So maybe I'll start wearing a life vest in the car

588 Mass. bridges 'deficient' - The Boston Globe:

Approximately 10 percent of the 5,500 bridges in Massachusetts are classified under federal standards as "structurally deficient," including 65 well-traveled bridges with such serious defects that they may need to be replaced and at least 10 with a design similar to the span that collapsed in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

Of course the American Society of Civil Engineers has been reporting on this for some years now, stuff falling apart all over - bridges, roadways, water and sewer systems, and oh, yeah, don't forget the levees, levees too. What the hell. Nobody wants to pay.

Wait until a bridge falls down on a highway that's been leased to, I don't know, Australia or something, see how much fun that will be. (Note to Chicago: Read the fine print.)

Meanwhile, buckle up.

So if things look a little different today it's because I'm writing from my laptop. Last night I ran a utility that promised to do a "secure delete" (by overwriting) all the empty space on my desktop hard drive. Let it run all night. And woke up this morning to discover the thing did not repair the file system headers properly and my disk now reports zero empty space. It will still reboot and run just fine, albeit sluggishly, but this is not a good deal, so now I have to decide whether to use another utility to fix it (likely can be done) or just wipe the disk and start over, reinstalling my software (the data files are all backed up). As there is a new operating system due shortly ("Leopard," in Applejabber) rebuilding the disk may not be a bad idea - then I can do a simple upgrade with the new OS. Either way it's a PIA, IYKWIM.

I don't have to make up my mind until this afternoon, so I won't.