There's a skim coat of ice on the pond near our house. According to lore, early ice portends a mild winter. "If there be ice in November that will bear a duck, there will be nothing thereafter but sleet and muck." (http://www.almanac.com/holidays/winter/)

Although my nom de blog is Roaster Boy, a name drawn from a coffee blend at local shop, we generally buy our coffee from Equal Exchange. We started buying from them years ago because they were among the first to offer Nicaraguan coffee. ("A light nutty aroma with good body, refined acidity, and a mild finish.") The current issue of Fast Company has a good profile of the company- http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/88/trade-secrets.html. The Equal Exchange web site is http://www.equalexchange.com/.

Yesterday I worked my first full day in several. I spent a good bit of time working with other writers on Javascript and shell script issues.

The company where I work has started blocking POP and IMAP connections, meaning that I can no longer get direct access to my personal email while at work. I've been using my Gmail (Google mail) account more. The interface is interesting and a bit better than the webmail service that we get through our ISP. The account is free and the ads are quite unobtrusive. I can give away a few Gmail accounts, so let me know if you're interested. More about it here: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/about.html.