For eight years, I wrote a gossip column.I don't know how other people write gossip columns, but for me it meant first gathering gossip — half a dozen juicy items — then walking in circles in the parking lot until some unifying thread came to mind that I could use to stitch it all together. I have few fond memories of those days, and by far prefer this format where I blather on for 1,500 or so words about one idea. Only this week (and just this week), I feel so distracted it is hard to concentrate on only one thing. And what has me so distracted is something the pet psychic said about my dog.

This is not the Pet Psychic from TV, but our local variant who doesn't call herself a pet psychic at all. She's a "pet communicator," and for $85, she'll have a long talk with your pet, and resolve any outstanding issues or misunderstandings. What's more, she doesn't even have to be in the same room as the pet to have that conversation. Using MapBlast, I determined that she was, in fact, 17.3 miles away when they had the talk, which was conducted entirely through telepathy.

I am not making this up.

A couple days after the talk was supposed to have been held, there arrived by e-mail a transcript of the entire discussion. It went on for pages and pages, and seemed very specific to the circumstances of our dog, Gilmore. You see, Gilmore came from an abusive home and is afraid of all men. He seems convinced that I am homicidal, or maybe canine-icidal. He runs from me when he can, and when he can't run, he pees on the floor. That peeing just had to stop, which is what brought us and our $85 to the pet communicator.

Among all those pages and pages of transcript, one section stood out for me.

Pet Communicator: "Is there something you do that you think makes them unhappy?"
Gilmore: "Yes."
Pet Communicator: "Do you know what it is?"
Gilmore: "I think it is my chewing."
Pet Communicator: "Yes, but there is something else, too. Can you think of it?"
Gilmore: "No, what can it be?"
Pet Communicator: "It's your peeing on the floor."
Gilmore: "Oh, that."

"Oh, that?"

Obviously, peeing is much lower on Gilmore's list of concerns than it is on mine.

Something about the words, "Oh, that" has been resonating in my brain ever since. Does Gilmore really talk like that? Have I been missing a chance to talk baseball with my dog or learn the joys of chasing sticks?

"Oh, that."

This would all be just a stupid story but for the fact that Gilmore immediately stopped peeing in the house, and has been much calmer around me. I can't explain it, but I know the experiment has saved me more than $85 in carpet cleaning alone.

Maybe there is a subtext like this in everything, and I have just been oblivious.

Just in case that is true, I have been trying to be more sensitive to what is happening around me, and that has led me to a number of disjointed ideas I would like to present here for your consideration. I'm not sure what, if anything, connects these ideas. Maybe you can help.

First there is Google, which runs four enormous data centers around the world containing in excess of 10,000 servers. It is the largest Linux cluster of all, and is constructed entirely of generic beige box PCs interconnected by 10/100 Ethernet. These are not racks and racks of state-of-the-art blade servers, just el cheapo PCs. So the magic must be in the software.

Now here is the part that sticks in my mind: the fault tolerant nature of the cluster is such that if a machine fails, the other machines simply take over its functions. As a result, whenever a server fails at Google, THEY DO NOTHING. They don't replace the broken machine. They don't remove the broken machine. They don't even turn it off. In an army of drones, it isn't worth the cost of labor to locate and replace the bad machines. Hundreds, maybe thousands of machines lie dead, uncounted among the 10,000 plus.

We have reached the point where we are totally dependent on computers, yet the marginal cost of a computer — at least for Google — is nothing. This may be an historical first.

Or maybe not. We push crippled Navy airplanes off carrier decks and into the sea. And in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, 20 years ago, I recall the local government contracted with a Korean company to remove the city's 80,000 abandoned cars (the population of Jiddah back then was 400,000). The Koreans discovered that many of the cars — some made by Mercedes and even Rolls Royce — had simply run out of gas.

More things that don't make sense: those TV images of Compaq computers being carried off by looters from government buildings in Baghdad. With a supposed economic embargo in place since 1991, where did those new machines come from?

