There’s something about weather here in the Northeast. Maybe it has to do with having lived in the Southwest in my formative years, where the biggest weather excitement I can remember was the day that the airport all but shut down because Boeing had only rated the 737 to fly in temps up to 120 degrees and we actually hit 122. The handful of 747s were good to go because they were rated up to about 125 degrees.

Since moving to this part of the country in 1999, I’ve found myself getting downright wound up over major weather events - they’re so much more dramatic here than anywhere else I’ve lived! And, of course, with really dramatic weather, there’s always the possibility of legitimately calling the boss and telling him that I can’t make it into the office because a) a 100-year-old tree came down at the end of the street, making it impossible to get to the train station; b) the trains aren’t running / are running 3 hours late because of ice on the tracks; or c) the plows have thrown two feet of snow into the apron of my driveway and even my AWD just can’t get me out.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve amassed a comprehensive set of weather-related bookmarks, but this weekend, with a potential ginormous nor’easter coming this way, for the first time I’ve found myself trolling not only the ‘official’ weather sites, but the message boards where the real weather weenies hang out. My goal: a determined attempt to divine whether or not I’m going to be able to legitimately call the boss bright and early tomorrow and apologize profusely for my inability to make it to the office.

I started with the local ABC affiliate’s Weather Chat, but quickly came to the conclusion that there aren’t too many folks (other than the host and resident Weather Guru, Bill Evans) there who know what they’re talking about. Somewhere in there though, I found a link to the Tristate Weather Board - not only frequented by people in the same boat as OneWoman, but both professional and hobby-meteorologists. Not only are its denizens egging each other on in the hopes of a nor’easter of biblical proportions, but there’s some really good discussion of patterns, models, and trends in there.

For a somewhat broader perspective, the Eastern US Weather Forums are full of good stuff. And Foot’s Forecast seems to have a pretty good handle on what we can expect. The comments on his blog are almost as good as some of the message boards for tracking this thing.

Happy shoveling, sledding, and snowball throwing!

I have nothing but admiration for people who come up with these things.

The Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich was brilliant, but I remember seeing an interview with the seller and thinking that she was a little bit out there. But this mystery envelope auction is the hallmark of a pretty clever mind. Hats off to joynersgeneralstore!

… and jump, and steal, and slink: my cat annie.

Found in my travels; definitely worth a visit.

And so, here we are. A log on the fire, lights twinkling on the tree, packages strewn all over the living room. The stores are closed - either you got it done in time, or it’s too late to worry now. So, while you put away the wrapping paper and get ready to crack open the eggnog, I have a few Christmas Eve tidbits for you.

At last check, NORAD’s radar had Santa somewhere in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower. Although, if The Daily Ripper is to be believed, Santa’s just about had it with that particular invasion of privacy. It seems to me though that a certain group of 15 year-olds in Ales, France committed a much bigger invasion of The Red One’s privacy when they mugged him on Wednesday. According to the BBC, as reported by the AFP news agency, Father Christmas suffered multiple bruises and has lodged a criminal complaint.

But The Red One can be pretty terrifying himself. We all have family photos like these somewhere in a dusty photo album, don’t we? Kind of makes you wonder why he didn’t just ho-ho-ho those teenagers into submission…

All of this got me to mulling over that age-old conundrum: How does he do it? You know - cover the entire planet in a single night; drop down chimneys and deliver loot wherever he goes? We all know that those reindeer can move pretty quickly, but still… The Wikipedia has calculated the velocity at which The Red-Suited One travels: as .03 times the speed of light, or 8 million meters per second. Wow!

Unfortunately, there are those who would just as soon that dear Santa stay put at the North Pole and stay clear of their children. According to The Landover Baptist Church, Satan is Santa Claus. Well, we’re all entitled to our opinions, I suppose…

And finally, our friends at JibJab.com have given us yet another laugh-out-loud production. No more milk and cookies for the man. He has more, umm… practical needs.

A peaceful (insert winter holiday of your choice here) to you and yours from OneSmartWoman.

They’re everywhere! In the last couple of days, reports have surfaced that both Movable Type and MSDN have been slammed by comment spam, and from reading through much of the commentary, we’re all getting hit by the same spammers.

In the case of MT, a bug in the software was apparently causing blogs to consume huge amounts of bandwidth, rebuilding constantly even if the spam went into the blogger’s moderation queue. Six Apart fixed the bug in short order, but the problem looms large for bloggers of all flavors.

Ugh.

Sean Gallagher blames Google’s page rank algorithm for much of this, and I can’t say that I disagree. If they didn’t stand to gain from throwing their links up anywhere on the net that they can, we’d likely have a much cleaner blogsphere.

My latest solution appears to have done the trick though. Since I added SpamWordBlock, not only has my moderation queue been free of drivel, but I haven’t seen a single one slip through to the blog itself.