At this point about six months ago:

You just won't find these topics [politics, religion, etc.] in the "News" for Mentata Systems anymore.

Here, I have become a complete failure. I just endorsed John Kerry last month and will now follow that with second enthusiastic endorsement of Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. It seems I'm hopelessly compulsive about expressing my political views over the internet. Mea culpa. I promise to spend the extra day this year in solemn penitence for my lack of self control. First, please allow me in humble defense to demonstrate the American internet public has a similar affinity.

In my annual usage summary for this web site I learned many interesting things. I was content overall with the amount of traffic and the search engine placement. I was pleased to find 14 countries represented among my top 100 visitor domains. It was also gratifying that 40% of what I serve is dynamically generated by my own software sometime during 75% of the visits to this site. But there was some bad news for the Good News: as much as I personally prefer the multilingual books, purveyors of my congress example outnumber those of my gospel example at a ratio of over 5:1. Well thanks to everyone for helping me decide what subject to focus on. Now I'll be plain.

I'm not using this site to develop software right now, so I'm donating spare time and energy on publicly scrutinizing the United States federal government and sharing my conclusions with you right here in the Mentata news pages.

That's right, I'm going the other way. If I'm a born critic driven by conscience and civic duty to speak my piece, why fight the tide? Of course, it goes without saying that this will mean a few comments about the incumbent executive. Maybe it won't be of the same tenor as other things I've written, but I'm still not afraid to say what I think...

George W. Bush accusing John Kerry of influence peddling with special interests is as hypocritical and distasteful as the pot of anthracite calling the copper kettle a n----r.

Begging your pardon. Is it now time to release another single from my disc?

Hindstill Sundays

by Hilfiger Tout

Another tune slaughtered with delay, further demonstrating my inadequacies as producer and audio engineer. I dedicate this bossa nova nova to my children, who are my chief and central joys, the sunshine of my life. They are the reason I don't pick up the guitar much anymore just as they are also the only ones who ever ask me to pick it up. Under the license, you are permitted to copy, distribute, or perform any of these songs free of charge, so have at it. I'm too busy amusing my progeny anyway.

So there it is, the extent of my spare time; nobody really reads these pages. Software is still my game, and I'm coding away on something exciting. The skinny is it will be a dramatically improved solution for the same problem space. I could always use a hand...

Suggestions?