This week we passed by a certain milestone for a modest little community like ours. We posted our 10,000th comment. It came from Laurel, of Santa Barbara, California, whose observation on that day was typical of the kind of thing that has made this blogspace such an addictive experience for me. Here is our 10,000th comment, rich with personal anecdote and interesting observation from someplace that is Not Here:

I live in a tourist town, santa barbara, ca. I have been watching the stores close for a few years now and the staff in the remaining ones becoming more harried. I see the workers taking on so much more and thankful to boot, that they still have a job. They are tired though. I also could swear I see new workers in the grocery store and banks, and they appear to be more qualified. Maybe I am imagining this, that employers are merging, hiring and keeping only the best. I don’t know what to think of this but everyone is nicer to each other.

Small business owners have usually sunk all that they have in their business and watching them lose everything, their hopes and dreams, everything, is reason enough to spend whatever it takes. So, if people are saving just in case, think again and spend a little, tip more, and drop the “were doomed” attitude and see what Bing sees; we can, we will, and we are going to make it.

on a personal note, i lost my job in epidemiology, but found out i could make the same teaching high school science and demand is high for females teaching math, statistics and physics. i recently had a legal matter, so i had to refinance for cash. The refinancing rate actually saved me more money then I lost. (I thought of Bing’s article when i calculated the new mortgage rate and realized my luck.)

Thanks Bing, you made my life a little better by pointing out to look for the cracks of light!

Thank you, Laurel. And thanks to all of you, first time commenters, long-time bloviators, story-tellers, complainers, philosophers, cranks and wisenheimers, for making this space what it is, whatever it is. You’ve given me your thoughts on airline travel, recession, depression, incessant solicitations from Chase, the triumphs of Apple and, sometimes, Microsoft, Bernanke, Paulson, Madoff and other great symbols of high finance up to and including Mike the Headless Chicken and Alan Greenspan.

Right now it’s pretty unclear what the future holds. I hope, frankly, that it starts surprising us in a completely different way pretty soon. But either way, if it does or if it doesn’t, I’ll keep showing up if you do. And who knows. I may have a few surprises coming soon myself.

And Laurel? Send me an email to bingblog@gmail.com with your info. I’ll send you something nice.

I’ve got a song in my heart and a smile on my face today, and not just because it’s the end of the week in the middle of summer and all the big cheeses are melting at the beach.

I looked at the news line-up this morning and saw a trend I had not noticed in quite some time. Did you spot it, too? Happiness is busting out all over, surprising the guys who make gloom for a living.

… stocks were up at the opening of the market… well, that’s nice…

… new home sales were stronger than anticipated… of course they were. People are expecting nothing but downers right now. In spite of how much we read or download or link to, we’re always surprised because what we believe will happen next is always in line with what’s going on right now… and that’s not a fair assumption at all… so we’re always surprised, both on the downside, when it arrives and then by the upside, when it inevitably comes creeping in.

… hm… durable goods orders also are up, shocking those experts whose job it is, really, not to be shocked. Are we paying them to be shocked?

Oil prices declining! Gas prices slipping back to ONLY $4 bucks a gallon! Gas up the car, mom! 

There’s more! Cleaner, greener diesel? and Honda (HMC) reporting record profits, which means it still may be possible to be a car company if you know how to do things right?

And I don’t know about you, folks, but there’s part of me that just plain enjoys seeing guys whose business it is shorting stocks taking it in the, well, the shorts, you know? Bet against us, will ya?! Well, eat the hose, shorty!

See? Nothing but good stuff, all the time. Things are looking up. The sand is hot. The breeze is cool. The banks have hit bottom and are screaming back up the ramp. Our own auto makers are retooling their plants, getting ready to sell us a whole new generation of tin cans that get 30 mpg and better, and to sell those they’ll need to advertise, bringing up the whole media sector. And there’s a new iPhone, too! And a HUGE line around the block not far from here, loaded with happy consumers who can’t wait to ignore all the party poopers raining on the new gizmo. Go, Apple (AAPL)! Spread that sunshine, right? Sure!

Could it get any better? Well, okay, it could, I’ll grant you that. But I’ll take what we’ve got for now.

Monday will come soon enough.

1. Manage by walking around. This is a concept, minted in the 1980s, in which people walk around and call it managing. The good thing about it is that 1) it’s perceived as managing by many people who are old enough to have been around in the 1980s and 2) it gets you out of your office.

2. Hose out your inbox. I read an article of some 3000 words in a Mac publication recently that was wholly devoted to this issue. It seems there’s a concept in which, with proper use of archiving and deletion of useless crud, the content of your inbox actually hits zero. Think of that. An empty inbox. It’s like a digital high colonic.

3. Take an accountant to lunch. Not that you wouldn’t do so at any other time of the year, but there are some days over the summer where quite a few people are, for some reason, “working at home.” Those are the perfect times to allocate time and any available affection to those who receive so very little. In this group, I would include non-management lawyers and the kind of financial people who slave over the numbers but get very little day-to-day recognition. A few years from now, those are the guys who could be approving your expense report. Make sure they pay, by the way.

4. Have a think-tank. Make sure to pick a day when the Board Room is empty, then get permission to use that or some other august space to gather a group of congenial people and talk about nothing in particular. Make sure it’s catered, but not opulently. Sandwiches are fine. Essential also to invite either a Research person to do a short presentation, or invite a Business Development or New Media dude to kick around a few tether balls and run them up the proverbial flagpole. There! You’re strategizing!

5. Clean out your credenza. If you don’t have a credenza, clean out your desk. If you don’t have a desk with drawers, straighten up your pile. If you don’t have a pile… what the hell are you doing, anyhow?

6. Establish your LinkedIn network of friends, made up only of people that you would under no circumstances see in real life.

