Man, I don’t even remember Syracuse being this cold.

Here’s a snapshot of the current weather.com page for Cambridge. I am so glad I’ll be watching tonight’s game snuggled on the couch instead of popsicling in Foxboro.

I had to clean all the frost off my car this morning, for the first time this winter. Brr. Grr.

I missed the last storm. While Boston was being buried, I was snorkeling off the Similand Islands near Phuket, where I took this picture of a lonely longtail.

Looks kinda nice, eh?

I don’t miss Thailand at all. Not at all. Not even if it’s 85 degrees warmer there.

Which it is.

Ok, so I seldom write about political topics, but I ran across this story — thanks Anil Dash — and the commercial a conservative advocacy group is running in Iowa is just hilarious.

In the ad, a farmer says he thinks that “Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading …” before the farmer’s wife then finishes the sentence: “… Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs.”

So, here’s my score:

Tax-hiking:
Not as a rule, though trillion-dollar budget deficits aren’t much fun either

Government-expanding:
Again, not as a rule; but it’s a complicated world and there may be times the government is needed

Latte-drinking:
Sure, though I generally prefer mocha if I’m going this way

Sushi-eating:
Hell, yeah. Yum!

Volvo-driving:
Nope, my car’s German, not Swedish

New York Times-reading:
Well, I work for them. Is that worse?

Hollywood-loving:
Naw, nothing good on TV now that Firefly got cancelled.

Left-wing:
Perhaps. I’m more attached to my personal freedoms than to my checkbook. Maybe Dan’s right and I should vote libertarian.

Freak show:
Guilty

Hmm, maybe I should check out this Dr. Howard Dean, he seems like a hell of a better guy than this bile-spewing farmer. Why does he hate America?

As I’m working on the Thailand travelogue, I’ll post some of my favorite pictures as a tease

Here is a baby elephant, just eight days old at the time of this picture. We saw him and his mother at an elephant show in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

If you like this photo, please check out the rest of my elephant photos.

Collecting Dead Presidents from Dead Peasants.

Didn’t Rush Limbaugh used to be pro-law and order?

Social networking sites are not very secure.

Matt Haughey has some ideas for new types of social software.

Craftsmanship is, of course, incredibly expensive.

The left-blinker is perpetually activated on this VW Microbus.

We have an article this week talking about how some folks’ blogs have cost them their jobs.

Michael Hanscom learned the hard way. Hanscom worked at a printing shop in the Redmond, Wash., headquarters of Microsoft Corp. He’s an avid ”blogger” – one of about 2 million people worldwide who publish Internet diaries about their activities and interests. Bloggers write about every imaginable topic, from politics to religion to sex. But some bloggers tackle perhaps the riskiest topic of all – their jobs.

That’s how Hanscom found himself unemployed. Last October, he published in his blog a photo of a pallet of Apple Macintosh computers being delivered to Microsoft headquarters. The following week Hanscom was fired for allegedly violating a confidentiality agreement he’d signed when Microsoft hired him.

Most of this falls under the rubric of common sense — it’s not overly smart to complain about your job in a heavily indexed environment.

You’d think Hiawatha Bray could have plugged the Job Blog in the piece, though. Damn editorial integrity.

Operation Better Jason continues.

2003 was a year of transition, bringing closure to old parts of my life while setting the stage for new adventures.

2004 is looking like a momentous year. I can’t wait.