This week's weather poses an interesting forecast problem: what do you do when the most reliable computer model is predicting something completely out of whack for this time of year?

Many of the major computer models, including the ECMWF (which has been the most reliable so far this winter), show a giant cutoff low developing in the western Atlantic later this week. A cutoff low is one that is cut off from the jet stream, and therefore not steered by high level winds. It just sits and drifts. A huge blocking high to the east is forecast to act as a giant wall, keeping this cutoff low spinning near the East Coast and possibly even pushing it westward (in other words, backwards).

This scenario is highly unusual for early February. It is more typical of March or April. And yet, several computer models show it happening. The key issue is what this means in terms of precipitation and wind for our area. Southern stream energy will also come out of the southwest and possibly merge with this cutoff. Right now, 3-4 days in advance, all that is certain is a major question mark for later in the week--possibly some rain or snow, but also very possibly nothing at all. It is not the week to bank on long term forecasts.

I'm enjoying the official SBC announcement on its acquisition of AT&T. Here are some guesses as to what it really means:

• Ed Whitacre, SBC's chairman and CEO, really wanted to stay home in Texas. That's why the corporate headquarters of the company will remain in San Antonio. He had seen three Arctic outbreaks in the last two weeks in New Jersey, AT&T's home, and wrote off any chance of placing the company up north.

• David Dorman, AT&T's CEO, will join the SBC Board of Directors along with two other AT&T representatives. According to SBC's Web site, SBC currently has 16 directors. This means that the new board will have 19 directors, 3 of which are AT&T people. That's not a lot of clout--expect Dorman to be out of the picture by 2007. Especially after all those trips to Texas.

• And what about the name? SBC's Ed says they value the "strength and heritage" of the AT&T brand, and it will "certainly" be a part of the new company's future. Since this is the last paragraph of the press release and since all the other facts point to an SBC-dominated entity, this means you can expect the AT&T brand name to fizzle over the next couple of years.

Overall (although I am generally skeptical of mergers), it looks like a great deal for SBC. They got a bargain because of AT&T's incompetence in articulating any value. AT&T has good infrastructure but dismal management. The merger integration costs will be absurd, but since SBC controls an overwhelming share of the combined company, this should speed the process. Kudos to SBC for not talking about some "merger of equals" phony baloney.

Good observation by the Times today that the Biography billboard and the digital thermometer a block away tend to show different temperatures. I've been under the impression that the Biography billboard takes its reading directly from Central Park. However, this morning it showed a temperature of 35 when the latest hourly observation from Central Park was 31. So while the other display looks too cold, the Biography sign seems to have a wrinkle also.

Speaking of temperature data, I downloaded a piece of Mac freeware to report the latest Central Park temperature right on my desktop. I set it to update every 2 minutes--not because a new reading is available that often, but because I wanted to be sure it caught the hourly update (at every 51-after-the-hour) quickly.

At 12:12 p.m., this display said 32, the same temperature as at 11 a.m. But the 11:51 a.m. reading at Central Park was 33. That was the dealbreaker right there. What's the point of setting it to update every 2 minutes if it misses the new observation? I've disabled this "Weather Grok" freeware for now.

My Phish studio mix is spectacular. I didn't expect it to work this well--it's hard to predict how the sequence will sound as such--but somehow this works as well as any mix I've heard. Of course, Phish is best known for its live jam material, but its studio tracks are nothing to write off. Sometimes they work a nice jam into a studio version of a song, and sometimes a studio track just stands nicely on its own as an impressive (if tame) piece of work.

The mix:

1) "Free" (from Billy Breathes). Phish's first (and arguably only) radio hit from 1996, "Free" features an infectious hook and well-crafted bridge for showcasing a trademark Phish sound.

2) "If I Could" (from Hoist). Somehow the strings playing broken chords don't sound cheesy and the song is just tender enough.

3) "Birds of a Feather" (from The Story of the Ghost). One of my all-time favorites, especially for the way Trey's guitar during the bridge propels the song into a relentless groove.

4) "The Connection" (from Undermind). I originally put this in as a nod to Phish's last album, but the more I hear it in this mix, the more I like it.