7. Start an e-mail chain, trying to set up a meeting of great importance with senior management. It will very quickly become apparent that senior management is all over the place, literally. Bob is in Denver. Ned is in Skokie. Maggie is in Petaluma. Everybody can try for weeks to get it together and nothing will transpire except for the common perception that you’re the only one pursuing an aggressive agenda. This is very good for you at no personal cost.

8. Program your ring tones. Right now I just added “Big Pimpin’” as the signature ring for our head of Sales. She’d really like it. In a few minutes I’m going to download a couple of games. I hear the new Incredible Hulk mobile game is terrific. This would be a departure from most that are associated with films, which are totally bogus.

9. I don’t know… This is the longest time I’ve devoted brainspace to an issue all week. It’s very hot outside, did you know? So I was going to say go have a picnic, but the idea of being out in the heat with some lousy tunafish and chips in the park, which is filled with tourists and mosquitos? Maybe not. Beyond that, it’s hard to say. Nobody really wants to do any work right now, do they? Do you?

10. Go online and book your vacation. Go ahead. I’m serious. Do it. I hear the dollar is still strong in Sri Lanka, although the air fare is through the roof. Take your time. Look at what’s out there. Isn’t that nice? Wherever you virtually go, there you virtually are, you know.

1. I like reading all the articles in the normally sycophantic Apple (AAPL) magazines promising to fix the 10 Things You Hate About Leopard.

2. I like to think about the meetings they had at Apple, in which the Development people fought with the Marketing people over whether the product was ready to be brought to market. Obviously, the Marketing people won.

3. I like to imagine what life is like for the Apple PR Department, which does such a good job positioning the company as an innovator and a creative force, and now has to deal with hoards of infuriated people who don’t understand why stuff that used to work, doesn’t anymore.

4. I like to hunt around for my wireless connection when it disappears from my Airport toolbar. Where did it go? Who are all these other people whose wireless networks appear, where mine does not? Should I get to know them? Do they mind me poaching their hookups when mine disappears?

5. I like wondering why my file sharing protocol between computers on my home network seems just ever so slightly kerflooey.

6. I like bumping into comments online and in the magazines confirming that the file sharing protocol in Leopard is a little kerflooey.

7. I like the mental picture of technicians at Apple working day and night to fix the teeny-weeny crazy stuff that people seem to care about — like whether certain features display their contents in alphabetical order from the top down or the bottom up, or why there is no built-in growl notification in I-Chat. How much dough is spent to correct issues like that?

8. I like realizing there are many, many people out there who are angry that the Dock has become transparent. There must not be enough problems in this world.

9. I like the idea that a whole little industry has popped up of third-party developers who are making money providing fixes to Leopard. That’s what I call stimulating the economy!

10. I like going back to my old laptop, firing it up and going back to the operating system that served me well for so many years. Give ‘em hell, Tiger!

Word comes from Megan in Chicago, one of our most valued and assiduous correspondents, that this humble blog has been blocked by the IT police of her company. Megan writes:

I can tell you one thing that is going the wrong way. Bing’s Blog page has been officially blocked at work with a code of “Social Networking”… Stanley baby – can you pull a few strings and help the numb nuts in IT understand that I need this site in my daily work life? How can I possibly put in a full 10 hours without a spoonful of delicious irony! I’ve explained that this is a very useful site which quite often covers business related topics. I’ve stated my case that while the site is not essential to doing my job, it does help me do my job better. They’ve claimed that they will review and let me know – *sigh*. I’ll miss you sweetheart…

I’ll miss you, too, Megan! It’s all so unfair! A social network? Us? Could that be? Every day we have as serious a discussion of current business-related events as the facts warrant! Sure, a lot of the time we focus on the ridiculous and outrageous, but that’s a direct effect of the times in which we live, right? Just look at the following issues we’ve dealt with in recent months:

• Guys who play golf and bridge while their city-states are flailing, and are then super-compensated upon their departure;
• The collapse of huge banking institutions that stupidly gave loans to people who couldn’t repay them when belts tightened even one teeny notch;
• The most aggressive Fed in living memory, moving dynamically to do who knows what?;
• Utter confusion on the part of experts and pundits of all stripes, and a general sense of incapacity and weirdness from all over;
• The usual insanity pertaining to mergers, acqusitions, divestitures and other organizational hooey in organizations from Apple and AOL to Yahoo and whatever companies that start with the letter Z you can think of;
• Intense activity in the digital arena, including the geometric growth of online retail while brick and mortar stumbled;
• The worst performance by the airlines industry since Howard Hughes attempted to commercialize the Spruce Goose;
• Other (your peeve here).

We’ve covered these terrific business trends and stories just like a responsible information source should, with aplomb, sagacity and no little amount of sang froid. We’ve also looked extensively at your bulls**t jobs and crazy bosses, and even occasionally offered some advice in our Ask Bing sector. And if, in so doing, we have also attracted a witty, savvy, saucy, snazzy, slightly snarky group that get together with some regularity to comment on the general situation? Does that make us a social network worthy of blockage? Well! All I can say is…

Thanks for the promotion, IT dudes! Now come on! Free the blog! Lift the blockade! Let freedom ring!

On Friday, I offered a little fable full of love and appreciation for the pet that has won my heart: my MacBook Pro. It was an homage to The Nightingale, a story by Hans Christian Anderson, which is a story about an Emperor who falls in love with a mechanical toy bird and spurns the flesh and blood warbler with whom he had enjoyed a long and happy relationship. I thought it was a sweet little fable, pathetic in its own way. I mean, what kind of fool falls in love with his Laptop? Shouldn’t I really get a schnauzer and lighten up on the emotions I’m investing in an inanimate object?

