No snowplows would have been better

Big snowfall this morning. And that's normally good, cause we like snow. But apparently every city in the area fired all people who know how to watch the weather report. So, it was almost un-driveable all the way from my driveway to Lawrence. Very little evidence of plowing, and mostly quite dumb. Like, the ramps from K7 to K10, not plowed. Barely passable at 5 mph. In fact, I only saw two plows the whole time, both on K10. And both were being marginally useful, severely impeding traffic and one actually tried to kill someone; dropped a side blade almost on top of a Civic who was about to pass, that threw so much snow in the air I (50 m back) had zero visibility for way too long. Then the plow veered from the left lane all the way to exit on the right. All in all, it might have been more helpful to just have zero plows and we make our own way entirely.

All scooter people can go !@#$ themselves

I am seeing this more and more, as scooters become more popular: No one knows how to drive them. This is a huge problem to me, in a car. I know most of them can go at least 30, they aren't that underpowered, yet I routinely run across scooters that won't go over 20. And today, just now, on the way home I had the best example of it. Smoking, driving 21 in a 30, way off to the side, and keeps waving me around. My issue: it's functionally a car, and there is a double yellow line. I have indeed gotten a ticket for passing someone on that very road. I am not gonna pass him. Please, if you drive a scooter, pay attention. Pretend you live out in the world, and are driving a vehicle down a road, cause you are.

Microsoft reorganizes oddly

Its not just me. I read this release about a change of the Mobile division yesterday, and found a lot odd with it. Later in the day, a whole spate of new promotions were revealed. Happy V-day, executives! And today, though it focuses on another appointment mostly this editorial, also at eWeek, starts to talk about how odd Microsoft's choices of leadership are. Since I am more mobile, we'll take on the new mobile stuff. There are two things out of this I want to cover. One, the new head of Mobile Communictions. When I saw the headline, I followed it to see which Danger guy was getting the job. Nope. Its Andrew Lees, from Server and Tools. Which means "servers." Maybe they expect generally good things, and maybe they need to work on infrastructure and deals, but I'd tend to say that the problems with Windows Mobile are at the handset layer, where your finger touches the screen or views the unresponsive pixels. (I'll also note that previous head Pieter Knook is appaerently already dissatisfied with all the fishing and rocking on the front porch of "retirement," and has taken a job with Vodaphone. Oh, wait, here's an announcement about Danger:

In addition, Microsoft promoted Roz Ho from general manager to corporate vice president of Premium Mobile Offerings. Ho will lead the new Danger team, which Microsoft recently acquired, and continue to focus on consumer-focused premium mobile offerings, the company said.

I'm sorry, the what? Premium mobile offerings? I guess Windows Mobile smartphones are not premium after all. And it makes me even happier at my comment here the other day. Could Microsoft try any harder to be insular as a company, and continue to silo their devices? I'm waiting for Microsoft to appoint a new VP of Interop, who jealously guards his domain and doesn't work well with anyone else.