We're in Clever, MO, visiting Sara's family. Her brother Lucas is on leave from the Navy. He just returned from Iraq. He brought home two chunks of the big bronze statue of Saddam. Yes, the one you saw on the news. I was holding them and a few things occurred to me: 1) This is a little piece of history, 2) It's really heavy, no wonder it took them so long to knock the statue over and 3) How many people starved so they could make this statue? Anyway, it's been great having Lucas home again. No matter what you think about the war, you just have to be proud of guys like this.

I'm writing this post on Sara's parents' new computer. It has a beautiful 17'' LCD. I'm taking their old computer home so I can throw it into my Linux mess. I might frankenstien it or just try for a dual-boot system. If nothing else I'll wipe the hard drive and stick it into my current Linbox. (If you're interested, here are the specs of the old one: 366 Mhz Celeron processor, 32 MB RAM, 4 G hard drive and a 14” CRT monitor.)