Be that as it may, my story contained some mild complaints about the new plaything in my life — my MacBook Air. I didn’t say anything really nasty about the thing. That would have been impossible. It’s a great little tool and I like it a lot. What I don’t like is:

I didn’t even get into the last bullet in my tiny parable, because I wasn’t sure if that was just me. Over the weekend, nerd that I am, I read a bunch of magazines and web postings on this subject, all of which revealed a host of angry people railing about this very issue and taking Apple (AAPL) to task for launching a new OS without proper testing.

At any rate, what was interesting to me about all this was how ferocious and immediate were the contemptuous, partisan, ill-tempered replys to my tender tale of affection and loyalty. Not all of you, no. Many actually wrote in to say that they wept when the narrator of the tale returned to his first love, the bigger, clunkier but more substantial Laptop.

But the rest of you, wow. You would think that I had stepped on a crack on purpose and broken their mothers back most heartlessly. Why didn’t I get the new migration route!? What am I, a moron? Hey! Didn’t I know that you could plug all kinds of peripherals into the supplied USB port? What kind of schweck was I to criticize this apex of contemporary achievement?! Dolt! Idiot!

This nation is right now embroiled in any number of screwups wrought by people who stayed the course when they should not have, who failed to listen to criticism when it was offered, who placed blind enthusiasm over judgment.  

Hey, people? Nobody is more immersed in the Mac universe than I. In fact, those who are close to me are frankly concerned about my tendency to solve problems by purchasing hardware from Cupertino. But that doesn’t mean I believe that those guys can do no wrong. The fact is, Leopard’s printer drivers blow. And so does the Air’s actual battery life.

There, I said it. You want to make something of it?

Once upon a time there was a Laptop (AAPL) that belonged to a mid-sized wazir of the realm. It was a rather large laptop as laptops go, with a big, roomy heart filled with all kinds of good things, an impressive collection of ports, and big, strong hardware that could stand the test of any situation into which its owner might put it.

The Laptop had served its owner well for many moons and was proud of itself. “There is no function I cannot perform should my master demand it,” it said to itself at times when it was charging, at rest after a long day at the office, on the couch at home, or on the road in a random hotel room somewhere. “Be it spreadsheet or word processing or even photography, I am up to the job.” And then the Laptop slept as its owner did the same.

One day, when the market was doing nothing and American business was slogging through another day of senescence, lethargy and malaise, its owner was watching CNBC at his desk when a commercial came on. It showed a slender, lovely hand inserting a notebook computer into what looked like an 11″x14″ envelope. This Notebook was so thin and light that it only took one little hand to slip it into that small enclosure, and was silver and carried a sexy logo to which the owner had already formed a symbiotic attachment.

“Wow,” said the owner, “Yum yum yum.” And so are major purchasing decisions always made.

And so the owner went to the online store that dispenses happiness for those who seek it in those quarters, and pre-ordered the bright and gleaming Notebook, along with the remote DVD drive that was necessary because the tiny unit did not have one built in. “That is a small compromise to make, given its amazing lightness and elegance,” said the owner to himself. He also acquired all the necessary chargers, since his older ones were not quite right either. “All new hardware requires these kinds of initial investments,” the owner added to himself.

Ironically, it was from the Laptop that the owner ordered all this new gear. “That’s all right,” the sad Laptop told itself as it conveyed the credit card information to the online store. “This is just a little Notebook my master can utilize when he’s making short trips to the coast. Due to its tiny size, it cannot do all the wonderful things of which I am capable!” And the Laptop felt sanguine, as we all do for some reason even when it’s not particularly warranted.

Then one day in the spring the new notebook arrived in a big box with the logo on it, the one for which the owner had already developed a drooling affection. And he opened up the box and there was the wafer-thin, juicy, sexy little Notebook. “Ah!” said the owner in a paroxysm of joy, and he held the thing to his bosom and the music swelled in his imagination and all was right with the world.

That night, the owner put the Laptop on a shelf in his closet. “Oh my,” said the Laptop, looking around at the shelf on which it had been placed next to an IBM (IBM) ThinkPad and an old HP (HP) printer with nothing but serial ports. “This don’t look good.”

Several weeks went by. The owner and the Notebook went everywhere with each other and for a while they were very happy. True, he found the lack of a firewire port very annoying at first, since it made the transfer of data from his other computers — once the soul of simplicity — into a complex wireless process that he detested. And his face fell when he also realized that all of his remote hard drives no longer worked with the new Notebook, making his photos and iTunes folders suddenly difficult to access.

But the Notebook was indeed very light and easy to transport, and people did notice it wherever he went, which made him feel very good about himself (at least for a while, until everybody else started having one). He barely complained when the wireless feature on the new computer had difficulty reading his existing network. After only two nights of cursing and yelling, that problem was solved as well. So he was happy for a while.

Then one day he took the Notebook on a transcontinental flight. For some reason, on this particular journey, he was not upgraded to Business and was therefore consigned to a Coach seat that had no power outlet. “This will be no problem,” he said rather smugly to himself, “since my new Notebook is advertised to have five hours of battery life.” As the plane took off from New York, he took out the silver platter and began working.

After about ten minutes, he saw the battery indicator slip from the original 5:00 hours quite abruptly down to 3:25. “Hm!” he exclaimed to himself. “That can’t be right.” He turned off the wireless feature and dimmed the screen in hopes of extending battery life but within a few moments the indicator had now slipped to 2:20. “Well,” he muttered to nobody in particular, “This bites.”

In the end, the owner got about three hours of use out of the Notebook, perhaps a little less. In the old days, he would simply have swapped out a new battery into his old Laptop, which was now languishing in the closet back in New York. But the new Notebook, as a concession to weight and overall bulk, had a built-in battery that could not be replaced with a fresh one and required a full charge before it could pop into maximum life again. The owner said nothing. But something shifted in his heart.

