? Hello? Sigh... He hasn't been the same since I asked for some graphs and charts of how the business is doing. Said something about holding 'em upside down. Oh, now I see - yeah, the squiggly lines are going up now. Cool. That'll work.

Oh yeah, there was that business plan. Parts of it are still valid. I'm going to need rental income in the fall to keep me afloat. That means I need a lot of rental instruments. Except that now there isn't any money to buy them. Oh well. I will also need an electronic billing system. Assuming I can double the pool, it's too much to process by hand. And the existing systems cost big bucks and will have to be migrated to another system when the software maker goes belly up. Looks like I'll have to fire up my compiler again.

McSoft's quest for world domination has apparently led to the development of an internet ready porta-potty. I'm serious. Waterproof touch-screen preloaded with MSN. For all those folks that while away the hours sitting in those stinky booths. They want to use them at European music festivals. I'm serious. They've already developed a line of toilet paper printed with lists of interesting web sites. That will likely require a monthly subscription to keep the list current. Chuckle. I'm freaking serious. Chortle. No, really...