Although I’m not real big into presidential politics, a friend passed along a site which helps you figure out who to vote for. The site was experiencing “technical difficulties” when I logged on this afternoon — can you believe they wrote that in flashing letters?! — but when I gave it a trial run last week and selected “no preference” on all the issues, Bill Bradley came out way ahead. Hmmm. Can’t really tell you what that says.

My teacher friend Sara has a student who builds ice castles and other cool sculptures in his backyard. And he’s only a senior in high school. Rumor has it he must finish the 2000 sculpture before the upcoming Sweetheart’s Dance in just a few weeks. How sweet.

Hello. I’m back. And I’m sure the four of you that actually read this (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) didn’t even miss me. My new Palm IIIx arrived last Thursday and I made it three days on the road with no Franklin Planner withdrawal. Then the phone rang when I got home tonight and Em asked me if I could come over tomorrow night to start my t-shirt quilt, and the first thing I do is look at my Franklin. This could take some geting used to.

One cool thing about this little gadget is the ablility to personalize everything (oh duh, that’s why it’s called a personal digital assitant). AvantGo.com lets you select channels that can be downloaded to your PDA. So this weekend I read Salon on the plane. Too bad AvantGo’s interface is kinda sucky and the Net’s been so slow from my apartment these days.

On an unrelated note: This year you may get a knock on your door as workers from Census 2000 come to try to count you. I heard on NPR that the 1990 census missed 4 million people. How do they know they missed 4 million if they couldn’t count them?

Have you ever locked your keys in your running car parked on a skanky exit ramp off of I35 in 10 degree temperatures with eight inches of snow on the ground? (Oh yeah, in order to qualify, you had to have left your purse and cell phone locked in there too, and then get pulled over for speeding on the way home.)

Last night I watched Frontline on PBS: “The Killer at Thurston High.” The show attempted to explain why Kip Kinkel killed his parents and then went to his high school, killing two of his classmates, and injuring dozens of others. It was a frightening show that left me emotionally drained. I could only think back to my high school experience when one of my high school classmates shot and killed his parents — and his two siblings — at home, then came to school the next morning, flaunting hundreds of dollars, before disappearing for weeks. He was eventually apprehended. These things do happen where we study, work, live. Frontline’s storytelling techniques, once again, left me in awe. For the first hour of the show, I didn’t understand why the cameras only showed the Kinkel family home from the outside — eerie camera angles forcing our imaginations to conjure what was happening behind closed doors. Then, the home video of the police force entering the home the morning after the killings. Scenes of his parents’ bodies, lying under bloody sheets. Shocking television, at its most effective.

I did not sleep well last night.

Today (or maybe tomorrow or Thursday) my new Palm IIIx arrives. Yeah, yeah — I sacrificed the style of the Palm V for the functionality (not to mention price) of the IIIx. Can anyone out there tell me if I’ve made a huge mistake? Maybe the hugest (okay, not a word) mistake will be forgoing my reliable paper Franklin planner for this PDA. Since I wanted to do some comparison shopping online, I stumbled across mySimon.com, which gave me 40+ outlets carrying the style I wanted. I found the cheapest from PCWonders.com in just two clicks.

T.J. doesn’t know I’m doing this, but I’m putting his Oscar pics on my web site. I don’t know why. Maybe just so we can all come back and mock him when Matt Damon is passed over for his performace as Ripley.

I’m leaving for Iceland in just two short months. No, I’m not looking forward to the beautiful volcanoes and glaciers. It’s what’s beneath the surface.

This week’s episode of This American Life (although a rerun) was especially sad, being that it was all about hospitals. Hearing the story of 14-year-old Brent, burned over 85 percent of his body, fall in love with his nurse made me want to cry.Not that I want to say anything bad about this amazing radio program, but I did hear once that host Ira Glass has a tendency to hire lots of young, young women.

I do have a friend who works at WBEZ in Chicago and who will soon be producing(?) his very own program. Until then, however, you can just hear his voice by typing “Jason” into their search engine.

As long as I’m on the subject of enlightening entertainment, does anyone have any idea when the next season of The Real World begins?

You know what? I want to be a millionaire. Why is it that no woman ever makes it into the hotseat? And now some 20-year-old college junior is sitting there. I am SO calling. Gripe of the week: Adobe Acrobat 4.0. When Adobe came to Minneapolis last summer to tout this most fabulous new product (which practically walked on water) it promised me that I could change a Word doc into a PDF with the click of a button. Ha. Fortunately, my Adobe magazine just arrived in the mail, and wouldn’t you know, the Q&A has my exact question. With some non-answer. I’ve only reinstalled Acrobat five times now with no luck.

8:07 p.m. I am so bummed. I just called and Regis answered. But unfortunately, I didn’t qualify (my geography could use some brushing up). I’ll just call back tomorrow. And in the meanwhile I’ll play the Flash version.

10:33 p.m. David Letterman has won.

This weekend’s movie picks: The End of the Affair and Snow Falling on Cedars.

google.com is now my favorite search engine. I’ve found everything I’ve wanted this weekend using this simple little gem.

More on web diaries. I’ve learned that no one uses the word diary and that they are called “weblogs.” Now that I sort of am keeping one, I keep finding more and more of them on the web. Not that I’m surprised or anything. Just surprised that I can’t stop reading them. Jason’s friend Ariana keeps one too. And her friend Brad. My God. I don’t even know these people and I’m referring to them by their first names.

More blogs here.

Found it! I was looking for another site with an online diary, when I came across Jason Kottke’s, referenced in a web design list I’m on. Jason is a web designer in Minneapolis. Strange how I come across these things virtually, then discover this person lives only 30 miles away.