Four inches of snow fell last night, and I'm sorry to admit that that's a lot of snow for this area these days.

This could end up being the biggest snowfall we get this season and that really sucks.

Winters were a lot more interesting when I was a kid.

Not so much of a report this time as simply an update.

Cone Smoker #2 is back! At least for now.

That is all.

The images I create never end up looking the want I imagine them when I first start out.

Case in point - this new image was way cooler in my head than the way Vue D'Esprit rendered it.

It may come as a shock to those who know me but I'm not a particularly giving person when it comes to charities.

My donations are usually limited to things like throwing some change in the Salvation Army buckets, giving a check to the local Volunteer Fire Department, and buying Girl Scout cookies.

One of my pet peeves is when people ambush you looking for donations. Whether it's the March of Dimes laying in wait at freeway exit ramps, or homeless fiddle players at bus stops, I just end up getting annoyed.

And unfortunately, perhaps because of people like me that don't go around throwing money at strangers, the trend of active vs passive donation seeking is increasing. I'm sure the proliferation of credit and debit cards, and the resulting lack of cash-carrying, has something to do with it as well.

This trend reached its highest level for me the other day at a Taco Bell drive-thru. A damn drive-thru window. When I drove up to pay the guy asked me if I'd like to purchase a star (or maybe a tree) with my name on it to help some organization or another. I didn't really pay attention, I just reflexively said "no thanks" while feeling shocked that now even drive-thru windows weren't safe.

I know that there are a lot of organizations out there that do good things, and that these organization need money to function, but if I gave money to every group that had their hand out I'd need to start soliciting to feed myself. I have to prioritize, and one of the measurements I use to do that is - How annoying is the group in question?

Unfortunately that annoyance factor is becoming less and less useful as more and more groups are relying on the ambush method of fundraising.

The results of a personality test I took:

As I put up more Christmas decorations this year than any before, I can't help but be reminded of perhaps the most festive, and certainly the most memorable, Christmas decoration of all.

From my sister Neisha's web page back in the year 2000, ladies and gentlemen, selected images from The Penis Tree.

Here's the original, before it was blown up and severely trimmed for web use.

Just goes to show you, those penises are sneaky. You never know where they'll raise their, um, ugly heads.

I continue to play with Bryce, and some interesting new skies that I've downloaded, so I'm able to push another crappy image out of gallery 5 and replace it with a less crappy one.

I present "moonshine" for your viewing pleasure.

Star of, fittingly enough, "The Hot Chick", Rachel McAdams is my December 6th Hottie of the Day.

One of very few that make me wish I were twenty years younger.

Tonights tastings are bound to be slanted by two factors: the lack of sleep caused by last night's supernap, and the fact that I'm coming down with the Kentuckiana Death Flu or something.

Anyway, I went into Rich O's and actually followed my own advice by not making Cone Smoker my first beer of the night.

My first beer was, in fact, a Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar. It wasn't the worst beer I've ever tasted (that would be skunked Beck's Dark) and it wasn't the best (Alaskan Amber Ale) either but it was quite drinkable. It also solved a little mini-mystery of mine when I realized that the undefinable taste and smell could be attributed to hazelnuts, of all things.

My second experiment of the night was Spezial Rauchbeir Lager. Though this is supposedly a rauchbier, I could detect no smoke whatsoever. Perhaps someone working at the brewery is a chain-smoker, and that's how they feel justified in calling this a rauchbier.

Anyway, it was pretty good, for a lager. If I had to pick a single word to describe it, that word would be "thick" and that description would help no one.

Lastly, I had a Cone Smoker, and it was the best thing I had tonight. Its ever-changing flavor had landed back on style #1, which is really quite good. Smoke, malt, a slight hop background. Yummy.

Playing with Bryce today and made this image.

It's not very good, but it's worlds better than the Gallery 5 image it replaced.