Google wasn't working properly for me yesterday. Every time I tried to modify my search terms, the entire search text that I was editing disappeared, which made it impossible to continue with the edit. I was only able to get Google to work by starting over from the beginning with an empty search page, which was very annoying.

I was not certain of the cause of this problem. I had just reinstalled my operating system. It was possible that I had a buggy version of Firefox or some libraries were missing. I had done a minimal installation of Debian Lenny and I was manually selecting the additional packages that I wanted. I could have missed a critical Firefox dependency, but no other website the I regularly visit was malfunctioning.

Now I know the real reason for the problem. Google introduced Google Instant yesterday and it's defective. It is supposedly a system that shows search results while you type in a manner different from, and supposedly better than, the predictive text that they had already been using. I haven't seen it actually work and don't know if it's any good when it's functional. I disabled it on the Google Preferences page and Google works properly again.

When my clients have problems, they tend to call multiple times until they get a response from me. This actually tends to cause an extra delay in getting a response, because I start ignoring all calls if I get too many in a short period of time. It just become energetically overwhelming for me and I have to build up some energy before I can deal with the messages.

The amount of work that I get escalates substantially every September. I originally thought this was a consequence of the fact that students are returning to school and my multi-millionaire clients are returning from their extended summer vacations. The trend seems to have continued this year despite the fact that the extra work that I am getting now is not from parents who have children in school nor from wealthy clients that have been traveling around the world. It just seems to be a weird coincidence that there is a sudden increase in the need for my services.

My mother will be walking through a high crime area with a lot of cash some time this week. The money is for cataract surgery that she is planning to get next month. Prior to that, she has to get some eye exams, and she decided that it would be convenient to pay on the same day as the exam. She is paying in cash because she was offered a 10% discount if she pays that way. It's for some extra feature that is not covered by insurance. I don't understand enough technical Chinese terminology to know exactly what this extra procedure is.

Although I have done bodyguard duty before, it will be different this time for two reasons. The first is that she did not inform me until today. The second is that this will be in the morning, my most difficult time. I had very little advanced notice and will need to start adjusting my circadian rhythm. I will also need to reschedule a lot of things. I will be bringing a lot of weapons and doing extra training just in case.

It's from 2008, but it is still shocking. I had not heard it earlier despite it's popularity, because I abandoned normal music some time in the early 90's.