5) "Fee" (from Junta, Disc 1). Jazzy chromatic piano runs cushion this crazy tale about a weasel named Fee (who tries to live a life that's completely free).

6) "Brian and Robert" (from The Story of the Ghost). This masterful work accomplishes the near-impossible: creating an overall sound that seems suspended in its own dimension but also keeps moving within itself.

7) "Sample in a Jar" (from Hoist). Just a fun song all around.

8) "Limb by Limb" (from The Story of the Ghost). As I've noted before, drummer Jon Fishman's performance on this track is mind-blowing. There isn't one obvious drum solo--it's just the way he turns an uncomplicated beat into rich rhythmic acrobatics.

9) "Heavy Things" (from Farmhouse). A nice no-nonsense, upbeat song that appears standard at first but has aged nicely.

10) "Cavern" (from A Picture of Nectar). This song may spur endless mind games trying to think of additional phrases that fit the syllabic emphasis of "a mudrat detector," "a ribbon reflector" and of course "a picture of nectar." The music is somewhat dark but still lively and catchy.

11) "Billy Breathes" (from Billy Breathes). Similar to "Brian and Robert," this song seems to live in its own universe, with a refreshingly different but still soothing chord progression.

12) "First Tube" (from Farmhouse). Is there any other way to end a studio mix? You really have to listen to this one yourself, all the way through, to appreciate it. One of my all-time favorites.

Putting aside the dubious wisdom of SBC acquiring AT&T, the reported price tag is unbelievably low. $15 billion? AT&T Wireless was bought out for $41 billion. It's just an incredible testament not only to the dwindling value of residential long distance telephone service, but also to AT&T's colossal failure to articulate any value in what is actually a pretty good data network.

Put another way, a 100 year-old company with 50 million customers is fetching 1/3 as much as a two year-old company wrangled by an information management disaster, repeated service glitches and a flood of flocking customers. Incredible!

Score another one for the ECMWF (European) computer model. Not only did it do well with the recent snowstorm, but it was the first model to predict the imminent return of Arctic air. I think until further notice, the ECMWF is the model of choice. However, computer models are like mutual funds: past performance is no guarantee of future results. Forecasts busts tend to occur that very first time the model just doesn't get it right.

One reason I love reading the technical forecast discussions is that they provide a glimpse of the internal debates in a prediction. Earlier in the week, the National Weather Service in Albany was saying that although its official late-week forecast highs for the Berkshires were in the upper teens, it wanted to go colder. The problem was it couldn't break ranks with surrounding NWS offices. As it turns out, the forecast highs dropped and now the NWS is predicting highs around 10 for the Berkshires on Thursday and Friday. (The three discussions I routinely read: New York City, Albany and Boston.)

The good news: it's a quick blast this time with temperatures moderating by Sunday, melting the snow.

This past Sunday, the Times had a great article on new year's newbies at the gym. Indeed, January is my least favorite month of the year to work out.

I am not opposed to newbies per se. In April of 1996, I was a newbie too. The difference is, when I first started going to the gym, I went out of my way to use the equipment properly, let other people work in when necessary, and follow general protocol.

If you are reading a book or magazine with small print while you are on the cross trainer, you are not working out hard enough to justify a trip to the gym. Those people are wasting space. Same with people who talk on the cell phones while on equipment, or yap to the person on the piece of equipment next to them.

An unscientific survey of newbies yesterday revealed that almost 40% of new faces fell into this delinquent newbie category, reading books or magazines, chatting, or just, in one case, doing absolutely nothing (the person was sitting on a stationary bike and not pedaling while simply staring up at the ceiling).

Thankfully, by late February or so, most of these clueless types realize that they are just not cut out for this resolution, leaving the knowledgeable regulars behind. I actually like that my gym has very little attitude and nobody cares how much you can lift or what you are wearing. That's good. But New York Sports Clubs, with its apparent focus on numbers, gets too many of these people who never should have joined in the first place.

When it snows, New Yorkers tend to flock to the supermarket and buy food, milk and water like they will never be available again. This happened at Whole Foods at Columbus Circle on Saturday evening.

The staff there gets major credit for remaining calm even though they were going to close early, and checking everyone out quickly and efficiently. Besides, the food itself (dinner) was unbelievable.

