In font sizes typically reserved for moon landings, the newspapers proclaim the good news. The Boston Red Sox won the World Series. At quarter-to-midnight the neighborhood kids were outside, yelling for joy.

You can bet that this will be a tired day at the office and a distracted one. We'll be ok. We're happy.

From the world of weird science comes a story about hypoallergenic cats. The scientists use RNA interference to inhibit the gene in cats that produces the allergens. Here's the press release: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041026/phtu021_1.html. At the company's home web site, http://www.allerca.com/, you can find out more and even place your reservation.

Great joy is held back by a thick dam of trepidation. The Red Sox are 3-0 in the World Series, winning last night 4-1.

Our edition of the Boston Globe has to go to press before the games are complete, so the front page and sports sections carry incomplete reports, through about the fourth inning.

One of the most ambitious and interesting projects on the net is Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.net/. There's more aboout its history and philosophy here -http://www.gutenberg.net/about/history - but, in brief, they are making public domain books available in electronic form. They also have audio books read by a speech synthesizer. I have to admit that it takes a bit to get used to the voice.

This morning, under a waxing gibbous Hunter's Moon, we have a thick frost.

Starting with AltaVista nearly 10 years ago and continuing with Google a few years later, search engines have become my standard method for locating information. At one time I might use a dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, and technical manuals. Now, it's generally a whole lot easier just to check Google. (There are some other search engines that I'll check occasionally, such as AltaVista, Yahoo, A9, and Clusty, but Google is still the best.)

The other day, for example, I was working on a script (a small program) that would help us automate some repetitive tasks. I needed some examples to help me with a certain problem. Rather than tracking down a manual or even reading the online help, I found easier, faster, and better to search the web using Google. I had my answer in seconds.

Of course, a search engine is only as good as the information that's out there. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find something that, I finally concluded, just didn't exist. (Anyone know how to select and copy the text in a Java applet?)

Search is also only as good as the question you pose. If I need to look up common words, such as select text, I can be overwhelmed with a large number of irrelevant results. For example, among the results of a search for "select text java applet" is a link to a page that describes binomial probability histogram. There are people who care what that means, but I'm not among them.

But, the Red Sox are still playing baseball this late in October. It will be interesting to see which Pedro shows up tonight.

We've been fired. During a phone yesterday afternoon, my father indicated that he no longer needs our help around his house. We'll take it as good news. We'll still stop by from time to time.

There's a baby shower for Lynn today. Many of the men will gather at Mike's house for the duration. I'm going to go to the camp and work on closing up the place for the season. We bring much of the food home, anything that can freeze or which would be too tempting for the mousies.

Game 1, 11-9. A game like this might be called winning ugly, playing just well enough to overcome mistakes and miscues. Unlike some other sports, baseball isn't scored with style points, just runners who cross home plate.

The game got over after 11:00, so the scores didn't make it into the Sunday papers. Bill Lee used to deliver those wonderful two-and-a-half-hour, 75-pitch games.