Today we're taking Matthew into Boston to see Blue Man Group. Like the plane trip to PEI for their 10th birthdays, this is a coming-of-age gift for the grandchildren. Matt's 13th birthday was in October. The weather will be good, bordering on the warm. We'll walk over to Faneuil for lunch, visit Jack's Joke Shop, and then go to the show.

A couple of job leads came my way yesterday. I'll follow up this weekend. After that burst of activity in mid-December, things have gone quiet. That's alright. I'm enjoying what I'm doing. With my current project schedule, I won't have much time for daytime interviews for the next month or so.

Chevy is running a series of television ads that promote their new line of cars. The background music is a 40-year-old Yardbirds tune, Over, Under, Sideways, Down. It's as though they played ragtime when they announced the Corvette back in the 50s.

I don't think that it's a complete waste of time to find out about worldwide weather, but my day, and the day of my family and friends, probably isn't greatly enriched by my knowledge of the deep cold (-30C) in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It has been, however, a good exercise of the network tools on DNS Stuff to try to find out why the Mongolia tourism web site isn't accessible. Google reports that it was available a couple of days ago. It looks like a problem with the DNS server that supports the Mongolian government sites. Other Mongolian sites are reachable.

The saga of email notification continues. I am trying different hammers until the email works reliably.

I stayed late at work yesterday, until nearly 6:30. (I should have read this article earlier.) Sandra was having dinner with friends, so I used the time to work on a tricky little problem. As it turned out, I solved the problem while driving home and was able to verify it while watching the Simpsons. (For those who care about such things, I can now build a FrameMaker document (either a stand-alone file or a book) from a database-driven script. Some of the content is coming from the database itself, merged with existing files.) The solution has some Rube Goldberg qualities, but I've had fun and learned things that will help me waste time in several new ways.

The house is thumping from the cold. We live in a house that was originally built in 1816. (Sandra researched the history of the house for a college paper.) The core of the house is that old, while several rooms have been added over the years. The most recent change was in 1982, when we moved here and had a wing built for the MacGregors. Sandra's parents had owned the house and renovated it completely in the late 70's with new insulation, windows, walls, electrical work, siding, and roof. We moved in to a very new old house, for which we were and are grateful.

Like any old house, this one has noises. The stairs and floors in the older parts of the house creak underfoot. The teenaged boys who used to live here knew the parts of the floors and stairs that didn't creak and so could come home late at night without waking their parents. Wasn't that thoughtful? There are ways to get out and in the upstairs windows, too, but we won't get into that.

There's so much stuff out on the net that you can drown very quickly. When I started browsing the Web in 1993, it was possible to visit every public web site. Now, even enormously fast computers can't keep up. Google's index is roughly 8 billion pages, but that's not even close to the whole web. So, we need some help finding information that's useful and interesting. This has the makings of a promising trend, a way to find weblogs and other resources that focus on particular topics. In this case, here's a page about work.

Oh, by the way, here's an article about procrastination for later reading.

And, don't forget - the 2005 Bloggies are coming.

With a half a foot of snow down yesterday (and much more on the Cape), we're now settling in for another cold spell. There was no school yesterday, so Michael Francis and Joe went plowing with Mike for the day. Mike said it was great to have their company. There's always some shoveling and the extra help was welcome. Mike told all of his customers that it was his birthday.

We had a nice party in the evening - a pan of lasagna from a local restaurant and a nifty cake from MRM. She got the word from her surgeon yesterday that she no longer has to wear her brace and that she doesn't need to see him again regarding the surgery.

AOL is up and running on Mike and Lynn's computer, much to the joy of Michael Francis and Matt, who have been reunited with instant messaging again. I stopped trying to be clever and just reinstalled the AOL software.

In this cold weather, the air can get very dry, leading to static electricity. After years of working with computers, I'm usually pretty good at grounding myself before touching anyone. Usually isn't often enough, though, when it's your 10-week-old granddaughter. When the spark jumped from my finger to her cheek, she looked more surprised than hurt. She wasn't too keen on having me hold her after that.

A network was once described to me as a system somewhere not doing something you never heard about that keeps you from doing what you want to do. So it's been as I try to figure out why email notification of these journal entries is working sporadically. Some people report that they have received mail on time, as expected, while others receive delayed messages or none at all. I won't go into the gory details here, but the links between the blogging site, the email server that handles the notification list, the server that actually sends the mail to me, and the site where I read the mail all have their own, um, challenges. This morning everyone's behaving like they have stones in their shoes.

I didn't quite meet my deadline yesterday afternoon. I was supposed to have something included in the next software build, but I couldn't get my files in through the usual channels. If I'm lucky, one of the engineers was able to check in the files for me. If not, I'll have to spend a part of this morning groveling to get permission to check in the stuff late. I told my boss that I'd have some other pieces completed by tomorrow afternoon. When people come to my office, looking for help on interesting problems, I have to say no or, at least, not now.

As a newspaper reporter, it was no problem to write under pressure. That was the job. I most admired the wire service reporters, whose deadline was always now. They would write their stories on a long, skinny notepads and dictate them while standing a pay phone. The pressures are the same now, perhaps even worse, while the technology changes. Now they have laptops, cell phones, and PDAs. Journalism, as it's often been said, is the first draft of history.

Happy Birthday, Michael Alan. It's a special day, but also a regular day filled with high energy, positive spirit, and solid faith.

We'll have a birthday party at his house tonight and hope that he can join us. He coaches Joe's basketball team on Wednesday evenings. And then, some snow is starting fall. The forecasts are a bit varied, but we could certainly pick up a plowable amount by day's end. Usually Mike plows driveways during the overnight, but this is a daytime storm, so people may want clean driveways when they return home from work.

For the first time in oh, so many years, Worcester is getting a professional baseball team this spring. More on this as it develops.

The pace at work has picked up quite bit. We have six weeks to finish our current product's development, with several interim deadlines on the way. I have to have some work completed by the end of the day and so will go in early. Dunno if the pressure would be any less if I hadn't been sick or if I hadn't been sidetracked by interesting dead ends during the past couple of months.

One excursion out to the Web brought me to an announcement of a technical conference in April. The presenters include many people I know, some of whom I would like very much to see. Seeing other names on the roster, however, stirs up less healthy emotions. Candidly, they're doing interesting work that I would be doing if, well, if I had handled some things better at my previous job. Good for them. They're getting it done. I wish them well. I'm also glad that I'm not going to that conference.

Today is the day traditionally reserved for the Robert Burns supper. When we were in Scotland a few years ago, I developed a fondness for haggis, although, as any haggis diner will tell you, the less you think about the contents, the more you're likely to be able to finish your serving.

In the early 90s, Sandra and I, along with our dogs, Bob and Raye, drove to Prince Edward Island about this time of year. We were going to visit the MacGregors and to attend a dinner in honor of the Bard. We left after work on Friday night. The forecast said that we would see some snow, but we believed that we could outrun it. By the time we reached Calais, Maine, however, the snow was falling heavily. At a coffee shop, the truck drivers who were heading south reported that it was slow going on the Canadian side.

Onward we went. Our little Subaru, with four-wheel drive, held steady on the snow-covered roads. The visibility was deteriorating, however. At one point, between Saint John and Sussex, we got behind a snow plow and followed its tail lights. The trouble was, the visibility was so bad that the light we were following stopped being the snow plow and turned into a light on a farm house on the side of the hill. Sandra brought this fact to my attention just before we went off the road and into the deep culvert. At that point, we decided that we needed to find a place to stop for the night.

The Bluebird, a restaurant and motel in Sussex, New Brunswick, will forever be on our gratitude list. We arrived at three or four in the morning, had a bite to eat, and checked in to our room. Two days later, we were able to leave. (Weather forecasting in New England is a competitive sport, but not so elsewhere. We heard precious little about the weather on any of the radio stations.) The storm closed the highways in all directions. Even the snow plows were ordered off the road. A few other people, including the restaurant staff, were stranded with us. By good fortune, the cook had just made a full supply of pies for the weekend. We ate well and stayed warm.

The Moncton newspaper reported that we'd received 1.5m (about four and half feet) of snow. Drifts were to the rooftops of many houses. By the time we were on our way, the roads were snow-covered, but passable. We made it to the Island and learned that the Burns dinner had been postponed because of the storm. We attended the rescheduled event a few days later, with one of Sandra's cousins as the master of ceremonies, and sang Auld Lang Syne.

We can take comfort that misery is scheduled to peak today, so things will be getting better.

The full Wolf Moon is shining over the cold (-1 °F / -18 °C) and snowy landscape. Snowfall reports vary widely around the state. We picked up about 20" (50cm); places on the coast nearly doubled that. We weren't able to open our usual doors because of the snow; instead, we had to jump off the front porch and make our way through knee-deep whiteness. After the long cold stretch, the snowblower needed some coaxing, but finally started and performed admirably. The whole household, along with reinforcements, participated in cleanup. Mike and Matt returned mid-morning to plow the driveway. By noon we were ready for a world that wasn't ready for us. That was ok. There was plenty to do inside and, later in the day, there was football.

