Here's a funny-slash-jaw-dropping follow-up to my rather sour previous posting about the iPhone. Apple's online store lets you download approved applications to run on your iPhone; some are free, but most come with a price. Apple takes a 30% cut off the top from every sale for ahem "upkeep".

The joke? Some created an application titled I Am Rich and, with Apple's permission, posted it for the maximum allowable price of $999.99 (U.S.). The sum total of this application's capabilities are to sit in your list of icons and, when opened, display a big red ruby on the screen to alert people of your, um, richitude. That's it.

Eight people downloaded it before it got yanked. That's about $5,600 for the developer and $2,400 for Apple. I wanna be in that business.

Who exactly was firing shots on Ottawa Street late Saturday night or Sunday morning? Julie tells me she was in a friend's back yard around 1:30 AM when he not only positively identified the sound as gunfire, which may or may not have come from two separate guns, but found a spent shell casing in front of his house and handed it in to the police. There was a brief mention at the top of the A Channel news last night, but the police aren't saying anything and I can't find a whisper about it in today's Windsor Star.

In other news, I came across a blog I wish I'd known about earlier. With the decline of the auto industry, Windsor has never been more in need of fresh ideas. Scaledown Windsor is a welcome development and a hub for new thinking about transportation and development in this excessively auto-centric town.

This week I'm driving up to Toronto to visit Cam at his new place. I've been looking forward to the trip for several weeks, so it's too bad Mary told me last night she has to work Saturday and Sunday. It's still looking like a busy weekend, though, since Mom will be in town too and I'm stopping off to visit Lisa and Derek overnight on Friday. And now Karl has entered the mix as well. A social life! Who woulda thunk it?

Visible Insanity

With the 2008 Summer Games only a few days away, anticipation in China is running high… One enterprising petit-bourgeois wanted to promote his restaurant to the world, so he plugged his Chinese-language text into an online translator, took the English result that came out and paid for a sign which he hung for all the world to see. What did he get for his troubles? "Translate server error".

Now, go stick your head in a pig!