Web search contest

Despite my smoking' hot search technique, I can't seem to draw a bead on a seemingly simple piece of information:

How much has snowfall in Summit, NJ, changed over the past few decades?

I'd like to go back to before 1970, because I know how the mean overall precipitation has changed since then. But, except for a few record-breaking years, the only snowfall information I can find is averaged.

This information might as well be classified. Just to be sure I wasn't missing something basic, I called in the big guns. I contacted a reference librarian at QandANJ.org. Believe it or not, she couldn't find it either.

I'm pretty sure that the Snow & Ice Management Association has the information. I bet they give it out to members only, given how hard it is to find.

So here's the contest:

Be the first to find me changes in snowfall since, say, 1960. It doesn't have to be just Summit. It can be Union County. Or it can be all New Jersey. I don't need individual year info. It can be decade-over-decade averages.

If you can find that information, you get your choice of delicacy from pastryparadise.com* and my profuse thanks. Good luck.

* Offer valid in continental US and Canada only.

Popups and popunders

Here's a direct mail challenge: send mail to boys at summer camp every day for a week. Mailing pieces must be brief, if recipients not avid readers, unsentimental, preferably humorous. If you don't feel like going to the post office for a weigh in every day, must fit in #10 envelope and weigh less than 2 ounces. No candy allowed. Ah, and did I mention that you must begin mailing four days before the camper even boards the bus?

One year I thought I distinguished myself with a series of cartoon postcards depicting what said camper was doing every day at camp. Said camper informs me that he did not in fact appreciate these miniature works of art.

This year I took a shortcut and looked on the internet for camping jokes. Usually I search for things like "material handling systems" or "apply for DUNS number." These webmasters know that I am not there for fun. I need the information they provide. Their sites make no desperate bids for my attention (if they make any at all).

This search was a new experience for me. Try this yourself: go to Google and enter "camp jokes" in the window. The quantity of popups on the sites I found flabbergasted me.

Pity the poor maligned engineer who invented popups, probably in answer to a real problem. Some popups are blessings. I am grateful for a popup telling me "System going down in five minutes; please save your work".

It all changed, though, the day the first salesperson saw a popup and said, "Wow! I can use this device to put my message right under the user's nose! It won't go away until the user clicks on the little x! Hey, we can get the programmers to put lots of these on our website!"

"But-" the programmer sputtered. "Popups are for emergencies!"

"Yeah, and it'll be an emergency for you if we outsource your job to Bangalore."

And popunders do not even pretend to carry important messages. You just look down at your screen and realize that you suddenly have eleven open windows. No wonder your screen refreshes so slowly.

I am pleased to say that Google agrees with me about pop-ups. Apparently they find them as intrusive as I do. Which is why you will never find pop-ups on this site, other than the fact that Google hosts Blogspot, and I do not know how to program pop-ups. Yet.