Snow!

[eurydicebound]

It's snowing here. This is the first time this winter. What this really means is that stuff will cover the ground and everything will freeze before 5 PM and getting home will be a real pain. They may even not have school tomorrow. It's freaky, especially after Chicago, where snow meant simply a more adventurous ride to work/school. Even in Oklahoma, they didn't shut down/delay school until the buses couldn't make it through. Here they have guidlines for what to do if snowfall happens during the school day. Bizarre. :)

In other news, my hard drive has become grossly unhappy. It's looking like we're going to have to reinstall the OS and see what that fixes. It might not fix the problem. It's an old 10 gig drive (on which I have essentially XP, Office, MS Money, and World of Warcraft). So it was pretty much filled to the brim.

The rough part on this is that what would really fix the problem is a new hard drive and new RAM, though I'm not sure I can still buy the type and speed of RAM my system takes...basically, it looks like the damn thing could snowball at any time and require that I buy a new system. I have zero budget for this right now. I can't even afford to get a new hard drive. Michelle is now sad.

Comments

[adamjury.livejournal.com]

I very much doubt that the RAM you'll need is unavailable. You may have to hit some local computer shops instead of the big-boxes, or even eBay, but RAM is one of those things that just doesn't not disappear from the market.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

In 2003, I thought I had killed my PC at a time when I couldn't afford a new one. It turned out that old laptops are amazingly inexpensive, as long as all you want to do with them is move words around (actually, it'll run Half-Life too but I de-installed everything not directly related to doing work).

Snow...

I live in Ontario. It snows every year in Ontario. It has snowed every year for the last ten thousand or so years and before -that- there was a mile of ice making up for the lack of precipitation. What I am saying is, having snow in Ontario is one of those things the government should have a contingency plan for.

But this year, snowfall is -not- being met with a prompt release of the plows. The road in front of my place hasn't been touched....

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

Yup yup. So once you can get more RAM put in there, you ought to be able to nurse your computer along for another year at least, if not more. (So long as you're not putting additional big, beautiful games on it, that is. ;))

[iamnikchick.livejournal.com]

re snow: Coming from the midwest, I initially found the response to snowfall in Portland and Seattle baffling, but was educated early on. There are two aspects that make it different out here. "Black ice" (which people fretted more about in Portland) which are patches of virtually invisible ice on the roads and cause a lot of accidents in otherwise "normal" conditions. In Seattle in particular, it's the hills. It takes very little snow or ice to cause extreme havoc on the hills.

re computers: Chris upgraded to a decent Dell for pretty cheap recently. This leaves us with an older machine that we're not using at the moment; if it would be of use for you as a back up or something, you're welcome to it. Give me a call if you need it.

[(Anonymous)]

As another Ontarian, I find the Maryland attitude to snow pretty strange. They close down Randa's school if there's snow in the next state! We're in the extreme southeast of the county, and we're in the Baltimore heat shadow, so it hasn't snowed here yet this season. But the extreme northwest corner of the county is adjacent to the Pennsylvania border, and is closer to the Appalachians than it is to nice, warm Baltimore. So if it snows in York County, Pennsylvania, they close the schools 50 miles south in sunny Dundalk because... some of the teachers in various parts of the county may commute to/from/through the snowy bits of Pennsylvania.

They also close for fog days and sun days in Maryland.

Which compares to my total of 1 day of school closing between elementary and high school, and 2 days in university back in Toronto.

Spike, who can't understand why his wife is joining his child in praying for snow

[jeff-preston.livejournal.com]

Welcome to Washington!

Land of the most non-snow-driving MoFo's around. I mean they freak about it. A dusting closes schools where in Wisconsin it would be 3 feet deep and they would keep going.

I understand the ice...they called it flare ice or flash ice...something like that in WI. Same as black ice. Slicker'n snot.

The main difference would be the hills etc. Granted most of the places are pretty straight forward. It's worse up in the SEA area than down here in the PDX area as far as hills go.

It only froze (no rain, no snow, no sleet no nothin...) and people drove 20 under the speed limit this last week. Ironically the first day of snow last year they were the same...but days later after the initial fear went away, people were back to 5-10 over the SL.

Go figger!

[anaka.livejournal.com]

Y'know, you're both right. I forgot for a moment that I live in a real city now. :) Doesn't make coming up with the cash this month any easier, but availability is probably not the core of the problem.

[(Anonymous)]

Welcome to Washington, land of the most non-snow-driving MoFo's around. I mean they freak about it. A dusting closes schools where in Wisconsin it would be 3 feet deep and they would keep going.

A couple years ago a friend was visiting us in Baltimore from Toronto, and when she was scheduled to fly home she had to call her husband and tell him that she might not be able to make it home because the snow in Baltimore was threatening to shut down the airport. There was about half a foot of snow in Toronto, which was causing a few minor delays, and he wanted to know how bad it was in Baltimore if they were talking about closing down completely. When she told him it was 1/4 inch, we could all hear him laughing through the phone.

Spike