Minneapolis

In said burgh for the 62nd IETF meeting... this being the place at which the folk concerned with putting bits on the wire argue over the order in which those bits shall be sent... And the place at which some of us folk who don't so much actually mess with the bits as mess with crypto primitives also show up, to suggest to the people building the packets how to use said primitives wisely on the wire.

No, I've no idea why it's in Minneapolis. But it is.

So far, all I know about Minneapolis is: (i) it's in Minnesota, and (ii) if your flight was around dinnertime, and you don't get around to eating due to this and other obligations, this can be trouble--as it's apparently rather difficult to get food delivered in Minneapolis after midnight.

(Crosses fingers that the pizza he ordered finds its way to his hotel room, preferably before he wastes away from hunger...)

Psychotic prairie barbers

We're currently getting creamed by an Alberta clipper--nasty sorta storm that blows out of the prairies.

You don't normally hear about these much in Ottawa--not sure if it's just that the term's not much in vogue around here or that the storm track really normally does most of its storming in the Northern US and then peters out just in the lee of the great lakes. In any case, when the radio announcer issues his warming, I have visions of some wild-eyed prairie barber, hell-bent to give us all brush cuts or some damn thing.

Signs of spring

Discovered--somewhat to my pleasure--this afternoon that the water working its way into our lovely sunroom wasn't going through a fault in the roof.

It was actually coming in a vent. An ice sheet several inches thick has formed on that part of the roof--probably due to the fact that we only sporadically heat the room. Some days, the wood stove's a-blazin' or the blinds are wide open, and the sun heats the tiles. But some nights, we don't run the stove, and I close the doors, let the area get down to the outdoor temperature--or near enough, I suppose.

Should have occurred to me, I suppose, that this might cause trouble. Sure enough, probably due to the fact that this regularly creates conditions suitable to partially melt the snow on the roof, we've now got ice on the roof around the chimney and adjacent vent thick enough that when it starts to melt on warm days, water works its way in through the vent.

So yes, we have a leak, but no, there's nothing wrong with the roof. And I was able to climb up there, clear the ice from immediately around the vent, and it's stopped dripping in--for now.

Next winter, we might have to invest in a roof rake, try to keep the snow off the shingles in the area--though I suspect this will also eventually require some serious flashing, as shingles don't hold up to that kind of thing for long. I suppose it's also possible it might have just been due to the truly odd weather we've had this year--freezing and thawing all over the damned place--but I rather doubt this.

In other news, we saw cardinals in the back yard this morning--a male and female, presumably together or thinking about it.

Yep, meltwater on the floor and amorous birds in the backyard. Looks like spring is springing.