It only took 24 hours. The guv'mnt announces yet another terror alert, and the streets are empty of shoppers. Empty. Now they admit that the information is uhm dubious, but it's too late. The damage has already been done. I can look down the street and see nothing but store owners standing around on the avenue wondering where everybody went.

What was interesting about the firefight in Mosul wasn't that they got the Hussein boys. What was interesting is that four people apparently were able to hold off the 101st Airborne Division with all their TOW missiles for almost four hours. They couldn't have had much in the way of large artillery - in a borrowed mansion. Most likely only a few Kalishnikovs.

Five times in the first 30 seconds of Bush's speech. Ambassador Bremer. Let's just forget about the stints with Kissinger and Tom Ridge. Then he shows up on Larry King. King was polite. Touched on his past. Bremer actually held out pretty good. He's taking the new job with gusto and giving it his best shot and it shows. The penultimate politician but without the appearance of an agenda. He knows how to say the right thing at the right time, and avoids saying the wrong thing. He might just be the right man for the job. Either that or they decided to throw in a nameless nobody just in case he gets assassinated (unfortunately, a pretty high probability). Don't think I'd take that job. Don't know anybody sane who would. He appears to be at least partially sane, and he took the job, so he must be the right guy.

Got a call from one of the big five US guitar companies. No, I can't tell you which one. Equally surprising because they had already told me point blank, don't call us, we'll call you. We don't need any new dealers thank you. But times have changed and they actually called. Seems they're having a bit of a spat with a big-box retailer that I've ranted about before. Said retailer has been dumping their product below cost to keep the shareholders happy. In the meantime it has ticked off every other dealer of this particular product line. So now I guess they're running out of people willing to sell their wares, and are looking for some new blood that hasn't been tainted by the fiasco. Not sure I want to get involved, even though I'm drooling to get a well known name brand in the place. My blood isn't for sale.

So they got Odie and Kissy, the Hussein brats. Or so they say... How many times did they kill Chemical Ali now? Still, I'd keep an eye on the Bush brats for a few months. Sometimes when you kill somebody's kids, it seriously pisses them off.

Funny time for Idi Amin to come back into the public spotlight. He was quite a character in his day. He's dying. Been living too good for too long. Wasn't the UN or some world court. The obesity finally caught up with him. We find he's been living in a virtual palace in Arabia since we last heard from him. The Saudis are giving him money. His four wives probably provide some diversion from world affairs. OK, he did have to convert to Islam. Saddam and Osama are probably calling the princes right now. A coupla' red-heads please. Got any blondes?

Warning! Funny math alert. Yesterday they were counting about 150 something GI deaths since the official end of hostilities. Today with no explanation, they add one more death and bring the total to uhm 47.

I'm really getting annoyed at the mozilla folks lately. Every time the browser becomes almost useful, they throw away the code and start over. It'll be another 2-3 years before the code is stable and useful again. In the meantime they'll have to re-write all the features they threw out to make it a lean, mean browsing machine. That was the goal of the last incarnations as well, ness-pa? And what happened? They bloated until they became useful. In the meantime we put up with real buggy code for a few years. Hope I don't get annoyed enough to (gasp!) switch browsers.

Out here on the fringes the weather is hot. The roof of my shoppe is being replaced. Oh joy. I love the smell of burning tar in the morning. Not. I've gotten used to the constant pounding after three days now. Just wish these guys had some rhythm.

It's now four weeks into the sale. Business has been reasonably good for a refreshing change. Don't know how much is due to my nosebleed prices and how much is due to a generally improving economic climate. Lots of phone calls. That makes me belief it's the latter. Otherwise I'd see the spike in walk-ins, but they've spiked as well. But not as much as the phone calls. Maybe now my Yellow Pages ad will start to pay for itself. Just hope it lasts... It's tempting to bring prices back up a bit if all this is due to an economic improvement. But I won't. This formula seems to be working. If it ain't broke...

Sold the Altair 8800 I had sitting in the window. It was looking for a good home. The local computer museum came to call. It's always enjoyable when you find a perfect match.

