Montego Bay and Other Weather Reports..

While I don't live in Chicago, I can remember the "snowstorm of 1978". Not sure if that was one of the big ones or not, but it was the biggest snowstorm I've ever seen - tunnels built around campus making you feel like you were an elf in some middle kingdom.. I think we had 77 inches of snow in one weekend, or maybe that is the story today...

Living there in the winter does get old, and February is the time it gets the oldest. New snow is fun, but old dirty snow and the 32nd day in a row of wind chill reports below zero gets old. Hey I used to be able to differentiate between 20 below and 50 below (WCF). Now probably either would kill me. Unless the sun was shining, then I think I could endure anything.

In the depths of a small company where I worked which was very dingy and very dirty and literally housed a manufacturing sign company in the basement, I had my own private office door. Those were the days (bars on the windows however, and car breakins, oh those Nine West boots I lost, I will never forget those..)

But I found a virtual way to survive. The Chicago Tribune posted (not on the internet, but in the real live newspaper, which I still believe in) temperatures for places near and far. I picked Montego Bay, Jamaica to be my alter-weather-ego place to track. Every day I would post the temperature clipped from the paper on my door. Ah, a virtual escape. Today it is 70 degrees. Look, today it is... 70 degrees! Later in the week I was able to proudly display - look! It is 70 degrees. Something warm and comforting about that.

Cairo, Egypt: 64 degrees (Fahrenheit)
Beirut, Lebanon: 54 degrees, with rain
Sana'a, Yemen: 55 degrees
Tunis, Tunisia: 50 degrees

One by one, these are the places to virtually visit this winter. My heart goes out to the people in Egypt. Why did the world think only 3 days ago this was some sort of peaceful protest, and that it would be met openly by the ruling regime? Why were there no suspicious voices wondering if things might take a different turn?

Or maybe we all like to be optimists till events prove otherwise. I know I like to be an optimist. But lets face reality. Journalists are getting beaten up and attacked. Anderson Cooper, either brave or a completely stupid guy, is broadcasting from an 'undisclosed location' which looks like a utility trailer.

News from where? What happened to the twitter revolution? Oh, when the government controls the means of communication they can "shut down the internet". Sounds phenomenol. OK all you open source hackers (excuse me, software engineers) out there who are so empassioned about Linux. Challenge: develop competing open source technology, get someone rich like Richard Branson to sponsor an 'open source, open world' satellite. So you can keep broadcasting even in the face of government oppression.

Some people think their right to own guns means they can protect themselves from the government. But all guns do is kill people errantly, like that 13 year old in Oregon whose dad left a loaded shotgun in the living room after duck hunting. Tragedy strikes and I'm sorry but we aren't in militia days.

The true path to freedom of the population seems to be information, communication. Maybe it always has been.

Hillsboro: 42 degrees
Worcester, Mass: 13 degrees
Troy, NY: 5 degrees (you win!)
Redmond, OR: 39 degrees
Roswell, NM: 0 degrees (you really win!)
Chicago: 9 degrees