Many schools and government offices in eastern Massachusetts are closed today. (Our local school district is open.) The state and some businesses are using that delightful phrase, "Nonessential workers should not report to work."

A raised coffee cup in memory of Johnny Carson, David Nyhan, and Rose Mary Woods, each of whom has made our lives more interesting in their unique ways.

There's a snowstorm out there, for sure. I can't get the door open to measure the snow that's sheltered from the wind, but it looks like we have more than a foot with even more to come. Mike's plowed our driveway once and will come back at least once more, perhaps twice. The street light shows that the high wind has sculpted the snow around the neighbor's car. The snow is light and the wind rearranges it easily.

As noted earlier, though, the eastern and southeastern parts of the state are really getting clobbered on this one. As a result, the governor has declared a state of emergency, restricting non-emergency travel. Places on the Cape have received two feet of snow and day is still young. Already the commentators are likening this storm to the Blizzard of '78 . We may very well get there. And, like that earlier storm, it was primarily an eastern Massachusetts event. We received two feet of snow and wondered why the governor ordered us to stay off the roads for several days. A three-foot storm for us barely warrants mention on the Boston stations. Funny, isn't it, how 50 miles can make such a difference in both weather and attitude.

It's not likely that the newspapers will be delivered this morning. That's ok. We have plenty to do and plenty to read. This piece, for example, is a different take on the classic speech to graduating high school students.

Never underestimate the power of a bad day to get worse.

[I'm still seeing irregular email delivery of these notes. I'll use this snowy day to run some tests.]

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for the mother of a friend. I hadn't known her, but the stories revealed a remarkable woman. She took it as a badge of honor that the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on her lawn because of her role in desegregating the school system in her town.

The National Weather Service just published a blizzard warning for southern New England. The snow will start mid-afternoon and continue until tomorrow morning. The worst of the storm will be to the southeast of us, toward the Cape, where 20-30 inches of snow is possible; we're expecting 10-20. The winds will be strong and the temperatures low, meeting all of the criteria for a blizzard. It was -10F when I got up this morning and probably won't rise beyond the mid-teens.

We'll visit with A,J,&L this morning in Florence (the village in Massachusetts, not the city in Italy, although A&J did honeymoon in the Florence across the pond. Theirs was the Florence to Florence world tour.) We also have to tend to a couple of errands and then we can settle in for the duration.

When nerds get bored, watch out.

The little routines of winter are now well established. We back the cars into the driveway so that, if the car won't start, it's easier to connect the jumper cables. We keep a mixture of sand and salt by the door. In this very cold weather, salt doesn't work, but sand helps to keep walkway safe. The forecast is calling for a substantial snow storm, with high winds, starting tomorrow afternoon. It'll warm a bit when the snow comes, so the snow blower will be easier to start.

In this morning's spam: "cough syrup particle accelerator". I'm pretty sure that I don't want to know any more. (Spammers believe that if they include random words in their message, spam filters won't be able to catch the message. Good spam filters aren't fooled and can adapt quickly.)

We'll visit Adam, Jennie, and Lily tomorrow morning. We haven't seen them since Christmas and haven't been to their house since Thanksgiving.

In the "Ready when you are, C.B." dept., we have this news story. A scientist works on a project for 18 years, puts the instrument on the Saturn space mission, and then learns that someone forgot to turn the thing on. (The "Ready when you are, C.B." references goes back to an apocryphal story about Cecil B. DeMille. One rendition of the story is here.)

[Recently I've noticed that there's been a delay in the delivery of some journal entries. The message on Martin Luther King Day, for example, didn't show up until Wednesday. It appears that the problem originates at the web site that creates this web log. This is the second time that this has happened. I like the current web log hosting site, but if the problem becomes chronic, I may need to investigate alternatives.]

Today at work, we're scheduled to have a group party at a local hotel. There will be food 'n stuff, probably a speech or two, and opportunities to be formal and ill at ease. (We still recall the time when, several years ago, Sandra and I attended her company's holiday party. I stepped on the foot of the wife of the vice president of engineering.) I'm hoping that I can stay in the office and work.

The company closed its office in Maryland yesterday afternoon. For two inches of snow. Two inches of snow! We eat two inches of snow for breakfast.

But, then, we're not like the brave folks in Ottawa, where nails in their houses are exploding because of the cold.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Some people are marking this inauguration day with individual protest.

I talked with my manager yesterday and learned that my contract has been extended until early May. He said that, unless he comes in to tell me to clean out my office, my contract will be renewed automatically. We talked briefly about permanent employment. There's nothing available right now nor is anything likely to open up this quarter. Nevertheless, it's good to know that my work is useful and that I'll have continued employment.

Statistics can be interesting. For example, Firefox now has between four and five percent of the web browser market, about the same percentage as the number of climbers who die on Mount Everest.

I don't, as a rule, read the spam that comes my way. I receive on the order of 150 spam messages each day. Not only is the stuff unpleasant, but it can also be dangerous. About 20% of the messages carry some kind of payload. Anyway, one message, sent to an address that I rarely use, caught my attention. In French, it invited me to a web site where I could purchase a book that is leading the charge against heliocentrism. "... that Holy Scripture does in fact undeniably present the universe as geocentric and the sun as being in motion around the earth."

Not willing to fall further behind the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy style mavens, the People's Republic of North Korea has launched a program against long hair. Let us trim our hair in accordance with socialist lifestyle warns us that long hair has a deleterious effect on intelligence. It takes a lot of nutrition to sustain long hair, robbing the brain of energy.

Bob Dylan, however, observed, in an interview published in 1966, that not only is long hair warmer, but it is beneficial to the functioning of the brain. "But I guess if you figure it out, you realize that all of one's hair surrounds and lays on the brain inside your head. Mathematically speaking, the more of it you can get out of your head, the better."

As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens. We have almost a half hour more daylight than we did at the solstice and the cold has moved in for the week. I briefly considered putting on shoes when I went to get the newspaper from the driveway, it was that cold. We're not likely to get above freezing for a week at least.

(When searching for a source for the lengthen/strengthens phrase, I learned that the Kiwis have something similar, although their time starts in June.)

We went to the camp Sunday afternoon. We realized that we'd need to walk in when we were in our car sliding sideways down the icy hill. The ice on the lake was soft in places, but this week's cold will take care of that. One tree had fallen into the water and there were branches scattered around, but there was no damage to any of the buildings.

Lynn returned to work last night. They are brave. A household with six children gets to rebalance itself. When I returned to work in July, Sandra and I wondered how we'd ever get all of our chores completed with both of us working. As I've mentioned before, what we would call a large dinner party, Mike and Lynn call just another weekday supper. For all the chatter I provide in this journal, ours is a very simple, tidy life.

To the mountain top.

Yesterday we visited with some long-time friends in Connecticut. We hadn't seen them for more than two years, so we had a lot of catching up to do - our families, our work, our selves. It was good to see them. We have the ability to pick up our conversations pretty much in mid-sentence. The hours passed quickly.

Among other things, we wandered around the themes of our own retirement and aging. What will be our next act? Or, more importantly, what will be our next acts? Retirement will be a major transition in our lives but it probably won't be our last one. Our lives will continue to evolve, just like they do now, based on our own abilities, the needs of those we love, and circumstances that catch us by surprise. Retirement is a while yet, 10 years or so, plus or minus, depending on the behavior of our presidents and of the stock markets.

A friend once said, "Want to know how to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans for the future."

It's important to take this stuff seriously, but not too seriously. We want to be as prepared as we can be so that we don't wind up, at 85, eating cat food from cans and living out of the back of a VW Microbus. At the same point, though, we (I) have to approach this with humility. It's been said that every generation believes that it invented sex. The baby boomers, some of us anyway, (me), behave like we're inventing aging and retirement.

Samuel Johnson remarked, 'No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.'(From the Gutenberg Project version of Boswell's Life of Johnson.) By some accounts, there are as many as 10,000 new blogs each day. I'll leave it to the reader to estimate the number of blockheads who have revealed themselves.

The football season is heading into its homestretch. The Patriots play tomorrow. The local liquor stores are hoping for a Patriots win because that will boost sales for next Sunday. On my way home the other day, I stopped at the BJ's in Westborough (one of those big warehouse stores). They have a liquor department with a separate entrance. As I was coming in to the store, a person leaving with a 30-pack of beer, for those times, I guess, when a 24-pack case just isn't enough.

I finished the work week on what I think was a good note. In sum, and again, for those of you who care about such things, I've cobbled together a makeshift content management system with Microsoft Access and some shell scripts. I wouldn't show it off at the county fair, but it let me complete a couple of assignments. The work was interesting and, on Monday, I'll learn if it was useful.

