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The snow started in just after I got to work this morning, and by the time we were ready to break for lunch, it was pounding in at over 3 inches per hour. Since I had a half-day’s vacation on-deck for the afternoon, I headed for home after a celebratory end-of-the-year lunch with my group.

The ride in the Saab was, to say the least, harrowing. With a co-worker following behind, I figured the least-hilly, least-twisty route and padded my way toward home. Only once did I get out of third gear – when I found a stripe of road that had been recently plowed. Otherwise, it was a constant fight to stay within the tracks left by other drivers, and to keep from stopping at nearly any cost.

Thankfully, I made it home safely and the car is unscathed. I nosed it into the front yard on arrival, cleared the driveway and then gave the beastie one more brush-off before pulling it into the garage. Given the weather forecast, I doubt it’ll be doing much moving any time soon!

Considering that I’m not up for shelling out 80 bones per wheel for studded mountain bike tires, last night’s ride might be my last for a few weeks. It’s been a while since I’ve done a “by the numbers” post, so this seemed as worthy a subject as any!

• Starting Temperature: 25°
• Riders: Lucky 13!
• Snow at Ride Start: None
• Snow at Ride End: Enough
• Trails Run: 9
• Headlamp battery failures: 2 (luckily not mine!)
• Cursing at my frozen feet: Um… a lot.
• Cursing as I fell over backwards: Um… a lot.
• Cursing as I fell over sideways:: Um… a lot
• Cursing as I fell over my handebars: Um… a lot.

Interestingly (or amusingly?) enough, with the ground frozen solid and thinly coated by dusty snow, I actually felt more secure on the bike than on my feet!

In past lives, I’ve had the occasion to do a bit of computer consulting – and a handful of those consulting relationships have persisted to this day. In some cases, I helped people set up their home PCs, shake off malware infestations or set up wireless networks. In others, whole client-server networks were built up for small-town businesses that weren’t up for paying big-city prices.

Tonight’s story is about one such network: a pair of client PCs, strung with 100 megabit Ethernet to a shared file server, at a lawyer’s office in a town of 2,595 people. The firm epitomizes small-town business: one attorney, with some part-time administrative help, housed in an office space that was – at one time – the town’s first Savings-and-Loan. The old vault is still there, guarded by a big, black, squeaky metal door with a long-since-frozen lock and a musty plaster-clad interior about the size of a walk-in closet.

More…

Today, the United Auto Workers union proved that greed is still alive and well, and it’s going to make for one hell of a black friday:

The UAW, displaying its true colors like never before, refused to accept immediate cuts in wages and benefits that would have put its members on a par with workers at Toyota and Honda plants in the south.

No! The UAW has a contract that runs through 2011, president Ron Gettelfinger insisted, and no concessions will be forthcoming before that!

Fine, said Senate Republicans. Good luck to you, sir. No “bridge loan.” Good luck collecting your posh wages and benefits from companies in Chapter 11, fellas.

It’s only my long-held personal opinion, but as an employee whose job is on the line because of the UAW’s greed, I think it’s high time The General kicked them to the curb. We’ve got plenty of inventory (after all, car sales are in the worst slump in half-a-century) and – at least according to Rick Wagoner’s congressional testimony – we’re a few weeks from closing up shop anyway, so the time has come to part ways with the UAW. US jobless claims are higher than they’ve been in decades, so there are plenty of non-union people looking for work. Let’s show this Nation what the auto industry can really do to throw off the baggage of the past: Halt production, hire a new workforce, spend a few months training them, and hand the import manufacturers their asses on a platter.

OK, I need to go do some yoga or some breathing exercises or meditate or something.

(Hat tip: Northstar Writers Group)

I bought Eggbeaters. They work … real good.

Before:

After:

‘Nuff said.

