When it comes to driving, I'll admit it...I cannot keep my cool. But I'm a defensive road rager, not an offensive road rager. I only get angry and vocal when people do things to me...I'm not the sort of rampaging asshole who cuts you off, then flips YOU the finger (for, apparently, objecting to his or her behavior or maybe for just being there in the first place.)

Connecticut is a hot spot for aggressive drivers, along with its neighbors New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts (it can't be a secret that people from Connecticut refer to Massachusetts drivers as "Massholes," but we are truly a pot calling a kettle black.) We don't realize how bad things are here until we go on business trips to places like Nebraska or Iowa, where people are nice to each other on the road and actually observe road signs and rules.

But now, I want to move to Washington State. Why? Washington State, I have recently become aware, has a special Web site you can visit to report aggressive drivers (http://www.wsp.wa.gov/traveler/agdrvng.htm). Not only is there space for you to describe the offending car or cars and their license plates, but there's a free-form space in which you can vent.

Recent news that Dell is opening up new call centers in India (the company's third Indian facility, which will be an ultimately 1,500 person call center, was opened this week in the city of Mohali) is hardly the only India-related call center news as of late. It's no secret that growth remains explosive, so much so that companies are finding a shortage of trained, high quality staff in popular cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad, and are venturing further afield to smaller towns to recruit agents.

Symon Communications recently announced its own explosive growth in the Indian market. Demand for Symon's products, including contact management tools which the company customizes for the Indian market, remains bottomless.

TES

Symon Communications Announces Record Growth In India

Company increases revenues, personnel; expands client base

Symon Communications, Inc., a leading global provider of enterprise information, performance management software and visual communications systems, announced today record growth in the India market, including increased revenues of more than 75 percent over 2003. A number of factors contributed to Symon’s success in the region, including key marketing agreements with trusted alliance partners in the India market.

Much of the company’s international growth is attributed to increased sales activity in India, where demand for Symon’s contact center management tools is on the rise.  Through Symon’s real-time alerting solutions, organizations can gain valuable operational insight to ensure better-informed and faster decision making.

If you're a "South Park" fan, you'll remember in the film version, the character Eric Cartman has a "V-chip" implanted in his brain in an attempt to clean up his language. Every time he utters a naughty word, he gets zapped, resulting in a (luckily, brief) period during which he can't utter his charming and rather anatomically impossible colloquialisms.

While South Park fans everywhere were glad the ploy was a very temporary plot device, computer users will take heart that IBM is about to begin offering a service which will essentially return spam to spammers. Not to the fake e-mail addresses they use, but to their computers.

Every time I'm lost in an unfamiliar city (or a familiar one, for that matter...I have a terrible sense of direction), trying to confirm a movie time, pondering a restaurant, or reaching for a factoid that's come up in a trivia conversation, I'll always ask my friends, "Doesn't anyone have a Web browser on their phone?" It's become a bit of a joke.

The truth is, all our phones allow us the service if we choose it. My friends are a high-tech bunch, yet none have chosen Internet access from their mobile devices. It seems that Web-browing on a screen roughly the size of a postage stamp appeals to no one, and for good reason. Web sites that have supposedly been customized for mobile devices are questionable at best, and relatively speaking, there are not that many of them available.

It seems Tim Berners-Lee, inventer of the World Wide Web, agrees.

I don't often need an excuse to raise a beer, but the news of Bernie Ebbers, former CEO of WorldCom, being found guilty of all nine counts filed against him is worth drinking to.

CNN says, "A federal jury in New York, on its eighth day of deliberations, convicted Ebbers on all nine counts that he helped mastermind a $11 billion accounting fraud at WorldCom, now known as MCI.

Ebbers, 63, had been charged with one count of conspiracy, one count of securities fraud and seven counts of filing false statements with securities regulators. He faces up to 85 years in prison, but sentencing guidelines are expected to result in a much shorter term.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 13."

Ebbers' primary defense was, "I knew nothing," and that day-to-day affairs were handled by minions. Pardon me, Mr.

If you're a consumer (i.e., if you're human), you know that there's one kind of shopping we all dread the most. The kind of shopping experience that means within a minute of entering the store, you'll get run down by an over-eager sales person who won't take "go away" for an answer.

Furniture shopping.

Furniture sales people stake themselves out by the front doors of furniture stores, eagerly awaiting you the moment you get out of your car. They decide, in advance, who will play predator on the next shopper who walks in the door (perhaps they have a system: in order of alphabetical by last names).

I've tried every excuse I can think of. "No thanks, I'm just looking." "I'm actually just trying to get ideas." "I just come in for the smell of new leather couches." "I've had 37 personal bankruptcies...will you give me credit on a $10,000 purchase?" "Ever since I was diagnosed with the bubonic plague, I've been looking for a good Barcalounger in which to sweat out the toxins." Nothing works.