Google thyself.

An old work buddy, Bryan Murphy, recently started a blog called ilovebryanmurphy.com. Though only weeks old, it's already full of cool stuff and great writing. Check it out. You'll love him as much as he does.

His latest entry is about something all guys do at night, when we're hunched over our computers with our pants off and there's a wad of Kleenex in our hands. We google people from the past. The pantslessness is for comfort at the Kleenex is to catch the tears of joy when we find an old friend's address.

I google a lot. I look deep into that invitingly minimalist search page and think: "Who was that one girl I used to stare at in 11th grade?" Then I type her in name and am relieved when I see her name pop up and find out she teaches kindergarten and is unmarried. It's nice to know that ex-crushes from high school are unmarried. It pleases my inner 15-year old, who still thinks he's got a shot.

I also like to google myself now and then. OK, a lot. There aren't too many Brian Kunaths out there, and most of them speak German. So I've got a front seat on Google. Anything I do online launches me right to the top of the list. Like this article I wrote for an online employment Website. I got paid $100 to write that in 1999, which wasn't a lot of money back then either.

There are also about a thousand links to my book, Fearless Brewing. Check out the glowing customer reviews. Six of the seven reviewers are old friends and the seventh only kinda liked the book.

Last night I found a new one. Turns out that in 2000, a Senate Subcommittee, headed by actor Fred Thompson, prepared a report on Day Trading that referenced an article I wrote for a financial magazine in 1999. That made me feel vaguely important and connected for a few minutes. Until I remembered what a lousy job I did on that article, and how much I hated earning $28K a year and getting paid once a month to interview bajillionaire money market managers about the viability of completing a institutional trade transaction in a single day. I get angry just thinking about it. Great, now I'm angry. Thanks a lot, Bryan Murphy

A great program for crazy people

So she finally dumped you and is now living her own life, free of you for good. But you can't have that, can you? You have to know what she's doing, who she's talking to and where she goes at night. But who has time to stalk these days?

Creepy ex-boyfriend, meet Loverspy. Created by Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara, the handy program lets you remotely track and control her every online move. That is, it used to, before Perez-Melara was indicted for allegedly violating a handful of U.S. federal computer privacy laws. If convicted, he could be fined up to $8.75 million and spend 175 years in jail. So naturally, he's on the run.

Terrible as he might be for having offered Loverspy, Perez-Melara did pack a lot of value into his product. For just $89 -- the price of a black-market handgun -- you were able to monitor a chosen individual's e-mail, passwords, chat sessions, and Web site visits. Plus you could remotely control your victim's computer and even quietly turn on any connected Web cameras to get a sneaky-peek of them from afar. Compare that to the $200 you spend on a basic version of Microsoft Word and you start to wonder who's the real criminal. The answer, of course, is Perez-Melara. But it got you thinking, right?

The herring finally did her in.

A 115-year old Dutch woman finally succumbed to a lifelong addiction to herring, a gross-tasting fish that is particularly vile when pickled. Frankly, I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did.

Let there be opinions.

I have created man for no higher purpose than to fill the universe with uniformed opinions and endless platitudes. Let the bullshit gush forth!