A legitimate beef

Just my luck. After being delayed a month, after being sent to the wrong city, and after beiing tossed over the wall to the patio of our now-vacant condo, the device finally arrived that allows me to dial up my Austin doctor from Minneapolis and zap data over the phone about my dwindling battery. Yep. The battery red-lined. I learned this news just as I saw the headline about the cardiologist convention in San Francisco. (Cue a line about Tony Bennett. Any line.) Hopefully, one or two doctors stayed behind in Austin. More later.

Advice to medical manufacturers: study the Land's End delivery model. They can get my shorts here the next day and you guys can't deliver a life-saving monitor to the right city! Grumble, snarl, gripe, complain.

Suspicions confirmed: the number one state producing wind power is, wait for it, Texas.

Many detectives get their work clothes with a special cut – suit coats are wider in the shoulders for maneuverability in a fight and fuller at the waist to conceal their hardware like handcuffs, a pistol, mace, etc. Columbo was haute after all.

Not everybody frets the recession or the high price of oil. The sale of business jets continues to boom. Last year was a record and first quarter results indicate 2008 will be another banner year with a 40.8 % increase over 2007.

Do we need this? A Minneapolis company is distributing electronic cigarettes, cigars and pipes that mainlines nicotine to smokers – but no smoke. The e-smokes atomize liquid purified nicotine that makes a vapor that can be inhaled. A way around smoking bans?