On A Dark Desert Highway

Praise be unto Darwin, who, in his stuffed monkey wisdom and grace, has blessed us this day with teh goodness and hawesome. Ahhh, man.

And there was much rejoicing (yay).

The Audio from Wil's performance is up and live on teh Intarwebs (which is a series of tubes), and there are several ways for you to get your hands on it. I won't type anymore so you can get to downloadin':

• Directly from Pulp Gamer, who was kind enough to record, encode and release it (41.1 MB 128K MP3)
• As a backup, Wil has posted a copy available on WWdN:IX itself (41.1 MB 128K MP3)
• A Rapidshare Link, provided by WWdN:IX Reader Patrick G
• And two torrents: One on The Pirate Bay from WWdN:IX Reader Michael S
• And the other on Mininova courtesy of yours truly, The Lost Prophyt

I reccomend the last route, since I'm seeding that puppy as we speak, and will continue to do so as long as I have the uptime. That might be a bit shaky right now, though, given the fact that, six feet in front of me and through not much more than brick and glass, there's one hell of a high wind session going on.

The usually sullen and rather rare creaking of the sign for the office below us is now a batshit crazy pendulum of constant "hit me with some WD40" noise, and looking out the window reveals lines swinging like a double dutch rope.

Good times in Central PA...

Update: My update color is never the same, but that's not the update. The update is thus: I hope Lawyer Mama doesn't get too jealous, but for my torrent effort, I got name-checked over on WWdN:IX. I'm still seeding, and we're up to four total seeders now, with just one peer as of 2:20pm my time. On the bright side, I've tossed up enough for two copies, so my part is done :D

You Were Caught In The Crossfire

It. Is. Fucking. COLD.

ForecastFox is telling me that it's 12 degrees outside. DAMN. It's the coldest day of a young 2008 so far, and if you ask my muscles (which are still tense from being out there and shivering so damned much), it's easily the coldest day of the winter as a whole. Granted, officially, winter is only about three weeks old, but this frigid-ass weather has been going on for long enough. Mother Nature needs to get her shit together.

This morning, though, she managed to give me a sign that she's still got some tricks up her green sleeves. I had to go to Weis on a mission to buy some milk for The Bear, and after I'd finished my lengthy trip around the store, I checked out and headed for the doors to trek back out into what can only be described as shirtsleeve weather in Anchorage. But when I walked out the door, I noticed that it was snowing.

It wasn't the big, fat, wet-ass snow we've been used to seeing lately. It was more like the fine, powdery snow that skiers like myself love to see, with a twist: If any of you watched the ball drop Monday night, you saw confetti out the yin-yang floating freely above Times Square. Well, the snow was coming down like that, and reflected in the sliver of sunlight shining down on the market's parking lot, was transformed into a transleucent crystal blanket of diamonds, slowly floating towards the pavement below.

For a second, I forgot how cold it was, but then I was quickly reminded that I'd become a dudecicle if I stood there like a gawking oaf for much longer, so I shook the sparkles from my eyes and made my way to the Explorer. But, for that little moment, I was reminded that Mother Nature can still look good at times, even when she's PMSing.

Might be time to dust off the ol' skis and head over to Tussey Mountain for a trip down the hills. Just another reason they call it Happy Valley...

Ice Capades

I'm about to bundle up and head out into yet another ice storm. Why am I doing this? Well, it sure as hell ain't because I like to wander about town in ice storms, that's for sure.

So far, the fire whistle has gone off four times in the last two hours, with apparatus flying up and down the streets. That should pretty much tell you that there's no way I'm driving, even just the four blocks down to the convenience store. Not worth it. I'd probably get so frustrated going that slow, I'd do something stupid anyway.

So, off we go, then. Wonder if Admiral Perry felt this way as he headed north...

Five Hours Later

Here's another shot of the same area, five hours later, and as you can see, I've caught some of the snow in the pic. Nifty, eh?

So, my day has been pretty much stoking the fire and watching snow fall. How's your day been?

Seasons Bleed

The weather this past decade has been quite the topic of conversation, both locally and nationally. Alot of people want to pin it on Global Warming, and then when we have a bitter cold spell, do a 180. There are those who are simply ignorant of the change other than the inconveniences it causes. Then there are those of us, but only a few, who want to read more into what's going on.

Since I don't have any formal meteorological training, all I can do is guess with what layman's knowledge I do have. For the previous two years, snow has been a long time coming to our area, often waiting until December before we see any great amount. This year, however, snow decided to show up a little early, at the beginning of November.

Now, as I recall from my childhood, snow in early November is fairly normal. Quite a few of my birthdays (and even a Halloween or two) were celebrated with powder on the ground, and it was the time during high school that I'd be getting geared up for Ski Club trips to Tussey Mountain.

The above picture illustrates a sort of bleeding over of seasons, something I haven't seen in quite a few years: The colors of fall (seemingly skipped this year, or at least only two weeks long), tinged gray with a thin veil of falling slow. As I type this, the snow has lightened up even more, but it's still coming down. The roof of the pharmacy across the street has a frosty layer of white stuff capping it, but not the houses down the street.

Heh. People losing all kinds of heat over there.

Such is life in this nowhere void we call Houtzdale. Joy, eh?