When he returned to New York, he put the Notebook on his nightstand and plugged it in. “You’re cute,” he said to it, running his hand along its sleek, smooth skin. Then he went to the closet and got the Laptop down. “Hello old friend,” he said to the Laptop.

He opened it up and remembered a few things, like how many tunes he had stored on its capacious hard drive, and how he really didn’t mind the old operating system, which somehow felt a bit more solid and well-baked, and how it was nice to have 30 gigs of photos at his disposal, and how much he appreciated the ability to watch movies and burn DVDs from a dedicated optical drive, not to mention how nice it is to have every port a person might need right at one’s fingertips.

Today, the owner still takes the little Notebook here and there, like when he’s going to Starbucks (SBUX)for a cup of coffee and a few hours on the web, or perhaps when he’s definitely upgraded transcontinentally to a seat that for sure has a power jack. The rest of the time, however, the Laptop is still #1 in his life and will be for quite some time to come… unless he gets really serious about the Big Mother Desktop he’s had his eye on for a while.

But that, my friends, will be another story entirely.

Just a look at the front page of cnnmoney today is enough to give even the strong of stomach the extreme willies. Next to a headline that says, “Wall Street Braces for Ugly Day,” and video featuring a scary dude warning about the dangers of inflation, is a deck of headlines. At this writing, here they are…

• Income, spending higher than expected
• Mortgage mess socks ex-Goldman stars
• MBIA says more writedowns ahead
• Wilbur Ross bets on bond insurer Assured
• Dollar sinks further/Oil hits $103
• The 10 best cars – Consumer Reports
• Toyota’s unknown business partners
• Banks could see $600B hit from credit crunch
• 3 steps for living well in retirement
• How Sony won the high-def DVD war
• Don’t panic: That IRS letter is good news
• Furniture company – or hedge fund?

Aside from the interesting tease that a letter from the IRS is good news, there’s not a lot to feel good about here, unless you’re Sony (SNE) and right now popping champagne corks over its victory in the high-def DVD wars.

Of course, winning the format battle for who will provide the DVDs of the future is very good news… unless you think that maybe in five or ten years nobody will be watching DVDs anymore.  I just upgraded my Apple TV (APPL) and up popped a huge menu of movies I might actually want to see, in both regular format and HD.

Wow, I thought. There goes Netflix (NFLX). There goes DVDs. There, in fact, goes everybody but Apple unless somebody hurries up and figures out an alternative to Planet Steve. My new MacBook Air is functioning really well, by the way. I can’t say what I’m really going to need it for, of course, but as King Lear said when questioned about the size of his staff, “Oh! Question not the need!”

Anyhow, just look at those headlines. And they were actually updated nine minutes before I copied them into this blog. When I woke up and looked at them, they were even worse.

I’m expecting to wake up sometime soon and see a headline in the stack that says, “World ends with both bang and whimper. Bernanke soothes investors with indications of additional rate cuts.”

When I was a whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school, I used to love Fridays because I looked forward to freedom from the tedium of class, to watching cartoons over the weekend, to dressing the way I wanted to and not combing my hair. I got nervous on Sunday nights, knowing that I would have to put my game face on the next morning, and that always hurts.

Today Friday feels different. I like it, sure. The weekend will be fine, I have no doubt. But I yearn for this day, I dream of its arrival, because I know that when it is done there is probably no more that the week can do to us. Or at least that tomorrow we really don’t have to pay very close attention.

Not paying attention right now may be a key strategy for survival in the next 18 months or so. Or paying attention to something completely different. I’m thinking of getting serious about my bird-watching, how about you?

It struck me, after my tale of the cute little piggies yesterday, how grateful some of you were in your comments for a nice upbeat story in which nobody got hurt. A welcome change from the gloom and doom was the general drift.

When you think about it, this should be no surprise. I think people are sick of all the negative stuff that washes over us every day, from the coming recession which may already be here to the pending inflation that is possibly coming along with it to the massive write downs sweeping throught the banking industry to the fact that more people seem to care about Britney Spears than about the War in Iraq. 

We want to hear some good news now and then, feel that world is a bright and hopeful place, not a bottomless sump pump of murk and schweck.

The good news is that there is good news — so much I can hardly contain it all. Let me give you some in case you need it.

Chairman Bernanke has just indicated that he intends to do whatever he can to stimulate the economy without making the same mistakes as his predecessors. I have no idea how he will do this, but then I’m not expected to. My job and yours is to feel a warm glow about his intentions and then take that jolly mood into our investment decisions. You know how much the fate of the market is determined by emotional factors. This could be just the lift we all need!

Sure, stocks have been taken a beating. But anybody with even a modest little portfolio of bonds is feeling all right. Shouldn’t the gutless conservatives like me who hate to gamble with our savings have a day in the sun now and then?

Think about our political process. It’s going great guns. There hasn’t been so much genuine fervor on both sides of the aisle in years. Young people are energized and enthused and voting their hearts and minds as never before. That’s terrific for our nation. Plus, for those with an eye on local economies, this ferment — not only the candidates but also on the issues — will pump millions of dollars of advertising into the marketplace as voters fight over the wisdom of casino gambling, for instance, as well as who should be the CEO of the world’s most powerful multi-national corporation.

And okay, it’s true that the housing market is in the privy. This has of course stuck a finger in the eye of a lot of dumb entities that loaned money to people who had more dreams than cash to pay for them. Bad? Not completely. First, it’s good when large institutions are punished for greed and stupidity, and their leaders are forced to depart in ignominy. Our entire ethical system is built on the concept of appropriately public disgrace, from the days of colonial Williamsburg, when they put miscreants into the stockade, to today, when TMZ, CNN and Gawker do the job.

