Good morning, Friday! Forecast: snow on the way, but maybe not so much.

In trying to abide our New Year’s resolutions (see No. 7), we didn’t mention a thing about Metro’s  10-cent fare hike yesterday! So: here, now, are a few links, in case you want to read someone else’s reporting on this. OK, just one link. Plus, a bonus Metro cartoon.

Can you bear to read any more about the iPad? Apparently, the Japanese company Fujitsu in 2002 launched a device it calls the iPAD—it’s a mobile hand-held thing used in the retailing world to check prices or verify inventory on the spot. According to Masahiro Yamane, director of Fujitsu’s public relations division, “It’s our understanding that the name is ours.” And they’re consulting their lawyers.

Note to Apple: Let them have the name!

In other news, Osama bin Laden is mad about climate change, and the Johns Hopkins University student who killed an intruder in his Baltimore backyard a few months ago with a samurai sword will not be charged.

But now to the passing of J.D. Salinger. Let’s look at a bit of the coverage. The New York Times offered several stories, including a good old-fashioned obit, the kind with a 66-word lede. It is the Old Grey Lady, after all:

J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died on Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.

GQ‘s pop culture blog went with something a bit edgier: former City Paper staffer Mike Riggs‘ recounting of a road trip he took (mostly stoned) to Salinger’s house:

A man on a small motorcycle wearing a yellow hazmat suit took me to J.D. Salinger’s house when I was 21 years old. Two friends and I had been driving around Salinger’s mountain for a full day, and we were exhausted, irritable, and hopeless.

But the prize goes to The Sun (the U.K. tabloid), which really got the mood just right:

THE legendary novelist whose cult classic The Catcher in the Rye inspired assassin Mark Chapman to kill John Lennon has died.

RIP, Jerome David. And happy Friday.