Funny, Seattle looks remarkably like Boston. At least this morning it does, with fog and mist obscuring the mountains that are allegedly out there somewhere.

I'm in Seattle in my capacity as Supportive Spouse, not on my own account. More details to come, depending on the outcome of hubby's meetings with Major Software Developer.

One way to keep prices of a commodity product stable is to form a cartel. Limit production and make sure all suppliers charge the same price. No one wins, but no one loses either. Except for consumers, of course, which is why federal prosecutors have told first Infineon and now Hynix, "Don't do that."

From the point of view of a hiring manager, the cap on H1B visas (for non-immigrant specialists) is a bureaucratic nightmare. You scour the world for the most qualified person to fill a position, but then you can't actually hire them until the next round of visas opens up. Meanwhile, you have to either pay them off the books or keep your team in limbo.

Supporters of the cap will say that the way out of the problem is to hire Americans instead. Believe me, anyone considering an H1B hire would go that route if they could. But the total pool of people qualified for many technical jobs is very small, and the US educational system seems to be making it even smaller.

Not that anyone cares what I think. When Bill Gates talks, on the other hand, people listen.

Microsoft is an evil totalitarian monopolist, intent on forcing every computer user on the planet into the corporate mold. Apple is the liberator, freeing creative people everywhere to Think Different.

Yeah, right. So why is Apple the one dumping all Wiley books from its stores because it didn't like a biography of Steve Jobs?

Wiley, to their enormous credit, is standing by the book and its author. If you're in a book-buying mood, you might show your appreciation by browsing their titles first.

Sematech's Advanced Gate Stack Program claims to have achieved a breakthrough in high-k gate dielectrics. The reported work achieved 90% of silicon's universal curve mobility, very close to a comparable thickness of oxide dielectric. The group also reported greatly reduced threshold voltage instability relative to other high-k work.

4800 words since my last update. That gives me 8,950 for April so far, 51,850 for the year so far.

Which is pretty terrible if I want to get to 300,000 for the year. Except that I've figured out that I'm resisting creating new words at that pace because creating new words isn't what I need to be doing right now. Instead, I need to attack my very substantial pile of rough draft material. I like revising, but it's not a good way to run up word count.

So, doing what all the management books say and aligning my metrics with my goals, my new target is two hours of editing a day, six days a week. Onward!

I'll still post word counts for those who care. I want to see where I end up. But I'm not going to beat my brains in over them.