The strong winds from the southwest have pushed the temperature close to 60F (15C), the warm fog eating away at the snow cover. We almost don't need a fire in the stove. The cold will return this afternoon, however, so it will be good to have a warm stove at the ready.

Yesterday I stayed at work until almost 6PM. I ran into a couple of technical difficulties, solving one and leaving another for this morning. (Aside to those who care about such things: I've built a database of documentation topics. I can produce a very useful graphical map of the topics, but can't (yet) generate a linked list of topics in the desired sequence so I can build a book.) Some days have you just do the work; other days are about invention. The days full of invention can be more interesting, but also more unnerving.

I've been working at this contract job for six months now and have settled in pretty well. Yesterday afternoon one of the other writers stopped by to discuss an interesting problem. I spent an hour at day's end working on it and some more time thinking about it in the evening. It's still difficult to become involved in long-term projects, but the work that I have is challenging enough. The funding for my current contract runs out at the end of the month, so it's time to have a converation with my manager about a renewal.

We had a nice party for Krista last night, telling stories of what we remembered about that snowy night when she was born. Krista asked Sandra to tell the story about how we got Marley. In turn, Krista told the story of how they got their cat, Smokey.

One of the kids asked me if I knew why their AOL connection wasn't working. I had started work on it last week before I got sick again. I hope to get back there in the next few days. It should be as simple as reinstalling the AOL software, but experience has shown that few things are as simple as they should be.

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has reviewed the Microsoft AntiSpyware software I mentioned. He spent more time testing it and he's not as favorably impressed as I had been. It's better than nothing, but, when dealing with the bad guys, better than nothing can lead to a false sense of security.

Friday the 13th falls on a Thursday this month.

Happy 9th Birthday, Krista Lynn.

Krista was born on a very snowy night. Sandra and I were baby-sitting the boys at their house. When Mike and Lynn called with the news ("It's a girl," shouted the boys, hopping around the room.), we debated a long time before deciding that it was too stormy to make it to the hospital that night, even in the Subaru. We had perhaps two feet of snow and the old St. Vincent Hospital was on top of a hill. We waited until morning for our first visit with our new little girl.

Mike had (and has) a snow plowing business. Through that evening, people were calling him at the hospital, congratulating him on the birth of his daughter and then asking if he'd be plowing their driveways soon.

Today, by comparison, we have a couple of inches of fresh snow which is now changing to sleet and freezing rain. We'll have rain and then temperatures close to 60F by tomorrow.

I've been using the beta (pre-release) Microsoft AntiSpyware software on a couple of systems and have been favorably impressed. It caught a couple of things that other tools didn't find. Currently this software is free; Microsoft hasn't determined how much, if anything, they'll charge for the final product.

I use several web-based job search tools, such as monster.com, DICE, Yahoo Jobs, and Flipdog. For each, I filled out a form that indicated my areas of interest and experience. Each day I receive an email from these sites with a list of possible job matches. I have been primarily looking for a job in software technical documentation; I'd prefer a management job. So, recently, I've received ponters to jobs as Senior Waste Manager and Senior Executive Secretary. (To be fair, in the late 70's, I worked as an office temp for Kelly Services, "The Kelly Girl People.")

Nerd stuff ahead: In the past two days, two stories have appeared on Slashdot. One, about Rational software, a division of IBM, incited vitriol against its products, including documentation. Another story, about IBM's decision to free up 500 of its software patents, had them nearly dancing in their cubicles. The /. crowd is smart, loud, and fast.

When my mother had a difficult night of sleep and would be tired the next day, she'd pretend that she was tired from traveling.

Today I will try to return to work. As is typical of returning from time off, today I'll focus on getting caught up with email and trying to figure out where I was when I left. I'm not sure where I stand with regard to the next round of deadlines. I worked on our bills last night. While we're a long way from destitute, losing those days of work last week will have an impact. I'm not going to try to work extra hours, though, until I'm sure I'm restored to good health.

Sandra and I got out of the house for a while yesterday afternoon. Sandra's been very patient during this protracted illness and needed a break. We visited with my father and then went out for a mid-day meal. The change of scenery was good. The countryside, covered in snow, is New England at its best.

We have a house rule that, if anything goes into the attic, something must come out. So, to make room for a couple boxes of my stuff, I brought down a crate that contained papers from college and that brief, crash-and-burn semester in graduate school, notes and drafts of short stories, outlines for magazine articles and research projects. None of the material was less than 20 years old and almost none of it was worth saving. (Anyone care for a $4.40 excise tax bill on a 1969 Plymouth Valiant?) There was an article that I wrote on hitchhiking from an alternative newspaper way back when. Rejection letters from publishers filled several Pendaflex® folders.

My papers from elementary school were a bit more interesting. You woudn't expect much humility from a 9th grader's autobiography and that's just what you'd get.

Yesterday's Boston Globe was its semi-annual Big Help edition. The paper runs a special promoion with their business customers and fills up the help wanted section. I've not had great luck with job leads in newspapers, but should make the effort. Sandra has a sewing class tonight, so I'll have a chance to review the ads. I should also have a conversation with my current manager about a contract extension. The current contract runs through the end of the month.

Happy 70th Birthday, Elvis.

While there is a lot of great Elvis music available, my favorite recording is The Million Dollar Quartet with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins. It's a casual studio session with then-current rock tunes (Brown-Eyed Handsome Man) and gospel standards (Farther Along, I Shall Not Be Moved).

And what an interesting collection of people sharing this birth date: Stephen Hawking, Graham Chapman, Shirley Bassey, Bill Graham, Soupy Sales, David Bowie, among others.

I have family and friends with chronic lung ailments, for whom each breath is something of a miracle. I think of them often as I continue to recover. Breathing is important.

Brother Mike came by yesterday afternoon and shoveled a path from the back deck to the wood pile. We are grateful and humbled. He also gave me a copy of Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. 1, good reading for a snowy day.

A snowy day it will be. The forecast calls for another six inches (15cm) of snow in a short burst from mid-morning through early evening.

On the overnight radio I heard an interview with the BBC's news director as she defended the service's slow response to the south Asia tsunami story. (Mostly, people were away for the holiday, so it was difficult to get a full team together.) The news cycle on the tragedy, it appears, is just about complete. This morning, the BBC News web site reports, as its second story, on the breakup of the marriage of Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. The story was featured, although not quite as prominently, on the MSNBC and CNN sites, and buried as a wire service blurb on the New York Times or Boston Globe sites.

A cardinal, bright red against the white snow, has joined the other birds at the feeders out back.

My bronchitis continues and my voice makes me sound like Johnny Cash. I went to the doctor's yesterday and have some antibiotics that, we hope, will reclaim my lungs from the forces of evil. My family and friends have been quite kind and comforting, but we're all growing weary of this. There's work to be done, fun to be had, attention to be paid.

I'm staying home again today. I am seriously concerned about the work that I'm not getting done. Assuming that I'm back to good health next week, I may ask my manager if I can put in a few extra hours to make up for this week's lost time.

A thumbnail moon is rising in the southeastern sky. Much of our southern horizon is blocked by trees, so this will be the last day that we can see the moon in this cycle.

Scott and Val's cat, Sadie, passed on this week. She was in her late teens and suffering from kidney problems. She lived a lot longer and a lot better than was expected, but faded in the past couple of weeks. She was the sister of a couple of our former cats, Spot and Kissa. Sadie lived a long life with good grace and energy.

We picked up several inches of snow topped with freezing rain yesterday, the whole mess freezing solid overnight. I wasn't able to get the snowblower into the back yard, so the path to the wood pile is going to be a problem. We have a large cart with bicycle wheels that can make it through the snow and ice, but isn't easy to maneuver. New England winter, the gift that keeps on giving.

As the saying goes, I've become sick and tired of being sick and tired. This time it's bronchitis and it's dragged on for a week now. It's worth thinking about why I should be getting sick twice in such a short time. I don't have a good answer right now. In the meantime, however, I'm staying home from work today. My co-workers don't need another day of my coughing in the office.

This isn't a good time to be missing work. I have a couple of tasks that are a bit behind schedule. These tasks are also holding up someone else's work. I can take the heat for missing my own deadlines, but don't like it when I make someone else's work more difficult.

I had bronchitis another time, several years ago, and had to miss work for several days. We were under severe pressure to release a product. My manager wanted to send a courier to my house so that I could finish a couple of documents. We get sick in the context of who we are. My manager might not have been so anxious had my work been up to date at the time that I got sick. It had been a challenging project and I often felt as though I wasn't up to the task. We did complete the project, though, and it was successful.

The BBC reports that web log readership is increasingly popular in the United States.

From the description of a software product that helps you develop online help:

"Product documentations are manage in some different languages by QuickHelp eBooks !!"

