Got my powersupply.  No more thumb keyboards to check my e-mail.  Now maybe I can get something done.

No power supply yet, so I'm still down.  I have received notice, however, that it has been shipped.  But that was the middle of last week.  Hpefully, I'll get it this week.

Murphy Lives! 

Just as soon as I get all worked up to write something, my computer blows a power supply.  Now I'm fat fingering -- uh, thumbing -- this note of frustration on a thumb keyboard while I wait for Best Buy to get the necessary replacement part.  Probably take two weeks off my schedule at the very least.  Obviously I can't post much this way, so I'll just hope for the best in today's election to fill Kennedy's vacant seat.

Yes folks, I am going to take a few weeks away from xanga and the net in general to take care of some personal business and to devote some time to a book that I have gotten a decent start on, but which has been sadly neglected for more than a few months now due to my growing addiction to being online.  I'm not prepared to say too much about that book at this time except that I have much of the details written, but I am kind of floundering about looking for the ties that bind everything together into a single, coherent story worth reading.  I guess that's always really the hard part isn't it.  But never fear; I'll be back and will check in from time to time on an irregular basis.

In addition to the above, I expect that a brief respite will give be some time to forget about all the nonsense going on it Washington these days.  Both the Democrats and the Republicans at this point are really making me sick to my stomach.  I need to forget about them for a while.  So take care.  I will see you all again soon enough.

With record low temperatures all around the world, from China to Russia, from Norway to England, From India to Australia, and all over the United States and Canada, someone has now seen fit to cut Al Gore's freezing image into a block of ice.

You Gotta Love It.

Since we are coming out of the holiday season now, I thought it might be a good time to say something about hotel guests during the holiday.  Each Holiday Season, the hotel manager where I work likes to go all out and decorate the lobby and the dining area.  At halloween time, she puts out several of full size Audio-Animatronic gadgets you can buy in various shops.  One of the is a 6'6" figure of Count Dracula.  His eyes flash, he moves his head, and he talks.  His mouth and lip movements are synchronized with a dozen preprogrammed phrases built into a microchip in his heal that he randomly repeats (one per invocation) when activated by a motion sensor as people approach.  He is dressed in formal evening wear with a black and red cape, the coolest top hat, and a jewel studded walking cane.  Placed near the lobby entrance, he has momentarily startled more than one guest.

Every year since the manager started putting him out on display, guests have been trying to appropriate his hat, cane, and cape.  Some of them have asked if they could buy them; other guests have simply asked if they could have them; and a few have tried to steal them.  This year a man tried all three, asking first if he could have the hat.  When told he could not, he offered to buy it.  Not for sale, so he walked away.  A few hours later I noticed the hat was gone while I was on my way out to the van.  It turned up as the same guy was exiting the van at the airport.  He dropped it while trying to manage his luggage.  Being caught, he reluctantly returned it to me, and I recrowned The Count shortly thereafter.

Then comes Christmas.  At that time of year, the manager puts out a nice full tree with some very beautiful lights and ornaments, and inevitably each year, some guest will either not be able to control their young children, or they will not watch what they are doing with their luggage.  And of course this results in any number of ornaments being broken.  Last year someone even pulled the tree down.  This year, the breakfast hostess made the mistake of placing her favorite ornament on the tree to let everyone look at, and wouldn't you know it -- someone stole it.  Whatever possessed her to put that ornament out there I can not say, knowing guests as she does.  I can say that she was really upset, because she had that ornament for more than twenty years.  It had to be an adult or a teen, because it was placed up high enough that no child could have reached it.

So, what am I trying to say here?  Nothing really, except that people can really be thoughtless at times.  What do you think?

P.S. Before someone asks, no; I do not work for a Holiday Inn; but it is a neat play on words.

Except for two days of mid 40s weather last week, I have been in the freezer.  Temperatures have been down in the mid teens and low twenties for weeks, with winds bringing the chill factor to as low as -4 F degrees.  As I write this, the ambient air temperature outside is 15 degrees, and the winds are 22 miles an hour coming out of the North, making it feel like -2 degrees with the wind chill factored in.  They say we will have gusts to 45 miles an hour tonight.  This is supposed to keep up throughout next week. 

It has been the coldest Winter in these parts for a very, very long time, forcing me to wear winter gear in excess of what I have worn in the last 45 years.  A wind-tight, heavy overcoat with a hood, heavy arctic gloves because regular leather gloves just won't do, and I even wear a balaclava that completely covers my head, face, and neck, leaving only a 1" slit for my eyes.  Then I pull up the heavy weather hood to further protect against the bitter winds.  I may soon have to get a pair of insulated snow pants, and yesterday morning I thought that if it gets any colder, I'm going to have to buy a pair of ski goggles to keep my eyeballs from freezing. 

It's a good thing that I decided to get a heavy winter coat for Billie (the dog) too.  I bought it on the internet from a manufacturer in Wisconsin. (They should know something about heavy coats for dogs.)  It arrived just in time too, one day before the temperatures fell through the floor.  In winters past, he wouldn't have needed it (our average winter temp in Northern Virginia is 40 degrees and 60 degree weather on Christmas Day is not uncommon), but this year is different.  And as I sit here typing, I'm even thinking that maybe I should put his sweatshirt on under the coat for an extra layer.  After all, I'm wearing a heavy fleese top under my great coat;  why not him.

It's a good thing that I laid in all the extra provisions before the heavy snow came two weeks ago.  Now the only reason I have to go out in this miserable stuff is Billie.  Come what may, he still has to do his business, and living as I do in an urban area, he can't go out alone.

[EDIT Sunday 7am] -- Its now 10 degrees with winds at 26 mph.  Wind chill hit -9 a few seconds ago.

GPS systems are nice, and they will always manage to get you to where you want to go.  But sometimes all those options need to be attended to.  Case in point: a couple leaving Portland and trying to get home for Christmas let their GPS take them down a Forest Service Road and a few spur roads through the high desert of Eastern Oregon where they got stuck in snow for three days.  That's because they told the system to plot the shortest route for them.  It did just that.  But short is not always best or safe.

Ironically, what saved the couple from Nevada was the one thing on their cell phone that they could not control.  Though the battery was nearly drained, the GPS location signal, found on all cell phones manufactured during the last several years, managed to report a weak location signal to the 911 service they finally managed to reach.  A Lake County deputy found them in the Winema-Fremont National Forest outside the small town of Silver Lake on Sunday afternoon and pulled their four-wheel-drive Toyota Sequoia out of 1 1/2 feet of snow with a winch. 

Sometimes you need to change the option to have the system follow only the major highways.  A friend of mine found this out the hard way a few months ago and nearly ran out of gas taking a short route for a couple of hundred miles down a very lonely and deserted desert road.  Fortunately for him, he arrived at a small, one gas station town at 8pm, just as his onboard digital gas meter was indicating that he only had 1 gallon left.  He got lucky.  A few minutes more and he would have spent a cold night in his car.

So let these two examples be a lesson to you.  You should always know the capabilities of your equipment and when to use them.   

Another thing to remember when traveling outside your normal and known area (especially in winter conditions), is to carry some food, water, blanket, and extra warm clothes with you.  Our friends from Nevada did, and that may have saved their lives.