Hal Stern's thoughts on the economy, software, services, technology, and snowmen. Hal Stern: The Morning Snowman

I've been quiet lately because I'm expending overhead cycles lugging my slightly damaged body from place to place. When 15% of your time is spent figuring out the shortest overall path that includes the study, bathroom, kitchen and perhaps mailbox, including whether to use crutches, wheelchair or just pogo stick imitation, you lose some of that writing energy.

I have gained a new appreciation for anyone who is mobility impaired, and a new set of derisive stares and glares for those who ignore us and our needs. When you're on crutches, things like curbs become large potential hills full of bad potential. Doors that open out have become my pseudo-speciality, involving a special pick and roll that I vaguely remember from 6th grade basketball. But my true social experiment took place as I explored malls, stores, and hockey rinks in my rented wheels: one hospital-quality, 70-pound, human-powered wheelchair.

Here's what I've witnessed in almost a month of being wheeled around in public like the Stanley Cup:

Ramps are your friend. Drivers who block those ramps, even if it's "only for a minute," are both rude and scofflaws. I've yet to try a bomb drop off of a curb (mostly because I can't get enough speed up to avoid tipping over the curb), but I'm not above some bump and run maneuveurs where needed.

I need a sign that says "Careful! Aggressive Engineer Driving" to hang on my wheelchair. Shirley Partridge would be proud.

Shelf space is arranged to catch the eye of the average height shopper. I've seen a lot of tier two products, and I created a minor mess in the cereal aisle this week. Just because it's healthy doesn't mean it has to be on the top shelf unless there's a physical fitness or vertical jump requirement for buying it. Shaq isn't available to help me buy my breakfast foods, although it appears most of the still-resident New Jersey Devils might appreciate the work.

Kids are cool. They want to know how I broke my leg (I make up gory stories for them), they want to sign my cast (I carry a Sharpie at all times, part of my NFL training), and they look me in the eye.

Adults either express sympathy or ignore me. Lesson to all adults: Most of us in wheelchairs have lost some mobility, but nothing else. If you gave me the right of way when wearing my AC/DC t-shirt and walking upright, you really should yield when I'm wearing the AC/DC shirt and barrelling down a ramp in the mall at a cool 14 MPH. Shorter doesn't matter; mass and speed are increased, I'm a huge winner in the momentum game.

I'm not the Stanley Cup. It's more interesting and weighs less than I do, and it has much more protection during transportation. But given the way the hockey lockout is going, I may be the closest anyone gets to it this year.

For those wondering where I've been, no, the Snowman wasn't searching for colder temperatures. I've been enjoying my forced sedentary lifestyle to catch up on some reading -- which necessitated being the last person on the planet to read The DaVinci Code.

About halfway through, I realized I'd read this story before, namely in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Eco's book pre-dates Brown's by more than a decade, and Eco's writing (translated into English) is both rich and dense, requiring skill and thought to appreciate, much like a high-end chocolate confection. I'll admit to not finishing Foucault's Pendulum because my reading pace didn't allow me to made adequate progress through the book, and eventually the wear and tear from toting it aboard airplanes beat the book before I did. It's a shame my copy didn't get frequent flyer miles or I could have sent it to Hawaii for free.

I'm far from the first person to recognize or react to the similarities; google "davinci code foucault's pendulum" and you're greeted with a rash of conspiracy theorists and their rankings worthy of amazon.com content.

The DaVinci Code is to Foucault's Pendulum as West Side Story is to Romeo and Juliet. That should suffice to upset nearly all literati, trade fiction readers, and Jets fans everywhere (who are already worried, but that's another story). But -- I liked the book. I finished it in two days. I figured out how to carry it with me while hobbling on crutches, which is something that I can't say for my laptop, the town newspaper, or even the most recent ESPN: The Magazine.

By making secret societies and various shades of mythology accessible to the general reading public, Dan Brown scored a lot of points, measured by weeks on the bestseller lists. There's a lesson here for technologists -- accessibility counts. If it's hard to figure out, only a few will bother. Simple wins.

Have you heard about this dollar per CPU-hour utility we're building? Simple wins, and it's accessible. Sorry, commercial message in the middle of an itinerant literate rant.