Originally written in German, the phrase made some detours on its way to English. It reminds me of the "All your base belong to us" phenomenon from 2001.

If you're looking for an interesting way to waste time, the Lost in Translation site shows you what happens to a phrase when it goes through several automated translation cycles.

With the cold rain, it feels more like a day in late March than early April. There's talk of 'a significant snow event' Wednesday night and Thursday. Other forecasts suggest that we may get more ice than snow.

I first learned about the word 'dooced' through this article. A bit of further research on the 'net shows that Dooce was the nickname of one of the first people to be fired for writing a web log about work. Although this is a private journal, shared only with family and a few close friends, it's also in a public space. There's nothing in here that I wouldn't want my manager to read.

The AOL software on Mike and Lynn's home computer resisted my attempts to fix it. (It hangs on the startup screen with the waol.exe process consuming 95% of the CPU. Someone at work reported something similar; I hope to find out more today.) Next step is to reinstall the software and then, if needed, call AOL technical support. If there was a fine manual to read, I'd read it.

Addressing a problem I didn't know I had, the AARP has started an ad campaign to encourage advertisers to consider the over-50 crowd as a worthy market. Just think of the wonderful solicitations that await us.

Because New Year's Day fell on a Saturday, we have today as a company holiday. It looks to be a busy day. I'll spend time with Mike and Lynn's computers, the one at their home and the one at Mike's office. Mike is looking for ideas about setting up a web site for his business. As with most things, we rarely have to choose between good and bad options; those choices are easy. With computers anyway, we have many, many good choices, including choices that didn't matter to you until you knew you had the choice. (For example, these keychain USB drives are extremely handy.) It's not unlike the first time you walk into Starbuck's and say, "I want a cup of coffee." The person behind the counter points at the menu board and the blood drains from your face.

The pain that Sandra's mother was experiencing appears to be gone. She and Woody went for a walk on the rail trail yesterday afternoon.

Sandra and I had a great time in Boston. We had lunch at Quincy Market. While we were waiting for our order at a Mexican restaurant, a woman came up to the counter and looked with interest at the array of side side dishes on display. Sandra urged the woman to step closer so that the restuarant staff could see her. She did so. The man behind the counter came over. They talked in brief, low tones. The man served a large plate of rice, much more than just a side order. The woman put a dollar on the counter. "That was nice of you," Sandra said. "She comes in here every day and gets the same thing. We try to help."

The Lion King at The Opera House. Both the show and the venue are stunningly wonderful. On our way out of the city, I got a bit lost, giving Sandra and me more time to talk enthusiastically about the music, visuals, and athleticism in the show. Eventually we found our way to the Mass Pike and home.

In an audience of 3,000 who were attending a show set in Africa with lyrics in Swahili and a predominantly black cast, I counted three black people in the audience.

The camp is in good order as we begin 2005. We had several strong wind storms in December, but there were no trees or large branches down anywhere near the camp. The road had just a bit of snow and ice. There were tracks on the road from at least one truck and a couple of snowmobiles. The ice is generally safe, but there are weak spots where the springs have eaten away at the underside. With the ice, there is no sound of water against the shore and the whole lake is very quiet.

We were invited to an open house at friends of Mike yesterday afternoon. We stopped in briefly between a visit with my father and the trip to the camp. One of the people at the party, also a friend of Mike, attended Notre Dame, a nearby Catholic high school. He and I were on our high school debating teams and had debated against each other a few times. He's Joe's godfather and his son has worked for Mike for several years. We had a good long talk about caring for parents. His father died at home not long ago and both his mother and mother-in-law are living close by.

Sandra's mother has had a bit of a setback. She woke on Saturday morning with a great deal of pain in her back. We suspect that it may have been triggered by sitting in the movie for two and a half hours on Friday. She's ok when she's lying still, but it hurts a lot when she stands and walks.

After we got home, I received a call from Michael Francis. His voice is getting deep and at first I didn't recognize his call. He asked if he could get a ride. His parents and siblings were still at the aforementioned party and he had made plans to see his girlfriend at her house. Lynn and Mike got home just as I arrived to pick up Michael. I drove him across town to a nice-looking home. I'm glad that he called us.

Sandra and I are taking a quick trip into Boston today to see The Lion King at the newly renovated Opera House.

Bringing a bit of fresh air to new year, we clean out 2004 with Dave Barry's year-in-review, Arianna Huffington's things to forget, and the list of banished words from Lake Superior State University.

Happy New Year in Finnish is Onnellista Uutta Vuotta. Folks claim that because Finnish is a phonetic language, the words are easy to pronouce. It's like saying that you don't feel the heat in Phoenix in the summer time because it's a dry heat.

My Finnish is limited to a few words and phrases of greeting (Päivää), well-wishing (Näkemiin), and something else entirely (Haistaa napa, or "smell my belly button"). Of course, I had to look up the spelling of these words; I've rarely needed to write them. When my parents wanted to talk about something in secret, they would talk in Finnish. There might have been good reasons for learning Finnish, but eavesdropping on my parents' conversations isn't among them. There are some things that a kid doesn't need to know.

So, a new year. The day has dawned sunny and mild. We don't make resolutions for the new year. The cycle of our years doesn't begin on January 1. Most of the time, our year begins in the spring. For one thing, it's a time of renewal. For another, it marks the time when we spend most of our weekends at the camp, changing the pace of our weeks. And, finally, in April we will have just paid our taxes and reviewed our financial state in the process.

We stayed in last night, enjoying a fine meal of take-out lasagna from our favorite local restaurant. We watched Spider Man II (a pretty good movie) and stayed awake, more or less, until midnight. Earlier in the day, we went with Sandra's parents to see The Avaitor (also a good movie, although not, IMO, the Oscar contender that some have proclaimed).

Today we'll visit my father and tend to chores around the house. It will be a quiet start to this new year. Excitement, in the forms of elation, anxiety, and befuddlement, will find us soon enough.

Marley has a cut on his foot. The salt on the roadways gets into the cut and he limps along. This injury, however, hasn't completely sidelined him. He found a gap in our backyard fence (since fixed) and has gone on some memorable adventures, including barking matches with other dogs on the street.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy introduced the concept of the total perspective vortex. It's a way that humans keep their world imaginable. To try to comprehend the whole of everything is to run the risk of having your brain disintegrate, a sort of mental singularity.

Humor aside, this world is often too much for us to comtemplate for any significant amount of time. On the other side of this earth, 100,000 people have died, millions more are injured, homeless, or mourning. It took a great tragedy to push the war in Iraq off the front pages. We watch the images and we grieve. We try to take it all in and imagine what it must be like. And then we come back to our home, our familiar little corner, to our dog's injured foot. Rare are the people who can think about very important things for very long.

Today is trash day in our part of town. Driving home last night I saw the trash barrels overflowing with the by-product of Christmas. (I don't recall any part of the Christmas story that had the three wise men riding off to the dump.) It's no doubt a very long week for the trash haulers.

When I was growing up, we didn't have community trash pickup. (My father still doesn't; the house too far from the center of town.) That which wasn't burned in a barrel in the back yard went to the dump. The dump was the center of activity on Saturday morning. Rocky, the guy who ran the town dump, got to keep what he wanted out of the trash. He wasn't wealthy, but his house was nicer than you'd expect. His daughter, though, wasn't treated well in school.

We had a Studebaker pickup truck when I was a kid. As you know, then, as now, if you have a truck, it's not yours alone. People want your help moving all kinds of stuff. Some friends of my parents were getting new furniture and asked my father to take their old sofa to the dump. As my father was driving to the dump, he glanced in the rear view mirror and thought that the couch looked pretty good. Our house was on the way to the dump, so he stopped at home. The couch stayed at our house for another 20 or so years. My mother had to throw a spread over it when their friends came for a visit so they wouldn't recognize their old couch.

Last night we took five grandkids to see The Polar Express in IMAX at a furniture store, of all places.. (We wish that Lily lived closer so she could have joined us.) The movie on the really big screen is wonderful.

Sandra stood in line with the kids while I went to get the sodas. When I returned, I said "Hi, Dave." to a former co-workier.
"You know that guy?" asked Sandra.
"We worked together at IBM."
"He just cut in line."
"Yep, that's him."

After finishing his snow plowing route yesterday, Mike drove up to my father's house. Huck had already plowed his driveway and shoveled the steps and was getting the snowblower started to clear a path to the woodpile. Mike helped with that chore and then went along.

Even though fewer than half the people were in the office yesterday, it was difficult to find a quiet time to work. The people who were there were extra chatty. Once I started work in earnest, I was able to get some good stuff done. I stayed until after 5:30. As I've mentioned to Sandra, the work that I'm doing will either be an important breakthrough or a massive sinkhole of time, energy, and money.

