Here's my weatherman's secret. There's less to predict during the summer than now. What I mean is, if I say rain you really don't care how much. For snow you do.

The snow total has as much to do with cloud temperature as it does with moisture content. When Mother Nature sets her mind to it she can produce many feet of snow from a single inch of water. The fluffiest snow usually falls under conditions that produce a ground temperature near 15°F. That's unusually cold for snow here.

The funny part is in the end the number of inches you get hardly matters as long as it's over 2" and under 8". That's the vast majority of storms here. Any storm in that range will produce virtually the same effect in difficulty of travel and closings.

The storm coming Tuesday evening will be a pain for a different reason. It's likely to contain many different precipitation types, starting as snow and progressing through freezing rain and sleet to all rain. Phew. There will be mid-range snowfall accumulations inland with lesser amounts near the shore.

It's that icy stuff that's got me spooked.

I think this is from 1985. Wow!

The state of my industry is not good. This surprises a lot of people. It's true. This is not a good time to own a broadcast property.

Revenues are down. Some stations may still have a positive cash flow, but not after debt service is figured in. It's like being upside-down in a mortgage.

We are, by virtue of the technology allotted to us set-up to produce high cost newscasts. These shows are meant to be consumed en mass in a serial fashion, beginning-to-end at a scheduled time. The Internet provides virtually the opposite experience and the audience increasingly likes that.

I think all-the-time of what I can do next. I'm under contract so it's not a next week thing. I've got some interesting ideas. I have no idea if any of them would be a living.

I have watched Leo LaPorte. He is on 24/7--live and re-runs. In his studio, he runs the cameras and switcher and audio and everything else. It's a one-man-band operation. That doesn't scare me.

What he does is not mass market broadcasting. Leo's programming is tech oriented. I'm not sure there's anyone watching other than early adopters. Can this type of programming be successful with a less computer savvy audience?

Meanwhile, Leo is performing the jobs a dozen or more people used to do.

Society has become too efficient for its own good. We need fewer people--certainly fewer expensive people to perform most jobs. Maybe the Luddites were right?

So many jobs are dead end. So many jobs are low wage and low benefit. We are currently undergoing the largest economic shift of my lifetime.

Oh Google, master of the universe, why do you puzzle me so? I am but a middle-aged boy from Connecticut who speaks English and English only. Yet my Gmail account, often as not, displays ads in Japanese.

Gotcha--but I still don't speak Japanese.

This has been going on for a while. Maybe they've heard of my fascination with Asian women and decided to do me one better. Nah. Probably not.

If you can figure out why Google thinks I'm turning Japanese, I'm really turning Jpaanese, they really think so, would you let me know?

It was like one of those timing routes you hear about in the NFL--the one where the quarterback fires the ball to a spot on the field, perfectly meeting the receiver. We left Connecticut, drove to LaGuardia Airport and about three minutes later picked up Melissa, my niece flying in from Milwaukee.

Not much traffic today. The trip was a breeze in both directions.

On the way back I asked Melissa if she wanted to see where her mother and I grew up? It wasn't for Melissa. I needed to return to the scene of the crime.

It was a cold day and this isn't an out-of-doors kind of neighborhood under the best circumstances. The streets were full of cars and empty of people as I slid Helaine's 4Runner to the curb--a space reserved for me by a fire hydrant (I was only staying a few seconds--no citizen's arrest, please).

The apartment complex, originally built for electricians in Local 3, is called Electchester. This building, one of a few dozen in the complex, is 55 years old. There is neither warmth nor humanity in this stark, brick architecture.

The wall air conditioners you see were added decades after we first moved in. In the summer it was brutally hot with open windows and the added bonus of low flying planes on the way to LaGuardia.

Heading up Jewel Avenue past Pomonok, the city housing project across the street) the buildings looked smaller than I remembered them. I suspect 'smaller' is a common complaint when adults return to childhood haunts.

We didn't go inside. Outside is friendlier.

My niece Melissa is coming to visit tomorrow. That's a big occasion in this little family (I only have two nieces and one nephew). I'll be meeting her plane at LaGuardia in the morning.

Melissa will be glad to hear Helaine baked. Actually, she might not know the true implications of that last sentence. In that case I am glad Helaine baked for her!

Meanwhile the pre-Melissa house sprucing continues. A few minutes ago Helaine went to fire up the dishwasher and... nothing. Uh oh. I acted husbandly pushing all the buttons and looking concerned--nothing.

Down to the basement and the fuse box. Did you know breakers 29 and 31 are swapped? Me neither. I turned off the dishwasher's breaker only to hear Helaine say, "The TV and DVR just clicked off." Nice.

Finally after much head scratching Helaine asked, "What's this switch for?" It was a light switch mounted in a plate with two AC outlets near the splashboard behind the sink. I flicked it upward. Problem solved.

Nearly 20 years in this house and no one has ever noticed this switch! Not only that, no one had ever turned it off.

We're thinking of taking a cruise. I have some time off I have to take. We've got free airplane tickets. The cruise itself isn't that much more expensive than staying home and eating out.

Helaine read the specifics to me on the phone. "Plus there's the senior discount," she said. "Only one of us has to be over 55."

A senior discount. Seriously? This sucks. Can't I just pay the full price and we'll call it even? I'll make believe I'm still 23.

