You can't officially call it March Madness for another 10 minutes, but this was an amazingly entertaining way to kill a few hours. Go, Longhorns!

Now that the Portland public school bigwigs have decided that they can close only a few schools due to weather on a given day, leaving the rest open, how about expanding the smart idea of selectivity to delayed starts? Today it was obvious that there was no need for any special scheduling at most of the city's schools, and yet at a handful of schools an all-day closure was called for.

It's 2007. We all have computers and laptops. There are weather stations and weather cams all over town, and they sell them dirt cheap nowadays. Can we get the school closure machinery into the 21st Century?

Willy Week offers a smart reader a chance to win a hundred worth of good stuff, here.

Beats the heck out of me.

Looks like the Portland Planning Commission has given the proposed Burnside-Couch traffic couplet a three thumbs down. There's a report on this over at citizen activist Chris Smith's blog, where he bemoans the decision. No maw stweetcars? Wah. Need maw pwetty winchpins.

As if today's severe weather in the Portland metro area wasn't enough to worry about, check out this news:

This year, Daylight Saving Time (DST) will start three weeks earlier beginning on Sunday, March 11 at 2:00 a.m. It will end one week later on Nov. 4. The extended period is the result of the Energy Policy Act passed by Congress in August 2005. Daylight saving time is not observed in Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Nation), Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam.

Technology support professionals are preparing for the change by deploying patches to many time dependent applications prior to March 11. Software vendors are recommending that customers also validate time information for certain applications during the weeks between the new and previous DST dates.

Here at bojack.org Storm Center 9000 we have snow mixed with rain -- repeat, snow mixed with rain.

Remain calm. Do not leave your home. Stay tuned to bojack.org Storm Center 9000 all day for continuing, comprehensive team coverage of the snow mixed with rain.

Portland schools chief Vicki Phillips is reported in fair condition at this hour after what school officials call a fainting spell at district headquarters early this morning. "She was up all night looking at the weather reports," said a staffer close to the dynamic superintendent. "They were reporting that it might snow, it might not, maybe just in some places, maybe a lot, maybe not a lot. Finally, I think she just cracked."

Medical crews were rushed to the agency's crisis headquarters off Northeast Broadway, where neighbors were wakened by the early morning commotion. "She looked pretty bad when they wheeled her out," said Elgin Roundtree, who lives across the street. "She had on, like, an Army helmet and some kind of camouflage outfit, and her hair was all messed up. She kept saying, 'Johnny can't walk in the snow.' I think she was having some kind of a breakdown."

An emergency team took Phillips to the OHSU Wellness Center in the SoWhat district, where at last report they were waiting for an aerial tram. A spokesperson for the school district said that a final decision on whether to close schools today in light of the severe weather will not be made until about 3 p.m. "We've decided that it's better to wait until all the facts are in," the spokesperson explained.

Meanwhile, the temperature in Portland hovered dangerously close to the 37-degree mark as drizzle continue to pound the area. Stay tuned to bojack.org Storm Center 9000 for the latest developments on the late winter storm crisis. It's better than checking with your stock broker.

As anxious residents wait nervously in their homes, bracing for a deadly winter storm headed in their direction, city officials in Portland are seeking to reassure them that everything is under control. Nonetheless, the morning commute in the metropolitan area promises to be one of the trickiest in quite some time.

"Everyone should remain calm," Mayor Tom Potter advised in an impromptu press conference televised lived from his neighborhood walking route in southeast Portland. "I'm in charge of the emergency response, and I think those who are sowing fear among the citizenry should just shut up and let me talk. It's going to be a rough couple of days, but we are going to come out of this progressively, and sustainably." To bring his point home, the mayor appeared in pajamas and fuzzy slippers with a to-go cup of brewed Boyd's decaf.

Meanwhile, the city's street crews are operating under temporary management, as transportation Commissioner Sam Adams is still recovering from televised surgery for painful toenail fungus. Daphne Stone, acting director of the bureau, noted that beginning at 9 p.m., the city had begun plowing streets where snow was expected to fall, as a precautionary measure. "We only have two plows, and the guy over on the east side tends to go really slowly," she explained. "And so we're getting an early start on this. We're totally prepared." The city's two sand trucks have been active since midday, spreading gravel in places where snow might fall later, she added.

Tri-Met is operating on a normal schedule at this hour, with an estimated 10 percent of the drivers behaving in a surly manner and 5 percent homicidal.

