Upstate New York Winters-- 01/25/00
PiperDane recently posted a question about winter on her discussion forum -- to which I posted a response in which I complained about the recent cold weather and commented (as I also have in my journal) that after living most of my life in upstate New York, Rhode Island winters usually seem pretty mild to me. This weekend my wife received an email from one of her friends (Hi Jodi!) who lives in upstate New York containing the "Official Upstate New York Temperature Conversion Chart" which you see below. I have no idea who the original author might be; it's just one of those annonymous documents that gets forwarded and forwarded forever.
A niece recently emailed me a copy of that famous infamous(?)chocolate chip cookie urban legend... some documents really do get forwarded forever....
Our regularly scheduled journal entry will continue following this message from Upstate New York!

Official Upstate New York Temperature Conversion Chart
60 above
New Jerseyites try to turn on the heat.
People in Upstate New York plant gardens.
50 above
Californians shiver uncontrollably.
People in Upstate New York sunbathe.
40 above
Italian & English cars won't start.
People in Upstate New York drive with the windows down.
32 above
Distilled water freezes.
Lake Ontario's water gets thicker
20 above
Floridians don coats, thermal underwear, gloves and woolly hats.
People in Upstate New York throw on a flannel shirt
15 above
Philadelphia landlords finally turn up the heat.
People in Upstate New York have the last cook-out before it gets cold.
0
People in Miami all die...
Upstaters lick the flagpole.
20 below
Californians fly away to Mexico.
People in Upstate New York get out their winter coats.
40 below
Hollywood disintegrates.
The Girl Scouts in Upstate NY are selling cookies door to door.
60 below
Polar bears begin to evacuate the Artic.
Upstate Boy Scouts postpone "Winter Survival" classes until it gets cold enough.
80 below
Mt. St. Helen's freezes.
People in Upstate NY rent some videos.
100 below
Santa Claus abandons the North Pole.
Upstaters get frustrated because they can't thaw the keg.
297 below
Microbial life no longer survives on dairy products.
Cows in Upstate NY complain about farmers with cold hands.
460 below
ALL atomic motion stops (absolute zero on the Kelvin scale).
People in Upstate NY start saying...."Cold 'nuff for ya?"
500 below
Hell freezes over.
The Buffalo Bills win the Super Bowl.

We now resume our regularly scheduled journal entry.
That gave me a bit of a chuckle... Of course the weather around here has been wintery of late... we had that long spell of bitterly cold weather and today we got snow and rain and freezing rain and I think we may get a bit more snow overnight. We received much less snow here in Rhode Island than they did further south, in New York and New Jersey, and down through Washington, even into Georgia I believe. There was perhaps four inches or so on the ground around my house when I left for work this morning and by the time I reached the bridges over Narragansett Bay it had turned to sleet and rain... although, to be accurate, I think it continued to snow in South County later than that and had probably changed over to sleet and rain on the Bay much earlier in the morning than when I crossed over the bridges.
My daughter said the drive to school was "interesting" with some snarled traffic near the high school. Midterm exams began last week and continue through today. Jennifer and Sean were both finished with exams after this morning. On their way home they stopped at a friend's house only to see a town snowplow backing out of a cul-de-sac knock over a mail box... and then park, blocking the driveway of the house they were trying to reach.
When I left work (just before six p.m.) our parking lot had become ice-coated and extremely slippery. Fortunately the roads had been well sanded and salted. It began to rain very hard (combined with gusty winds) as I drove over the bridges. The roads were not bad until I reached my neighborhood... the newest block on my street, where all of the houses were still under construction, had not been salted or sanded and was very slippery. Sean had shoveled our driveway and had chipped away all of the frozen slush, but by the time I got home, temperatures had dropped enough that the rain was freezing on the driveway. I came to a stop at the point where I zig zag around Jennifer's car on my way to the garage so that I could open the compartment where I store my garage door opener. The door opened just fine, but the driveway has a slight grade to it and it was icy enough that my wheels began to spin when I attempted to start moving again. I had to back out onto the road and drive forward again in order to get into the garage.
I don't know what it will be like in the morning. I am hoping that roads will not be too slippery. I know that I can always work from home (I have enough work to do on java to keep me busy for weeks) but I did not bring my laptop home so I can't access Lotus Notes. More importantly, I need to make some phone calls to people in other sites and I need to speak with people at my site. It is just too much of a nuisance to have to try to get all of these phone numbers together and make these calls from home with out access to Notes and to our LAN. This all deals with a lot of training I need to get in order to prepare myself to teach some courses in a new (for me) technical area. This will probably be a three to five month process and will require four or five business trips over that time period.
I'm quite excited about this opportunity. It will get me into an area I have been interested in. (Yes, and will also increase my value on the job market... I'm not looking around; I really like what I do... but what if the company decided to relocate my department to other locations and I didn't want to relocate?)