Does Money Grow on Trees, or just on vines? Well you'd have to wonder judging by the price of tomatoes at the moment here. I went for a mission to the shops earlier today to grab some supplies, which included a stop at the local vege shop for some salad components. The tomatoes didn't look all that great so I just grabbed four of them to cover us for the next day. Want to guess what the price was for four tomatoes? Over ten friggin US dollars! That's over US$2.50 (nearly NZ$4) for each friggin tomato! It's not like they were even nice ones either, they only had the hothouse 'slicing tomatoes' that don't have nearly as much flavour as usual alternative 'holland tomatoes' imho, and they were far from being perfect specimens regardless of price.

The shopkeeper asked if I still wanted them at that price, so I put two back as we needed a couple at least. He wasn't sure why they cost so much, only that the price at the suppliers was US$75 a box at the moment, much higher than usual apparently.

In total I spent around US$40 and had very little to show for it, maybe about a quarter to a third the amount of similar stuff I would've got in NZ for the equivalent amount of money. Sick.

Yeah ok so I'm a bit late with the news, too bad. I downloaded FF1 nearly two weeks ago and should have mentioned it then, but for the benefit of those who still don't know, Mozilla's web browser FireFox 1.0 is now available.

If you're still using Internet Explorer, I recommend you switch asap for security reasons, IE is just way too open for attack. Features such as tabbed browsing, popup blocking, a nice variety of themes and more make Firefox even more attractive, although for me security was the main reason to switch. Installation is easy, just click the following button to get to the download page:

If you're looking for a nice email client, Mozilla also released ThunderBird 0.9 very recently, a very nice, friendly mail client with intelligent spam filters, a built-in spell checker, extension support, and much more. If you're looking for a nice stand-alone calendar / scheduling utility for your PC, check out their SunBird project. It's in beta at the moment, but it seems pretty stable to me, and handy. One last thing to mention - they're all free.

One of those milestone things I guess - it's been 2 months today since I last had a cigarette. Yay me.

In other news from back in the Land of the Long White Cloud (aka Aotearoa, aka New Zealand), the recent NZ Netguide Web Award winners were announced recently. Congrats to James from NoiZyland who, much to the surprise of the audience, accepted the award for the weblog Bizgirl, winner of Netguide's Best Personal Blog award. James is like 6ft 7inches tall, not really the stereotyped attractive but conservative bookish female "International Librarian of Mystery" pictured on the website, hehe.

Similarly, congrats to nzXsports.com for taking out the Best Sports and Recreation site award. The site also runs under the surf.co.nz URL, a NZ surfing site that I have been frequenting for many years, even before it amalgamated with the similarly topical NZ skiing (snow) website to become what is now nzXsports. Well deserved on both counts.

Some more amusing news from back home which I'll quote directly from James: Concord Dawn (band) licensed some of their music to be used in a German hardcore porn film, under the condition that the lads might get to use some of the presumably less hardcore footage for a future video. All very well if the film in question featured fine-boned blond aryan goddesses, as the duo were no doubt expecting, but, upon arrival of the video, it turns out to be an all-male anal fisting video. Doh!

I just stumbled across this image and had to post it.. pretty damn funny :)

I found the image on newspeakdictionary.com while doing some research on Orwell's novel 1984. It's a really interesting site full of information, including full downloadable copies of a number of books, including 1984, Animal Farm, Mein Kampf, The Art of War, The Communist Manifesto, Constitution of the Confederate States of America, Brave New World, The Theory of Relativity and more, in multiple formats. Check it out.

At this point it seems likely Bush will remain president. Currently Bush holds 254 electoral votes while Kerry holds 252, with a total of 270 electoral votes to any one candidate being required to win. There are only three states yet to be clearly decided:

• New Mexico (worth 5 electoral votes) currently 50% Bush, 49% Kerry
• Iowa (worth 7 electoral votes) currently 50% Bush, 49% Kerry
• Ohio (worth 20 electoral votes) currently 51% Bush, 49% Kerry

New Mexico and Iowa combined don't have enough electoral votes to push either candidate over the 270 electoral votes mark, so really it all comes down to Ohio. Bush is currently about 135,000 votes ahead of Kerry in Ohio (Bush with 2,794,346 votes, Kerry with 2,658,125) but the paper ballots are yet to be counted. Although not entirely impossible, it's now unlikely Kerry will swing it.

I think if the democrats had put up a more viable candidate, he or she would've won. From keeping my ears and eyes open over the past few weeks, I think there's a lot of people who aren't all that crazy about Bush but voted for him because they didn't see Kerry as an option. At the same time, many people voted for Kerry not because they wanted Kerry as president so much, but because they wanted Bush out. Both of these things don't actually show a lot of confidence in Kerry himself, which is why I come to the conclusion that a stronger democratic candidate probably would've won this election.

Fellow NYC blogger John Hoke (an avid Kerry supporter, or more accurately, an avid Bush non-supporter hehe) accredited some of the results to the apathy of the "youth vote", and he's probably right to some extent. Unfortunately history has shown that the youth vote, although usually vocal and opinionated in the lead-up to elections, usually fails to stand up and be counted on the day, and apparently this year was no exception. As John put it, they've made their bed, they will have to sleep in it. Those who didn't vote (and I agree with this point entirely) have no right to bitch and moan if things didn't go their way.

Interesting also that Osama Bin Laden made an appearance a couple of days ago for the first time in years, I think it's safe to assume he is still alive now (many people were wondering). Bin Laden didn't really condemn either candidate as much as say that it was the policies that make the difference. Translation: it doesn't matter who the president is as far as Bin Laden is concerned, if the policies don't change then attacks on America will resume. Well, saying it doesn't matter who the president is as far as Bin Laden is concerned isn't entirely accurate, because it's pretty obvious if Bush stays in then the policies won't be changing regarding terrorism, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian conflict.

Whether Bin Laden's statement had any influence at all is debatable. If Bin Laden had said something to the effect that 'if Bush gets in then the US will be attacked', it probably would've increased voter support for Bush, as Americans generally don't take kindly to being threatened when it comes to their right to vote, unlike what happened in Spain with the train bombing before their elections. I guess Bin Laden couldn't resist a bit of attention though, given the occasion.

As an official at the polling place said jokingly to me, "I wonder if we'll see the final results by the end of the year?" I suggested they flip a coin for it.