Better still, a depressed housing market means that people who DO have a little bit of cash can now afford to move into that dream home whose price was formerly jacked up to ridiculous heights by the idiotic inflation of the market by morons weilding cheap debt. Last year, in my little California community, people were expecting to get $1.5 million dollars for a two-bedroom, one-bathroom cottage with no property. Now these little bungalows sit there with their real estate signs hanging dementedly from one hook for months. Then they go off-sale entirely. When they return, I’ll bet they’re one step closer to people who might actually be able to purchase them with a little more equity.

A few days ago, Apple (AAPL) announced a whole host of new stuff, including tons of movies to be available on demand, a free upgrade of some kind for my Apple TV, and a new skinny-Minnie laptop that sounds super boffo keen. Every year, one of my happiest events is my bi-annual purchase of something I didn’t have before and didn’t know I needed until it was invented. Can’t wait for these, either! Thanks, Uncle Steve!

Beyond that? Consider this: every downside has an upside for somebody. When stocks fall, Warren Buffet does a little dance. For him, because he’s so smart, the moderation of prices represents a chance to invest in companies who are suddenly unappreciated for what they do. I hope he’s looking at mine. Hey! Mr. Buffet! Over here!

Let’s try to keep our heads about ourselves. As a wise man by the name of Chauncey Gardiner once observed, there will be growth in the spring. Until then, bundle up and try to enjoy the cold. I hear it’s good for the circulation.

Today I am writing my last blog entry for a little while. I’m going to take off for parts unknown for about 10 days, maybe two weeks. It’s possible that during that time I’ll lob in a few thoughts now and then, but I don’t know. My brain feels like one of those static electricity balls that shoots off sparks and bolts all over the place to no particular good effect a lot of the time. I need to get grounded.

Before I go, however, I thought I would like to unload a few of the things that are on my mind, stuff I’m nervous about, excited about, wondering about.

I’m thinking a lot these days about cloud computing. Google (GOOG) is talking about it a lot. You probably know more about it than I do. It’s a movement away from local storage of personal information, all the things we have normally come to expect on our own dedicated hard drives and servers, including applications and data. It feels very Terminator to me. Like, I think about Skynet going self-aware and destroying the future.

I also wonder in my own mind whether we are constructing what is, in effect, the Library at Alexandria. All the knowledge of the ancient world was located there, back when men wore skirts. Then it burned. Now we have a handful of plays from Sophocles where there might have been dozens for all we know. What happens if the cloud gets a massive wedgie?

As always, I believe that Microsoft (MSFT) is taking the rear-guard action and developing ever-more evolved servers for home use. I admit to feeling more comfortable with all my intellectual property tucked right next to my desk. It just doesn’t seem to be the way things are going. We are all melding slowly into a collective mind that connects via innumerable electronic nerves with Mother. But I wish the geeks at Microsoft well.

I also send out big hugs, in spite of what some of you may think, to all the good folks at Apple (AAPL), not so much for what they’ve done for us this year, but for all the good things they’re cooking up right now. I don’t even know what they are. But I want whatever it is they’ve got on their minds already. And that makes me feel very hopeful about this future of ours.

I’m also thinking about what kind of year 2008 will be, of course. There seems to be a lot of negativity around, some of which I admit, in my own small way, I grouchily contribute to. I’m sorry if now and then I bum some of you out. I’ll try to be more upbeat in the year to come. If, you know, the airplanes run on time, among, you know, other things.

Now I’m going to take a leap here, skip the Happy Holidays thing and just say Merry Christmas to all of you, not in a hostile, mean-spirited, contentious, divisive Lou Dobbs way, but just because it is, after all, a real holiday, not a merged and transformed national event like President’s Day. And even though I do not believe in Santa I’m glad he’s around. And when it snows on December 25th, I feel like childhood. So Merry Christmas to us all, each and every one.

I wish you a terrific 2008 as well. May your securities go up. May your loans not be adjusted. May the Fed time its actions to help your portfolio. May your work be as pleasant as possible, and not interrupted by any forces outside your ken or power, either majeur or otherwise. And may you make more money in 2008 than you did in 2007, without trying quite as hard to do so.

Finally, I just want to say thanks for being here, for your crazy boss stories, for your thoughts about your bulls**t jobs, for yelling at me when I annoy you and rallying to my side when the Humor Police occasionally comes knocking at my door.

Shakespeare said that many a truth is spoken in jest. I hope to aim for that and occasionally hit it in the year to come.

Until then? Hasta la vista, baby. But just for now. As Arnold said on more than one occasion…

I’ll be back.

This being the season of giving, I thought I would share with you a list of things I’d like to get from some of the major vendors in my life. The way I see it, I’ve given them so much during that past year. I don’t think it’s out of line for me to hop up on Santa’s lap and give them some clue of how they could make me happy in this joyeux season.

From American Airlines (AMR), I would like an on time departure from Kennedy Airport sometime in the next twelve months. As part of that, I’d like to have an airplane that does not have some “small problem” that needs remediation by a mechanic before taking off, or a host of puling announcements apologizing, thanking me for my patience, or explaining how our “brief delay” made us “lose our place on line to the flights headed to Europe.” I’d just like to get on the plane, take off and get where I’m going when I expected to, give or take a half hour.

I guess I’ll also ask Santa to bring some new planes for American. They’re trying to make do with what they have, Santa, but new Business Class seating is not actually the same thing as having an actual new plane that doesn’t require constant tinkering because it’s always in the air. I know they know that at American, and it must make them sad to offer the same old airplanes to people year after year after year after year after year.

From Apple (AAPL), I would like my touch-screen Ipod to hook up more easily to the Internet. The commercials show it seamlessly doing so, but I’ve had some problems getting online in places where you need a password, like Starbucks (SBUX). I admit this is a small present, just a stocking-stuffer, really. The gizmo is great. I love it. One with a few more gigs of storage would be nice, too.

