Welcome to BenWoods.com

Riding in a car during a long trip is a lot like sitting in front of a computer for a day. You know, staring aimlessly at whatever is in front of you thinking of a million different places you'd rather be and yelling to no one in particular because you've just encountered the Leave-on-Your-Left-Turn-Signal entourage.

I'm not going to lie, I'm short on time this week because, well, I'm on vacation. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't give all six of you something to ponder for at least the next eight minutes.

I've been trying all day to download Macster, a cousin of Napster. It's just not working. At least I have been able to get a few other things taken care of, such as shearing my sheep.

I'm becoming rather disappointed in the Internet's search engines. The other day, I couldn't find my keys, and neither could any of them.

I was talking to your computer the other day, and he said you were a little perturbed. He said you didn't appreciate me or anyone else, especially NATO officials, being able to find all kinds of information on you. Wasn't the Computer Age founded on simple things, like privacy and freedom to practice whatever mathematical calculations you wish?

I have seen my name plenty of times in The Exponent, the Purdue student newspaper. Although in the past, my name was in the byline area, not in the actual body of the story.

This changed when I recently had a couple of book signings in the area. The paper ran a preview for "The Developers" signing, which was definitely appreciated exposure.

As you may or may not know, I'm in the process of writing a book. It was fun, but I'd like to finish it, get it published, sign some books and start working on the next one.

In the meantime, I'm going to provide you a few excerpts so you can see what I'm working on.

To set the stage for the first one, one of the book's main characters is meeting a blind date who happens to closely resemble her favorite celebrity.

Read the excerpt

Open source will no longer mean open season for little standardization when it comes to the Linux operating system.

On Sept. 14, The Free Standards Group announced the availability of Linux Standard Base (LSB) 2.0, an essential component for the long-term market success of Linux. The best part about it is that many major players who have Linux-based solutions, including IBM, Intel, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard, are endorsing LSB.

I finally had time to update the website design for my new narrative nonfiction humor novel, "Polos to Ties." I just wanted to make it a little more user-friendly so that people would be able to find out more about the book. I'm looking into both agents and publishers at the current time, and I'm expecting to make a decision sometime in the near future. Stay turned!

I have a computer at work and a computer at home. They have never met each other, yet they perform the same functions for me. I don't think they get jealous, but then again, I've never asked both of them.

If you're in the same dilemma as I am, you've probably thought at least 521,052 times about moving information from one to the other. For me, that's not as big of a problem as just linking to important websites that I may find at home or at work. Luckily, there are multiple websites that allow you to share bookmarks, and even share them with anyone online.