If the folks developing the Dark Sky weather prediction app have their way, you'll no longer have the ability to misjudge the weather and get caught in a storm when you're riding your bike to work last Thursday, the Tuesday before, and pretty much every time it rains I get stuck in a storm, and I'm fucking sick of it. Sorry. Anyway, how do they do it? Who knows! What's the catch?
Well, the catch is that it only works over a short period of time: a half hour to an hour in the future. But, as it turns out, this timespan is crucially important. Our lives are filled with short-term outdoor activities: Travelling to and from work, walking the dog, lunch with friends, outdoor sports, etc.
My street floods fairly regularly because we're below the hills of Somerville so it's no surprise, with Hurricane Irene and all, that my street would flood this weekend, too. That said, I expected it'd actually wait for the hurricane to get here to start. Irene is supposed to get here sometime tomorrow...
I live on Lake St and every couple years you find out why. We were away this weekend when our entire neighborhood flooded, stranding cars and trains. Here's an awesome video by Paper Fortress Films showing the situation Saturday afternoon.
A couple years ago, I made this much less awesome video to show a flood.
Remember last week when I was telling you about how much the people of Somerville loves Tom Champion. And how they love him so much there's a fan group on Facebook? Cosmo Catalano has remixed the latest snow emergency call into some bumping Tom Champion fanmusic. Just listen to it.
Somerville is a city that LOVES its snow emergencies. We've had a snow emergency for every snow storm this year, during which, you can only park on the odd side of the street. The City LOVES them. Sometimes, they call a snow emergency the morning of the day before a storm. We love our snow emergencies so much, there's even a Facebook Group in appreciation of Tom Champion, the guy who records the snow emergency phone messages. This past week, we even had a cold emergency. There weren't any parking restrictions, but Tom Champion didn't want us going outside unnecessarily.
Except for a couple hours this afternoon, it's been snowing ALL day, and yet no snow emergency. You'll get'em next time, eh, Champs?
I'm calling it right now.
To: All you hardy New Englanders making noise about other New Englanders making noise about the snowstorm.
Look, people freak out about the weather. They freak out about the snow. They freak out about the cold. They freak out about the hot. They freak out about the rain. They freak out about the lack of rain. It's not just weather either. Any event that is happening to a large group of people is going to cause some percent of that population to freak out. And you know what? Another percent of the population is going to stand on the side of the that group and they're going to ridicule them for freaking out.
This is no loner acceptable behavior. It's over. Right now. This has to end. It's possible you didn't know how many of your acquaintances freaked out about weather and such before Facebook Status Updates and Twitter, but you've seen television news, right? Who do you think the reporter on the side of the road in the parka and mittens was talking to? Who do you think was watching all that stock footage of plows and sanders rolling out of the DPW yard? This is how people are. People like getting worked up about things and getting fired up about them getting fired up isn't going to make them not be fired up next time. Believe it. And you better know I'm serious if I'm using a euphemism that involves sharks. I hate sharks.
Earlier this afternoon, a thunder storm rolled through Union Square, Somerville. I'm not sure what happened, but soon the street was flooded under about a foot of water. About an hour after it stopped raining, the water was gone.
It was terrible weather for a cruise around Boston Harbor, but Lucero is one of my favorite bands and I was on a boat with several of my friends. The sound wasn't so good, but Lucero is one of my favorite bands and I was on the boat with several of my friends. You couldn't see the band at all, but Lucero is one of my favorite bands and I was on the boat with several of my friends.
Every burgeoning bike rider probably has a stuck in the rain story, below is mine:
The clouds looked ominous as I left work, but I hoped the weather would hold off for the 20-25 minutes it would take to get home. Unfortunately, about halfway home, as I started across the Mass Ave Bridge, I felt the first drops. Big, intermittent, falling from the sky with more urgency with each pedal. By the time I crossed the bridge, it was a full out sideways rain thunderstorm. My shoes filled with water. Dirty water from the street was spraying into my mouth from the tires. My glasses were quickly rendered opaque by the drops and when I looked over them to see, water laser beams shot into my eyes. It was an angry, confused shower, filled with all the bitterness of a scorned Mother Nature.
I wasn't sure if I should stop (I should have) or keep going to meet the HVAC guy who was coming for a spring tune up (what a waste that was), and I wasn't sure how much protection my backpack would provide to my laptop.
Of course it stopped raining a couple minutes after I got home, but by that time, I had already seen the angry, blinking lights of my soggy D430 and taken the battery out. I tried it one more time after the HVAC guy left (seriously, a waste of time and money. He hadn't even brought a ladder to change the air filter, leaving it for me to do). And one more time a couple hours later before leaving it in an A shape on the table to dry. And then I waited. And waited. I'd say it was the longest 24 hours of my life, but that would be cheap hyperbole, wouldn't it? Finally, I couldn't wait anymore and put the battery back in and it worked no problem. It came right back from hibernation somehow and it seems to be fine.
For those of you looking here for instructions on what to do with a wet laptop to guarantee bringing it back to life... I don't know. Shut the power off right away. I guess probably don't leave it on standby on your way home to reduce the chance of it getting wet while it's powered on, also. And then hope it works after it dries for as long as you can stand drying it. Hope and Luck. That's what you need with a wet laptop, because I imagine I had as good a chance of getting a brick out of the whole experience.
In the Esquire article about Roger Ebert a few weeks back, Ebert mentioned his interview interview with Lee Marvin as one of his favorites, and now they've republished it online.
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