New rule for the Sole Proprietor, old rule for everyone else: If you find a site you like, write down the URL dummy or you might forget how to find it.

The Sole Proprietor had been surfing, using links he found on the Journal Ring member's sites to find others. This particular site seems to have stuck in his mind because later he picked up a notebook and wrote a rough draft he wanted to spiff up, check out the site again to fill in the blanks (like the lady's name) and use it for today's journal.

He thought he'd written an interesting piece. The site belongs to a young woman, he seems to recall, named Sara. Not a member of the Journal Ring, but he thought her site had a link on one of the Ring pages. Not so. It seems to have slipped through the cracks. Adios journal entry.

Still, things are going all right. On this election day, the Sole Proprietor put together an NT file server in the lab. Hasn't done that in a while and it was kind of nice, putting him in a pretty good mood. He had plenty of time to work on it and since it will be used by his group to test pilot programs within the company to see if they're worth putting into production, there was a certain proprietary interest, as if the thing actually belonged to him.

Now, one file server later, he's sitting at his computer at home listening to the election news, sitting here with the returns coming in over the TV in the corner. He likes election returns, likes to hear what's going on and to listen to the talking heads who will analyze them to death over the next several weeks. He doesn't much like voting, but he likes the process, so this is his kind of evening.

The finest election coverage he's ever seen was done during the Nixon/McCarthy presidential race, written by Hunter S. Thompson for Rolling Stone. What a great time. Thompson covering the primaries and the election itself, describing, for example, candidate Hubert Humphrey running like "an 80 year old woman who's just discovered speed." That describes every politician he's ever known. A line like that justifies an entire writing career and Watergate, that great bon bon of political extravaganzas, was still to come. God was kind in those years to poor young political junkies.

Ah well, this day is done and its time to hang it up. He bopped out the picture used for the head on this piece and added the date in about two minutes in Photoshop. Using pictures for the journal headings has changed the way he looks at potential photographs. He needs something that provides space on the photograph to print the date. People who shoot magazine covers have to visualize their photographs in the same way.

Mr. Woose lounging above wouldn't make much of a picture without the date for balance and the Sole Proprietor doesn't believe he'd have noticed it or scanned it into the computer without that nice expanse of underexposed brick patio extending to the right. People will think he's crazy, of course, shooting pictures of brick walls and puddles and such, but they think he's crazy anyway packing a camera all the time, so he won't sweat it.