After a few light snows earlier in the month, we have our first real storm. It looks like it'll be a long winter.

Yesterday Buell riders from all around the country made one last ride to the Buell factory in East Troy, Wisconsin to pay tribute to a unique marque as it nears its end. The last Buell is scheduled to roll off the assembly line Friday and 180 workers will be out of a job on December 18th. Hat tip to Black on Bad Web.

Harley Davidson announced last week that it was shutting down its Buell motorcycle operation and selling MV Agusta. Buell is one of the more interesting Marques and this is sad news. Best of luck to Erik Buell and his merry band of elves.

Job loss from the current recession has been in the news for a year, but this animated graph hits harder than anything I've seen. Via Hacker News.

I participated in the Front Range Pythoneers Unconference today. Having sat in on a couple of open sessions at PyCon 2007 I had some idea about what to expect, but was still pleasantly surprised by the wealth of useful information. I'd definitely do one of these again.

I presented my rather embryonic talk on "Agent Based Programming in Python". I was unsure of attracting any participants, but get three who provided good feedback. Here's my presentation in it's current state on Google Docs: http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dc5vvs9p_0fp7hzmcm

While most of the private space industry is focusing on commercializing the Earth to Low Earth Orbit market, others are looking farther out. In this interview former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz discusses the latest milestone achieved for his VASIMR rocket engine for deep space missions, and the next steps for his company, Ad Astra Rocket.

I attended the Colorado Episcopal Diocesan Convention in Pueblo the past couple of days. It was an worthwhile experience, better than I anticipated. The workshops I attended were interesting, and the business sessions were tolerable. I enjoyed getting to know my fellow delegates from St. Stephen's better as well as meeting delegates from other churches. I wouldn't mind doing it again.

The Wilderness Experience worship service impressed me more than anything else. This service has been held at St. John's Cathedral for the past two years. The experimental litergy is blended with meditation, movement, music, and imagery in an engaging manner. I also attended a workshop describing how it came about and is produced. It involves more work from more people than typical worship services, but I think it's worth the effort.