On the way home from work, I stopped in to Blockbuster for a movie. I usually go there on a Saturday morning and the place is filled with parents and kids. On a weekday night, however, the store is shelter to guys with stunned expressions, each carrying a half dozen DVDs. It wouldn't have taken too many deflections in my life's journey for me to have wound up there. I wasn't in the A/V club in high school, but spent a lot of time with the shortwave radio in the science project room.

A story about this coffee shows up on the news wires fairly frequently, but is worth repeating.

This storm is having a much greater impact on the coastal areas, where some places can expect upwards of 18" of snow. We'll be lucky to get a third of that. Of course, the news of the earthquake and tsunamis remind us that our winter storms are an inconvenience, rarely bringing widespread devastation, misery, and death.

Not to say that these storms can't be dangerous. Yesterday we went out to pick up some groceries for my father and drove along the highway where a fatal auto accident that had taken place an hour and half before.

We were out shopping because my father's back was giving him lots of pain. The good news, I guess, is that there was a reason for the pain. He was out at the wood pile and slipped on a wet palette. The discomfort was enough that he took some of his pain medication. He didn't like the feeling of that stuff, though, and asked that we get him some Tylenol. He insisted, however, that he would be able to plow his driveway and handle the small amount of shoveling in front of the doors. I'll call him this morning and may stop there after work this evening.

Mike's made one pass with the snow plow already. Once the rest of the household is awake, I'll get the snowblower going.

We had a great time with our Christmas gathering and hope that our guests did as well. With much able assistance, we got the meal on the table on time and dined well. A small team packed up the leftovers so that we could clear the table for the desserts. In the spirit of celebration, we consumed the annual caloric intake of a third-world nation.

The day evolved at a good pace and we were able to talk with everyone, although not at any great length. One of our nieces is moving to Los Angeles in the spring. Another in our extended family moved into a new apartment last week. Joe gave me a framed photo of Tom Brady. Santa brought American Girl dolls to Krista and Tess. Krista came to the party with the cutest curls in her long hair.

As expected, my father stayed home. We'll take a container of leftovers to him this afternoon. We had suggested that we would like to take him out to dinner at his favorite restaurant, Denny's, but he wasn't too sure about that.

Sandra and I talked for quite a while after the last people left, reviewing what went well and not so well. Maybe we take this too seriously, but we want to do a good job. If we're worried about getting the water and butter to people while they're eating, we will hurry past someone who'd like to talk and no doubt will hurt that person's feelings. That happened a couple of times. Someone came in with a gift. I was busy in the kitchen and set the gift aside until too late. Feelings are hurt by the little missteps as much as by the bigger failings.

Serving a meal to 30 people would be a slow lunch hour in almost any restaurant. I had one job in a diner where I worked six days a week for $65 (plus meals, if I could stand them). Granted, it's a lot easier to cook meals for lots of people when you have commercial-grade grills, ovens, stoves, refrigerators, and prep counters. But the customers are grumpier and you've got management around. The co-owner of the diner would have his evening meal, a plain burger with a salad on the side, the Russian salad dressing made up of a mix of mayonnaise, ketchup, and relish. We sliced our own pickles and cut up our own French fries. Clarence did the fries. Clarence had a room-temperature IQ, but he could peel, blanch, and cut potatoes.

We have a quiet day ahead, with a visit to my father the only event planned. We are expecting snow overnight, so I need to bring in wood.

Early this Christmas morning is bright and clear, the nearly-full Snow Moon setting in the northwest.

We'll have Christmas music on the radio on for most of the day. I bought a set of wireless speakers to bring music to the other rooms. The speakers have worked very well. For a while, 10 or 15 years ago, I ran speaker wires to various parts of the house. That was fine as long the furniture stayed in place. Moving anything meant a rewriting job. We live in an old house with several additions. Running wires in this house is really a professional's job and I'm not one. For background music, the wireless speakers are fine.

The radio station is playing classical renditions of various types of Christmas music, including familiar carols. I learned most of the Christmas carols that I know in elementary school. (I learned 'Deck Us All with Boston Charlie'.) At that time, we received more Christian instruction in public school than I did at church (Unitarian). We sang to 'O Christmas Tree' in German ('O Tannenbaum'). We also began each school day with prayer. It was a different time.

This will be a fun day. Some of our visitors we've not seen since last Christmas. Sandra and I won't get to talk long with many people, but everyone will likely have a good time. Good parties take care of themselves. We reminded Mike's kids to bring a football. I can still throw a decent pass, but I've got no business trying to run against these kids.

Life is good.

Houska Joulua (although some parts of Finland use Hyvaa Joulua). Next week we'll tackle Happy New Year.

My family celebrated the holiday on Christmas Eve. We gathered, usually at our our house, to have a meal and exchange gifts. We weren't very religious people and so didn't always go to church services later in the night. We had dinner at my grandparents' house on Christmas Day.

I don't recall that Santa Claus was a great part of all this. For one thing, in order to let him come to the house, we tried having me take a nap in the afternoon. That didn't work so well. Other ideas on how the presents got there soon took hold.

This evening we'll go to Mike and Lynn's for Chinese food. The adults in our families don't exchange presents, so we'll gather for food, fellowship, fun, and the last part of the Vikings-Packers game.

My stepfather was a neurosurgeon. We have one of his scalpels, which we use for carving.

The strong winds last night blew over our little tree. The winds done their business, bringing in much colder weather, and have settled down nicely. We'll get the tree in place again. A calm weather night is in the forecast. The rain melted all but a few clumps of snow We have a brown Christmas, but we can have a football game in the back yard between dinner and dessert tomorrow.

Today is a cooking and preparation day. We want to get much of the food prepared in advance so that we can enjoy tomorrow's company. It's easier to make gravy when you don't have an audience offering suggestions.

Our new little printer worked well last night. We were able to print pictures of Sandra and Joe's trip to PEI in the late summer. Sandra made an album of trip memorabilia as a gift for Joe. We still have a way to go to learn how to manage all those pictures - which ones to print, which ones to publish, which ones to archive. Printing's the easy part. A software engineer once told me, "Before you can process data, you have to manage data."

I was the last person in our group and one of the last people in the building to leave work yesterday. I was making good progress and didn't want to set the work aside in an imcomplete state for the long weekend. I reached a place where it'll be easy to start again next week. The office will be empty next week. About only people working next week will be the contractors. The permanent employees have to use up their remaining vacation time before the end of the year or lose it.

It's time to get cooking.

We have a small Christmas now. It's outside, on the picnic table, visible from both wings of the house. Woody decorated it with the big, old-fashioned colored lights and it looks great.

When I was a kid, two or three years old, parents grew tired of my playing with the ornaments and nearly tipping the tree over. So, they put the tree in my playpen.

Don't let on, but Mike and Lynn have been hiding the kids' Christmas presents at our house. Sandra and her mother have done a magnificent job wrapping the presents. In addition to wonderful toys, clothes, and Red Sox memorabilia, they bought some spiritual books to bring the holiday back to its original intent. So, to see if we've got this straight, Mike and Lynn bought books such as The Stations of the Cross, while I bought a copy of the aforementioned Linkin Park/Jay-Z mashup (the PG version).

This will be a quiet day at work. Tomorrow's a company holiday and a number of people are taking today and most of next week off. I started on some very interesting work yeserday (using UML to model an information set, for those of you who care about such things). I'll try to get to a good stopping place this afternoon.

I have to do some shopping on the way home and am already steeling myself against my wild-eyed fellow shoppers. This has been a nutty week for commuting as well. Yesterday I listened to the traffic report on the radio for the first time in many weeks, wanting to know about the two mile backup on Interstate 495. (An accident on the Mass Pike jammed up traffic all around.)

Tom, Pamenter has often said that every person who owns a personal computer becomes a system adminstrator, whether the person wants to or not. (He also says that system administration is a lot easier with a Mac.) We bought a small color printer so that we could print some digital pictures. Unpacking and setting up the physical printer was a snap, about five minutes of work. The software was another story. The need for new software was brought about by the plug-and-play USB connection that gave a hieroglyphic error message. Finding the right drivers on the HP site was the major challenge. A search for my specific model number turned up nothing. The search results kept bringing me back to a site where I could buy another printer of the same type I already have. At the end, I did find the software, a version 6.0 of something that showed version 7.2 while it was running, and we now have a working printer.

We saw our biopolar friend recently. The police visited her again. There were reports from her neighbors that she was making too much noise during the night. She says that her windows were closed and that they were all wrong. When she visits people, she stays a long time and leaves hosts looking like they'd been dodging highway traffic.

It was nice to find a little Patriots bib in the laundry, left here during a visit from Cassandra.

