Greetings and welcome, I am your host, Andy "Wink Martindale" Patrizio, welcome to this round of the Dating Game, Silicon Valley Edition. Now this is not a show dedicated to finding a date for more than an hour for overpaid Java programmers with a whole lot of options. Nosiree, this is finding the idea luuuuv match for their company.

See, it seems to me if we leave it up to the firms to make their own decisions, they do it badly. I mean really, would you pay $1 billion for a company that did $50 million in business? Or buy a company with which you have absolutely no synergy whatsoever?

Since we can't leave this up to the MBAs, we're going to put it in the more capable hands of a guy who took six years to get a four-year degree. And now, let's meet our first two contestants.

If you find yourself constantly looking down at the keyboard, then you may want to avoid the Das Keyboard Ultimate. Or you may want to get one.

The German company Das Keyboard (German for "The Keyboard." Very original) has two ruggedly designed keyboards, one with the lettering on the keys (Professional) and one without (Ultimate). The textless version is specifically for people trying to improve their typing skills by taking away the main speed bump, constantly looking down at the keys.

Instead, the keyboard forces people to learn to type by tactile feel and learning to position their hands properly. No more two finger typing by looking down and pecking out words one index finger at a time.

Just like the Shamwow being hyped on basic cable channels, Das Keyboard touts its German-designed, complete with gold-plated mechanical key switches (on the keyboard, not the Shamwow) to create a "distinct click" with each keystroke. It also has two USB 2.0 ports, a black surface with blue LEDs, and a two meter (about six and a half feet) USB cable.

The Das Keyboard (is it redundant when you use a definite article in two languages?) sells for $129, with or without the lettering.

Funny how things can change so quickly. As I'd mentioned in my previous posting, the local AT&T store was all out of iPhones and put me on a waiting list for new arrivals. Wouldn't you know it, but around 4 pm on Friday I get a call from the store. Seems some more phones have arrived, would I like to come and get it?

Silly question.

After assuring my boss I'd be home in time for final editing of late stories, I headed off. It was all so cloak and dagger. I had to ask for certain people in the stores. By telling the floor staffers I was looking for these certain people, they would know I was there for a wait-listed iPhone. I got the phone a minute after walking in, but walking out with it wouldn't be so easy.

After one interminable wait while the customer in front of me was activated, we started on mine. Wouldn't you know it, there was a snag. I had left Verizon earlier than planned due to their unwillingness to fix a serious problem. My phone kept losing audio. In mid-conversation, I suddenly could not hear the other person. They could hear me fine but I could not hear them. The call never terminated, and eventually audio came back.

Despite giving me two replacement phones, the problem persisted. When it finally started to affect business calls and my work, I demanded a new model phone because it was clear the problem was with the LG phone. Verizon refused. They were going to give me a fourth phone of the same model that had failed three times already. So I told them where to stick their defective phones and their termination fee and left for AT&T a little early. (Can you hear me now? Goodbye!)

This, as it turned out, proved problematic for AT&T. The iPhone price is contingent on being a new activation. But I was already an existing customer. As my 30-minute run to the store rounded the bend on 90 minutes, things started getting a little unsettling. I ended up needing a new phone number, but in the end, I owe a big thank you to the crew at the San Bruno AT&T store for my new gadget.

Overall it's a great phone but it has some shortcomings. The Wi-Fi is not very good. I sit 12 feet from the office access point and I'm getting e-mail retrieval errors. Even with 3G, the network quality isn't as good as Verizon's. The curved back of the phone means if you lie it flat and type, it wobbles back and forth. The first gen phone didn't do that because it was flat. Still, it's an amazing piece of equipment. Hat's off to Apple for one million units shipped and 10 million apps downloaded over the weekend.

So Scarlett, will it be The Cliff House or Castagnola's?

After an impatient wait on my part, I was up earlier than usual to hit the San Bruno AT&T store for my new iPhone. Friday traffic was typical. All the way there, all I could do was hope there were enough stores to diffuse demand and keep the lines short. Maybe there's a chance.

Yeah right, and I've got a chance for a date with Scarlett Johansson this weekend, too.

If the line had been reasonable, I was more than willing to wait a bit. After all, it was 8 am. But no, this line was about 40 feet long and was barely moving, and as Dave reminded me yesterday, Jupiter does not pay me to stand in line shopping. The office called.

I didn't have a chance to talk to the store's staffers, but it seems the mad rush for the phone is the reason for lines. The overload of people trying to register the phone, activate it and download iTunes 7.7 is taking its toll, causing severe problems on both Apple and AT&T's ends. All of this is being documented on MacRumors.com and Gizmodo, and likely elsewhere.

A few people in line joked about being very late for work, while others said they took the day off. A few even camped out overnight. As a teen, I did that sort of thing for concert tickets. It was the kind of thing you do when you're 18-19, hanging out with people whom you share a mutual interest. It wasn't the concert so much as it was the experience. Of course I took grief for it at home, but I didn't care.

At my age now, this sort of thing looks ridiculous. It's just a phone.

Great, I'm finally seeing things from my father's perspective.

I'll get my phone another time.

Update: I went by the story during lunch and the line was gone. That's because so were the phones. They were all sold out, and taking waiting list orders.

The Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVO) Major Shared Resource Center (MSRC), an office in the Department of Defense, is the latest government agency to install an IBM supercomputer, a Power 575 Hydro-Cluster.

The Power 575 Hydro-Cluster consists of 149 nodes with 32 Power6 processors per cluster running AIX and uses IBM's water cooling system, rather than air cooling. When it's finally up and running, it will offer 90 teraflops of computing power, 4.5 times more powerful than what NAVO has now, according to Mike Hensley, vice president of deep computing product management at IBM.

At 90 teraflops, that would put the new cluster at number 15 on the Top 500 supercomputer list, which will undoubtedly change by November, when it will be reissued. The cluster will be used to do ocean modeling to provide operational weather forecasts for the U.S. Naval fleet, but the data is also shared with the public as well.

"They have, over the years, run a supercomputer center in operational mode 24/7 providing data and actionable weather forecasting information to fleet commanders to stay out of harm's way and to optimize their operating conditions," Hensley told InternetNews.com. "With this new cluster, they can refine the fidelity of ocean and weather forecasting models. With each generation of computing you can improve your accuracy for the fleet."

The new cluster is being installed now and will be operational some time in early fall. The older system, running older Power5 and even Power4 servers, will eventually be retired.