I will say, I think Boston is still traumatized by the Blizzard of 78, and it's been 30 years! Like, I'm pretty sure that's why they closed schools here last week when we didn't end up getting any snow. And that was "only" 27 inches, but no one was prepared, was the problem. [link]

Amy, I'm quite happy with my Asus netbook. I dragged it around Greece last fall with no problem, and now it's going to my Wednesday ground school class for note taking. I wouldn't want to do intensive Photoshop work on it, but for my light-use purposes (notes and web, mostly) it's fine.

After living up here in the Land of Lake Effect Snow, I'm so immune to snow by now, it's weird. I actually feel weirdly guilty that the Mid-Atlantic is getting hit so hard and we've gotten very little in the last month, simply because it's all budgeted for up here, so it's always plowed and salted right away. People know how to live with snow up here.

My perspectives on both snow and disability were altered by that huge storm in Minneapolis we got on Halloween '91. We got 30" of snow in 24 hours. I was on crutches, so I had difficulty getting around for the next few weeks - where sidewalks were not cleared, I'd have to walk sideways on the footpaths through the snow. I don't know what people in wheelchairs do when sidewalks are not cleared of thick snow.

I don't know what people in wheelchairs do when sidewalks are not cleared of thick snow.

I've been thinking about that here a lot.

Damn.

JPMorgan Bombing: Bomb Explodes At Bank Offices In Athens

(AP) Police in the Greek capital say a bomb has exploded at the offices of American financial services firm JPMorgan Chase & Co., causing no injuries.

Good thing there were no injuries.

The government of Greece was hiding the extent of their financial borrowing. Now they're screwed, and possibly the European Union with them

MacGyver Multitool

Probably not real.

Having lived in Athens Greece, bombings are actually not that surprising. They regularly have student marches that disintegrate into Molotov cocktail throwing. Most of the businesses in the center of downtown have full metal curtains for this sort of regular occurrence. (There's a big violent-anarchist segment of the left there.)

Gah! My friend just posted part of Chris Rose's Letter to America from after Katrina, and I am homesick and in tears.

Glad that meeting was canceled.

[link]

Wasn't an embassy toilet a casualty when Raq was there?

Yeash, lisah, this winter's been especially rough on you. I've never really liked snow, but now I have a pretty adversarial relationship with it. Plus now it is scary, not just annoying.

Despite the roads being a gawdawful mess (and the idiot decision to go ahead with the 39th closure) I really can't say the city is handling it poorly. We were never equipped for this kind of snowfall; it is going to take a while to recover. But the bonehead decisions, those I fault.