Another Geekback because I've had some probs posting today and yesterday with all the storminess.

1.) Of course, my thoughts are with the folks in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives, etc. etc. who are suffering after that huge tsunami.

2.) We had some serious rain here...of course it isn't anything like the situation in the Bay of Bengal but it's playing serious havoc here. The National Weather Service actually admitted that a TORNADO touched down in Inglewood last night. Usually when Tornado-like winds touch down in the Greater Los Angeles area they say it's "wind shear" or "straight-line wind force" or other weasel-words but they actually admitted we had a tornado here, at last. It sucks for the folks in the 'Wood...it would have been better if it happened in Beverly Hills or Brentwood where people who can afford to rebuild live. The big question that seems to be obsessing people here is will it rain on the Rose Parade? I don't care either way, but it seems like a lot of people would be bummed if it happened. The last time there was rain on the Rose Parade was in 1955. Exactly 50 years between rainy Rose Parades. Not a bad record, I'd say.

3.) I've got the hard drive for my headless ThinkPad server. 30GB of play space. Gotta love it. I plan to do some fun things with it.

4.) I know what I want as a grad gift: A flat iMac! A little birdy told me these rumors are all true, and we should see the econo-G4 by Summer 2005. This revives the wonderful LC/61x/61xx "Flat Mac" format that I have been a fan of for quite a while...my first color Mac was a Performa 460 that used to belong to Spumco, the studio that created Ren & Stimpy. They are saying that this sub-$500 beastie will have an iMac-style software loadout and a combo drive for that price. I am hoping that for a little more scratch you could get it with a Superdrive. Burn baby burn! I bet there are a lot of low-end PC makers who are sweating bullets right now. Nobody's going to be able to compete with this.