The new 2005 Federal Poverty Guidelines have finally come out (both the HUD edition, and the DHHS edition). It just doesn't quite feel like a new year until they do. In fact, I think the feds observe the Chinese New Year, instead - so, Happy Year of the Rooster! This year also marks the 40th Anniversary of the Federal Head Start program. Happy Birthday to Ed Zigler and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society program!

After reading a few other notable opinions around the web, I tried out a couple of alternate tabbed browsers yesterday, namely Avant Browser (the 'fastest browser on Earth') and Maxthon (Chris Pirillo's browser of choice - yes, there are other tech people out there that also don't like Firefox - SHOCKER). Avant, however, sucks because you can't customize the toolbars the way I like (minimal footprint - in IE you can get everything on one toolbar and free up a ton of space) and it also screwed up the way my existing links work (well, they actually just stopped working completely), while Maxthon fried the functionality of an important DOS batch file and it's printing of webpages to PDF that I use three times a day (even when Maxthon wasn't running). Having these less-than-stellar experiences right out of the box, I lost patience and subsequently uninstalled them both and everything went back to normal. So much for trying new things - I'll stick with something that works, thanks.

Watched "Gone in 60 Seconds" (2000; Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall, Giovanni Ribisi) last night on VHS - not too bad for a Cage action movie. Tried some new Minute Maid Premium Cherry Limeade a few days ago - quite tasty, if you like limes. Mike's discovery of the condiment packet gallery is simply awesome! Mike, how'd you stumble across it? Pretty random. I like to watch the packets shuffle across the screen as the images load - very entertaining. I especially liked his store. Good thing he stuck to teeshirts, and not underwear...