Kenton Smith

HEADLINE: Woman wets herself to keep place in line for $50 Apple iBook
A rush to purchase $50 used laptops in Henrico County turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line. Full story
MY TAKE – I’ve said this before – it’s better to be pissed off than pissed on.

HEADLINE: Henrico County Manager apologizes for mishandling $50 Apple iBook fiasco
I couldn’t resist a the follow up to this story. County Manager Virgil Hazelett said officials were trying to respond to every complaint and he wanted the public to know they are also upset and thankful no one was, in their opinion, seriously hurt. “I very honestly would not do it in this manner again,” he said. “There are any number of alternatives that we can consider in the future”
TAKE 2 – In the future? Dude, your school system has switched to Dell. In 2009, do you honestly think people will be pissing themselves for four-year-old Dells running Microsoft’s porous Windows XP?

HEADLINE: Napster on the rocks?
First, the good news: Napster’s quarterly revenue jumped 21% in the last quarter, to $21 million. The bad news: Last quarter Napster lost $19.9 million. That is, the company lost nearly a dollar for every dollar it took in. The best line in this article, though, asks the reader to question whether “Napster will end up as either the digital music era’s Yahoo! or Pets.com.” Full story
MY TAKE – Napster is a joke and the only thing that Napster’s missing, besides a clue, is the sock puppet. Die with dignity? Not, Napster, obviously.

Good thing you aren’t driving! That might be a problem.

Now then…For more than two years, I’ve toyed with the idea of posting thoughts, news, updates, etc. on my site in the form of a blog. Of course, you can never have too many blogs to read, right? Such writings usually have one common characteristic – Nobody reads them.

On the other hand, my thoughts will be quite different. I have a terrifically loyal following. My mom says she will read my blog…every once in a while. And I know my wife will read every single entry. That might not count all that heavily, though, because she’s a good proofreader and will undoubtedly read every single thing in every single posting.

So, except for Mom and Pookie, I may as well be sending instructions for building MX missles for all the attention this blog thing will attract. I have carefully considered the actual content iteself and the merit of what I have to say. And I have the backing of my own Mom; she assures me they all will be charming – the ones she reads, anyway.