In no particular order:

• I have really enjoyed watching the football playoffs on CBS. I've always enjoyed the commentary of Phil Simms. Also, CBS doesn't overproduce the show--no constantly intrusive graphics and gimmicks like Fox throws at you. A football game is long and the overall tenor should be steady.

• Great piece by Daniel Okrent today on numbers and journalism. I've noticed a certain innumeracy when it comes to reporting on the weather. Articles will say an area received "as much as" X amount of rain or snow, or was "as hot as" Y degrees, when in fact the average across the area is much lower. Interestingly, today's Times article on the storm correctly described the overall average of accumulations.

• As for the storm, Central Park received 14 inches. The ECMWF model did very well predicting the path of the storm, the area of coastal redevelopment, and the lack of high pressure to the north or northeast. The storm wound up redeveloping more fiercely than anyone expected and dumped around two feet of snow with 40-60mph winds on Boston southeast to the cape.

11 degrees right now after a high of 15--the lowest maximum since last February. Granted, overnight lows are not as bad as the lows of 1 and 2 we had on a few days last winter, but a high of 15 is about as stiff as it gets around here. It's about as extreme as an overnight low of, say, 80. That's pretty extreme.

Why so cold? The new snow cover across the upper Midwest and central Canada. Arctic air masses can't moderate as they spread south. Air warms from thermal energy bounced off the ground, not directly from the sun. Snow acts to eat up solar energy instead of allowing it to reflect back up into the air, in effect preventing heating. As a result, temperatures as cold as -42F made it all the way down to Embarrass, MN two mornings ago.

Now attention turns to the possible coastal storm later in the weekend. Besides the usual debate about path and strength and precipitation type, I (along with some other weather friends) cannot understand why the National Weather Service seems to be ignoring the ECMWF (European) computer model. This model projects a major coastal storm off New Jersey by Sunday with each run taking it slightly closer to the coast. (Note that forecast times are in UTC, so subtract five hours for Eastern Time.) If the storm is too close, winds will come in off the ocean and the snow would change to rain.

The other major factor is a blocking high, or dense deck of cold air, over the Canadian Maritimes, which would force the storm to the south and shove it east-northeastward out to sea. I recommend bookmarking two excellent resources to follow the forecasting debates behind this storm: one of the National Weather Service NYC office (updated four times per day), and the other of WCBS meteorologist Jeff Berardelli (updated every day or so).

I just took the late '90s mix for a test drive today at the gym. Incredibly, it's not so bad.

Granted, the sequence of "One Week" (Barenaked Ladies), "Battle of Who Could Care Less" (Ben Folds Five), "Dammit" (Blink 182) and then "My Own Worst Enemy" (Lit) with only "What I Am" (Edie Brickell) in the middle adds up to a lot of silliness. Fine. It's mostly good music, and it's upbeat and kind of funny.

Now that I've heard "You Wanted More" (Tonic) one more time, I have two specific problems with the arrangement. They should have forgotten about the useless guitar riff blasted below. Instead, they should have opened the song with an instrumental statement of the chorus. The song lives on the contrast between the dissonant tension in the verses and the release and the definitive sweetness of the chorus. Starting the song with an instrumental statement of the chorus would set up the first verse nicely.

Second, idiotically, the song ends with the useless guitar riff. It leaves an otherwise strong melody in shambles. This song (specifically, with its chorus) screams for a fade-out ending. Generally, if you're going to end a pop song with something other than a fade-out, it most likely will be a hard ending on the chord whose key the song is in. Anything else is risky and it had better sound good or else it's going to sound dreadful. Not only does this song elect not to end on "I" (that's a Roman numeral one); it takes an impeccable hook and throws it into mush, ending the song hanging in the air. Precisely because the rest of the song is good, this ending is frustrating.

I started putting together a late '90s mix yesterday. It's going to need some more time to settle.

It has some good material so far. "Pardon Me" by Incubus is fantastic, with a powerful, hard rocking, definitive chorus. I've always loved "My Own Worst Enemy" (Lit) and "Shimmer" (Fuel). I also found "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" by Nine Days, one of the best pop songs of this period. "The Way" (Fastball) is steady and predictable with a nice overall flavor. "Inside Out" (Eve6), the hit made famous by its use of the phrase "lack thereof," is also solid. "Wishlist" (Pearl Jam) is wonderfully understated and shows a real evolution point for the one-time grunge pioneers with personal, simple lyrics.

