From the newest issue of This Is True: Jason Pitt and Bill Wood of Walsall, England, wanted to hire some new staff for their business. They called the local government-run jobs center to place an ad, but the center wouldn't allow its wording: they wanted to advertise for "hardworking and enthusiastic" employees. "They told us 'You can't put that, it's discrimination'," Wood said. A Walsall Jobcentre manager spokesman said the ad violated the Disability and Discrimination Act. Secretary of State David Blunkett personally intervened and ordered the agency to back down. (AP) ...Now for the quiz. Which is more discriminatory? 1) Asking for a hardworking and enthusiastic employee. 2) Declaring that a disabled person can't be hardworking and enthusiastic.

I received a horseshoe in the mail today from Marlboro. I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, but a couple years ago, a friend and I filled out a form for a nifty free maglight. Apparently, Marlboro has tracked me down at my new address. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this rusty horseshoe, or how it would induce me to smoke...

I installed Windows 2000 on the Sony VAIO that I have home for the weekend today. It's actually faster than Windows 98 was! I don't know why, but Windows 98 always took about 2 minutes to boot on this machine. Windows 2000 takes less than a minute. It took me over half an hour to get all the drivers installed though. Everything worked with the drivers on the CD, but Sony had posted updated drivers for all the components, plus Windows 2000 versions of all of their software programs for power management. The only thing that doesn't work is playing DVD's.

Today, I started the Carbohydrate Addict's Diet. To log my experiences, I also started another weblog, over at http://cad.weblogs.com/. This is designed to be a diet that you stay on for life, not something you use to drop 50 pounds, only to gain it back. I'm optimistic that this diet will probably work for me. I've never really made a formal attempt to diet before, but I can see how this plan works. The thing I like most, is that this diet allows you a "reward meal" once a day, in which you can eat whatever you like, as long as you do it in 60 minutes.