Some of you might have noticed a glitch on my website last week. It turns out that my hosting company upgraded their PHP software to a new version that apparently has an issue with the $PHP_SELF variable on my script. This, by the way, took me many hours to figure out, and really goes to show that upgrades are not always for the better. I remember my dad once asking why I was installing new versions of programs onto his computer. “Is it supposed to make things run faster?” I thought for a second and told him, “No, they make things run slower.” In fact, software upgrades rarely offer any useful new features. Instead, they look shinier and get packaged with bloatware – programs like Nero comes immediately to mind. And for free programs like ICQ and Pandora, the “upgrade” actually means the addition of ads from sponsors. I was pleasantly surprised by Microsoft’s overhaul of their Office software, but Vista was a total disappointment. Unfortunately, our assimilation into the collective is inevitable. Resistance is futile. Anyway, speaking of upgrades, a second edition of my Kaplan book has been released. The first edition was only available as part of a wallet-breaking online course, so going retail should hopefully expand our readership.