The biggest disappointment has been "You Wanted More" by Tonic. It's another case of how a memory of a song can be misleading. The chorus here is as sugary as you can get. I had completely forgotten, however, about the repeated and disruptive guitar ramblings that break up this pleasant melody. Just when you think you're settled in the hook, you get dragged back to a patently useless guitar riff devoid of any ideas whatsoever. As it turns out, this song is completely misconceived and will probably be eliminated from this mix.

The late '90s were not known for outstanding music. Although I have some favorites from that era, I think I see why.

LiveJournal, another blogging service, is down today due to a power failure at Internap, LiveJournal's data center. From a legal perspective, it's exciting to think about these possible causes of action (I have no idea whether these will occur, and these are based purely on my own casual understanding of the situation).

The first and most obvious possible cause of action is LiveJournal against Internap. LiveJournal has said this isn't the first time this has happened. I don't know how a Web hosting provider can let both its primary and backup power go down more than once without some kind of defective service. I don't know anything about the service level agreement between Internap and LiveJournal, but I'd be surprised if there weren't at least some nasty letters to follow.

Second, Six Apart, the people behind MoveableType and TypePad (two other blogging services), just acquried LiveJournal. Is there a provision in the acquisition agreement to address this kind of outage? Was there a failure on the part of LiveJournal or Six Apart part to conduct proper due diligence of a company so critical to its business operations? Is there a material adverse change clause that is meant to be triggered in the case of an event like this? I don't know. What a way to get started in the new relationship!

Finally, the people with no recourse? LiveJournal users. They pay very little or nothing. Even if they paid something, what could the damages be from an unavailable blog, which is, in most cases, simply a recreational activity? And my guess is that LiveJournal has disclaimed or severely limited liability for this kind of outage in its service agreement with its customers. At least I would hope so.

By the way, just in case you were wondering, this blog, while powered by Blogger, is actually hosted by EarthLink, who I pay monthly for Web and domain hosting services. At any point in time, my client data is backed up on different media formats in at least three states.

After receiving my D-Link Bluetooth/USB adapter, I opened the manual to skim for any necessary instructions. The first six pages of the manual were for Windows: install software from the CD, open some configuration wizard, set this, check that, copy this to there, and so on and so on.

Then I got to the Mac section. The one instruction: plug it into the USB port.

Can't imagine using anything else.

The Lostprophets album with "Last Train Home" finally arrived. Memo to producers and musicians: people are listening to songs they like as singles constituting a mix. This means that transitions from one track to another, without a break, are extremely annoying.

As a fan of Phish, Bruce Hornsby and other jam and medley-type performers, I can certainly understand the value of one song meshing into the next. But many people are going to buy this Lostprophets album because of that one song. They should be happy I'm buying the whole album because I like the sound of the band.

The same thing happened with a song from the mid '90s called "In the Meantime" by Spacehog. The radio version ended at just the right point; the version I have, taken from the Spacehog album, starts blending into the next song before it gets cut off.

If people want to have seamless transitions between songs but one of them is a major hit, they should just throw the radio edit in with the album. Why not? It wouldn't cost anything and it would still provide fans with a more album-oriented experience.

I was able to find the radio edit of "Last Train Home" and order it separately. It's too critical a piece of my Fall '02-Spring '03 mix. Hopefully it will end on just the right note.

It's so nice when companies make it easy to get technical support. Hitachi, which made my Travelstar external hard drive, is one of those companies.

I had a question about the drive. I looked on the Web site and found a toll-free customer service number. Within three minutes of dialing, I was connected to a live person who simply wanted to know my first and last name and e-mail address before proceeding. He answered my question comprehensively and in a friendly manner.

One time I had a question for Sony about my DVD player. I called Sony and was asked at least 11 different questions--name, address, e-mail address, serial number, purchase date and location, and probably favorite kind of pasta--before I could even ask my question.

Hitachi could have quizzed me also. But how many people are randomly going to call the Hitachi Travelstar external hard drive service line if they aren't legitimate customers? This is a smart calculation by Hitachi and makes things easy for me.

