Woke up this morning to 8 inches of new snow – the roads were a killer, but it sure looks cool! And it was good snow. The neighbor kid should have waited 12 hours to attack. I would have OWNED!

My neighbor called me and asked if I was driving in, and if he could hitch a ride (I have the 4WD). As expected, once we hit the road we found that people around here don't know how to drive when the snow starts to accumulate. It took a lot longer than usual to get to work this morning, but sitting in the roadway behind a stuck semi truck, one is able to see things that one does not normally get a chance to see when moving along at 40 or 50 miles an hour. Hey - Where'd those train tracks come from??

I don't think I will be staying at work the full day. It sounds like the roads will freeze, which will mean much worse driving, so heading home early sounds like the best idea.

Maybe even make a snowman if we get back home in time? If the snow's still there. We'll see.

It started snowing yesterday, and this afternoon it picked back up, and now all of a sudden we have nearly two inches on the ground, and it’s still coming down at a pretty good clip. Just a few years ago, if I read these same words I would have laughed and said something like, “What – two inches? So what???” But I am much older and lamer than that now, and the fact is that it almost never snows here in any appreciable amount, so I am kind of excited. Add the fact that I live in the middle of nowhere and the roads SUCK when it snows or gets icy, and I feel like a kid again.

Speaking of which, the neighbor kid (who’s really a polite, smart, well-behaved 10-year-old) rings my doorbell this evening at dusk. It’s like 30 degrees outside and it’s snowing like crazy, and he’s standing in the front lawn as I open the door and peer out, with this crazed-little-kid look on his face (you know, the look they get when they’ve stepped over an invisible line and just can’t seem to make themselves go back). He’s not saying anything, and has a strange look on his face like he's trying to make a decision - or maybe he's battling with one he's already made, so I ask him, “Why are you standing out there in the snow?” The psycho grin grows across his face, and next thing I know, a huge snow/slush ball is hurtling toward me.

I'm standing in my doorway, on the entry floor, no shoes on. Wet ball of snow hits the door frame next to my left shoulder. Ah hah!

It wasn’t until a few seconds later that he realized exactly what he’d done (or maybe he suddenly got to the consequences part of the think-cycle). He spun in the snow, screamed in panic, and ran off.

I found him 5 minutes later, hiding in the trees, crazed again and apparently waiting for me to come find him. He had 5 snowballs at the ready. It was almost dark, but I heard him sneer, “This is WAR!” and he then proceeded to miss me, five times. But it was a good try.

So, for my part I made sure he had plenty of snow down the back of his jacket before we finished, and all was good. And for the record he managed to hit me a few times with his snowball stash in the process. All in all, I think it's safe to say that while I came out on the dryer side of the battle, he won the war.

Cold weather will make you do unusual things, won't it?

Ah, snow.

Nice - Tablet PCs can actually be useful, I am finding this out. This may not be the best example, but it does show how a little ingenuity and taking a little time to make things work together can change the way things are used. Not that this is an original idea - quite the contrary - but while others are out there writing special programs to do this, I just used existing programs with features that - when combined - allow this to happen. And, I thought of it and executed it in a matter of 30 minutes. All I need is my Tablet PC, Outlook 2003 installed, dasBlog on the server side, and finally a wired or wireless Internet connection, and I can do this. It's nifty.

Technology certainly continues to grow and change.

Testing my first post made via an email message to the new weblog. dasBlog now allows you to post with an html email, which is very cool for those of us that use Outlook a lot. Supposedly you can also post inline images – very nice!

I can see lots of possible applications for this, especially at work - avoids having to send an email and publish the content to a web site separately, and on top of that, RSS syndication of the post as well…. /me *drools*

Well – We shall see – if this post shows up on the site, it actually works and we are good to go!

- g