Thanks for your patience

Now that our technical difficulties seem to have been resolved, we've got some cleanup to do, restoring broken links, replacing images that were deleted as we tried to fix the problem, getting rid of all those "testing...testing" posts, and learning at least some of the new features of Blogger Pro.

If you get bored while waiting, you might want to pass the time by checking out one of these interesting items:

Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahhaf has disappeared along with Saddam Hussein and other officials of the deposed Iraqi administration, but ESPN columnist Jim Caple speculates on a new career for Saeed Al-Sahhaf as a YES man for George Steinbrenner.

Two weeks after the fall of the Saddam statue, there's still no running water in Iraq's two largest cities, and electricity has been restored to only a fraction of the capital, but first things first: Pizza Hut and Burger King are already operating in Basra, and even more important, apparently, oil is flowing again from the pumping station in Zubayr. "Our focus in restoring the oil is to give the biggest benefit to the Iraqi people," Brig. Gen. Robert Crear told the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the first suspected cases of cholera and typhoid, diseases that result neither from a lack of refined petroleum nor a shortage of burgers and pizza, but a lack of clean water, have been reported in Baghdad.