The bright side to the last few dreadful seasons of Knicks basketball has been some hysterical writing by New York Times sports reporters. Selena Roberts has composed some masterful insults. And today's opening paragraph by Howard Beck should be hung from the rafters at Madison Square Garden:

Ignominy has come in many shapes and packages, and yet the Knicks occasionally still find new reasons to hang their heads in shame.

This, after the Knicks handed the New Orleans Hornets their 4th win in 33 games.

For the first time in a long time yesterday, I heard "What I Am" by Edie Brickell, one of my all-time favorites. Naturally, as soon as I got home, I downloaded the song from the iTunes music store.

This song packages so many things together exactly right. Edie's voice seems just slightly scratchy, in the same way that Bonnie Raitt's voice has that authentic, down-home feel. The melody is perky without being dramatic, and the instrumentation is funky but not silly. It's a similar sound, composed of keyboards, bass, guitar and drums, you'd find on an album like God Street Wine's $1.99 Romances.

Finally, the guitar solo is masterful--a neatly condensed exploration with a Jerry Garcia flavor.

"What I Am," mixing spunky pop with jamband funk, is one of the best singles of the 1990s.

After a couple of wet and warm days, the upper air pattern will change again by Friday as a trough redevelops over the East Coast. This means a return to cold air, but it won't be so bad. Highs will be in the 30s--a bargain for mid-January, climatologically the coldest time of the year in NYC.

What is a trough? It's an area where the air is colder and therefore more compressed. Pressure falls with height. When meteorologists speak of "high heights" and "low heights," they are talking about the height at which the air pressure is 500 millibars. If the 500mb point is higher, that means the air is less dense and warmer; if the 500mb point is lower, that means everything is being compressed down and the air is colder.

This nine-panel map, which I look at every day, shows one computer model's prediction of these 500mb heights 10 days into the future. (The map says MRF, but it is actually the newer GFS computer model.) You can see that by day 4, heights along the Northeast coast fall significantly and a trough builds down from Canada while a ridge re-establishes itself over the West Coast. These computer models are not guarantees of pinpoint temperature predictions, but they do a fairly good job of showing the general pattern over the next week.

Amazon.com has consumer psychology pinned down just right and I fell right into their game. But that's fine with me, because I got a good deal.

I was looking for an extra iPod firewire cable so I don't have to unravel existing cables every time I want to sync. This is a purchase purely of convenience and laziness, but it will improve my music experience overall.

The cable was $19 and change, but free shipping doesn't kick in until you reach $25. So I looked around for some music I want and found the latest Gwen Stefani album and (finally) that Lostprophets album, Start Something, with "Last Train Home."

I also love the way Amazon shows you your order total. If you get free shipping, they add on the amount and then subtract it. They could have simply line-itemed the shipping cost at zero, but by showing you the process of adding and subtracting $7.50, they further convince you that you got a good deal. Well done.

Bruce Hornsby's piano solo in "Friend of the Devil," a track on the live album of The Other Ones (the reincarnation of the Grateful Dead without Jerry Garcia) called The Strange Remain, is terrific. For whatever reason, after having this album for five years, I've gotten more into it recently.

Hornsby loves to do two things in his piano solos. First, he'll play long passages of eighth notes and, in successive phrases, skip one on a different beat. This keeps the solo flowing but also fresh. Second, just like in "China Doll" on his 1993 album Harbor Lights, Bruce likes to end solos with long descending phrases just before the song resumes.

I saw The Other Ones in 1998 and the concert was unbelievable. I've never seen such tight music generated by so many different performers. Since they seem to have gone their separate ways since then, this live recording is a classic gem.

Eudora has very good email sorting ability. You can route messages to different inboxes and outboxes based on sender, recipient, subject and other things.

For awhile, I had it all organized: specific people were associated with specific projects, so I could assign sets of people to specific inboxes and outboxes and find all the mail for one client in one place.

However, recently I've gotten other projects involving the same people. So now those people are not exclusively associated with one client. I'm not sure what to do. I can't just sort mail by person, because then mail for an individual client will be dispersed among multiple mailboxes. I really need some kind of compound rule system, and I'm not sure Eudora has it.

