Well, it's been about a week since the deluge of hits have started. I have to give repects to OLM Hosting, who carried it off with a minimum of problems (problems which mostly consisted of us going over our bandwidth limits). There have been a couple of issues, but overall they've done a great job. And now, we've recently gotten word that the ip ban on google has been lifted in China. No confirmation on that yet, but our hopes are high. And yesterday went without a hitch, which is wonderful. Because by hitch I mean heinous act of terrorism on American soil. This concludes the serious and informative section of this blog entry.

I had a friend over for dinner last night (dinner, and to watch the surprisingly brief presidential address to the nation on the tv. I'll be perfectly honest, I really was not comforted or reassured by the presidents speech last night. And I need some comforting and reassuring, as far as that goes. The main problem was that the speech was followed quickly by a advert for the season premiere of The West Wing, wherein Martin Sheen talks movingly about the trials his nation is facing. And as much as it made me feel like I have given my soul over to the great cyclopean god Televisicus, I couldn't help but wish that President Bartlet was the man in the Oval Office, instead of our own W. I don't think it should be the case that NBC has better speech writers than the USA, although I suppose it makes sense. They probably pay better, and you can still work at NBC without a securuty clearance. Maybe, as Susan Sontag suggested this week, great rhetoric is dead in politics).

Woof. Did I say the serious part was over? Just kidding. But I mean it this time. I promise that in the next paragraph, I'll be talking ATF news, and a reference to making love to Natlie Portman will be made.

As I was saying, I had a friend over for dinner last night. Not surprisingly, the conversation rolled around to ATF (it's not surprising because it turns out that I have trouble saying more than 20 words in a row before I have to say the word "alltooflat"). And she mentioned that it seems like I have reached all of my goals. And I have to admit, it definitely seems like that's true. Now, I'm not saying that I'm living the good life, rolling in piles of money and naked ladies. But all of the goals that I had explicitly set for myself have been met. Part of the reason for this is that Alltooflat has been so successful over the past month. Another more significant part is, I believe, that I don't do very much goal setting for myself. So now, I figure that since recent history has proven to me that I will reach my goals no matter how unlikely I think they are, I will create a new set of goals to attain. I haven't done much thinking about this yet, but the first goal I'm setting is to be a primary participant in a night of wanton lust with Natalie Portman. I mentioned this to my friend, who told me that might be somewhat immoral because Portman is only 19 (which is incorrect, I just checked - Natlie [we're on a first name basis these days] was born in June of 1981, making her 21). I told my friend that it really wasn't an issue for me; I had given up on the whole 'worrying about Natlie Portman's age' thing when I first saw her in a movie. The movie was Léon [The Professional], and I believe she was 13 at the time. It wasn't so bad then, since I was 16, but saying it now I suppose that it comes off as a little creepy.

So that's my new plan. It's really new, so I only have that one goal so far, but I really don't think it's a bad beginning. I'll tell you how it goes.