Today WeatherGrrrl and I walked from the house up to UMM for our radio show (about 1.5 miles each way). When we left at about 11:15am it was a little cold and blowy, but nothing spectacular. When the show ended at 2pm, however, the forecast blizzard had rolled in with all of its pointy teeth sharpened and ready for business.

We actually considered punting the walk back and tried calling Morris transit, but they didn’t answer (turns out they shut up shop at 12:30pm on Sundays), so we bundled up and trekked out in our best imitation of Shackleton. At about the half-way point we ducked into the Morris (movie) Theatre to warm up a bit and re-arrange our scarves, and then we cut through the “mall” for a another bit of respite. The last few blocks were arguably going to be the worst, because (a) we’d cross the railroad tracks, where there’s nothing blocking the north wind for farther than modern telescopes can reach, and (b) we’d ve heading several blocks due north, straight into the teeth of the wind. (Much of the walk up to that point had been west, so sideways to the wind.)

Just after crossing the tracks, Timna drove past, pulled around, and offered us a ride. A TOTAL LIFESAVER! Normally, I’d be all “Oh, I’m just a few blocks from the house, blah, blah, thanks a ton, etc.”, but in this case neither Sue nor I hesitated one teeny bit :-)

The video is basically the walk from the corner of our block, after we were dropped of, up to the front door, and in the lonely little minute documented here my fingers became painfully cold outside of their gloves.

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure we moved here voluntarily. 22.5 years ago. And are extremely happy. But right now a warm, sandy beach wouldn’t go awry.

Not even a little bit.

And thanks again to Timna for the lift. That’s part of why living in Morris is so nice!

Due to the Federal Government shutdown, NOAA.gov and most associated web sites are unavailable. However, because the information this site provides is necessary to protect life and property, it will be updated and maintained during the Federal Government shutdown.

I’m genuinely grateful that they’re continuing to provide weather updates. It’s certainly damned unlikely that severe weather will be kind enough to take a break while the loonies are holding the proper functioning of the government hostage. This is a great example of how important government function and services can be, and the value our tax dollars generate.

I hope the voters will hold the Republican nut jobs responsible for all the damage this shutdown is causing.

The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed. – William Gibson

The thermostat we had when we got up this morning knew the temperature in the house (or at least in the living room downstairs) and because it was “programmable” it had some inkling of what we wanted the temperature to be. On the other hand it had no idea what the weather was like or was expected to be. It didn’t have a clue that a big winter storm was headed our way until the wind had already stripped away whatever heat was stored up in the walls.

It didn’t know if we were actually home or away, so we always had to remember to fiddle with the settings before we went away at Xmas.

It didn’t have any idea how long it would take our 100+ year old hot water radiator heating system to get up to speed or expend its heat. This meant that it often overshot, especially on cold mornings leading to sunny mild days.

It’s communication skills also left something to be desired, being limited to a small, unlit LCD display and four buttons. We keep a flashlight on a table under it specifically because it’s such a pain to to see, even in daylight, and we keep the instruction manual close to hand because the strange button combinations needed to alter the programming make emacs key combinations look positively intuitive.

And we had to be right in front of it to interact with it. If we left for vacation and forgot to put it on hold, well that was just too bad. And there was no way to tell it that we were an hour or two from arrival and it would be really swell if it could start warming the house up for us so we’d come home to something more welcoming than a furnished meat locker.

This afternoon, though, all that changed as we installed our new Nest thermostat.

We now have a thermostats that’s on the Internet. It knows where we live and knows that the sun went down a few minutes. It can access weather forecasts, so it knows how much the temperature is likely to drop tonight. And we can talk to it from anywhere we’re on-line. I can’t see it from where I’m sitting, but via this laptop I know that it reads the current temperature in the living room as 72F. And I can change its settings from this computer. Or my iPod touch. Or a computer at my parents’ house in Arkansas. We can provide an ETA and desired temperature from the road on the way home from a vacation, and the Nest can combine what it knows of our house, our heating system, the weather, and our request to figure out how to make it all happen.

WeatherGrrrl and I were giddy as school kids after we installed it and set up the accounts. We’d connect to it in different ways and alter the settings, and then look at the Nest and watch it respond almost instantly, and watch the displays on other computers update in real time. We giggled like we’d fallen into some strange episode of the Jetsons or Star Trek. And the crazy thing is that it hasn’t actually done anything yet, as the temperature’s still warm enough that we don’t actually want the heat to be on. Yet we sat there dreaming up scenarios and possibilities enabled by this splendid little device, and smiled and laughed and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

While we have no actual experience to report, I can say that the packaging was wonderfully elegant (very Apple-esque), installing it was no problem even for a unhandy person such as me, the set up was easy, and connecting on-line was a breeze. Now we wait while it learns things like how to recognize whether we’re home or now and, when the weather gets cold enough that we need heat, what our heating preferences are and how our aged house and radiator system respond to its commands. Here’s hoping it lives up to half of its potential!

On a related note, way back in grad school (late 80’s?) I had to good fortune to take a seminar from John McCarthy, pioneer of artificial intelligence as a field (and coiner of the term) and the man that developed the Lisp programming language. One of the most memorable moments was a lengthy discussion of whether a thermostat was intelligent; McCarthy argued that it was, much to the consternation of many of the grad students in the room. Without cracking the lid too far on that can of worms for the moment, it’s certainly clear that our Nest thermostat is a whole heck of a lot “smarter” than the programmable jobby we took down today, which was in turn muchly “smarter” than the old analog spring thermostat that was on the wall when we moved in.

Me thinks we just installed a bit of the future, and it’s whole tons of fun!

Our last trip was a fine week with my parents in Arkansas, where we had much cooler weather than one might expect for this time of year. We even had one really nice, gentle rain, which was an excellent excuse to stay inside and read. Or sit out in the rain if you’re a ceramic frog :-).

We’ve had two days of this super cold weather, with schools being closed and events being cancelled. This weekend it’s supposed to get to nearly freezing (high 20’s F), which will be a nice change. In the meantime we bundle up and drink lots of hot chocolate.

We’re up in Preston with WeatherGirl’s Mum for the holidays. Bandwidth here at her house is limited and at least mildly awkward, so there probably won’t be much posting from here.

The snow shot is from Morris a couple of years ago – the word is that they’re definitely gonna have snow on the ground for Xmas. It’s quite cold for the UK up here in Preston, but nothing on what it’s like in Minnesota. It’s a bit below freezing at night and heavy frost sometimes lasting the whole day.

Apparently they’ve had snow back in Morris, but we’re not likely to see any of the white stuff here in Colchester. The leaves are turning with enthusiasm, however, and it’s definitely crisp when Sub-Evil and I walk in together in the mornings. We’ve even seen a little frost. Hats and gloves are good, but a sweatshirt with rain shell is sufficient outerwear if you’re walking.

Colchester is one of the drier parts of the UK as it has about the most land west of it of any location on the islands. We’ve walked in some intermittent drizzle, but I’ve yet to walk any distance in real rain. (Sub-Evil’s not been so lucky, however, and got drenched one day coming home.)

The photo is from a nice park/green space in Colchester (see map) that was the Quaker cemetery from the mid-1700’s to the mid-1800’s. Sometime after they quit using it as a cemetery, they donated it to the city. Remaining head stones were moved to the edges of the space, leaving a wonderful little park.