So much for the threatened blizzard. It rained most of the evening last night, and finally changed over to snow about 7pm. But the ground was still warm enough that very little of the snow stuck, and most of the moisture came down as rain. Which froze. So yeah, it was a little treacherous out there, but hardly the huge blizzard we’d been warned about.
And yes, I was out driving in the mess. Tiffany and Jona were back in town and stopped by the Sporty, so I swung in there to see ’em. Good to see the gals, and they seem to be doing well now that they’ve both decided to leave Minneapolis and get their lives in order elsewhere. I’m not the only one who misses them, but it’s good to see them doing well, even if it’s not here.
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Coming home, there were two spots where the Auto-4WD kicked in on my truck. The first was pulling away from an intersection where braking cars had polished the ice on the street to a near post-zamboni skating-rink sheen, and the second was right in front of my garage. There’s a little hump to get into the garage, and I needed the front wheels to help pull the rear ones over the hump. But as I said before, hardly the world-ending blizzard the TV stations had warned us about. Heck, I don’t think I’m even going to bother trying to shovel away the ice and snow on the sidewalk.
I don’t find it surprising anymore that people ignore warnings to evacuate because a hurricane is coming or there’s going to be a flood. If I’d heeded the TV weathermen, I would have spent thousands on arctic survival gear for yesterday. As it turned out, my leather jacket was plenty warm as long as I was out of the wind, and tennis shoes were still very appropriate footwear. Probably didn’t hurt that I’ve got fifty-some pounds of flesh-parka to insulate me, but still, the sheer quantity of doom and gloom on the TV on Monday night was just silly. I’d be more surprised if people didn’t ignore such warnings. Plus I’m kinda pissed we didn’t even get the two inches that was the minimum forecast. I was ready for some snow, and this is just disappointing.
- Here’s a list of Five email tics I’d love for you to lose. Well, my list actually includes a few more: spam, HTML mail with no plain-text alternative, spam, top-posting, spam, and the fact that we’re still stuck with RFC 821 email, which encourages people to try and send spam via any form on the web that might send email. Yes, I have filters for the spam, but why should I have to spend time maintaining them because people are assholes? Or did I just answer my own question? [backup brain]
- Interesting. A group of Minnesota Businesses challenge Patriot Act, especially the National Security Letters which seem to be a favorite tool of the FBI. Good for them. [press-patch]
- For Minneapolis, Towing pulls in big business. Not so much today, but perhaps on the first real snow. They made $1¼ million on towing about 40,000 cars last year, though. Most of the money comes from selling off or scrapping cars that aren’t retrieved. [daily]
- Useful! The Beer Hunter tells you all the places you can buy booze right now in Toronto (it knows when which stores are open). New cities to come soon, supposedly. Another cool use of Google Maps. [accordionguy]
- Know any dim bulbs? Claire’s Shedding Some (Flash)light on the Subject with a roundup of her favorite flashlights. And while it’s still Too Damned Early for Christmas decorations to be up in the stores, I try to spread my shopping out over the whole year, so present ideas like this are welcome anytime. [claire]