Mom, I canceled class today
I suppose we’ll see plenty more where this came from:
Two Edgewood High School students were arrested Thursday and accused of hacking into the school district’s Web site to schedule an unplanned – and unauthorized – snow day.
I think it’s crossed everybody’s mind about forcing a snow day at some point, but the method usually involved having everybody flush their toilets at 7 PM sharp. (The theory went that, if enough people flush, the excess water would overflow into the streets and freeze, thus creating inclement driving conditions and forcing a snow day. It’s actually not that bad of an idea – if you naïvely assume that the sewer system has such low capacity – because frozen roads are so much more hazardous than snowed-over roads.) I guess today’s high schoolers are a lot more sophisticated. And more foolish: if everyone flushes, it’s not like they can give every student a detention for using the bathroom.
Anyhow, you can always count on Planet Xavier to provide accurate St. X snow closing information. Just don’t count on it being the least bit up-to-date. I cooked up a neat little script for my computer that yells at me whenever St. X is mentioned in the school closings, but because I’m three hours behind and there’s no way I’m getting up at 3:30 in the morning just to let you know you’re off school, you’ll have to turn to a less reputable source, like the local TV stations.
By the way, I just love how Channel 9 has a red breaking news banner urgently announcing “10+ Closings As Of 1:54 a.m.” Most of them, like the Appalachian Festival Meeting and the plug for Ultimate Doppler 9, aren’t even school closings.
Thanks to Dawn Kawamoto of CNet for the scoop, via the Finnish antivirus company F-Secure. It’s great how these two blog posts explained the concept of a “snow day” to their Californian and Finnish audiences, respectively.
I’ve been informed that the method for getting a snow day nowadays entails turning around once after flushing. To which I must ask: clockwise or counterclockwise? It makes all the difference.