Is it just me, or does this story sound like something out of a movie? I can just imagine bikers riding through the front doors a casino, mowing down bystanders with automatic weapons with a bad heavy metal soundtrack. What is this, Mad Max? Israel has suicide bombers. We have.....Biker Wars! I love Nevada.

That prison site is truly Busch league. The navigation is terrible, and by that I mean non-existent. And they use this annoying scrolling status message. It's very 1996. I firmly believe that one of the major problems with the federal and state government bureaucracies is an inability to embrace technology and make it work for them. Technology is supposed to make a task easier...to reduce the man hours necessary to complete a task. A web site is the same. These agencies think "Everyone has a web site. We should have a web site." So they build some clunky home page that doesn't do anything and becomes one more task that someone has to do. Instead, they could be applying the technology with a portal that could provide information to the public and streamline their inernal processes. How can we expect these people to get anything done when they are bitch-slapped by simple HTML? No wonder the lines ar so long at the BMV.

My other complaint with the site is that I don't know anyone in prison to look up.

The Eco-Challenge has me pawing through my gear and searching REI online, aching to get outside. The current (05/2002) issue of Outside has a short article showing exactly how Team Salomon/Eco-Internet upset the kiwis. See pages 26-27. Interesting, though, that Outside refers to the winning group as "Team Salomon", while Mark Burnett's TV coverage calls them "Team Eco-Internet". I wonder if this has anything to do with advertising?

Thanks for the wake-up from Wolfenstein--I very nearly missed the Eco-Challenge! I can't believe some of these teams. We can obviously do this. Some of these people are totally out of shape have only a talent for whining and arguing.

Now, if only we could get someone to come up with the $20,000+ for entry fees and equipment. And two other team members. Preferably with rock climbing, mountaineering, whitewater, and navigational skills, we'd be set.

Speaking of adventurers: I think Tom Brown's Tracker School would be a great place to get started if someone wants to become part of the next generation. Of course, you should also be able to win the Eco-Challenge, no problem.