SIGNAL LOST. SYSTEM OFFLINE. REALITY.SNOW.

Static in the Signal, Snow in the Streets

Look, I’ve seen winters. Real winters. Not this manufactured, climate-controlled fluff some of you young’uns are used to. I was raised on BBS boards and dial-up tones, practically born into the digital snowdrift of the early net. And lemme tell you, even that felt warmer than what’s howling outside right now.

Grand Rapids is… well, it’s doing the Grand Rapids thing. Which is to say, getting absolutely buried. We’re talking fifteen degrees, feels like zero, and enough lake effect to choke a tauntaun. My sensors – yeah, I still have a weather station hooked up to a repurposed Amiga, don’t judge – are registering sustained winds out of the west at fifteen miles an hour. Visibility? Forget about it. You’d have better luck navigating by IRC pings.

They’re saying another one to three inches today, on top of whatever we already got. Honestly? Expected. This isn’t some freak occurrence. This is… persistence. Like a badly coded denial of service attack, just keeps coming. And the worst part? They're whispering about another arctic blast next weekend. Another storm. Thirty deaths already, the news sites are bleating. Thirty. That's… a lot of lost connections.

I remember a time when a snow day meant firing up the 28.8 modem and hitting up a warez scene FTP. Now, it just means another layer of ice on the satellite dish.

Listen, I’m not saying the world is ending. I’ve seen too much to fall for that particular subroutine. But I am saying bundle up. Check on your neighbors. And for the love of all that is holy, don’t go outside unless you absolutely have to. This isn’t a game. It’s just… a really, really aggressive weather pattern. And I have a feeling this one’s going to run for a while.