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If you’ve spent any time at all browsing around DaveRea.com, you’ve probably noticed that our readers aren’t that big on that whole “commenting” thing. Sure, there are a few comments on the more-interesting or funnier posts, but the vast majority of posts slide their way down the blog with nary an indication that anyone’s actually read them. Actually, the only indication that I have is the site’s hosting stats, which list nearly 2000 non-robot visits per month. If I were to take the time to cull this down, account for the RSS feed readers and the spammers, I’m guessing that maybe only a few dozen (hundred? anyone? Bueller?) pairs of eyes actually read these posts – at most.

Which is fine! Heck, look at the tagline: “Stuff that I care about, but you’re free to disregard.” I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but I post here for my enjoyment. It’s fun to write, and it’s fun to have a forum where at least a few other folks can read what I write, or at least read the first sentence or two before they decide they’re going to go with the “disregard” option.

But all this got me thinking – why do some blogs get bucketloads of comments, while others (namely, mine) log them few and far-between? I found at least one article on the subject, but he leaves out one big factor – you could easily put in place all 10 of Rowse’s suggestions, but if you don’t write about things people want to comment on, you’re still not going to get any comments.

I’ve been meaning to get a polling system up and running here at DaveRea.com for a while now, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to take it for a test drive. It’d be great to hear from you if you want to discuss the finer points of blog commenting in the comments section – and trust me, I’ll be there – but if you’d rather stick to multiple choice, at least indulge me and poke a button in the poll above…

What kind of blog entries make you want to leave comments? If you don’t usually comment on blogs, is there a particular reason why? To steal the popular corporate request: “help us make DaveRea.com a better place!”

Yesterday, the smartphone world took a big step forward with the offer-for-sale of the Kogan Agora Android phone. Things were looking promising, openness was on the horizon, and all was well with the world.

And today, AT&T announced that they’ll be consolidating all of their smartphone offerings on one platform. According to AT&T, that platform will probably be the Symbian operating system.

The announcement is a mixed-bag for Android fans. While the excessively-optimistic among us will likely hold out hope that AT&T’s platform of choice will – through some kind of a miracle – be Android, it’s highly unlikely. And with the “Big Blue” of mobile carriers standardizing on Symbian, a lot of people are going to be left out in the cold when it comes to choice.

The upside? Every smartphone that AT&T standardizes over to Symbian is one more that won’t be infected with Windows Mobile. Ultimately, because The Symbian Foundation intends to open-source the OS, this will still mean a market shift toward open mobile computing, even if that openness doesn’t come from Android.

Quite a while back, I sniped out a quick post inquiring… “Does anybody read this?” Despite my stats indicating that DaveRea.com gets almost 2,000 unique, non-robot page views a month, the post received three comments.

One of those comments was from Pauley’s then-fiancee, now wife Yvonne, who requested recipes. Unfortunately, most of the blog-worthy stuff I’ve cooked in the ensuing months has contained meat, rendering the associated recipes useless to Yvonne, who is a vegetarian. Until recently (no, she didn’t suddenly become an omnivore, I just found a meatless recipe to share).

Steel-cut oatmeal is a fantastically-hearty but uncommon breakfast treat for me, in no small part because it takes a long time to prepare. But once you make it, watch out – it’s delicious. So, despite it being almost pathetically-simple, I decided to post a recipe for preparing this Rea family breakfast delicacy.

Steel Cut Oatmeal

1 cup Steel Cut Oats
4 cups water

Bring the water to a boil in a heavy saucepan. Add the oats. Reduce heat, and simmer for 45 minutes. Watch the pot carefully, and adjust the heat as needed to keep the mixture simmering gently.

It’s that easy, kids. I usually flavor mine with a little fruit jam or maple syrup, and if I’m feeling particularly adventurous I’ll add some raisins or dried cranberries. I haven’t tried mini-marshmallows yet, but I’m not ruling it out as a possibility. The cooked oats will keep for at least a week when refrigerated in a sealed container, and they’re just as good microwaved as they are fresh out of the pan.