Temperatures in the mid-50s (13C) have melted the snow on the ground and the ice on the ponds.
It's orange season again. Although we can get oranges from Chile throughout our summer, it's not quite the same. The oranges from Florida are showing up now and from California around the first of the year. Grandson Michael has been selling oranges to raise money for the high school band. We bought two boxes.

Tomorrow we'll go to the Cape to celebrate an early Thanksgiving with Sandra's family. Mike's family won't be going. Matt is in the Pop Warner Super Bowl in Leominster. We're sorry to miss the game.

So today is a day of errands. We'll see my father this afternoon. We'll learn if he was able to fix the hydraulic line on the snow plow.

Some 20 years ago we were visiting an aunt and uncle. We wanted to take them out for dinner. "Why should we go out? We have plenty of food here." Then, we offered to take them out for dessert. "Why should we go out? We have plenty of dessert here."

We remember that encounter often, first as a gentle mocking and then as a realization that we're becoming them. We have plenty of food, plenty of dessert. We try to break the routine, but the Newton's first law of motion is strong.

This morning we received the first of four cords of wood. The price is very good. It's green, but will be good by the spring.

I didn't quite make my work deadline yesterday. I was slow getting back to full stride and didn't get done all that I'd hoped. I expect to have this stage of the work completed by Monday afternoon.

Speaking of which, it's time to go there.

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

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

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

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

Yesterday morning the MacGregors sought a new home for their dog, Molly. A yellow Lab, Molly is just a year old and full of energy, too much energy for an adult household. She'll be great in a family with kids. We're a bit subdued around here, including Marley (our nearly nine-year-old black Lab).

Sandra's mother drove the car for the first time in a couple of months. It was a short trip, about a half a mile, and she felt quite good.

My mother often quoted William Blake, "Energy is an eternal delight." This cold of mine has dragged on far longer than necessary. I came home early from work yesterday and slept for several hours. I'm getting concerned about a project that has a deadline on Thursday. So I'll keep this short and go along to work.

Rhinovirus 1, Hakkarainen 0.

As I decide to home from work or not, I have one more factor to consider these days - how much will this cost me? If I don't go to work, I don't get paid, which is the reality for most workers around the world. The folks who are living paycheck to paycheck have to worry about this a lot more (http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=9717&poem=119763).

So, yesterday I stayed home from work and spent the day in my red, flannel pajamas (you needed that image, right?) and mostly slept. It was a busy household. A visiting nurse came to see Sandra's mother. Sandra and her father prepared us for the snow, bringing in wood, getting the shovels and scrapers from the back shed. It's a bustling enterprise here on Fridays.

The snow was about as predicted, two to three inches of fluffy stuff. This morning I'll get the bird feeders filled up. The cardinals are stunning against the white landscape.

In Flanders Fields - by John Macrae

With the baseball season over, most excellent that it was, it's time to resume my grandparental training. Last night I watched SpongeBob SquarePants. I also eagerly await the movie. The younger generation calls me Iso, short for Isoisä, Finnish for grandfather (old father, really). Sandra is known as Buppy, aka the Bupster. Lily used to call us buppyandiso, even when talking to us individually.

Lately I've wrestled with software problems that ought to take about 15 seconds and, instead, use up the better part of a day. Some of it is my own doing as I resist the most obvious solution - uninstall and reinstall the software. If we had to take out the engine and put it back when our car wouldn't start, we might get more than a little upset. Imagine if doctors treated us that way when we came in with a headache. With software, however, we have an incredible tolerance for bad design and worse support.

Friend T. finished the New York Marathon this past Sunday, her second time running New York and third marathon overall.

The weather forecast for Friday afternoon are suggesting that we might get our first substantial snow of the season. Our snowblower is still in the back yard. Last year I had to pour gasoline into the carburetor to get it started. My commute is much shorter than in years past, but there are still plenty of opportunities for adventure in the season's first snow.

Sandra's mother and father returned from the Cape yesterday morning. Her doctor has scheduled some follow-up evaluations.

Whenever we discuss someone else's life, particularly someone's health, we walk up to the line of privacy and may occasionally step over it. The challenge is to keep family and friends informed while respecting the privacy that each person deserves. We may make mistakes, but they're always in the spirit of trying to be helpful.

I had a nice chat with Beverly at the Cardigan PEI post office. I'd called to find more about continuing to have their mail forwarded down here. "And how is Woody?" she asked. Cardigan is a town of 200 on the east coast of the island.

We had a few snow flurries last night, just enough to remind us who is in charge.

This morning Mozilla released its 1.0 version of Firefox, an excellent web browser. It has better security that Internet Explorer and some nice features, such as tabbed browsing. It also supports a number of extensions, add-on utilities that make web browsing easier and more fun. I've used early versions since June and quickly made it my default browser. If you're interested, you can find out more at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/. A note of caution, though - the servers are apt to be very busy today because of the new release.

