dive into mark: “After it was filed, I got a $1500 bonus in my next paycheck. I saw the money and cried. I swore I would donate the money to the EFF Patent Busting Project, but it too got swallowed up by food and medical expenses and daycare and an unexpected tax payment and yes, mortgage payments. At our next quarterly all-hands meeting, my boss’s boss’s boss called me out specifically for a job well done on my first patent. I put the phone on mute and cried some more.”

If you can’t see the freight train of the 2008 Presidential Election coming, you must be blind. Debates between primary candidates are already on the air and make for great entertainment. Here’s my prediction: none of the above. We’re going to be surprised next year by a candidate and a platform and he’ll win in a landslide.

The United States is increasingly aware of the concept of saving energy. Long the niche cause of a small part of society, the last 10 years has seen a sharp increase in recycling, waste reduction and consideration for the environment.

Then came the war in Iraq.

The chain that connects our cars to a oil sheik in the Middle East got pulled tight a couple of times in the last two years. This year, there’s rumblings of US$4 a gallon for gasoline during the prime summer vacation months.

Here’s how it breaks down: people are sick of the war and they are sick of arguing about it. There is one thing that Americans of all political leanings agree upon and that’s the price of gas and it’s too high. The candidate that figures out how to spin energy conservation, the impact on energy of the war in Iraq, the Republican party and it’s ties to big oil company profits together will win the election.

There’s already someone who is doing that: Al Gore.

He’ll step back and let everyone yell and scream about George Bush and whether it was right or wrong to go to Iraq. When the general public is tired of hearing that line, he’ll step in and say “Let’s be nice to our neighbors, explore alternative energy, stop the advance of global warming.” It will be refreshing and positive and *that’s* what will win the election.

Pretty Pretty Bang Bang: “Since we have vision insurance (for the first time) and my old glasses were almost 2 years old, I decided to invest in some new frames. I went out of my normal zone and opted for wire frames with rimless bottoms.”

Click over to see the great picture of Tammy with new glasses and (bonus!) new shorter hair. She looks fantastic!

Ted Leung on the air: “Last week while I was in San Francisco, I sat down for an hour with David Wadhwani, the VP of product development for Flex and Ely Greenfield, one of the Flex architects. After I wrote my original post about open sourcing Flash, I got a note from David asking if I would be willing to spend some time to help him understand the issues that I raised in that post and its follow ons. This afternoon David called to tell me that Adobe was announcing that it was open sourcing Flex v3. I was especially happy when he said that my posts and our conversation had an impact on his thinking about open source and Flex. There is a press release with the announcement as well as a FAQ on the basics.”

ZachIsHere: “I learned that my good friend Joel had a bat in his place in KC via Facebook.”