The rest of the city's transportation staff is working around the clock trying to get the OHSU Health Club aerial tram operating again, after it suddenly stopped in the afternoon, stranding frightened passengers high above the Lair Hill neighborhood. The official explanation was that a 45-mile-an-hour wind gust had tripped a shutdown mechanism on the tram, but critics of the lift were skeptical. One OHSU physician, who requested anonymity out of fear of being treated at the hospital, said the real cause was that the tram is operating on Windows Vista. "I had just gotten done doing a botox on this old gal from Dunthorpe," he told Storm Center 9000, "and after my massage, I was waiting to catch the tram back up the hill to where my Mercedes is parked. I was over by the main control panel and I heard that bad piano chord come out of the computer. Next thing I knew, the screen went blue and there was a whole bunch of gibberish on it about a fatal exception."

A seventh-grade student who was waiting with the doctor eventually got the computer to reboot and guided the tram car back to its station, but when the good Samaritan tried to connect to Microsoft for a Vista update using the city's free wi-fi cloud, the tram stopped operating completely. At last report, the system was still shut down, and engineers from Slovenia are being brought in to assess the problem.

Meanwhile, in Storm Center 9000 weather central, we see that the temperature has plunged to 37 degrees, meaning that the city is a mere five degrees above freezing. If the temperature falls to 32 or below, any water present will freeze. This is believed to be the leading cause of ice, which most scientists agree is slippery. If you encounter ice, keep in mind that it's slick and cold.

Stay tuned for continuous live team coverage of this late winter storm here on bojack.org Storm Center 9000.

Our comprehensive team coverage of the Portland Storm of the Century of the Week continues now with this live report from our Clark County correspondent, Butterbean:

I was getting 'Couv fever and had to get out. They still haven't caught that guy in Tualatin yet, but I don't care. YOU try spending five straight days north of Mill Plain.

I headed east on SR 14 and can report several drivers had deployed their windshield wipers in an effort to cut through the driving drizzle. Things didn't improve much on 205 south as a nasty 5 mph cross wind forced drivers to slow all the way down to 55 mph for portions of the drive. Fortunately I reached my undisclosed destination before the sun went down and was thus spared the worst. Unfortunately I'll have to drive all the way back to the 360 in a few hours. Provided I arrive home in one piece, I'll make sure and give you all the details.

Be brave, Jack. This looks like the nastiest weather we've had in a good week. Back to you.

Another vicious winter storm has brought the City of Roses to a standstill. Rain and wind have made Portland wet and windy all day, and as long as the precipitation and gusts continue, those who venture outside will find themselves getting blown around and moistened.

Not to mention the bitter cold -- 42 degrees and dropping at this writing. Damaging winds of 14 miles per hour are being reported out at the airport. It's so cold and nasty that the aerial tram -- our symbol of reliable transportation -- has been paralyzed. That's one hellacious winter storm, people. And so we're reactivating bojack.org Storm Center 9000 -- your one-stop survival information source.

Mixed in with the rain are actual snowflakes, which could make travel extremely dangerous if the weather turns to all snow, temperatures drop, and several feet of snow accumulate. We are presently just 10 degrees from the freezing mark, and so anything can happen. Forecasters say that there's a 100 percent chance of darkness overnight, followed by periods of light toward dawn.

We'll have continuing team coverage all night long, including eyewitness reports from the neighborhood under the aerial tram, where shaky passengers lived through a real nightmare this afternoon. We'll also have a forecast of the latest from China, where a deep low pressure system is causing widespread damage to American 401k's.

Stay tuned to bojack.org Storm Center 9000, and whatever you do, pull down the blinds and do not go outside!

Looks like the fun has begun.

I understand there was some slushy snow this morning. Being a late riser, I missed it. But it seems cold enough that it could do it again tonight. Do I need to be pulling this out again?

Photo courtesy Miles Hochstein / Portland Ground.

Our weekend speculation about what's going to happen to the Wild Oats store on NE Fremont, now that Whole Foods is buying out Wild Oats, was fun. But it gets a whole lot more interesting when you consider who owns that building. I'll give you a hint: It's not Wild Oats.

At least on the tax records, it's listed as something called ADG Properties, LLC, which I do believe is owned, at least in part, by Stan Amy, a founder of, and still affiliated with, New Seasons markets! Amy, a former Nature's bigwig, was a fiercely unhappy camper with the new Wild Oats management when it took over the old Nature's chain, and there was lots of bad blood when Amy and his partners left Wild Oats and started their own place. He is definitely getting the last laugh now, as the Wild Oats presence is about to be wiped off the Portland map.