Meanwhile from the toldjaso department... the military is investigating the bushwhacking of Jessica Lynch's unit after they failed to make a right turn. In the report, I heard not less than four separate mentions of injuries and deaths occurring primarily because their M-16's jammed. So they haven't improved the things over the years. Sure glad we didn't see much house-to-house combat, instead using more reliable bigger guns. It's appalling these things are still in the arsenal. Especially as the US has moved from fighting in jungles to fighting in deserts. Sand and M-16's don't belong together. I also think of the psychological impact of having to put a condom on your gun. Funny. But Trojans are the de facto dust cover for the GI rifle. Nobody else needs to do this. Everybody else in the world has guns that usually work. If we're gonna' try and keep up this 'greatest nation on earth' image, we should really fix up our guys and gals with something better.

Happy birthday Marty.

Given the law of averages, sometimes even the wrong people will end up doing the right thing. This time it's Microsoft. What did they do right? They plan to eliminate stock options as employee compensation. Just give the poor geeks the stock. Don't make them learn all the vagueries and implications of ISO's and NSO's and the dreaded AMT. As long as they stay out of bankruptcy court, the shares are always worth something. With options, you never know if they'll be worth anything and you need two years of university-level accounting and tax law education just to figure it out.

Happy birthday, Isabella, happy birthday to you.

Gadzooks, what a mess. A bit of inventory is turning. That's the good part. But now, I'm running out of a bunch of critical things for band season. Not just a few things, but a bunch of things. Seem to recall this happened last year as well, but for other reasons (found out all my instruments were junk). There's a bit of money coming in, but once I get through the bills there seems to only be enough to replace one or two of the critical things. Have to wait on the rest and run out until I can buy more. But I need to absolutely have them in hand in uhm, six weeks. Tick, tock.

Meanwhile, my scouts have turned up some cheap guitars. Well known brand name. Nosebleed cheap, but the prices won't last. We're talking guitars for cheaper than filling your tank. And I can't do it. I need flutes. Ah temptation.

On to the next phase. Looks to me like I've just about wrangled out all the advantages of purchasing an existing business with a known brand. More and more, the current branding is turning into a liability. Time to change. But this will be a long-term endeavor with a definite phase-in. Otherwise it causes the dreaded consumer pickle known as brand confusion. The lag time is mostly determined by the Yellow Pages advertisement. I've already signed the papers for this year, so the current branding will be in effect at least that long, assuming the business is still viable a year from now. But the business has a new name. It'll soon have a new web site. Mountain View Music is a place, not much of a brand. I'll soon be free of the geographic distinction. Sorry, that's all the clues you get.

$25 million for Saddam's head. $15 million for each of his sons. That might go down in the Guiness Book. If you're looking for get rich schemes in the new millenia, might I suggest a career in bounty hunting? Where's my ak-47? Heck I'll go over and try and find the dudes for 55 mil. The other lucrative career move of 2003 is to donate lots of money to the Republicans. Here's five grand. Can I have all the music stores in the next country you pillage? Looks like that's going to be Liberia. Nevermind. I'll wait for Iran, thank you. What? They don't have any music stores? Not a single Guitar Center. Even better. George is sure raking in those campaign dollars. Gonna' have to pillage a lot of small countries to pay everybody back. Might just have to go after a big one.

Time to renew my prescription. I need some more Phucidol. It was customer-from-hell day today. About twenty of 'em. Started off with the lady at the business next door. Somebody had the runs last night and couldn't find a public restroom open. So they did a big runny dump right in the middle of the sidewalk. It's a shared sidewalk, so I don't know why it's my problem, but my business neighbors decided I should be the one to clean it up. I scowled and frowned and let her know that it wasn't my problem. But I have contacts with the property owners so I was voted to deal with it. I know the rental contract - the property owners won't clean it up. So I'll take from your silence that you'll take care of it?, she asked. Asked isn't the right word. She told me I would be taking care of it. End of story. I took care of it. Now, she's on my (s)hit list. I want revenge. And it will be sweet. At a time and place of my choosing.

I've been in business a year and a half now. Time to close out month 18. I ended the month with an entirely different business than I started with. Have to just wait and see what happens. Might go down in flames like the old business, but I doubt it. Didn't sell any guitars Saturday. First day in two weeks that I didn't. But it's OK. Sold a cello and a flute. Made more off each one than I did on the last four guitars. But they're cheap commodities as well. Need to sell one or two at least every couple of weeks to get by. Right now they go at the rate of one or two per year. But hold on - that is two cellos and two flutes in two weeks. Already sold one of each. I'm far from out of the woods, but it's a step in the right direction.