When we went to bed on Wednesday night, most of the weekend’s snow had melted. We were woken around 5:30am by two large thunder claps, attributed to thun­der­snow. The snow was falling again and fell for most of the day.

We were sensible and stayed home. So, it seems, did almost everyone else at Cozi. I worked remotely for part of the day. Otherwise, we watched movies. I felt no desire to go outside and make snowmen, though we certainly could have.

We fly to Ireland on Saturday morning. I’m a little worried about getting to the airport.

I’m Irish. I was raised on butter. Not margarine. Butter. Good Irish butter. Yellow, creamy, with a little salt.

Melted onto toast. A soft yellow layer on bread. A pat of butter on your potatoes. Fry your eggs in butter. Let butter melt on your chips.

I knew butter was important in baking, but I didn’t realize until today how carefully it should be treated:

The most common mistakes made by home bakers, pro­fes­sion­als say, have to do with the care and handling of one ingredient: butter. Creaming butter correctly, keeping butter doughs cold, and starting with fresh, good-tasting butter are vital details that pro­fes­sion­als take for granted, and home bakers often miss.

Butter is basically an emulsion of water in …continue.

My friends Frank and Lyndol met 32 years ago today, the day they celebrate as their an­niver­sary. For several years, Emma and I have brought them out for dinner on this date. We also celebrate Lyn’s birthday, which falls next week.

Frank’s health has been poor for some years, but it’s grown worse this year. He spent six weeks in hospital in September and October. He’s home now, but he’s in hospice care.

Naturally, we try to see him often, since he rarely feels strong enough to leave the house, even in a wheelchair. We almost always find him in good form, glad to see us and ready with his stories.

He’s somewhat stronger than when …continue.

Jeremy Wheale is ‘a grey little man in a grey little job’ who doesn’t fit in well in swinging London. His brother is murdered and he finds himself embroiled in the search for a lost Mayan city in the Yucutan peninsula. His companions are a rich old ar­chae­ol­o­gist, a paranoid young ar­chae­ol­o­gist, and his attractive wife. Somewhere out in the jungle is a Mafia don who’s convinced that there’s a hoard of gold in Uaxuanoc.

Wheale is an ordinary man who rises to the occasion. As the tension grows, he finds …continue.

It snowed in Seattle yesterday. We drove over to Sammamish last night to my CEO’s house for the Holiday Party. The snow wasn’t sticking to the roads, so although visibility wasn’t great, getting there and back was not difficult.

It was cold today and colder tonight. I saw only a light dusting of snow fall today, but the snow that was melting earlier has refrozen.

We had to go out this evening, over to Burien to see Frank. The main roads were fine, but we had a slightly alarming descent on a hill near us as we headed over there. Coming home, we had a couple of unpleasant minutes trying to get up a hill near Frank’s. The …continue.

Lots of new babies around.

Dilip in North Carolina emailed me the other day and mentioned the recent birth of his daughter, Anuragini. And Alan in Dublin emailed me this morning, to tell me of the birth of his daughter, Beth.

My sister, Michelle Bowles, is due to give birth on the 19th to the first Reilly grandchild. We arrive in Dublin on the 21st. First babies tend to be born late, so we may get there before the baby does. She and David have elected not to learn the gender of the baby, so I addressed their Christmas card to "Michelle, David, and TBD".

It seems like all of my mother’s friends have had …continue.

(As I mentioned last night, I read Ac­celeran­do (Wikipedia) in Stanza on my iPhone on the bus.)

Ac­celeran­do is a set of connected short stories following three gen­er­a­tions of the Macx family around the Sin­gu­lar­i­ty. The ideas fly thick and fast (and somewhat con­fus­ing­ly): minds uploaded into virtual machines, nan­otech­nol­o­gy, posthumans, lobsters brainscans uplifted into space, an in­de­pen­dent-minded AI in a cat’s body, economics, …

Thought-provoking and en­ter­tain­ing.

Emma had a chance to play with Jacob’s Kindle (Amazon, Wikipedia) today, while I looked on.

The electronic paper screen is one of the big selling points. We found the text to be very readable, albeit black-and-white. It works very well for its primary use case—dis­play­ing book pages with minimal battery drain—but it’s sluggish when updating menus.

I’m not impressed by the design of the case. The buttons on the side are far too big; the keyboard at the bottom is ridiculous. It would be in­ter­est­ing to see what Apple could do.

I’ve been using Stanza on my iPhone for the last couple of months, mostly to read Ac­celeran­do on the bus. I like it, …continue.

Since the summer, I’ve been working on and off on a mobile site for Cozi. Chris, one of our interns, did a lot of the initial work. Getting it to a deployable state has been my primary focus over the last few weeks.

I’m happy to say that as of today m.cozi.com is in public beta. Will wrote a little about it at the Cozi Blog; take a look at the promo.

Currently, the mobile site supports shopping lists and the calendar. In the calendar, you can view, create, and edit your ap­point­ments. On the shopping page, you can update your shopping lists and cross off items as you move through …continue.

We’ve gone high-def over the last month. First, Emma bought a 42" 1080p plasma Panasonic HDTV to replace the 32" CRT TV in our living room. Although it’s wider, it’s not over­whelm­ing, as the slender box sits further back. The picture’s pretty good—at least when you give it a good signal.

To take advantage of it required a cascade of upgrades. Our old TiVo served us well for eight years; ap­point­ment TV has long been alien to us. It’s dis­con­nect­ed now, replaced the other day by a DirecTV Plus DVR and a new satellite dish. I had heard bad things about the older DirecTV DVRs, but I have no complaints about this one yet.

I …continue.