Dear Sober: Did you buy the bottle from Wine.com? If so, you may be able to return it. If not, Dottie Downturn suggests keeping it for a cold night when your own stock tanks; buy your friends a bottle of Ravenswood instead.

Dear Dottie Downturn: A forged e-mail from my company's CEO, which makes him look like even more of a despicable tyrant than he actually is, just showed up on Fuckedcompany.com. I feel like I should alert the CEO and the rest of our management team, but I don't want them to know that I've been reading Fuckedcompany when I should be working. What should I do? -- Fucked in Silicon Alley

Dear Fucked: This is what anonymous remailers were invented for. With their help, you can inform key executives without jeopardizing your job. Sometimes the Internet makes it easier to be politely honest without consequence. See also: Coworkerhints.com.

Dear Dottie Downturn: Yesterday, our stock price dropped by 50 percent. Today, the CEO asked full-time employees to forgo their next paycheck in return for stock options! Am I wrong to think this is really rude behavior, or can I go ahead with my gut impulse to start hurling hand grenades? -- Violent in Venice

Dear Violent: Two wrongs never make a right. While Dottie Downturn agrees that it is grossly insensitive to ask employees to sacrifice hard cash in return for worthless paper, please do think of what could happen if news of armed warfare in your company's headquarters hit the trade press. You might start longing for those good old days when your stock price only fell by half.

Dottie Downturn suggests heading to the Yahoo FinanceVision bulletin boards, where a few anonymous posts can easily start wild rumors touting your company's imminent purchase by AOL. This sudden solvency will have you working for cash again in a few short hours; it is, however, only a temporary solution.

Dear Dottie Downturn: My girlfriend works for a dot-com that just bought my dot-com. Before the buyout, we both had an equal number of vested stock options -- and they were even worth about the same amount! But after the buyout, my options are suddenly worth about half what hers are. I don't know whether to be mad or happy for her: Should I buy her dinner or should she make up with me by sending flowers? -- Perplexed in Palo Alto

Dear Perplexed: Count your blessings. It's time to propose.

The Free Software Project
Read Andrew Leonard's book-in-progress on Linux and open source -- and post your comments.