It's Christmas in Seattle, and the good folks of Washington State are engaging in traditional festive activities. Like blazing away at wildlife from the comfort of your own four wheel drive, apparently. Hello Microsoft OEM chief, star of subpoenaed emails and antitrust trials Joachim Kempin. Also now, it would seem, a noted gunslinger who is helping local Redmond police with their enquiries.

In Texas we believe good old boys grab a six pack, a flatbed truck and quantities of hardware and blaze away at road signs as they go by. In Redmond even the software guys have hardware, and shoot at... Well, we're not sure about this, yet. A story involving somebody called Kempin was published on MSNBC (relation) on 17th December. It now seems to have gone away, but it's left a trace at the MSNBC database here, which is the most recent MSNBC story covering somebody called Kempin.

The search result summary tantalisingly reveals "MS exec cited for hunting from car." Some other Kempin who works for Microsoft, perchance? We think not: "December 17 - A top Microsoft executive who figured prominently in the government's antitrust case against the software company has been charged with..." And there our summary ends.

What was the lad shooting at (allegedly)? Was the car moving? Is it usual for MSNBC to expire stories so quickly? What does Joachim keep in his pockets when negotiating with hardware OEMs, and had they been under the impression he was just pleased to see them? We expect we'll find out the answers to most of these very soon, but if nothing turns up in the mail, we'll take a turn through the local press a little later to check up on deletion skills.

Microsoft executives are of course no strangers to vehicles, police departments and mysterious deletions. Is it not the Albuquerque police department which has a mugshot of a youthful Bill Gates, who was noted at the time as something of a hot rod? But is it not also the Albuquerque police department which has a mysterious lack of any record as to how it might have come by the snap? ®