Snow Day

Our daughter came into our bedroom early this morning and climbed into bed with us, which she hasn't done for quite some time. Thus it was that her face was about two inches from mine when I told her that her school was starting two hours late today, and her eyes snapped right open, while a grin of great delight popped up. She's outside now, shoveling the driveway to earn some money for a charity, while I am in here looking out at the mound of snow that's sitting on the deck railing, watching the snow ghosting off the roof of the garage, and the snow-covered evergreens in the corner of the yard, as the wind kicks up. The evergreens frame the barn and outbuildings in the field beyond, bathed this morning in a bluish light and a halo of snow. It's a pretty sight.

I was thinking about news and headlines last night. One of the Sunday papers carries an insert magazine called Parade, which usually has a page of questions about actors and what's going on with their lives. Though I'd like to think that I'm superior to all of that, the truth is that I'm not, so, to assuage my conscience, I came up with a personal rule: if I could see myself asking the question in public, then I could read the answer. That effectively lops off about half the questions, and of the remainder, about two thirds are of no interest to me -- the 'who played the third assistant detective in the old Kojak series' kind of thing.

I thought about that rule when I was writing a blog entry last night about headlines, wondering why certain items appear, or, why they appear so often. When Hunter Thompson committed suicide, I could understand why the article appeared, but not why it continued to appear over multiple days. Even given that Google was simply repeating what it detected as the most popular stories, and therefore was essentially reflecting the path of the article through secondary news outlets (its shelf life, you might say) , it seemed to me that it was tacky to keep posting the article and its clones. What's next, I'd grumble: Hunter Thompson Still Dead ? Then I applied my Parade rule. If you can't see yourself asking, don't read the article. Don't notice it at all. Funny how I need to tell myself these things.

A clump of snow just slid off one of the upper branches of an evergreen as a bird took flight. Something graceful about watching the snow cascading down. Though lately, when its chilly out, I find myself still thinking of the snow scenes in the apocalyptic movie The Day After Tomorrow, and I shiver just a bit.

A shiver of a different sort: saw an article about the Honda Accord 2005 hybrid... Nice.

We received a shipment notification from Dell that our laptop should arrive on Monday or Tuesday. Ordering the laptop -- our recognition that we had reached gridlock in our access to the PC, let alone to the Internet -- was a fairly easy decision, though, as is our wont, we had kicked the idea around for quite some time. And entering the order was simple -- even though the site is cluttered with options that aren't always comprehensible (want the Gmax 400Q or the UltraWhoop 6000?), and even though the order page goes on for two more pages than it should, to give them the chance to push all sorts of things (printers, cameras, additional software, PDAs, services) that have little, if anything, to do with computers, its still a pretty organized process whose goal is to get you to the point where you click the image to say 'Ship it, Mike'.

Changing the order is a whole different ball game. Dell may pat itself on the back for its 'award-winning customer service', but either that award is several years old or its for something like 'Best Use of Pencils'. Its not impossible to change the order -- in fact, they have a page that says it exists for that purpose -- but it takes a lot of time and effort. I won't go into the tawdry details. Suffice it to say, when you order from Dell, get it right the first time, and don't push the button until you're absolutely sure. And read every option, too: I didn't realize that the available hard drives spun at different speeds until a friend pointed it out to me. Not that that info wasn't available -- it was: two pages down into a 'Help Me Choose' option.

Dell also says that they're going to send my name to PC Magazine for a free subscription. No 'would you like us to do this' option. We're doing it -- get over it. I do truly dislike that style of institutional arrogance. Same thing with the page that says I must accept their 'terms and conditions'. What terms? You build, I give you money, you send it? Ah...no. Considerably more than that. Reflecting the articles on NPR and in the Washington Post, I'll bet there's something in there about binding arbitration and 'governed by the laws of the state of Texas', too.

But its coming, and that's good. So's the weekend, come to think of it.