"Beneath chaotic dot-com busts of last half-year, an overlooked breed of Internet companies - mostly small and nimble - is thriving.

"They have no public stock, no Super Bowl commercials, no million-dollar product launch parties, and no naming contracts with professional sports stadiums. Their small size has allowed many to weather a storm that has quickly taken down hugely stupid, profligate and unlucky internet firms.

"This year's grim portrait of Internet economy has largely been painted by big-money Wall Street nose dives such as those by Priceline.com, Drkoop.com and Etoys.

"By contrast, mundane dot-com survivors are small operations with few employees that have trudged along, slowly but steadily, in a parallel universe that more closely resembles so-called Old Economy."

Well, gee, no kidding. Finally dust begins to settle and resulting landscape resembles, well, something suspiciously like real world. And WE, "mundane dot-com survivors" are ones trudging along in a parallel universe? I think not. We've always been firmly rooted in real world. It's "hugely stupid, profligate and unlucky [and what's "luck" got to do with it?] internet firms" that were always living in a parallel universe of their own imaginations.

My wife has been very sick for several years. In fact, four years ago she went into a coma for 5 days and came within seconds of dying. It's a major league miracle that she survived. Her recovery has been tough on her, both because of pain and because she has trouble leaving house. In order to make things more tolerable for her, I gave her all of tools she needed to become a webmaster along with some training and help.

Now she has become a very good webmaster. She has created a site about how she survived asthma (http://www.survivingasthma.com) and another about how she survived diabetes (http://www.survivingdiabetes.com). These sites explain her experiences, give some advice from her heart and attempt to give people hope.