From Stan O’Neal and Chuck Prince, late of Merrill (MER) and Citi (C), respectively, I’d like one million dollars. Each of them got enough in their platinum envelope to give away a little. I won’t go into any details with you, but believe me when I say that, like a lot of corporations, my expenses are very high and actually outpace my revenue. While cash flow is good, bottom line EPS for my annual personal report is nugatory. These humongous exit packages for failed executives aggravate me. I would feel better if I got a piece.

From Nintendo (NTDOY), I’d like a few more games? It’s a terrific platform, but XBox has a better lineup, at least for psychotic killers who want to roam free blasting evil mutants. I’m one of those and so are most of my friends.

From the Fed, I’d like a clear reading on whether we’re in recession, depression, inflation, stagflation, ingestion or decompensation, along with continuing decline in interest rates that will re-boot the ailing housing market.

From President Bush, I would like a quiet ‘08. While continuing war is good for some industries, I persist in the conviction that peace is better for the overall economy, and certainly for anything American that seeks to operate in the global environment, including American brands and American corporations.

These are just suggestions. I actually appreciate anything I get. No beef sticks or cheese logs, though. I still have some left over from last year.

My prior post referred to an object of my desire — what I referred to as a “towering G5″. I had no idea when I mentioned this thing that a tsunami of you guys would leap on me the way a pack of dogs attack a wounded chipmunk, instructing me with great condescension that Mac stopped making those years ago.

Big deal. I work in a giant corporation and my entire floor is packed with G5s, and they rock. I understand that Mac now makes Mac Pros that are packed with Intel power. Here’s what they look like. They come in a big tower and I want one. It would go nicely with the Macbook Pro 12″ and 17″ laptops, the Mac Mini, the iMac and the Apple-TV that are sitting at home waiting for me right now. I say this to quiet the ill-tempered, swaggeringly pompous Macophiles who continually accuse me of not being sufficiently Mac when I occasionally poke a little hole the the slightly wormy side of the AAPL.

Sorry I got the model number wrong, or the processor designation incorrect, or the format of the digital copranshy defibrilated. No matter what you say, my point stands tall: I’m not getting an iPhone until I can use it on the network of my choice! And I DO like every single XBox I’ve played on! And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to get a Wii at some point, either. My old Super Nintendo was the best gaming system ever, maybe, except for… now get this… my old Windows PC! Yeah! I liked playing on that, too! It was WAY better than any Mac I’ve ever played on, okay? Even the G5s at my office!

Thanks for listening. Oh, and you guys who occasionally send me comments wasting your time to tell me what a waste of time reading my blog is? Bring it on! You can waste my time telling me that I’m wasting your time anytime.

Yesterday I had the temerity to take a short and somewhat gentle poke at Apple (AAPL), noting that their exclusivity to one particular network made it impossible for me to acquire the apple of the collective I — the iPhone.

A teeny-weeny storm ensued.

What happened is what usually happens around here. First the angry Apple (AAPL) fans come in, calling me names and contending that I know nothing about Marketing. Of course I know nothing about Marketing. After 25 years in business, it’s my contention that Marketing is like Economics. Everybody knows a lot about it and nobody knows anything about it. In the end, we are all equally intelligent and stupid on the subject.

For proof on this, I will point to the most superbly marketed item on the planet, the iPhone, which Apple (AAPL) rolled out with extraordinary perfection, except for the fact that it was priced wrong. So much for expertise in this area.

After the waves of invective hit me, a big number of you waded in to defend my honor and, not coincidentally, pile onto Apple (AAPL) a little bit. Some of you reminded cranky commentors that this is a site that, in between rants about one current indignity or another, indulges in satire now and then. Others forgave my ignorance and then launched into extensive technical discussions on the nature of cellular transmission and delivery. Those were very interesting. Thank you.

It is clear, as one constant reader noted, that all you have to do is talk about Apple (AAPL) to get your blog read. This is because people care intensely about Apple (AAPL). They love their Macs. They despise/love the CEO. They identify with the company as a scrappy David going up against the Phillistine Gates. They hate its critics. They defend its battlements. Others feel the exact opposite. And nobody has no opinion. Good for you, Apple (AAPL)! Passion sells. And we’re buying.

This holiday season, I have no doubt that all the Apple (AAPL) worshippers will be lining up to acquire. iMacs. Macbooks. Towering G5s. Flat screen monitors that irradiate your brain. All of them produced by the genius mind of one great corporation.

On the night before XMas, however, I won’t be home abed. I’ll be sneaking out to the nearest big box electronics store to pick up something else that starts with an X. It’s called an XBox. Perhaps you’ve heard about it. It’s surfaced as the game platform of choice for just about anybody who loves to suffuse their cerebrum with electronic cheese. I think it should go very nicely next to my AppleTV. I’m keeping quiet about it here, of course, because I don’t believe it’s made by Apple (AAPL) at all, but by some other corporation entirely (MSFT).

Gee… I hope I haven’t enraged all you Wii-heads now (NTDOY.PK).  

The Founding Fathers — if one may use that somewhat sexist phrase in this enlightened, post-Enlightenment age — crafted ten amendments to the Constitution that together form our treasured Bill of Rights. It is clear, however, that the Founders never saw the need for a new perceived entitlement that is now firmly entrenched in the hearts and minds of our citizenry. This, then, is the new Right… call it 10A: The Right To Choose.

We used to sit down every night in front of the TV and choose one of three networks. Now we have hundreds, almost all of them superfluous. An improvement? Maybe. Last night I fell asleep in front of The Mold Network. Who knew watching lichen form on a log could be so interesting? One thing’s for sure, though. I was very excited to have the chance to choose it. Made me feel, you know… important.

Better still, I time-shifted the program with my new DVR. That meant not only that I could choose the program I wanted, but I could choose to watch it when I wanted to. Boy, that felt good, viewing that lichen forming on the log a full hour later than when it was originally scheduled. I like being able to choose the time as well, not just the content. I consider it my right, you know. As a consumer and an American.

