So we had some snowfall in Minneapolis, and I went skiing in the park, but the snow was too thin.
Maybe by Sunday there will be enough of the white stuff?
There are a lot of monsters.
Arah and I recently watched No Such Thing.
And I got a monster card from Jezebel.
From that site I was pointed to Sam Whiting's interview of traffic professor Pravin Varaiya .
My own driving experience is that if I'm behind an SUV I need more space, simply because I cannot see through the SUV to the vehicle in front to see if that one is slowing down. So I have a larger distance if I'm driving behind an SUV and I see other people with similar behavior. So I have a suspicion that because of SUVs, the capacity of the freeways is reduced.
I totally agree with everything said here: traffic is the monster.
Finally, never forget that A Monster Is Bigger Than 9.
A week has passed without updates, my only excuse being that work has been crazy. More later.
While I was actually enjoying my car free days, thanks to a jumpstart from Ms. Bahn, the Saab is back on the road.
From the game geek file, I was disappointed to learn that Megan of Earth and Beyond fame was passed up for the role of financial advisor in the upcoming blockbuster Sim City 4.
Perhaps Lady Isabel deWinter should have applied instead?
Now I know what to do with my car.
Thanks to Darryl for finding this gem.
Perhaps I don't understand, but the show Man Versus Beast seems just plain wrong.
Can someone from the Little People community explain to me why this isn't exploitative?
Brian was kind enough to give me his unused old-school ADSL router, so hopefully that problem is fixed.
The pda, the phone, and the car all need new batteries.
I need new batteries.
Last night my ADSL router died, inexplicably.
This morning, my stupid car wouldn't start.
My phone was dead.
My pda had died.
And then I had to go to work.
Not a very fun day.
Well, Minnesota remembered what winter is like after all.
This morning, as I drove to work, it was zero degrees Fahrenheit.
Now, if we could just get some snow then maybe I'd be content.
Okay, I swear, this must be International Bring Out The Cranks Day today.
I don't know if it's a change in the weather, the lunar cycle, the stock market, or what the reason is, but all the cranky, complaining, nasty, bitchy people are sending us e-mail, voice-mail, and faxes today.
Some excerpts:
You people made a serious mistake. You kept the DUMB BLONDE and got rid of [TALENT]. Very serious error. THE BLONDE has nothing going for her, not even a very good figure. And the voice would curdle ice-cold milk. Why is it that stations like yours keep the whey and let the cream get away?
Instead of giving yourselves a 5 degree window either way, you'd be better forecasters if you guaranteed your 5 day forecast.
According to your forecast over the weekend, Wed-Fri were supposed to be a 'ball of sun'. Now, it's supposed to snow Wed and Fri.
These 5 day forecasts, admittedly can change overnight. Knowing that, you still persist in this idiotic ploy for attracting viewers. If you switched from your 5 degree forecast to a guaranteed 5 day forecast, I'd like to find out who the umbrella manufacturer is so that I could buy stock in their company,
Why don,t you do the whole state a favor and take your long range forcast model and SHOVE it up your fat DUMB ASS. you have to be the most worthless so called meteroligist in the world. We are so sick and tired of hearing you say it is going to snow 2 or 5 days in the future when you can not get the forecast right for the next day. None of you idiots know what the hell you are talking about so please stop.............
I have removed the names of the senders and the recipients, as well as the talent and affiliate to protect their identities.
To me it is important to foster interactive communication between a media organization and their audience...
But people, please, stop being so rude!
Don't you realize that your e-mail message has a return address?
Perhaps it's because people are accustomed to shouting obscenities at one-way media, like broadcast television.
Maybe they think, perhaps justifiably, that the people on television aren't real?
In a world of interactive communication, some people are going to need to learn how to be more polite.
Especially those of you who send email from AOL accounts!
I'm catching up on time tracking today; pity me.
Molly sent me the info on GeoURL so you can see nearby websites here .
The consensus on the forecast is highs in the upper forties this afternoon in the Twin Cities.
This means that I need to get out of here early for once. Yay!
It got as warm as 51 F today!
I did manage to ride my bike on the Greenway Trail for about 7 miles.
Windy though!
Well, we've moved the site from an IRIX workstation to a LINUX server. Big deal.
However, this new server does support PHP, so I may add some dynamic content or games.
Following up on the weather icons analysis (thanks Poynter), I came across this article today, which trumps my silly little page.
In the alumni file, the Larries sent this story about the First Baby of the Year. Congrats to both mothers!
When I knew them in college, Jo and Helen were über VAX geeks, and I'll out them for that!
Because it's been a while since I actually put any images on this page, I thought I'd do a little comparison of weather icons.
Let's select "cloudy" because it's a good example of what you're going to be looking at this time of the year.
I've obscured the names of the business partners, so maybe I should have a quiz?
Send me a note if you can identify a dozen local television web sites that display these icons!
| Partner A |  |
Very whimsical, like a doodle. |
| Partner B |  |
Style is everything. |
| Partner C |  |
Absolutely ghostly. |
| Partner D |  |
A child's wallpaper or "bankie". |
| Partner E |  |
Minimalist, yet bold! |
| Partner F |  |
Is this popcorn? |
| Partner G |  |
Very "buttony" - can I click on it? |
| Partner H |  |
Busy, busy, busy; hazy, hazy, hazy. |
| Partner I |  |
These clouds look threatening! |
| Partner J |  |
The sun is shy. |
| Partner K |  |
That's a high ceiling level. |
| Partner L |  |
The sun is angry! |
As you can see, there's at least a dozen ways to show cloudy.
Some of these remind me of a cloudy sky near the ocean. Others evoke the prairie. And some seem like Mars or Flatland...
Finally, please note that this web site is moving to a new server this week, so updates will halt during that interval.
