Cole's Notes - The Sunday Journalist

  Since I won't be going out in costume this year - check out the images from Worth1000.com for Halloween. 

  I've been thinking of branching out. If Micrsoft can do it - why not me?? 

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A man who twice missed while trying to shoot a friend's cow only to accidentally shoot a passer-by in the leg was fined Wednesday for what an Australian court described as a freak accident. Rudolf Stadler, 61, agreed in April last year to shoot the troublesome cow which belonged to a friend who owns a hobby farm at Caboolture in tropical Queensland state. Stadler lured the cow to a shed, and then took aim with his rifle. He missed. He took aim a second time, fired and missed again. The second shot went through the back of the shed, a fence across a paddock and then through the door of a car being driven along a road behind the farm. The bullet hit 46-year-old Carrie Tunning in the leg, the Brisbane District Court heard. Tunning, a passenger in the car, made a full recovery but Stadler was so distressed by the incident that he handed in his firearms license. The court fined Stadler A$1,000 and banned him from obtaining another gun license for five years. The cow w...

Every Wednesday Ross Rubin publishes Switched On , an opinion column about consumer technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment on the engadget website. Today’s Switched On’s first birthday, so wish Switched On a happy birthday, why don’t you? The Maven Once upon a midnight madness sale I sauntered, steeped in sadness Through the shiny piles and aisles composing my computer store. Suddenly there came a rapping. Skeet skeet skeet. Had I been napping? Energy, it had been sapping from my soul for weeks or more. Yea, those loathsome customers had chilled my being for weeks or more. Back-to-school had drained my core.... ...On his pattern kept repeating and I watched my cash depleting As he dispatched questions like blind bulls before the matador. Each request brought new retort in just like when Leo Laporte ‘n’ His ex-co-host Patrick Norton would save screens in days of yore — Oh, to live those fond remembered years of TechTV of yore Ere the odious G4.... The full poem after the jump...

The folks at Gizmodo have a contest going on. Send a picture of your dead laptop and they can win a new one. We have received many unbelievable photos—check out some of the wretchedness after the jump—but it’s not over yet. Tomorrow, Gizmodo’s crack team of forensic editors will scan hundreds of entries and pick the top 3 (well, maybe 5 because there are so many good ones), and we will put it to you, our faithful frapprs, to vote on which story and photo deserves to win a brand new Sharp M4000 WideNote laptop. sharpm4000thumb.jpg For details on how to win the 13.3-inch, 80 GB, Sharp WideNote M4000 with CD-RW/DVD combo drive and six hour battery life, read all about it here and here