And apparently, the CIA has been tapping fiber optic cables in Baghdad, listening in on telephone conversations in efforts to track down Saddam. Most people think fiber can't be tapped, but here's how to do it (I wrote about this at least 10 years ago). Strip the plastic casing off a couple inches of the fiber bundle, being careful not to damage the glass. Bend the fiber back on itself in a very tight loop. At that place where the bend in the fiber is sharpest, the internal reflective ability of the fiber is compromised enough for a little light to leak out (called "conductive emission" in the spy biz). That's where you put your detector. This is remarkably easy to do, yet we think of fiber as being totally secure.

A different form of security is available to purchasers of wireless file servers from Martian.com. These book-sized Linux servers that were featured recently in the New York Times have no fans and use hard drives with liquid bearings, making the units almost totally silent. With a WiFi connection you can have almost instant Network Attached Storage for your PC, Mac, or Linux network with 120 gigabytes of encrypted disk space for under $500. There is literally nothing to configure. Just plug it in. Yeah, but who would want one of these things? I would, for one, but my friend David from the UK points out that such a device hidden away from sight would be ideal for storing data you wouldn't want confiscated by the police. Nestle a Martian box under your attic insulation if you have something to hide.

This week, TiVo announced a new version of their Digital Video Recorder software (called the Home Media Option) that finally brings to life that USB connector on the later TiVo boxes. The "upgrade" costs $99, though it is pretty obvious that the capability was in there all the time. Releasing it this way just allows TiVo to make a lot of money directly from users and not have to share any of it with dealers or hardware OEMs.Ninety-nine dollars is certainly more than TiVo made from the box originally, so this will be a big boost for the company.

The new capabilities are pretty impressive, too, provided you connect that USB to an Ethernet or WiFi external adapter. You can stream MP3 music from your PC across the network to your TiVo-attached TV or stereo system. You can do the same thing looking at digital photos. And if you have more than one TiVo box, they can talk to each other, and you can finally watch in the bedroom the movie you recorded in the den.

But here is the part that makes no sense to me. A TiVo box is just a little Linux computer in disguise, and TiVo boxes have been hacked in a hundred or more ways. There are very few TiVo secrets left. This new software supposedly won't stream video to non-TiVo devices or to devices that are outside the home. Yeah, right. TiVo has to know that through MAC address and IP spoofing people will soon be streaming video across town or across the world to other TiVo devices or to PCs. They have to know this is going to happen, yet still they moved forward with the software release. Can this be a secret part of the marketing plan? Maybe plausible deniability is all TiVo is seeking here, counting on the hackers to promote the upgrade.

Microsoft is seeking far more than TiVo. They want to put their software in every next-generation DVD player — more than 300 million of them in this decade alone. These are the follow-on devices that will be appearing in two to three years to hold High Definition (HD) content, requiring 40 to 60 gigabytes of storage per disk. In order to make this happen, DVD makers will either have to dramatically increase their video compression efficiency, or find a way to cram more bits onto each plastic disk. Chances are they'll do both, building a device with red and blue lasers (blue lasers allow denser data storage because smaller wavelengths of light burn tinier pits in the disk, while red lasers allow backward compatibility with old disks). And the compression software, according to an NAB speech this week by the top techie at Warner Brothers' Studio, who is on the committee deciding such things, is likely to be either the new standards-based Advanced Video Codec (AVC), which was submitted in draft form to the ITU just last week, or it will be Windows Media 9.

Microsoft, which has thrown away hundreds of millions of dollars trying and generally failing to get its software in consumer devices, now has a chance to put a piece in every next-generation DVD player. This is a big opportunity and Microsoft — aggressive Microsoft — will do pretty much anything they must to beat AVC, which is sometimes called MPEG-4 part 10. That of course means pushing WM9, but it could also mean holding back AVC. It is especially odd then that the committee that just submitted the draft AVC standard is chaired by someone from Microsoft, which has no AVC product in the works and would greatly benefit from AVC's death. Coincidence? I think not.

Like Gilmore, perhaps they'll say, "Oh, that."