This quiz reminded me of work. Anna and I scored 5/10 on it.

So I've got an industry nickname. Let's hope it doesn't stick. I like "the seal" a lot better.

Call it a curse; call it a blessing - small businesses simply cannot buy the peace of mind that comes with a Linux license, according to a report by Robert "Server Bob" McMillan of IDG News Service.

Another interesting item forwarded to me by my boss. Apparently, the five second rule needs work.

The next step was sterilizing the tiles and inoculating them with E. coli, then placing 25 grams of cookies or gummies on the tiles for 5 seconds. In all cases, E. coli was transferred from the tile to the food, demonstrating that microorganisms can be transferred from ceramic tile to food in 5 seconds or less. More E. coli were transferred to gummy bears from smooth tiles than from rough tiles.

OK $5 to the person who can find me a job here.

So the disgraced CEO of Tyco could face 30 years for stealing millions of dollars and defrauding shareholders. And this disgruntled baseball fan could face 471 years?

Federal officers arrested a disgruntled Philadelphia Phillies baseball fan in California on charges of hacking into computers and sending thousands of spam e-mails to sports writers at two Philadelphia newspapers, officials said on Wednesday.

The first time I swam in the bay, I was terrified. I has signed up for this Alcatraz swim in a fit of optimism, around the time I got my job at IDG. I then spent the next three months working myself out of my "freelance writer" state of physical conditioning (aka "excellent") and into a serious state of worry about whether or not I would survive 15 minutes in the Bay, never mind the 54 minutes or so it would eventually take me to swim from the Rock to the South End Club on the shores of San Francisco.

Three months of three days a week is what it would take to condition yourself for the cold waters of an Alcatraz swim. This is what Danny Macchiarini told me and he had done the swim, dammit. Danny also told me that a wetsuit was a "performance enhancing device" and convinced me that the only way I could do this thing was by leaving my, frozen ass somewhere in the Bay.

I told myself I would hit the bay for the first time in July. By August, I had revised that estimate slightly, and by the beginning of September I had pretty much resigned myself to trying a wetsuit, not that I had yet mustered the nerve to venture into the frigid waters of aquatic park.

So I had butterflies, the first time I swam in the Bay. It was that "date with destiny" kind of feeling, as I threw myself into the flat green waters that seemed colder and more alive than I could take. I don't know how to explain this, but swimming in the Bay can somehow be like swimming in a black and white Humphrey Bogart film. When it's new, it feels somehow as though you're on the run and if only that damned frigid water would give you some kind of break, you'd make good for once in your life.

The funny thing about the Bay, though, is that it does make good. It can be a bitch, like the time I got a rash in my armpit from swimming (that was a first; blame it on the particulate matter, aka grunge), but it can also make good, and as the sun sets and the Golden Gate Bridge comes alight with pinks and blues, you can feel like you are, at that moment, making things as right as they'll ever be.

The Bay did right by me on Saturday. Though the piers on the waterfront and the Rock itself seemed lonely and black-and-white desolate as our ship, the Spirit of San Francisco made its way to Alcatraz, I felt happy and emotional and very in touch with what mattered to me. I had decided to go without a wetsuit, but a month of swimming at Aquatic Park had put me on cordial terms with the Bay water, and that lingering fear of dying was somewhere in the back of my mind. Right next to my memory of being warm, no doubt; before I boarded the boat, the swim organizers had made me strip to my speedo and put all my clothes and things in a garbage bag that was taken to the South End club a couple of miles away. It was the coldest day of the fall, and the hour or so it took to get to Alcatraz was a long time to hang out in a speedo.

When we got to Alcatraz, we rounded it one time, just to take in the loneliness and decay. Alcatraz still looks like a prison from the outside, and its flat emptiness makes it all the more ominous. A prison for ghosts. The captain tried to bring the boat around so we could jump out from both sides, but the wind wouldn't have it, so we began jumping out port-side.

If you're ever in a sinking ship bear this in mind: Ships are not designed for quick evacuation.

I watched the first people jump in the water and swim to the starting line, thinking "what suckers. They're going to have to wait in the frigid water until we all get out before the race starts. I'm going to be the absolute last rat to leave this ship."

Imagine my surprise when the ship's horn suddenly sounded, signaling the start of the race. It was another five or ten minutes before I managed to get to the open door and, two of us at a time, jumped without thinking into the bay below.

I went far deeper than I expected, but the panic of trying to get up for air and to avoid being jumped on exceeded the panic I'd reserved for the cold water and the 1.25 mile swim ahead. Gasping for breath, and with a quick glance to the suddenly warm and friendly rock next to me, I began to swim for San Francisco.

The swim was harder than I expected. Three foot swells kept slapping me about and preventing me from breathing to my right side. I kept looking up and finding myself rotated 45 degrees from where I thought I would be. And after awhile I stopped seeing any swimmers around me.

There had been some discussion before the 400 of us had leapt overboard about navigation during the swim. "The current will come from the right," "The current will come from the left." The consensus seemed to be, that the current would come first from the right and then from the left, or vice versa perhaps. People said, "aim to the left of the big building," unless you were a slow swimmer, then it was "aim to the right of the big building and let the current pull you left." Or was it right?

At one point a race organizer came on the intercom to give us a pep talk, saying, "If you have any doubts about your ability to do this swim... don't do it." I decided right then to stop listening to anyone else. I'd aim to the big tower and wing it from there.

But now it was getting lonelier and lonelier in my little part of the Bay. I felt I was on course, but I couldn't tell if I was far off track or if I'd been passed by everyone, or if -- San Francisco Miracle -- I'd zoomed to the front of the pack. Honestly, I was pretty sure I'd not zoomed to the front of the pack. I did a quick backstroke, telling myself it would be fun to take in a parting view of the Rock. Lots of yellow swim caps behind me. Phew. New ambition: don't finish last.

Time flies when you're open water swimming. I remember stopping a few times to take in the view of both bridges and San Francisco and Alcatraz, and to contemplate, for a moment the happiness of my communion with the Bay, but I was really overwhelmed by the rhythms and the satoric synchronization of my human enterprise.

When I pulled myself onto land, I felt so good, I could have probably swam back.

And there was Anna! And a woman put a medal on me! And there was free beer but I didn't feel like drinking it! And there was Nick! And there was the Buena Vista Cafe! And I felt on top of the world, and when Anna wanted to go to an ice cream store later that day, I told the dude behind the counter, "No way am I going to have any because I just swam from Alcatraz!" And he said, "wow, how much does a tour cost?" And I said, "You don't understand, dude, I swam from Alcatraz.

I'd always wanted to use that line. It almost makes up for my dissolving faith in democracy.

God, I just watched five minutes of Arnold's victory speech. Maybe if I do this three times a week for three months, I'll become acclimatized, but all I can think right now is that a slave of vanity can never be a ruler of people.

Couple of quick notes.

1) I survived it. More to come later.

2) Eddy Izzard as Doctor Who? I don't believe it.