It looks as though when Nature's sold its stores to Wild Oats, Wild Oats didn't buy the Fremont building -- it got only a lease on it. Just as it didn't get title to the building that housed the old Nature's (converted to Wild Oats) down on Division. And who owns the Division site? It's listed as being owned by something called ADG III LLC, with addresses that again point back to Amy.

A commenter on this blog last night theorized that the reason that the Wild Oats store on Division closed was that its lease was up and ADG was demanding a big rent increase. Yikes! Now that's an interesting tale that I don't remember hearing before. (I don't think daily newspapers like to dig too deeply into grocery store wars... for some reason...)

Anyway, what it all boils down to is that on the Fremont property, Whole Foods may, in effect, be dealing with New Seasons. A little internet sleuthing strengthens that impression. At Amy's address, there's listed a company called New Villages Group, Ltd., and on New Villages' website, New Seasons is shown as an "affiliated organization." Meanwhile, the old Nature's site at 24th and Fremont -- more recently a high-end garden store and the graveyard of several noble restaurant experiments -- is listed as being owned by something called ADG II LLC, which corroborates the old Nature's / new New Seasons real property connection.

If I've got this all straight, the plot has thickened considerably. Would Whole Foods want to deal with Amy over the Fremont building, and vice versa? Is there still a lease, and how much longer does it have to run? And if Whole Foods folds its Wild Oats cards there and closes, would New Seasons consider an outpost in that location? It certainly wouldn't have to worry about relations with the landlord, who from all appearances would be friendly indeed.

Stay tuned. I'm just praying that somebody will sell groceries in that place when this all shakes out.

I got an e-mail the other day responding to this post. The "From" line on the message read, and I quote, "SHERIFF." The message said:

Mr. Bogdanski:

Thanks for your email. You might guess there is much more to the story than the "National Enquirer" Oregonian version. I would like to have the opportrunity to speak with you directly about the issues involved. I have taken my 33year law enforcement career very seriously and have served this state honorably and with a commitment to the professional integrity of the agency. That does not mean that strong leadership will not lead to the need to make difficult decisions around that professional responsibility. Also private life decisons of elected officials are ften less contgroversial than those of others the only difference is that they are open to public view.

I have never been accused of violating my oath of office. While I do calim to have a perefect life, I have conducted myself as an unmarried (for the past 18 years) in a reasonable and lawlful manner.

Please call me, I see you are an educator as such you should be open to some honest and open debate on the issue.

Bernie Giusto
Multnomah County Sheriff.
503-988-4404

If it were the county librarian doing this, it would be one thing. But it's the county's top law enforcement officer. He's not too far from saying "I am the law." Not a healthy situation.

Oh, you crazy searchers and the Google. Somebody came by here today looking for this.

I see only one first-run movie a year -- if that -- but I know how to pick them. This year I caught an Oscar winner. Cue Dave Frishberg: "Just ask me if you're in doubt." And congratulations to Savion Glover for Best Feet By Far.

A while back we cleverly deduced that some mysterious troll comments we were receiving from Glendive, Montana were coming from Emilie Boyles, the disgraced former Portland City Council candidate who took the city's taxpayers for an easy ride in the "voter-owed elections" scam that currently has her chief fundraiser under indictment and publicly bemoaning his sperm count. After a few nasty Boyles-isms flashed through the comments on this blog, we decided to block her IP address from access to this site, and spare her the agitation she was feeling when she stopped by.

We figured that the address she was coming from covered either her home or her workplace, and no one else. Well, we were wrong about that. There aren't that many servers over there, and it appears that we had blacked out a wide swath of territory from access to this blog. A reader we know and trust in Wolf Point, Montana contacted us the other day to tell us she couldn't get through to our site, and when we asked for her IP address, it was the same as the one we figured was Emilie's.

Now, there are a couple of possible explanations for this. But it seems to us the most likely one is that IP addresses over in that part of the world get shared, sort of like the old-fashioned party line telephones. And when somebody's bugging you from 216.220.15.182, it could be somebody in the newsroom at the Glendive television station, or it could be somebody on a farm 100 miles away.

Well, we've unblocked that address, at least for a while. Welcome back, everybody in Glendive, Circle, and the entire Wolf Point metropolitan area -- you know who you are.