I choose the music I play on my Ipod. I choose the videos I like on YouTube. I choose from six kinds of apples I buy in one of six supermarkets in my general neighborhood. I exercise my rights under Amendment 10A every chance I get. This makes me feel empowered. This makes me feel good as an American.

Up until now, however, I could choose my cellular network but I could not have complete freedom of choice about the cellphone I utilized to hop into it. Now all that has changed, and I can feel my heart beginning to burst into song. Or maybe it’s the second helping of bacon I had at breakfast. No! It’s song, definitely.

I’ll tell you the reason why. News comes in USA TODAY this morning that Verizon (VZ), the #2 cellphone network provider in the U.S., has decided to open the floodgates of history and allow people complete freedom of choice about the phones they may use as Verizon subscribers. Hurrah for you, Verizon. You have made the world our oyster, and removed one giant disincentive to be a part of the Verizon cosmos. If a phone doesn’t work on the Verizon network, it’s probably because that phone was designed to be exclusive to some other.

Which brings us to the fabulous, fantastic, must-have gizmo of the new century — Apple’s iPhone (AAPL), which only functions within the alternative universe of AT&T.  I have nothing against that network. I’m sure it’s a fine one, festooned with pretty green trees and blue skies. I just don’t belong to it. And so I can never have an iPhone. And this makes me sad. More than that! I makes me mad. As an American.

A company I love is denying me of my right under Amendment 10A of our Constitution to choose something. Come on, Apple! Let freedom ring! With the ringtone of my choice, that is!

I suppose it would be germane for me to point out, after all the Applemaniacs got so upset on Friday, that I am devoted to the Apple (AAPL) universe and reside, not on the DOS-based dark side but with the MacForce.

At this moment I own: a 17-inch Mac Book Pro, a 12-inch PowerBook G4, a big old 24-inch iMac, fully loaded, and a little Mac mini with a big remote hard drive and a 21-inch screen. I will never go back to PCs, not after my experience of losing two machines in one quarter to the vicious nerds who troll Windows-land with malware.

I make fun of Mr. Jobs for only two reasons, 1) because he deserves to be made fun of for overpricing his cute little toy and giving so many regular people the droolies, and 2) in my opinion, he should have given back $200, not $100 to reward his early adopters.

He’s not the only one to have thrown the entire intellectual framework for early adoption into question. There’s this club in downtown Manhattan not far from where I work. I’m not going to give its name because sometimes I like to eat there and they treat me well. One time, when they were trolling for members, I actually got a free dinner. So I’m not going to be mean to them.

But when they got started, they sent out an invitation package that looked like a cross between a college application and an invitation to a Grimaldi wedding. A membership could be had — for early applicants only! — for as little as $100,000!

Wow, I thought. That’s a lot of money. The place wasn’t even built yet. To be one of the first to be a member, though, that would be something. For some reason, possibly the cost of two college educations, I didn’t pony up the dough. A few years passed. The place opened. It was popular, you know, but not an absolute must-have for the fatuous fabulositors. I started hearing that the club would comp anybody in the public eye who wanted to join. One writer I know occupied a permanent table there all of a sudden, and word was he was totally in for gratis just because of the panache he brought to the establishment. Then I heard one could join the club for, like, thirty grand. It didn’t make me want to join. Not yet. But who knows? When membership falls to $2,500 maybe I’ll spring for it. They have a nice bar and an attractive wait staff. One time I think I saw Ron Perelman there, even. So there’s that.

My point is, what do you think the six or seven idiots who coughed up six figures for that evanescent bubble of exclusivity feel right now? I’ll tell you. They feel bad.

This past summer there was a concert in the Hamptons on Long Island, a phalanx of getaway communities that cater to people who can barely keep from floating away due to the gas buildup in their egos. And one day a promoter there came up with the idea of a very exclusive concert and dinner series featuring Billy Joel, James Taylor, Prince, like that. Tickets for the lucky few who would get to attend were slated at $15,000.  I believe dinner might have been included.

Incredibly, far fewer than that limited run of 1,000 individuals showed up to extrude that sum of money, so by the time the Billy Joel event actually happened, a whole slew of people were rumored to be comped to the event, including the daughter of a mogul I know and several others. Good for them! A comp of that calibre is a joy forever.

Still, if I were one of those who bought into the whole extortion-for-status transaction, I’d feel gypped. 

So that and that only was my point. A hundred bucks does little to repair the wounded pride of all those who stood on line and paid the full freight in exchange for the boost in self-image early possession implied. In fact, even $200 seems sort of limp at this juncture. Why not $250? Or $300 and a next-gen iPod? Hey! Come to think of it, how about an extra $50 to everybody who declares their intention to purchase an iPhone in calendar 2008? Or a couple of free downloads, even!

It has come to my attention that Mr. Steve Jobs, the head of Apple (AAPL), has just offered to pay every American citizen $100 immediately. I think this is extraordinarily generous, and puts Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates, as great as their philanthropic efforts have been, to shame.

I’m not sure how the idea occured to Mr. Jobs, but I can tell you that the idea of just getting $100 out of the blue, for nothing, essentially, makes me feel very proud and happy to be a citizen of this vast, global corporate state we all live in. I can tell you that I know what I’m going to do with that hundred bucks. No, it’s not a windfall. But I think I can put it to good use. I mean, $100 buys you all kinds of things these days. Half a pair of sneakers. One tire. A cheeseburger and a Coke at the Ritz.

I could even put it away in the warchest I’ve been building toward the purchase of one of those new iPhones Mr. Jobs has been selling. I hear they do all kinds of terrific things. If only they weren’t so darned expensive!