It's Friday. I know that on an intellectual level. There's a clock/calendar staring at me on this computer screen just-in-case.

On an emotional level I'm not sure what day this is. It's probably because I took New Year's Eve off, only had the late newscasts on New Year's Day and came to work in a mainly abandoned TV station today. It a rhythm thing I guess. No matter what the reason it's disconcerting.

I'll check with my folks later, but I'll bet calendar confusion runs rampant at the condo.

It's tough to talk about the upcoming weekend, aka-tomorrow, when my brain is telling me it's Monday. With two consecutive days off I should be back to normal by the 'real' Monday... I hope.

This afternoon I decided I'd go out and take pictures. It was a sparkling day though bitterly cold. I wore a sweatshirt under my coat along with 'convertible' fingerless gloves, work boots with thermal socks and earmuffs.

For equipment there was "Clicky," plus a wide and two telephoto zoom lenses. I have a new tripod--very lightweight. I took that too.

Photography is better when the Sun is low in the sky. I guess shadows are pleasing as is the redder color of late day sunlight. Photographers call it golden light.

I headed to Sleeping Giant looking for a brook that runs sometimes. Would there be enough melt to bring it to life? No.

I drove to the Mill River. It's a really picturesque spot, but I've been there too many times, especially in this weather.

Back up Mount Carmel I took a turn onto Hillfield-a very quiet rustic street. A half mile away Eatons Brook passes under the road in a culvert.

This is a little mutt of a brook, passing through backyards in zigs and zags. At Hillfield the downstream river takes a sharp left than back right over the course of fifty feet. For photographers this is perfect. All angles of the brook are easily accessible, often just by standing at the edge of the road.

Some folks were getting into a car in a driveway I half-blocked. "What's the name of the stream" I asked? They didn't know. I suspect it's nameless to most people. There are no signs.

This time of the year the river runs swiftly. As long as there's sunshine there's some melt every day. Rocks and other objects in the shallow bed are covered in snow to the waterline.

My last step was Jepps Brook. It's the HDR shot at the bottom of the stack. This time of year it's too snowy and slippery to walk to the river bank. This is another stream I shoot as it passes under a road.

I was out for a quick shoot in the neighborhood when I ran across these two guys along a creek bed around 100 yards in from the road. In order not to spook them I switched lenses and set the camera before leaving the car.

They seemed as curious about me as I was of them.

The house is quiet. I am playing poker. The TV is on. I've been watching Law and Order--original cast.

This is such an excellent show. Because of my hours it was difficult to appreciate first-run.

Obviously, the ensemble cast was great but the show also calls upon the huge pool of New York actors--and these are different than the people you see in Los Angeles.

This last episode had Richard Libertini in a smaller roll. That's a pretty good catch for episodic TV. Nancy Marchand is in this one. Same sentiment applies.

It's witty. It's clever. It's good enough to motivate me to watch it on TNT.

It's been snowing again. This makes three over the last week and a half. The winter's hardly begun.

Snow is beautiful to see (though because of its high albedo and limited tone range difficult to photograph). It's just a pain-in-the-ass to deal with!

The tendency is to stay inside. I could drive away right now and probably handle it without problem, but I can't trust the other drivers. They're probably saying the same thing about me.

Tonight it gets exceptionally cold--both thermometer and wind chill. The Weather Service has switched to "mom mode."

Who exactly will be in Times Square tonight? What kind of person will brave this weather in order to stand, penned up like cattle, as a backdrop for what is now at least a half dozen broadcasts.

On a day like today it seems like winter is eight months long. It's depressing. The summer is so much easier to deal with.

It's easier to find people with unusual names than common ones. If your name is Geoff Fox and Geoff is spelled with a "G" how tough can it be?

On the other hand it's been tough to find my freshman college roommate, Dan Weston. There are too many Dan Weston's (including that guy on TV for the Scooter Store). When last we spoke Dan was working for the PBS station in Hershey, PA. That was at least 30 years ago.

When I stumble across people I knew from college I ask about Dan. I just don't stumble into that many people... and having been on the accelerated dismissal program at Emerson College that's understandable.

That came from Paul Greengross in Los Angeles who I ran into on Facebook. No one wants to get this news.

While we were at Emerson, Dan's dad was a dentist. Somehow Dan got hold of a medical catalog and ordered all sorts of exotic condoms. They weren't for Dan nor me. Dan got a display case and sold them to fellow students!

I wish I would have found him sooner--obviously.

Be careful when going to Facebook. If you transpose two letters you're at the king of NSFW sites!

This is experience speaking.

"Are you OK?" Those were my first words after hello as I spoke to Helaine a few minutes ago. It was obvious something was up.

"We've been in line for an hour and twenty minutes," she said. She sounded dejected. There was more waiting to come.

Somewhere, somehow, Stef lost her driver's license. Though AAA is our secret shortcut to renewals, their website made it sound like they wouldn't issue a replacement. There was no choice but to head to the drab, low slung, obviously government built and maintained office on State Street. A case can be made it's functionally dysfunctional!

I haven't been in the DMV building in years. Its interior is still etched in my mind for the same reason I still recall details of my tonsillectomy... from 1952. We remember terror and pain.

By any metric this has got to be the DMV's worst week With Christmas and New Year's only a week apart and the end of the month, and the year, one business day away people are crazed. There is no place left to put off the inevitable.

Stef will be much more protective of her license in the future.