A Bit Chilly

We're not talking the economy here or even the weather in California, but rather the current cold snap in Europe. I heard on the BBC that last night the U.K. was, in places, colder than Antarctica. Even allowing for global warming, that's still a rare occurrence, so I thought I'd post something in solidarity!

The picture above comes from Belarus (and is part of a set of images on the theme of "Icy Days & Nights" featured in the Boston Globe) where they are used to this sort of thing, but it's perhaps a warning that continued exposure to cold weather seems to do bad things to the brain.

Roll on summer. Round these parts the forecasters are promising us temperatures in the 68 to 70 degrees F range by Sunday. Now that's more like it!

(Oh, and I think I did very well to avoid any "man with his chopper in his hand" jokes, don't you? Bit of a struggle, mind ... )

All Quiet On The Western Front

... largely because I'm not there. I'm in Texas - Austin, to be exact - grabbing some PC time in the hotel prior to a set of customer meetings.

Spring looks like it has already arrived here. It's in the 70s and clear, and so in other words an order of magnitude better than, say, Chicago, where one of our party was try to leave from to get here by last night. They ended up on a train instead of a plane, heading to Saint Louis from where they did manage to get as far as Dallas at least. This latest storm has literally frozen solid much of the mid-west.

In the background, I have MSNBC running on the TV. They were just reporting from Minnesota and apologising for not shooting the interview from a prettier place. It seems their camera lens has frozen solid and they can't now zoom it in or out ....