On this first day of astronomical winter here in the northern hemisphere, I renew my gratitude that I don't work or live outside. It's cold, very cold. One time, many years ago, I was hitchhiking to Toronto (it seemed like a good idea at the time) and stood outside overnight on a night such as this in Syracuse, New York, waiting for a ride. Finally, as the day broke, it warmed up enough to snow. I was lucky that I was just cold. On a similarly cold night a few years later, a friend had a bit too much to drink and fell asleep in a snow bank. He lost most of the fingers on one hand to frostbite.

After getting off to such a cheery start, perhaps we should try again.

I had a nice, long phone conversation with my cousin last night. We hadn't talked for quite a while. She lives in central Florida. Her house was in the path of three hurricanes this year. The repairs on their roof were completed just a few weeks ago. I spent quite a bit of time with her and her sister when they were growing up in New Hampshire. We enjoy each other's company and say that we'll be in more regular contact. But, then, a few years slip past us so easily.

Yesterday afternoon I received an invitation for a job interview in downtown Boston. Unfortunately, the invitation was for today and I can't get away from work. I'm hoping that another day next week will work out.

Most of the area schools have closed for the day, including the district that covers our town. Grumble, grumble. We have 2-4" (5-10cm) of snow of fluffy snow, the kind more appropriate for a broom than a shovel or snow blower. When I was a kid, it was six inches of snow, minimum, before they'd consider calling it a snow day. And this was before road salt was so widely used. The road crews used sand. We lived on top of a small hill. On snow days, the neighborhood kids would get brooms and sweep off the sand from the roads so that we could go sledding.

The forecast says that we're in a bit more snow, followed by a cold and windy night. The National Weather Service has issued a wind chill advisory for tonight because of strong winds and temperatures around zero F (3.2 hectares). When we get a strong northwest wind, the kind that brings in cold weather like this, we're apt to get a downdraft in our stove. The two parts of the house, our house and the MacGregors' wing, form a canyon and the stove pipe is in the middle of it. The wind gets strong enough that it can blow out the fire. Adding another eight feet to the chimney would take care of the problem, but the engineering would be difficult and the results aesthetically unpleasing. Better, I guess, to have the occasional puff of smoke in the room.

My father's cable TV is installed. When we visited yesterday, he asked me how he could switch between the cable and his old antenna. I asked why. He wasn't able to find one of his favorite shows, Seinfeld. After a bit of experimenting with the remote control, we got the TV set up so that he could get to the station that carried Seinfeld. He's still not too sure of it all, but he was impressed that the Weather Channel carried the weather conditions for the town next to him.

We saw some friends this weekend, people with whom I used to work. With good friends, you can pick up conversation where you left off.

Happy Birthday, RSM.

I've started mixing the new wood in with the seasoned. The general guideline is that you should have half of your wood supply left by the end of January. We're far ahead of that pace and will use up our seasoned wood before the winter is done. It's ok to mix some green wood when you've got a hot fire. Most days, with Sandra's parents around, the fire is going nearly around the clock. I'll start it in the morning, but there are usually still a few glowing embers in the stove.

The cable company finally got around to completing the installation at my father's house. He's still not convinced that it's a good deal. More to the point, he's convinced that it's not a good deal. We'll see. One of the major reasons for arranging for cable is that the Celtics games are shown only on cable. The Celtics are playing decent basketball. Their losses have been just by a few points, particularly on a rough West Coast trip. They're one game out of first place (in a division where no one has a winning percentage).

It's a given, and should surprise no one, that shoppers during the week before Christmas are, without a doubt, off-the-road, wheels-in-the-sand, and heading-for-a-cliff bonkers. That said, they weren't that bad yesterday. I went shopping, mostly for groceries, but also a couple of gifts while I was at it. I expected the unexpected and had a pretty good time. I was the only white guy in the rap section of Newbury Comics and the only person over 50 in the whole store.

My shopping trip was part of the preparation for our Christmas family gathering. My father has opted out. I don't blame him. We'll have about 30 for dinner. In a previous life I worked as a short-order cook for nearly five years. As a result, I have some experience preparing food on a large scale. Unlike brother-in-law Scott, however, the food that I prepare is strictly utilitarian - simple meats and vegetables. Sandra saw our next-door neighbor yesterday; he gave her more detailed instructions on how to prepare the top-round roast that we'd ordered from his shop. The day will be fun. We have lots of people on our side.

My fellow commuters are wackos. Early this morning we had less than an inch (~2cm) of snow. My commute this morning took an hour and a half (dunno what that is in metric), three times the usual. As I sat in the thick traffic, I watched those who weren't driving in the breakdown lane putting on great displays of lurching lane changes. It's December. It snows in New England in December. You wouldn't think that it would be a surprise.

The New York Times > Arts > Television > Moyers Leaves a Public Affairs Pulpit With Sermons to Spare. A voice that the folks in this corner will miss a lot.

The two agency calls turned out to be duplicates, both discussing the same job. Even so, it's a good sign when agencies are calling people, particularly when they're calling me.

There is no better celebration of bad writing than The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Of course, we don't want to omit the celebrities. A book report by Britney Spears is up for auction. (The link may go away after the auction is complete.) I know that I've written badly in the past (including the not too distant past) and have been spared greater public embarrassment only by my relative anonymity and the grace of good editors.

The next two weeks at work will be busy, made all the more so by holiday gatherings that jump into the middle of the day. We don't have Christmas parties as such, not the kinds portrayed on TV. No drinking, at least none that I see, and no wild antics. The big parties are a thing of the past, victims of budget cuts and liability laws. Anyway, there are a couple of luncheons, one in the office and another at a local Chinese restaurant. Most people will be eager to get back to their offices to wrap up their projects.

We ordered the meats for our Christmas gathering from a local market. Last night our next-door neighbor, who works at the market, called to make sure that our order was right because it was different from what we ordered last year.

The longer-range weather forecasts (five to seven days out) have improved dramatically over the last few years. It wasn't that long ago that a three-day forecast was a big deal. Last night, however, some of the local TV meteorologists were getting all breathless at the prospect of a nor'easter on Sunday night into Monday. This morning, the National Weather Service is hedging.

Yesterday two employment agencies contacted me with information about a couple of management positions. That, along with the telephone interview that I had yesterday afternoon, indicates that the market is changing. It's a long way from initial contact to the point where I have to think seriously about changing jobs, but it's very interesting to consider the possibilities.

Family concerns and my own energy levels are still considerations as I ponder a new job, much the same way that they were in late summer when two other job opportunities came by. Any new, permanent management job is going to require a lot from me and lot from my family. See, there I go thinking seriously about stuff already when I said that it's a long way away. I'll keep answering the phone calls and emails and find out what's next.

Did I mention that I received a report from my doctor on a couple of lab tests. I'm normal. How often do I hear that?

Forbes.com:: "Imaginary Companions Can Be Child's Fast Friends "

I didn't have an imaginary friend as a child, but have often imagined friends who weren't.

I didn't crash someone else's system yesterday. I have been setting up a couple of systems in the lab, a project that's taken many more days than I'd planned. (This is the same lab where I didn't spill coffee last week.) The computer systems in the lab are set on shelves in tall racks, perhaps 10 systems on each rack. I haven't spent a lot of time in computer labs during the past few years. Systems are much smaller and much more powerful. The systems look a lot alike, so it would be easy to mess up someone else's. I didn't, though, and finished the day with the setup that I wanted.

The house is busy this morning. Mike and his crew of workers arrived early, wearing their Christmas hats, to finish plastering the ceiling and replacing the mantel over our fireplace. Yesterday they replaced several doors. The room looks great. We'll set up dining tables in that room for our Christmas gathering.

Adam and Woody arrived safely at the Island last night. They stopped for dinner at a new restaurant in Cardigan. It's surprising that a town of 200 year-round people can support two restaurants, two gas stations, and a post office.

Adam and Woody left for the Island shortly after five o'clock. They should make it in 11 hours, plus or minus. There's a web cam that shows cars crossing the Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick to PEI. (The picture bounces somewhat because the camera is sitting high on light pole that sways a bit in the wind.) Once, when Sandra was on her way to see her folks, I caught sight of her on the bridge.

The classical station in Boston is starting to put more Christmas music into its rotation. They're playing a couple an hour now. By Christmas Eve, that's all they'll play. Some of pop stations have been playing all Christmas music since the weekend before Thanksgiving.

The Rockettes are playing in Boston this season. The local PBS station reviewer commented that the dancers performed to "bland arrangements of tunes unworthy of the elevator."

Job prospects are picking up. I've sent resumes to four places in the last few days. I'll have a phone interview today or tomorrow.

So Pedro is going to the Mets. Well, it's not surprising. He wanted the respect that a long-term contract would demonstrate. We'll miss him. He's been the best pitcher in town since Roger Clemens. Theo Epstein is a smart guy, however, and can put a good team on the field.

My mother received a tax bill from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue for a non-trivial amount of money. The bill was for her income during the year after she died.

From the old Beatles tune, Taxman:

Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes

I'm hoping that a phone call to the DOR will clear this up. (He says, naïvely.)