Okay, now Apple (AAPL) has announced the launch date of its newest gizmotic marvel, the iPhone. As always with anything new, there are those who intend to embrace the little thing immediately, and those who sit at the feet of the grand idea and yell imprecations up at it. I guess it will all come out in the wash on June 29, when we go to the store and find out that the thing is already sold out, that we have to wait to get it for a month or three. Then and only then, when we can’t have it, we will truly see how much we really want it.

I remember, not too long ago, when Sony (SNE) introduced Playstation 3. The day before the launch, I was walking down Fifth Avenue in New York and saw a long line of what appeared to be homeless people, raggy and baggy and smelling of rain, huddled around the block under umbrellas, tents, makeshift lean-to’s. Turns out it wasn’t a food line, or a collection of undocumented aliens applying for amnesty. It was just folks waiting for Sony on Madison Avenue to open the next day, and the chance that they might be one of the lucky ones, the first on their block to embrace the soul of the new machine.

Two young friends of mine waited in that orderly mob for an entire day back then. The store opened, and they began the slow, snaky trudge up to the front, where the glistening object awaited. As they got near the door, a big black limo with Jersey plates rolled up to the curb. A functionary in a black suit, white shirt, big flashy cufflinks got out, as a shadowy Don waited in the darkness of the long back seat. “I’ll give you each two grand for your place in line,” said the natty foot soldier. They took the money.

Now you can get a Playstation 3 in any Best Buy (BBY). And I don’t want one. I mean, I want it a little. The kind of way you want a new car sometime in the future, when the need and the mood strike. But have to have it? No.

This brings us back to the iPhone. There’s a launch date. I’ve seen an ad and boy, it looks so cool. You turn it on its side and the screen orientation changes automatically. You touch it and it does all kinds of neat stuff. Web. Photos. And in the end? It’s a phone. I could use a new phone. I’ve wanted one for a while. But how much do I really and truly WANT?

Not enough yet. There are some negatives I’m aware of. The phone is tied to one carrier and it’s not mine. I’m loyal to my carrier. I’ve read some nasty spoilsports who say it’s a better everything-else-machine than it is an actual, you know, phone. That depressed me. I don’t like it when people harsh my growing glow.

But it’s early. There are several weeks. If Apple plays its marketing plan right, if the frequency and reach of its advertising is perfect, if I receive enough positive impressions and adequate word of mouth… who knows?

I will know it when it starts. It will move from mild interest to a slow, nagging burn that lodges itself in my gizzard and never departs. After a time, it will be the first or second thing I think about when I get out of bed in the morning. When I see an ad or hear about it, I will feel something missing in myself, a hole that, unlike other gaps in my karma, can be filled with a simple purchase. I will start being stimulated by pictures of the thing. So shiny. So sweet. Ooh. And then, as we get close to June 29th, I will begin to work out strategies for getting the obscure object of my desire. I will pull strings. I will call friends at Apple. If I don’t have any friends at Apple, I will attempt to make some very quickly. My mind will plot and whirl and spin and not be satisfied until I get what I crave.

I hope things work out that way. I love to want things. And to get the things I want when I want them. That’s important, too. If my engine of desire does manage to lock in, strong and hot, at some point between now and June 29, I truly do hope that I manage to acquire my gizmo right then, on that date, or sometime very shortly thereafter.

There’s something about seeing your true love on mass display in a store window, easily accessible to all, that takes the tang out of the act of possession, don’t you think?

John Markoff in today’s NY Times relates how Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) are getting together to make sure that the next time they both introduce operating systems they are “relevant in an increasingly Web-centered world.”

I find this vaguely threatening. Not the part about the two behemoths dancing, I’m way over that. Anybody who worries about consolidation at this point is missing the boat. Every industry – advertising, media, transportation, music, fast food - is agglutinizing, finding operating synergies and economies of scale and blah de blah blah and so forth. Those who do not work on this sized canvas must now swallow their own tongues and die.

No, I’m more concerned about another trend that I’d like to stop right now. I hasten to add that I’ve been incredibly unsuccessful in the past about this. Back in the late 1980s, I tried to stop the fax machine, which I felt would destroy procrastination as we then knew it. And so it did. Later, I foresaw the danger of ubiquitous accessibility represented by e-mail, cell phones and, of course, the BlackBerry. All in vain. The earth turns. Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. Man gotta be reachable on the beach in Costa Alegre.

But now what they’re talking about is taking all our operating systems, all our applications and all our data and putting it up on some motherlode hard drive somewhere. Our tools and work product will then be wirelessly downloaded to us from Mother wherever we are. No more Windows. No more OS X. Just little mini-applications that do what we want to do. No more big hard drives on our desktops and laptops. All storage can be done with Mother. No more iPods, because all existing music will be located somewhere in Mother’s capacious bosom and streamed to us from the nipple of the Web.

As Mr. Horse used to say in Ren and Stimpy, “No sir. I don’t like it.”

I like Word. It’s a good program. It’s been nice to me. It’s got a lot of functions, a lot of fonts and I’m as loyal to it as I am to American automobiles.

I like Photoshop. In fact, I like all those big, fat, monolithic digital photography programs that help me edit my pictures. I also like to save my pix in really big files, so they print well. Mother hates really big files. She wants things neat and transmittable over the ether. Not everything should be itty-bitty and easily downloadable!

I don’t want my storage to be elsewhere. I want it here, in my home, and no place else. Last time I looked, part of being a grown-up is not having to ask Mommy every time I want a byte. Empowerment! That’s the ticket.

And you know what? I like OS X, whether it’s Tiger, or Leopard, or Budgerigar. It’s a calm, unified place to go, where everything works as it’s supposed to and nothing ever crashes in my face. I don’t want a collection of convenient little mini-bots. In fact, if I never see another bot it will be too soon for me.

I am me. I am I. I am not going to go quietly into the vast, seductive digital collective mindspace that awaits. How about you?