“Have you ever seen the valle with snow on it?” “Yes.” *punch* ... “Ouch!” “Stupid! How can you see the valle with the snow in the way?” This exact conversation happened every year on gUe's birthday.

Poughkeepsie train bridge during the winter. A place where it actually gets cold in the winter.

Canyon de Chelly with snow.

I'm always so pleased with myself after shoveling the first snow storm from my driveway. By the time the second one comes along I am already tired of snow. At least that is the way it is in the Northeast. Today was one of those days that I am glad to be able to work from home. It looked like it was still coming down pretty hard at noonish, but I decided to start shoveling anyway, at least to make it easier to shovel for real when it stopped. However, while I was out there the flakes slowed, and then dissipated completely, and finally the sun came out. I took some photographs, but I am only going to post one because I was a dolt and was shooting with my digital set to 3200, so the quality sucks. Tonight I had dinner with Joe, Cicely and Brian. I'm going to miss Action Tuesday; mostly for the company though, and less for the TV.

One of my nice neighbors mowed my driveway with his snow blower. This made the overall task of making my front door accessible to the world a whole lot easer. This is just one small piece of evidence which suggests that humans are fundamentally good. I will be singing a different tune the next time some asshole cuts me off on the freeway of course.

What was 2004? It was a year of stolen and disputed elections in Georgia and the Ukraine, the rise and fall of Howard Dean and John Kerry, the first private space flight and the end of the "X-Prize," disaster in Darfur, prisoner abuse in Iraq, expansion of the European Union, the death of Ronald Regan and a month of flags at half mast, the return of Greek Olympics and a very smug presidential victory. In less political but tragic terms, the worst natural disaster in my memory has occurred in Asia as Tsunami death tolls top 135,000 according to CNN.com.

For me, the year started out as a bleak one in the coldest New York winter I have ever experienced. My mother came to visit me for her birthday. We stayed in Manhattan and it was bitterly cold.

Lowel and Johanna

I took a lighting class at Dutchess which was a blast. Some of my friends from Black and White II were taking the class and I met some other cool people. It was so much fun working with those people, including the teacher, Lowel Handler.

(Read more...)

In Short, 2004 was A Great Year and I have high hopes that 2005 will be even better.

Here is what a computer geek I am: while I was waiting to go over to brad's house for the Festivus last night I coded up a search engine for my web site using a SQL database and some perl. I don't really need one, I can grep for anything I want since I direct access to the files, and I don't get enough traffic to make it useful for anyone. It just seemed like an interesting thing to do. It may also have to do with the fact that in the winter months in New York, I don't really like to be outside when it's dark and cold.

See that little box up there by the twilight icon at the top of this page? Put in some text and type <ENTER> to find what you are looking for. For example, if you put "bradstock" in there you will find everything I have written about the annual back yard bash on my website.

I am going to go find something useful to do with myself.

It really sucks that it is dark at five o'clock. On the bright side, I will be skiing soon.