We went to the camp yesterday to finish the winter preparations. During a recent windstorm, a large birch branch fell against the outhouse, but there was no real damage. Dunno how it managed to avoid hitting the power line coming into the camp.

Inside, the mice had been hard at work. Several things had been knocked off of the shelves. Somehow, they opened a metal container of pepperkaker and ate their fill. They haven't figured out how to open the breadbox yet. Ah, well. It's their woods, too. With this year's acorn shortage, I figure that the squirrels are eating the mice's food, causing the mice to be more aggressive in the hunt for theirs.

You will be comforted to know that at least one company that ships Finnish breads to the US conforms to the FDA's bioterrorism regulations. I am looking for a place that sells the heavy Finnish rye that we used to call reikaleipa. The places that we've found so far sell a lighter, Swedish-type rye.

The funeral service for my friend's mother was held at the local funeral home. Every seat was taken and several people were standing, a gathering of family, townspeople, co-workers, church members, and other friends. The stories of her positive energy were plentiful. She and her husband loved to travel. She carried a light bulb on her travels, observing that hotel rooms only had 40 watt bulbs, not bright enough for a game of Scrabble, which she also carried. After the service, we gathered at the church for lunch and a chance to talk.

Last night Sandra and I went out to dinner with her parents. After dinner we drove around to look at the Christmas lights. You know that the spirit of Jesus has descended up us when you see an 8-foot (245cm) Homer Simpson dressed as Santa Claus.

In the past three days I've received several leads for permanent jobs. The most of the leads came in notes from friends. With these leads comes the renewed questions about my on-going work. What kinds of work do I like and do well? How much time am I willing to give over to work? (It was quite a treat when I was no longer coming home so late that Marley would bark at me when I came in the door. Now he barely looks up because he's at Sandra's parents' apartment, waiting for leftovers.) Even though I have pondering to do, I'll send copies of my resume and cover letters today.

Adam and Woody are making a quick trip to PEI to take care of a few things before winter really locks up the place. They'll probably take Woody's new Blazer instead of this: http://www.bikeforest.com/cb/couchintro.html.

The son of my mother's friend had recently received a Ph.D. in sociology or something similar. "He's a doctor," the friend said, "but not the kind that can help you."

For two days in a row I didn't spill a cup of coffee in the computer lab. I've been setting up a system in the lab and have needed some assistance with a couple of things. On the way back from the espresso machine the last two days, I have met up with one of the support engineers and we've gone into the lab to take a look at my problems. There was no place to leave the coffee outside the lab, so I brought it in with me, a clear violation of all that is sensible. What will I do in the future? Well, we've set up the systems with remote access software so that I can spill coffee in my office as often as I need to.

I've found that Walter Mossberg's Wall Street Journal columns on Wednesdays and Thursdays are a good source of clear information about personal computers and related technology.

Because I've been keeping more sensible work hours, which includes coming home before 7PM, I haven't listened to David Brudnoy as much in the past couple of years. He was erudite, an old-school professor, with a thoughtful libertarian view of things large and small.

Let's see. On TV tonight we have Get Down Tonight: The Disco Explosion (PBS), Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer (WB), WWE SmackDown! (UPN), Extreme Makeover (ABC), and Survivor (CBS). It makes me glad that we have cable so that we have alternatives such as Hunting 201, 101 Most Sensational Crimes of Fashion!, and the Essence of Emeril, where we can learn how to make cheese herbed popovers. Is it any wonder that this - http://www.tvbegone.com/ - is one of the hottest items for Christmas?

The lead story in our local paper told us about poisoning rats in an old factory in Gardner. The stories about war, famine, and disease in other parts of the world were below the fold and on the inside pages.

Oh, and this gem from yesterday's paper: " The bloodstains and nauseating smell discovered inside a Crescent Street apartment Monday could have been caused by the tenant, a 37-year-old Russian illegal immigrant, who had partaken in serious drinking days before the discovery and also suffered from minor bleeding wounds, authorities said yesterday.... The odor and scene at [the tenants]’s apartment led investigators Monday to believe a decomposing body might have been inside. " He's not dead. He just smells that way.

Yesterday the town where I work was having problems with its water system. An email went out to all employees in the two buildings, urging us to limit our use of the rest rooms until the problem was resolved. Mercifully the crisis was resolved quickly.

The Grammy nominees were announced yesterday - http://www.grammy.com/awards/grammy/47list.TXT. Do you think that, in 30 or 40 years, our grandchildren will get all misty-eyed when the oldies station plays Hoobastank?

At the suggestion of a grandson, I've been listening to Linkin Park. Not bad, although I'm still pretty much a three-chord rock-and-roll guy. The mash-up (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:cln8b5b4xsqa~T1) with Jay-Z is also pretty good.

On 8 December 1980, I was working at a small newspaper when the news of John Lennon's murder came over the wire. It was late in the evening, so there was just one other reporter in the editorial room. He and I sat in silence for a time and then went home.

The seventh of December was covered with snow ...

It's just a coating of snow with some freezing rain to seal it.

We have a friend who is bipolar and who has been, somewhat proudly, off her meds for quite a while. The symptoms are now gently humorous - the visit that lasts a bit too long, the odd gift (two cups of leftover Chinese food), the intense and non-stop talking. Her name showed up in the police log for playing loud music in the middle of the night. We've seen her out in her yard in her bathrobe, tending to the plants, in the chilly early morning darkness. She's been to court because of a parking ticket that she refuses to pay.

She's not a great danger to herself or others, not now, anyway. The threads in her life are starting to fray, though. Her husband moved out (was kicked out, depending on who's telling the story) and won't come back until she accepts help. The parking ticket could result in a revoked driver's license. We wonder how she can pay the bills.

Every illness requires, at some level, the willing participation of the patient in the healing process. Whether we have a broken leg, ALS, or a cold, we have to do the right things that will strengthen us and, to whatever extent possible, make us whole. Many mental illnesses, however, rob the patient of that ability to participate fully in the treatment. Of course, there's no assurance that the meds will be effective or tolerable, either.

Here we tread gingerly, taking care not to judge or presume the right course of treatment. (Even the professionals have to try different combinations of meds to get it right.) Acting with humility is one of the things that we, as adults, have to do.

I'm not very good at estimating crowds, so there could have been anywhere between 50 and 100 people at the party after CasSandra's christening. Lots of good food and company. The weather was mild, so the kids could play outside most of the time. Lynn and Mike are such gracious hosts. We're having a much smaller gathering of family at Christmas (20-25) and you will be hearing about it for a month before and a month afterwards.

The New York Times reported that IBM is in talks to sell its PC division. I don't have direct experience with the desktop systems, but I have been a great fan of their laptops for a long time. The keyboard, among other things, is outstanding. I hope that the sales doesn't disrupt the development and production of these fine machines.

The Boston Globe has a article in today's paper saying that this IBM news is part of a large consolidation in the IT industry: http://tinyurl.com/55ke2.

Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Here's the science: http://www.weathernotebook.org/transcripts/1997/07/07.html

We visited with my father yesterday afternoon and spent most of the visit looking for his hearing aid that had fallen off a bureau. We looked under furniture, around the wood stove, in the basket of 10-year-old newspapers, but didn't find it. We'll try again next time. It couldn't have gone far. He still has another. I suggested that we drop the other one in the hope that it would lead us to the first. He can get by, for the time being, with just the one. Besides, only needs them when people come to visit.

Also during the visit we looked through tattered paper albums and cigar boxes full of pictures. My grandmother had prepared some of the albums. Some of the pictures are 80 years old, photos of my father as a kid. There were lots of pictures of unknown people, many taken in Finland, stone-faced old Finns caught in a moment when all the world was in black and white. We'll probably never know who these people were.

Marley's enjoying having Sandra's parents in the house. Sandra's mother will be lying on the couch and Marley comes over to rest his head on her leg, giving and getting comfort in equal measure.

Hunting season has started. I passed a couple of hunters who were getting some supplies (beer) before heading out. They were dressed in camouflage jackets and pants and fluorescent orange hats. Do they want to be seen or not? There's no snow cover so it's difficult to track the deer. The forecast suggests that we might get some snow this week.

The funeral for my father's friend, Ben, was well-attended. We talked with Ben's daughter for a bit. "Now you're the only one with these stories," she said to my father.

He related one story about a time when he and Ben were riding the rails during the Depression. The train stopped. A railroad cop rounded up all of the guys who were on the top and in the box cars. The cop made all of the guys stand in a line and show the palms of their hands. He looked at my father's and Ben's calloused hands and said, "You guys can go. You know the meaning of a day's work."

My father and Ben were in their late teens and had spent a lot of time in the local gym, particularly working out on the high bar. Their hands were calloused from the workouts, not work. They'd not worked on anything harder than picking blueberries in the local fields.