I should have seen this coming. In the world of small business, it's the same set of people working with each other over and over again. Unfortunately, that is in tension with the capabilities of my favorite e-mail application.

Surface weather maps can be deceptive. Right now, the latest surface maps show a low pressure center over Toronto with an occluded front extending down to a triple point in central Pennsylvania. A triple point is where an occluded front, cold front and warm front all intersect.

Generally, low pressure centers like to re-form at triple points. But not as much as they prefer to re-form near the Gulf Stream east of New England. That's why, this time of the year, when low pressure centers get near the coast, they frequently transfer energy to an environment that is more favorable for development--generally along the coast between Virginia and Maine.

Right now, while the low center is back over Toronto, most of the precipitation has moved east of a line extending from New York City to Burlington, VT. This was the first clue that a low pressure center was about to form east of New England, since that's where the energy is heading.

A look at the latest surface observations confirmed this suspicion. The lowest pressure in New England is at Nantucket, where a gusty southeasterly wind is bringing in mild air. This is a classic sign that something is getting going off of Cape Cod. Meanwhile, pressures at Western New England reporting stations such as Danbury, CT and Pittsfield, MA are actually rising.

What does this mean in plain English? A dramatically declining chance of steady precipitation for New York City and a period of gusty northeasterly winds for southeastern Massachusetts. As usual, I'd rather be here.

Count me as one of the 1 million EarthLink users setting their e-mail protection to "high." According to this article, that's the number of EarthLink customers using the strictest level of spam protection.

It's great. I get no spam. The only e-mail permitted to reach me is from users in my address book or in my outbound address history from the last year. EarthLink's Webmail service made it easy to upload my Mac OS X address book and outbound address history. If you're not a contact and I haven't written to you in the last year, you're blocked.

Once in awhile, a legitimate message gets caught in the "suspect email" box, but these are easily identified. I also occasionally have to be pro-active and add someone's address to the allowed list before receiving email from them. These are small aggravations compared to the value of enjoying email again without any spam at all.

The best ring tone on the Motorola v710 is definitely "Notify." It's a distinctly modern simulated ring, in bursts of a second or two, pleasant to the ear and not cheesy. It's different from the rings for line 1 and line 2 on my landline phone, so it works well. It sounds crisp. If I am out I have my phone on vibrate, but when I am home I set the v710 to "Notify" and don't get sick of the ring when I get a call.

The whole craze with ringtones based on songs is a little puzzling. It might be funny for your phone to play Beethoven's Fifth the first time, but the novelty quickly disappears and the repetition becomes annoying. "Notify" is a no-nonsense ring that sounds pleasant without getting old. No matter the frequency of incoming calls, "Notify" stays fresh.

Allocating responsibility in team sports, whose results depend on highly complex interaction between different people, is difficult. Sometimes you have clear winners (Kirk Gibson's home run, Reggie Miller scoring 8 points in 8.2 seconds) and losers (Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series, Charles Smith in Game 5 of the 1993 playoffs against the Bulls), but more often, both the credit and blame can be spread around.

I really like Jets coach Herm Edwards, but the decline of the Jets this season needs to be put on him alone. The Jets started at 5-0 and finished the season 10-6. They had enough talent to squeeze out a better record. At various points along the way, including in yesterday's game against the Rams, they just couldn't get the job done when it counted. When the whole team fails, it's the fault of the person at the top.

The same goes for Joe Torre. As good as Torre is, especially at keeping large egos in check season after season, the Yankees' collapse against the Red Sox says more about Torre than anybody else. It simply should not have happened. It wouldn't have happened, for example, under Pat Riley.

Conversely, coach Hubie Brown rightfully gets credit for giving the Grizzlies some real hope before retiring (again).

Will the Jets wake up? How they play next weekend will tell you a lot about what Herm Edwards can do--or can't do--in motivating his team when it counts.

3 Doors Down has scored an impressive crossover hit: "Here Without You." The band made its first splash in 2000 with the edgy and catchy "Kryptonite." The new hit single keeps their trademark guitars so the song still passes for alternative rock, but also has just enough feelings for Lite-FM.

Last night's ball drop temperature at Central Park was 52. Since 1907, only three New Year's Eve ball drop temperatures have been higher.