Even though Bill's seemed like an awfully nice guy in our interview, and despite my devotion to Windows, this made me laugh. That's not something I can say about 99% of these Windows/Mac videos, so congrats. [Funny or Die

There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household. But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids.

There you have it. Los Apple prohibidos. I can imagine them sneaking iPods and iPhones into their house the same way I used to sneak porn magazines in mine. I wonder if the PlayStation 3 or the Wii are banned from their home too or if this is just some kind of particular hatred towards Apple and the iPod and iPhone—since the first was the thing that made Apple the renewed icon it is today, and the second obliterated Microsoft's Windows Mobile efforts in one sweep.

Whatever it is, Mrs Gates admits that she's being tempted by the devil:

Every now and then I look at my friends and say 'Ooh, I wouldn't mind having that iPhone'

Don't resist, Melinda. Resistance is futile. [Geeksugar]

From the Fortune profile on her earlier this year (the first ever):

Moreover, they say, she has helped Bill become more open, patient, and compassionate. "Bullshit!" he bellows. Nicer, perhaps? "No way!" he shouts, grinning because he knows it's true. One thing he admits readily: Thanks to Melinda, he is easing comfortably into his new role. About the philanthropic work he says, "I don't think it would be fun to do on my own, and I don't think I'd do as much of it."

An all-rounder, Melinda is the girl you remember from school who was top of her class, good at games, popular, and a volunteer. She rose through the ranks at Microsoft, ending up as general manager of information products, before marriage to Bill, and their three children. And now it's all systems go for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the one-time backroom girl has had to step into the spotlight—not a position she relishes, but where she knows she needs to be in order for the charity fund to realise its full potential.

Would the couple's foundation, expected to dish out around $100 billion of goodness in its lifetime, have been created without her influence? Perhaps Bill would still be flogging software to the world and beyond, with Ballmer, his Sancho Panza, riding alongside him. Misunderstood, he might claim, just plain weird, we might whisper as his wealth took him further and further away from reality. Melinda had the foresight to see what an aggressive, capitalist lifestyle would do to their family life and steered him away from it. He, in his wisdom, did not fight it.

The way I see it, most rich, workaholic men tend to marry someone who fits into their lifestyle. Bill Gates, on the other hand, has married a woman who has made him fit into hers. When I read about how she handled him in the parking lot at Microsoft after he asked her out on a date, her ballsiness made me weep with laughter. ("That's not nearly spontaneous enough for me. I don't know. Call me up closer to the day." He called her that night.)

Plans for a trampoline room and nonsense-strosity high-tech in his new-build Seattle home were coolly dismantled without even a squeak from her other half. Melinda is credited for making him more open, patient and compassionate. Last week I watched a BBC documentary about him as he prepared to step down from the day-to-day stuff of Microsoft. "As he has grown older, the ratio of shouting to non-shouting has decreased," one of his employees said about him. "That'll be the Melinda effect," I thought.

She is credited for having brought in a whole host of powerful partners to the couple's eponymous foundation—not for nothing is she known as a great team-builder. Rockefeller, Hewlett and the Dells are on board, as well as a couple of big pharma companies. Joel Klein, the man who took the government's anti-trust fight to Microsoft a decade ago, is batting for them on the education front in New York. And then there's the current world's richest man, Warren Buffett, who has pledged all his billions to the cause. "I'm not sure," he said, when asked if he would have done it without Melinda.

Personally, I hope that the Nobel committee does make Gates Nobel Laureate, because that will mean that he did manage to make a difference to the world. And all because she made a difference to him.

Around this time of year, I like to poke around in the MoneyLine campaign donation search tool at Congressional Quarterly's website. You can look up anyone you want—campaign donations by law have to be public. Sometimes the results are clear, as in the case of William Gates, "esecutive" (sic) of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.Things are a tad murkier when it comes to Palo Alto resident Laurene P Jobs:
Given the number of Barack listings, it's clear that Laurene is a fan. She might even be too zealous: Is that -$2,300 line item a donation she had to take back for giving too much? Even if you nix that and one of the other $2,300 items (for a zero sum), Barack appears to be $2,300 ahead of both Hillary and John Edwards.

It is possible that I'm reading this wrong, although I've doublechecked it as best as I can. The real lesson here is that anyone can "follow the money." Want to have a go? Dive in, enjoy democracy and report back any weirdness you might happen upon. [CQ MoneyLine]

• "Yes, we're a couple that has fun discussing fertilizer while we walk on the beach," says Bill, who says he's looking forward to haranguing pharmaceutical companies to do more for the developing world. "Nobody gives them a hard time. That job is natural for me to do."
• Melinda's a better runner than her husband and, as well as running the Seattle Marathon, has climbed 14,000-foot Mount Rainier.
• Would Warren Buffett have given the Gates Foundation his fortune if Melinda hadn't been in charge? "I'm not sure," he replies.
• She reveals how Bill asked her out on a date after they ran into each other in the parking lot at Microsoft: "We talked a while, and then he said, 'Will you go out with me two weeks from Friday night?' I said, 'Two weeks from Friday? That's not nearly spontaneous enough for me. I don't know. Call me up closer to the day.'"
• Chez Gates, Wednesday night is family swimming night, Friday night is family movie night.
• Bono describes Melinda as playing "the straight man to his [Bill's] dark humour." Catch the full profile over at Fortune. [Fortune]