Rick Herrick Central - Hi there.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I think Windows Vista is pretty good. I've had very little trouble with it compared to the trouble I had with, say, Windows XP at this point in its lifecycle. Graphically I think it's very slick looking also. The main complaint that I had with it was that the desktop icons were absurdly large, making the desktop feel very crowded even on my super-groovy 24" 1920x1200 monitor.

Update 1 - Update 2

So have you seen this guy Santelli's rant about the mortgage relief program?  Good stuff!  I find it heartening that in these dark times the salt of the earth, those option traders on the floor of the CBOE, can stand up for everyman like that.

But first, let consider why the issue of underwater mortgages is something that needs to be handled:

I thought, hey, living here in the freakin' Heart Of America™, I should have a few opportunities to go catch a Sprint Cup NASCAR race (full disclosure: I started watching NASCAR a couple of years ago when I couldn't find anything else to watch in HD on my HDTV; all of a sudden, NASCAR racing made a lot more sense and was a lot more exciting!). So I know Daytona's coming up next weekend and I figured I could look and see what races were scheduled for this season.

So I'm participating in FAWM, which is very cool.  I've got one song down already (good thing, since I really need to have two songs by end of day today to stay on schedule!), but I've run into a weird issue with my recording rig.

Andrew Sullivan comments Matthew Parris's point that the current economic collapse isn't a failure of market economics, it's actually the logical end-point of the credit boom, market economics coming home to roost.

So Jon Gruden got fired today.  I'm both shocked and not surprised, which might sound a little weird, but I'm also happy and sad, so it's fair to say I have mixed feelings about the matter.

Roger Simon asks on Politico:

Would it be OK if I stopped paying my taxes until Barack Obama names me to be his secretary of the treasury? That is a deal I would like to get. That is the deal financial wizard Timothy Geithner got.

 So what was the "deal" that Geithner got?

Some guy who no one's ever heard of writes an article in CQPolitics:

History May See Lincoln-Like Greatness in George W. Bush

Yeah, you know what? No.

That was easy.

So apparently the Bush administration was so p/o'ed about the Democrat Party (sic) winning the Presidential election in November that they couldn't even stand them staying in the hotel next door.  Now, I'm not 100% certain that this is true, but sadly I am 99% certain this is true.  Are you kidding me?

So my wife had mentioned that she wanted black-eyed peas for New Year's Day.  OK, I go to the grocery store to buy some groceries and remember that and think, "Hey, I'll get some canned black-eyed peas, add a little ham or something, and we can have it as a side dish" (I was making a chicken dish in the slow cooker).