Sandra's mother was hospitalized briefly at the Cape yesterday. She seems to be doing ok and is coming home this morning. Woody has canceled a planned trip with Adam to Prince Edward Island to finish the winter preparations.

Cell phones have become a key part of lives, haven't they? Sandra and I were at the camp when her sister, Barbara, called to tell us that their mother wasn't well. We don't have a landline phone there and so rely on the cell phone as our link to the outside world. In turn we were able to keep in touch with others in the family, even though no one was at home.

Although the pace of the Always On life has slowed a good bit since I changed jobs, I and we spend a lot of our day electronically connected. The phone is always there, email, instant messaging, and the Web often. My father likes to remind us that, when he was a kid, commercial radio didn't exist.

The leaves are down in the woods, letting sunlight shine on the camp road. For the warmer months, the camp road is a tunnel, but now we drive through sun and shadows. The mice at the camp are getting ready for winter. They found a package of peanuts and had themselves a fine feast. We've put the other edible goodies into the refrigerator.

Baby Cassandra hasn't been sleeping much. Mike and Lynn have remarkable endurance and reservoirs of good humor.

One of the best things for that which ails you is to watch a group of six-year-olds play soccer on a cool fall afternoon. There aren't lines of offense and defense so much as there are clouds of probability around the ball, energy barely contained. "Kick it with your left foot," the coach said. "No, the other left." The final score was something like 8-8. They played without goalies.

With the leaves down, you can see a lot further in November, but there's not as much to look at.

We'll go to the camp today to continue to close up the place. We'll also go to our favorite apple farm (http://www.redapplefarm.com) and then go to my father's. He seems to have things pretty well under control these days, but there are the occasional heavy-lifting chores that require some help.

Did you know that you can buy motorcycle insurance through the AARP?

Got Mouse? The Meow Mix Cafe - http://www.meowmix.com/newsevents/meowcafe.asp - is the first restaurant for cats.

It's been said that one of the keys to serenity and clear thinking is gratitude. There isn't a day that passes that I don't say, to myself always and to others often, "I work hard, but this isn't hard work."

The technology that delivers our important news continues to evolve. Ten years ago, Sandra called me on my cell phone to tell me about Joe's birth; I was driving on Interstate 495 at the time. A few years later, I learned about Tess while I was driving Route 101 in Silicon Valley, California.

So, it was expected that Mike would call me on my cell phone with the announcement of Cassandra. What's new is that much of the news spread via instant messenger. Matt was online at the time and sent the news to all of the people in his buddy list. As a result, some kid named Tony heard about the baby before Michael Francis did. Michael Francis was at football practice at the time. He informed his friend Erin via IM as well.

After visiting at the hospital, Matt rode back with me. We talked a bit about music and stuff. I was gratified to learn that I wasn't totally clueless. I knew the names of his favorite band (Linkin Park) and radio station (Kiss-108). A supra-middle-aged guy trying to be hip about music isn't always the most attractive sight in the world, but Matt was polite.

Cassandra Joan Hakkarainen (http://www.queenlake.com/pictures/Cassandra/) was born at 3:30PM on Wednesday, 3 November 2004, eight pounds and 20 inches. She and her mother are doing fine, with all of her family delighted beyond words.

Marley came upstairs and settled down on the floor at the foot of our bed, something that he typically does only during bad thunderstorms.

At the time of this writing, we're waiting for final election results from Ohio that will give President Bush the victory. Senator Kerry hasn't conceded and there may be a court fight. There's little doubt, though, about the outcome.

Texas football coach Darrell Royal used to say, when you get to the end zone, act like you've been there before.

We're due to get a new grandchild today. Sandra's father has gone to Mike & Lynn's to get the other kids off to school. M&L needed to be at the hospital by 7:00. Sandra and I will pick up the kids this evening and, we hope, take them to the hospital to meet their new sib.

Election Day. Finally. Sandra and I will vote this morning on our way to work. I recently learned that the New Hampshire towns of Hart's Location and Dixville Notch started the tradition of voting at midnight because so many of the people in those small towns work for the railroad and wouldn't be able to vote during normal hours. Those two towns typically vote Republican. This year is no different.

Our seventh grandchild is due tomorrow. Lynn will go to the hospital in the early morning. We'll feed the other kids in the evening and then go to the hospital to meet the new little one.

Over the weekend a friend gave me a pound of Roaster Boy coffee. It's a rich and smooth blend, strong enough to rally the troops at the start of the day.

Morning frost is routine now. The weekend forecast suggests that we may see a bit of snow. Our snow blower still needs a tune-up.

At work I'm handing off old assignments so that I can work full-time on my new project. I have a meeting this morning with another writer to discuss the transfer. After that I will try to find a conference room with a big white board where I can sketch out my ideas. It's a time of creative thrashing.

Sandra gave me a mirror so that I can see behind me as people come into my office. I've read that mirrors are the aspirin of feng shui.

"I should have listened to my mother."

"About what?"

"I don't know. That's why I should have listened."

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.