I was curious as to how close the weather is to arriving, so I checked the Franktown weather radar just now, saw this and thought “eww”.

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It’s been a busy week, both online and in the real world. I haven’t blogged this consistently in quite some time — I think I’ve managed to get past my writer’s block and all it apparently took was a bit of snow. Writing about the weather in Ottawa is often a good way to attract readers, especially if you make a prediction about it. I’m still hopeful that the snow is on its way out, especially given that the forecast for the next couple of days is calling for rain.

My most recent rant about Queensway drivers was picked up by the OttawaStart blog, which was a nice surprise and introduced even more people to my blog. Hopefully they’ll visit regularly!

Some stunning photos of the recent space shuttle launch as seen from a camera in a high-altitude balloon at the edge of space were an unexpected find on the Internet yesterday. I’ve chased and recovered high-altitude balloons, but never one that had take a picture of a rocket being launched into orbit.

Students at my alma mater who whined to the press when they had to pay for the loads of laundry they had been scamming from the pay-laundry in their dorm all year long gave me something else to rant about this morning. Why they believe they shouldn’t have to pay for something they used is baffling at best. Fortunately, not all of the students are behaving like spoiled brats caught with their hands in the cookie jar, but it only takes one or two to paint them all with the same brush.

So, what’s in store for the weekend? I’m going curling tomorrow during the day and then heading to a party in the evening. Sunday should see me heading to the climbing gym with my friends for a (hopefully) good workout on the walls.

What’s everyone else up to?

Did you hear about the Carleton students who were charged to use the pay washing machines in their dorm? I’ll admit it doesn’t sound very newsworthy and it probably wouldn’t be newsworthy if the students hadn’t figured out a way to cheat the swipe machine that activates the washing machines and then whined to a reporter when Carleton caught on to it and retroactively charged them for all the “free” uses.

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The last launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery took place a few days ago with the launch of STS-133. There have been a lot of photos and videos of the launch floating around the ‘net, and some of the most impressive were taken by Robonaut-1, a high-altitude balloon launched by Quest for Stars.

The photo in this post is from their photostream on Flickr and shows the exhaust trail left by Discovery as seen from an altitude of 22.8 km (about 74,800′). At that altitude you can see the curvature of the Earth against the darkness of space and the edge of the atmosphere where the blue fades to black.

The second photo is similar, but you can see the end of the exhaust trail where Discovery is punching through the atmosphere into space.

Having chased a couple of high-altitude balloons myself, I could related to the frustration of the searchers when the balloon’s payload returned to Earth and they had to wait until morning to retrieve it.

So, congratulations to the Quest for Stars group on their balloon launch and managing to capture a shuttle launch from the edge of space!

Time for a bit of a rant about drivers on the Queensway. I haven’t grumbled about them (in my blog anyway) since March 11th of last year, so it’s probably time.

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Well, we’re done with February and winter in Ottawa has broken, Monday’s weather notwithstanding. The forecast for the next couple of days is calling for sunshine and warm weather (for Ottawa in the winter).

Sounds like March is coming in like a lamb. If the old adage “in like a lion, out like a lamb” holds true, then the weather at the end of March is going to be spectacularly sucky. (Personally, I’m hoping this doesn’t come true!)

My prediction is that the end of March is going to be damp with maybe one annoying dump of wet snow to remind us that it can snow in the Spring, too. It would be really nice to have a repeat of last year, which saw me golfing on April 2nd, but I’m not going to be so bold as to suggest that will happen two years in a row.

What’s your prediction for the weather at the end of March and why?