The Blogosphere just got a whole new solar system. Sun Microsystems has turned on employee-written blogs for the outside world to read.

What's the slant, the position, the purpose, the goal? None, apparently:

“This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything.”

Woah. Cool.

“Here's a yet-to-be-posted Channel9 video, where Susan Cameron, of the Tablet PC team, gives a tour of the Tablet PC.” (via Scobelizer)

What is not mentioned directly in Scoble's blog entry, but is of great interest to many I am sure, is that the functionality being shown in this video is all-new in the yet-to-be released version of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition - presently code-named Lonestar and a part of Windows XP SP2. Essentially, when you apply SP2 to the Tablet PC OS (when it's available later this summer), you'll get all the new tablet functionality as well as the regular service pack stuff.

And referring to the greatly reduced need to use the physical keyboard with the new TIP (Tablet Input Panel) as mentioned in the video, I can vouch for the fact that there's a huge difference there. I hardly ever have to switch over to the keyboard with the new TIP capabilities and improved accuracy. Sweet stuff.

Charles Maxson has lifted my spirits, hit the nail on the head so to speak. Says Charles, “I spell like siht.” Amen brother, join the crowd - although my problem is not actually spelling per se, it's typing.

You see, I typ elike siht.

See?

My method of key-pressing is what you might call the Modified Greg HUghes Hunt and Peck Method (with the misplaced capitalization left as an intentional part of the name, simply to remind us that it's an imperfect method).

I have worked in journalism, as a police officer, and as a computer geek of various sorts. All of these jobs required me to type - a lot. I just never learned how to type “The Right Way.”

But hey - as far as I'm concerned, so what. That's what spell check is for. I use grammar well, can write my way out of a box whenever needed, and am often leaned upon to help clean up writing that needs to be disseminated to large numbers of people.

But still, I type with four fingers, hit the space bar with one thumb, use only one of the available shift keys with a fifth finger (and that's all that finger does), and I lean heavilly on spell check to help correct my typing rather than my spelling.

And Charles - I'm with ya bro' - add spell check to IM, and I might even start to look smart. Taht woudl be ccol.

My boss, Chris, posted a web-log entry that had me laughing out loud, so I thought I'd share. Check his site for “Thank you for calling the United States Army,” the official (not) voice mail message of the US Army.

• If your crisis is small, and close to the sea, press 1 for the United States Marine Corps.
• If your concern is distant, with a temperate climate and good hotels, and can be solved by one or two low risk, high altitude bombing runs, please press 2 for the United States Air Force.  Please note this service is not available after 1630 hours, or on weekends.

Read the whole thing here.

Don't know why for sure, but I've been on this random kick recently about The Ultimate Answer and all that. Of course, we all know the answer, and how it was discovered:

 ultimate_answer_t deep_thought(void)
{
        sleep(years2secs(7500000));
return 42;
}

The real question is, what was the question?

And that's the hard part.

“I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.”

If it takes seven and a half million years of Deep Thought to answer the question, but we don't know the question, then what do we do next?

It's all quite mind-boggling. Certainly does not invoke a feeling of infinite majesty and calm.

Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work?

Is that the question??? What is the question?

"Exactly! So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."

ARGH!

In reality, I have been doing a bit of deep thought of my own, trying to decide what I am meant to do, what it is I am supposed to be doing with my life (assuming I am supposed to be doing anything). Through a series of trials, successes, tribulations and challenges - some random and some not - I've ended up in a place in life that I never would have predicted. I'm not complaining, mind you, just wondering what's in store, what's next, why, stuff like that. Seems like something's missing, and while I have guesses about what that “something” might be, it's hard to put my finger on it for certain.

Maybe I need to play a long game of Scrabble.

Makes you wonder about which industry should be considering an IPO...

According to Hitwise, during the week of May 29th, 18.8% of U.S. Web visits were to 'adult' sites and 5.5% were to top search engines. Says CNN-Money: “Porn 3X more popular than searches.”

This could mean a lot of different things, but one thing's for sure: There's apparently a lot of people out there that I don't really understand. That, and excepting the fact that I have a soul and I value it greatly, it's obvious I am in the wrong business. :-P