Lynn stopped by yesterday afternoon with CasSandra. C. will be christened tomorrow, with a party to follow. Sandra's brother and sister will stay here tonight.

Lynn said that Krista had asked if C. could come in for Show and Tell. So, yesterday, Lynn brought the baby to the school. The kids in the first (Tess) and third (Krista) grades were quite excited. Joe's fifth grade class was more reserved, more cool. The teacher asked if there were any questions. After a few moments of silence, Lynn said, "Alright, I know that there's one question that you want to ask so I'll answer it now. Yes, Joe was this cute when he was a baby.

Last night we went to an art show. Last spring friend spent a week in France with eight other women. They are all artists - pen and ink, painting, and photography. This was a showing of the work that did on the trip and also a chance to tell the story of the trip to a wider audience.

It seems like we're getting out more and I guess that's true. We're just catching up, seeing people we should have seen six months, a year, two years ago. Good friendships are resilient, but we should never take them for granted.

The memorial service for John's mother will be next Saturday morning. She was an interesting and interested person, always greeting us with warmth and good humor. She loved opera and travel.

Friend John sent an email yesterday, reporting that his mother had died. They'd just brought her home from the hosptial and were making ready for hospice care. There will be a memorial service tomorrow morning.

John noted the unreality of it all. While this major and sometimes overwhelming event has taken place, the rest of life goes on around us. The same TV shows are on. Massachusetts drivers are still idiots. Kids are hitting their resonance frequencies as they anticipate Christmas. How do we fit this death in with the tremendous ordinariness around us? And if it doesn't fit, what then?

I'll take my father to the services for his friend, Ben, this morning. The owner of the funeral home is a good friend. He lives year-around at Queen Lake. The stairs to the funeral home are pretty steep, so my father called the owner and asked if he could come in the back way, using the elevator.

There was talk of snow today, but the cloud cover seems to be pretty thin.

He said, "potatoes".

Marley's getting signals from the dog satellite again (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326900/). He's pacing the room with a low growl. When I let him outside, he looks around the yard and comes right back in. He does this four or five times until it passes and he lies down in front the stove again.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Why 2004 was the year of the blog

"The first of December was covered with snow. And so was the Turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston."

We'll overstate things a bit for the sake of poetry. There was just a bit of light snow falling very early this morning in central Massachusetts. The rain has washed it away.

Today is Huck's 91st birthday. The morning paper, however, lists the obituary of Ben, one of his closest friends and traveling buddies. My father was recently talking about Ben, noting that he was one of the last of the old gang. The services are Friday morning. I plan to attend.

As I started reading the paper this morning, I remarked to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice if, someday, just one day, the obituary page was empty?"

This is the last official day of the 2004 hurricane season. Someone forgot to tell Otto, a minimal tropical storm in the Atlantic east of Bermuda.

For those who are interested in exploring Canadian history, here's a pointer to the Archives Canada: http://www.archivescanada.ca/english/index.html

[This posting is later than usual. The weblog service that I use, blogger.com, was having technical difficulty until just a few minutes ago.]

Yesterday afternoon I walked past a display of wreaths. The smell of the evergreen brought the feeling, for the first time, really felt that Christmas is approaching. We've had Christmas gifts and displays in the stores since August, but it's been just noise to me. Christmas lights went up on many houses over the weekend and they look nice enough. The fragrance of the greens, though, brought me around. I'm now ready to face the season, a season that brings us stuff like this - http://www.hammacher.com/publish/71144.asp?promo=sportleisure.

My mother's been gone for more than four years, but we're still receiving mail for her. It ranges from Catholic worker newspaper to the journal of the Insight Meditation Center in Barre MA. How else might we learn about the grim tale of the Foolish Monkey - http://www.dharma.org/ij/archives/1999a/ss_monkey.htm?

The work deadline that had been scheduled for Friday, in my mind, at leasst, is now the end of the day on Wednesday. Today and tomorrow may be a bit frantic. I'm pretty sure that I have enough time. The major difficulty comes from interesting interruptions.

We're heading into an odd season. This next month has most of the usual work challenges. I have an important deadline on Friday and I'm quite anxious about it. At the same time, however, many people, adults and children alike, have already checked out in anticipation of the holidays. People at work are talking about decorating the office area. It isn't often that the outside world infiltrates the workspace.

We had a delightful holiday, including another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. We met Jennie's father, step-mother, brother, and sister at the Publick House in Sturbridge. The meal and service were good, but the restaurant did a less than stellar job of scheduling. We arrived early and were seated right away. Others, though, had to wait a long time, filling up the hall and stairs. One of our party has MS and gets about with an electric scooter. Navigating through the crowds was quite a challenge.

Sandra and I stayed overnight in Northampton. We booked online and chose one of the better rooms, with a promised view of the park. When we arrived, we discovered that we had a view of the alley. After a discussion with the front desk, we were given another room. This time, we could look over the air conditioning units and vents from the restaurant and see the park - ing lot. We had good time in town all the same. It's refreshing to be in a place where not everyone is white and straight. We visited with Adam, Jennie, and Lily for Friday night supper.

George Washington Papers: Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation

I left work early yesterday so that I could get my car inspected. Massachusetts requires an inspection of all cars once a year or when the ownership changes. There is a basic safety inspection (lights, horn, etc.), but mostly it's an emissions check. My greenhouse gases were in good order. In years past, they'd jack the car up and check the tie rods. They'd also poke at the body to see if there were dangerous amounts of rust. One friend had patched his car with press plates from the local newspaper. You could read last month's news in reverse print on the fenders of his car.

I still get nervous during inspections, going back to my days of driving $250 cars. A friend called my Volkswagen a Rolls Canardly - it rolls down the hill and canardly make up the other side. Repairs were simple, though, usually requiring just a screwdriver, pliers, and the occasional hammer. One time, I was driving along and the engine caught fire. (Some oil had squirted out from the filler tube.) A few wires burned up before I could blow out the fire. I restarted the car and it ran fine. I never did find out what those wires did.

We've ordered cable television for my father for his 91st birthday next week. He'll be able to watch the Celtics games this winter; those games are only on cable.

My father worked construction. One day, it was so cold and windy that the bosses shut down the site and sent everyone home. My father arrived home and looked next door where his parents lived. My grandfather was on top of the roof, on top of a ladder, on top of a five-gallon bucket, swaying in the wind, trying to reconnect the TV antenna lead that had come loose. My father hollered, got my grandfather down, and went up there himself to finish the work. My grandfather was in his 70s at the time; my father would have been close to my age.

Earlier this spring, my father was having a problem with his sailboat. A cable had come slipped and the end had snapped up to the top of the mast. So, he gets on top of the boathouse, lassoes the top of the mast with a bit of rope, and tries to pull the mast close enough so he could reach the cable. He couldn't pull the mast (and boat) close enough. We arrived some time later, lowered the mast, retrieved the cable, and put things back in order.

Adam once observed, "It's a wonder that you're not any crazier than you are."

Want to feel old? A key contributor to the Firefox browser development team is 19. .Linux News: Open Source: Mozilla Firefox Browser Blazes Across the Globe

We had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. My brother-in-law, Scott and his wife Val hosted a delightful dinner for 18 or so. I sat at the kids' table and had a great time. Scott worked as a chef for many years and is able to plan, prepare, and present wonderful meals.

On the ride home from the Cape, Sandra and her mother sat in the back seat and sang in lovely harmony. They sang rounds ("Scotland's Burning), hymns ("That Old Rugged Cross" and "We Gather Together"), and others ("O Canada").

Popular Science is out with its second annual survey of the worst jobs in science: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,20967,713471,00.html.

It's a great comfort to look in the back yard and see all that new wood. Up close it smells good, too. We'll be warm this winter. I don't know how our wood guy makes a living at the prices he charges.

This should be a quiet week at work, with folks mentally checking out in advance of the holiday weekend.

Our niece, Rachael, is 26 today.

John Steinbeck observed that kids and dogs are the great ambassadors. When our boys were younger and involved in sports, it seemed as though we knew everyone in town. The same was true when we'd be walking our dogs around the neighborhood, particularly Bob and Raye, a pair of Springer spaniels. People would stop and talk with us; they'd pass us by if we were walking alone.

So, it was a surprise yesterday to find ourselves in places where we knew people. We just haven't been getting out much. We went to a local apple orchard to pick up a few things for the holidays and saw several people from our other home town. Last night we went to a musical production. A neighbor was a featured singer and had invited us. Imagine, Karl and Sandra out on a Saturday night. And we knew several people in the audience, although we had to coach each other on some of the names.

When we're at home on Sunday mornings, we get to enjoy a gospel music radio show on a local, 600 watt station, WCUW. The station was described by one reviewer as "quagmire of incompetence and apathy." Nevertheless, we've been listening to it for more than 20 years and the signal has gone silent just a few times.