Dear Friends,

Our mild, relatively snowless winter continues up here in the north country.  I am beginning to feel like one of the old guys at the general store waxing about the good old days. “Why, I remember when we had snow so deep…” I do notice a significant trend toward milder winters, though. I brewed beer for many years; in fact, the original business plan for Small Dog Electronics was to make enough money so we could open a brewery. My best beer was called “Prickly Mountain -40 Degree Ale”  and yes, it was -40 when I brewed that batch. I haven’t seen temperatures under -15 for some time and maybe I can think about planting some Zone 5 or Zone 6 plants here in Vermont.

[Editor’s note: Want to watch Don and Hapy talk about that brew and the beginning of Small Dog? Click here.]

We knew that Apple was doing well because our first quarter was spectacular, but to actually see the financial results from Apple was simply otherworldly. I will go over the numbers in a bit, but if there was any doubt that Apple is firing on all cylinders, it should be safely put to bed.  Congratulations to Apple and the Apple team for an outstanding quarter and of course, for awesome products!

I have been struggling with the enormous amount of spam that I have been receiving lately. It has gotten as bad as 100 junk mails in an hour, so I have been searching for a solution. One thing that appears (at least after a few days) to be working well for me is SpemSieve by Michael Tsai at C-Command. I will write a more comprehensive review of this mail client filtering system next week, but if you are having spam issues, I suggest at least downloading their demo and giving it a try.