At issue is whether the U.S. Government has the right to examine electronic databases of public corporations. Specifically, all of Google's search records for a [classified] week. Oh, and a million more records for good measure. Unfortunately, the legal precedent for this action has already been well established. The government can, and ultimately it will.

Whether or not this decision is publically acceptable is another issue. It is not a legal issue. Whether or not this concerns you sort of depends on what kinds of things you usually search for online.  Are you the kind of person who looks up the prices of ipods and rock-n-roll memorabilia? Or the more inquisitive type - say for instance doing high-resolution flyovers of the Tajikistan border, and researching Islamic history? How about searching the web for collimators and gas centrifuge auctions?

There are folks like me who do all of the above... But to steal a quote [Scott McNealy] "You've already lost your privacy. Get over it".

I'm now looking at next weekend as the last day for the business. The 21st to be exact. That will give me a little over a week after that to empty out the store fixtures and clean it all up.

Might work out about right. I find it amazing that people are still buying stuff. There's not much left to buy. But they're getting desperate. They feel that they have to buy something. OK. How about a broken guitar strap? One dollar. Need a flute case? They don't have a flute. But they buy the case anyway because it's cheap.

I've really started getting disgusted at all this. If these folks had all been here a month ago I wouldn't be closing this business down. But they're mindless robots, driven by cheap stuff. They aren't customers. Right now I'm beating Internet prices. I'm beating everybody's prices. Hence I've got a full house of mindless shopping automatons buying junk for pennies on the dollar. If I was still trying to make a buck, the store wouldn't have a soul in it.

I've had several real honest to goodness loyal customers stop by in the last couple of weeks as well. Chat about the old days and I try and let them know the closest places to buy the things that they'll be needing. Some of them I'm really going to miss.

So I open the city's weekly newspaper this morning, and there I am playing guitar on the front page. Wow. Big news I guess that the old music store on Castro Street is closing. The reporter repeated everything I said in confidence. Never trust a darn reporter. But still, it was a nice piece and gave a historical perspective.

If you want to know why the store is closing, you can pretty much find out why by reading these archives.  

The selection is getting real thin now. Don't think I have any more book 1 of anything (always the first to go). Lots of Volume 2's and 3's.  Vast expanse of display case is empty now. Those have to go as well. Only a couple more weeks to go.

Suppose I should close out the year with a report on the state of the music store. The decision to close turns out to be the best thing I've ever done - to boost sales. Go figure.

In a little over a week, I've turned in record sales highs most every day. I've got two! acoustic guitars left. One is left handed. The rest are gone. A few electrics left. Zero band instruments. OK, one tenor sax. The shop is looking bare. I thought I had about four or five months of inventory and would be stuck with tons of stuff at the end. Instead I might run out of stuff to sell before January is out. Folks are grabbing up stuff that has been sitting here for years. No questions asked. The yellow clarinet. The bugle. The timbales. The orange Gretsch. All the inventory that I was starting to think of as store fixtures than sale items. Stuff I've marked down to nosebleed prices so many times that they look like price tag pin-cushions.

Wish I could've had sales like this when I was making a few cents profit. With all the money I've wasted on advertising, it's also curious that people are mobbing the store from almost the entire south bay. Lined up outside the door. Nobody has heard of the place, nobody has seen my advertisements, but they have all found out in less than a week that a music store is closing down.

I've learned more about retail in the last week than I did in the last four years when I was actually practicing it.