A quiet day of work, while listening to the frozen wind howl...  spent a lot of time directing traffic.  You would think I’ve used up my life’s quota of sent emails by now.  And *sigh* I have not ridden in three days (bad prep for my first double in six months, coming up this Saturday...)

I survived a brush with near-computer-death; I successfully upgraded from Norton Antivirus 2003 to NAV 2009.  And not only was it a relatively smooth upgrade, but now that it's done, my computer feels faster.  I know, precelebration is the root of all failure, but so far I'm delighted by the non-fiasco. 

And in a related move, I upgraded from IE7 to IE8.  So far so good, although it perpetuates the Microsoft tradition of being incompatible with everything and forcing everyone else to adapt.

Still to do: upgrading SQLServer to SP3.  That also has real disaster potential.

Powerline wonders are we going bankrupt?  "One wonders whether a people as feckless as we evidently are deserves to survive."  It is depressing. 

ABC reports JPMorgan Chase, a recipient of TARP funds, is proceeding with a $138M plan to buy two new corporate jets.  Even if this makes sense (and it could) the optics are horrible.  Wow. 

Instapundit collects a list of MSM criticisms of Obama.  Buyer's remorse is definitely setting in. 

I have a confession to make: last night I watched Dancing with the Stars.  Well just part of it; I had to see Steve Wozniak dance.  And I must tell you, he doesn't suck, but he doesn't belong in this competition either.  It was in fact the perfect example of a dancing bear - cool, but not useful.  CNet's take: the Worm turns sour. 

Really useful: Smiley Icons.  Both graphic and ASCII...    :) 

Michael Barry, a rider on Columbia Highroad, blogs about the Milan - San Remo race (which his teammate Mark Cavendish won).  I love these "inside the peloton" type of reports. 

I keep thinking I have to play with Yahoo Pipes.  "Yahoo Pipes provides an interactive, web-based way to manipulate information from the web in order to create custom feeds and web apps. With its graph-based, Lego-like GUI you can pull data from RSS sources, Flickr, Yahoo search, arbitrary web pages, and more."  It has been out for two years now, and seems like it should be really useful, but somehow it is just a solution looking for a problem.  Maybe if I just tried it, I'd think things I could do with it... 

Here we have...  a creationist museum in California!
The mind boggles.  [ via LGF ] 

ZooBorn of the day: a fluffy little porcupine.