A spiritually-enlightened person I know asked me, "Are you the same person now that you were at the beginning of 2003?" I didn't even have to think: This past year was transformative in a way that no other year of my life has ever been. My answer was an immediate "No!"

My friend smiled warmly and said, "Well, then. It must have been a good year."

Indeed.

Happy New Year to all mahnamahna.net readers. May you find stillness and peace within, and see it echoed in the world around you.

Slugging. Masstige. Grandboomer. Woodpusher.

Phantom load. Butt call. Get doored. Seagull manager. Sleep camel. Greengrocers' apostrophe.

Second Coming type. Irritable male syndrome. Social expression product.

Walk the cat back. Throw it over the wall.

WORD SPY.

Some folks dig year-end best-of lists. Here's more Best of 2003 lists than you can shake a stick at.

[spotted on Metafilter]

I got some spam this evening. It contained one ad image, hyperlinked to a web site that's apparently paying a spammer to push some traffic its way. I never saw the image, because I use an e-mail client whose interface looks like it may be older than me, and it doesn't do images. The body text of the message read as follows:

princess janus region wiseacre annulled buck carboxy methylene ahoy lackluster sanatorium psyche farthest linkage qatar desert poverty ringside monarchic anything frailty

more...

(As if you needed another?) "A Texas housewife is in big trouble with the law for selling a vibrator to a pair of undercover cops." She could go to jail for a year.

I'm writing a new column for PC World, all about Free Software (including, but not limited to, Linux). The first edition went live today.

Anil Dash (one of the minds behind Moveable Type) reminds me why I love New York so much, and makes me want to move there.

This is ironic. (Doncha think?)

I got two pieces of snail mail from the Democratic party today. This fascinates me. I have not been a registered Democrat for more than five years, and I have never been registered as one at my new address. Yet they keep writing to me. more...

1 iRiver iHP-120 + 1 cable = mp3 music in my living room, for the first time. A low-tech way to make it happen, but oh is it sweet.

I am awash in a sea of phlegm. I've been sick since last Friday. My fever has been as high as 103.1, a number that should be associated with the FM dial, not a human being's internal temperature. I'm on the mend now, and wishing like hell I'd gotten a flu shot this year, because the flu is almost certainly what this was. Have you had a flu shot this year? There are no excuses.