Dammit, it's 1.4 degrees, and it's *raining*, not snowing. Why can't it snow? Ok, so it's a phase change and phase changes take energy and are hard. But it was already frozen when it was in the clouds, so it takes more energy to heat it up to falling rain water drops, rather than let it stay frozen and give me my snow!
OK, so next you'll use the excuse that it's not falling from the clouds and hence never was in the form of hail; it's just precipitating from the fog surrounding the mountain[1], but pishtosh. I want my snow.
PS. The subject of this post was the easter egg featuring in the old CCS control system (they dedicated 40+ words[3] out of the 2.5Mwords available to an easter egg‽) if you entered an atmospheric temperature of 0degC or below. I found it only once in the 2 two winters I worked with it before the CCS was replaced. I tried to convince the other software guy up here to add that to the status display of the new TCS when he encountered -0.4degC a couple of weeks ago.
PPS. US patent 4634021 is cool. As is Stanthorpe, Queensland. Quite cool.
[1] Last time I was on shift, I had my motorbike up here, and *really* had to get it down off the mountain at the end of shift so I could go riding on the 5 day long weekend[2]. And I woke to a torrential downpour. But I knew all I needed was 5 minutes to get off the mountain, and I'd be fine to get home. I had to wait more than 2 hours for that 5 minute gap, and not before 90mm of rain fell. Indeed, at the bottom of the mountain, the road was relatively dry -- in town, 5mm had fallen the whole day. Who decided to build an observatory in a dam rainforest? (sorry, I'm channeling the American sitting across from me waiting to finally get some observing in one of these days).
[2] The weather was bad. I decided to stay inside instead.
[3]
OK, so next you'll use the excuse that it's not falling from the clouds and hence never was in the form of hail; it's just precipitating from the fog surrounding the mountain[1], but pishtosh. I want my snow.
PS. The subject of this post was the easter egg featuring in the old CCS control system (they dedicated 40+ words[3] out of the 2.5Mwords available to an easter egg‽) if you entered an atmospheric temperature of 0degC or below. I found it only once in the 2 two winters I worked with it before the CCS was replaced. I tried to convince the other software guy up here to add that to the status display of the new TCS when he encountered -0.4degC a couple of weeks ago.
PPS. US patent 4634021 is cool. As is Stanthorpe, Queensland. Quite cool.
[1] Last time I was on shift, I had my motorbike up here, and *really* had to get it down off the mountain at the end of shift so I could go riding on the 5 day long weekend[2]. And I woke to a torrential downpour. But I knew all I needed was 5 minutes to get off the mountain, and I'd be fine to get home. I had to wait more than 2 hours for that 5 minute gap, and not before 90mm of rain fell. Indeed, at the bottom of the mountain, the road was relatively dry -- in town, 5mm had fallen the whole day. Who decided to build an observatory in a dam rainforest? (sorry, I'm channeling the American sitting across from me waiting to finally get some observing in one of these days).
[2] The weather was bad. I decided to stay inside instead.
[3]
INTEGER*2 MBM(38)
C
DATA MEM / 'ENTER METEOROLOGICAL PARAMETERS '/
DATA MCU / '(CURRENTLY #^^ DEG C, #^^^ MM HG) '/
DATA MMP / 'METEOROLOGICAL PARAMETERS:'/
DATA MT / ' TEMPERATURE = #^^ DEG C'/
DATA MP / ' PRESSURE = #^^^ MM HG'/
DATA MBM / 'IF YOU ARE A BRASS MONKEY, I STRONGLY AD',
: 'VISE YOU TO STAY IN THE CONTROL ROOM'/
...
IF (T .GT. 0.0) GO TO 300
CALL IODO('OW.',6,MBM,76)
GO TO 300
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