Boy Did They Blow That One

I have the indisputable answer as to why weather forecasters were so incorrect in predicting the severity of the recent snowstorm:
predicting the future is impossible.
Weather forecasts are just best guesses. You can have computer models anticipating everything but then one butterfly flaps his or her wings in TON's backyard in New Jersey and it changes the snowfall amounts at the palatial Damino estate in Westchester County.
But that doesn't mean they didn't fuck up royally. The meteorological community has a vested interest in going with the most dire forecasts they can reasonably get behind:
1) It makes people pay attention to them
2) It earns them money
3) They really feel like they are doing the right then to keep people safe
4) It's better to err on the high side, than on the low side

Unfortunately idiot politicians to whom we entrust way too much power and control of our lives, took these Chicken Little predictions and shut down entire cities for no good reason.

Note: it's a shame that we don't trust one another enough (we may be justified) to let people use their own judgement of whether or not it's safe to drive and go to work.

Where's Paulo?

To promote tornado week The Weather Channel did something pretty funny. They put correspondent Dave Malkoff (not that Dave Malkoff) and an intern in a room with a lot of fans. And they streamed it live on the internet. They turned up the wind each time they hit a milestone of people using the #tornadoweek hashtag. Malkoff also promised to write the names of his new followers on a piece of paper and tape it to the wall. So of course I did, see if you can find this blog's name.

Note: it is visible but you may have to expand the picture to see it.




Upper right corner for those of you too lazy to search.

Stormy Weather

The storm of the century wasn't as bad as expected, thankfully. Because even in a diminished capacity Hurricane Sandy was a bitch. Almost the entire coast from North Carolina to New England got demolished, and many areas were completely destroyed, including Seaside Heights. Maybe God really did just catch up on Jersey Shore on his DVR and decided to wipe the place out.
Personally, I'm angry at New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. I think he is an authoritarian dictator who think he knows better how you should live your life. He shut down the NYC mass transit system at 7pm on Sunday, a full 24 hours before the storm was expected to make landfall.
As a result the entire city was shut down all day Monday for no good reason. The New York Stock Exchange could have been open until 1pm. I realize he didn't want people to come to work and get stuck in the city if trains and tunnels and bridges had to be shut down. But his job is not to protect us from ourselves. Not when it comes to hurricanes and not when it comes large-size soft drinks.
If I were a teacher, or a stock broker, I might have enjoyed this government-granted mini-vacation. But the news never rests, so I had to come to work. I was offered a hotel for Sunday night but decided to forgo it and take my chances coming into the city Monday morning. I made a wise decision. Not only was the weather not bad, there were no cars on the road.
Leaving after work would have been possible, but getting back in would not have been, so I was forced to stay at a hotel, the Westin in Times Square. It is directly adjacent to Cheetah's, which was closed. So the strippers get the day off, but I have to work.
I went up to my room, read for a while, watched my guilty pleasure TV show (Dan LeBatard is Highly Questionable) as well as PTI, and then went to the hotel bar for dinner with a couple co-workers.
Now if you run a hotel bar in Times Square it's unlikely the guests often eat there, they'd rather adventure out into the city. But in this case, the hotel bar was the only game in town, so everyone was there. They set up tables outside the restaurant in the lobby. The service was terrible, but it helped kill an hour and a half. At 7:30 I ran across to Duane Reade to get snacks. It was barely drizzling.

I went back to my room to watch the Final Table of the World Series of Poker Main Event, live and unedited on ESPN2. And to eat the Skittles I had just purchase. I really enjoy these rare opportunities I get to watch poker like this and I am beyond furious that because of the power outage which happened at about 7pm, my DVR couldn't record the entire thing while I slept.
Mrs. Poop was watching a movie with the kids at the time and Julian didn't understand why Cars 2 turned off in the middle and his mommy refused to put it back on. Luckily she fed and bathed the monsters earlier, so all she had to do was put them to bed. In the morning she went to work and took the kids to a friend's house where the power was still on.

When I woke up in the morning, it wasn't raining, it wasn't windy. But no one was out. Not a car or a pedestrian in sight as I walked to work through Times Square.