Brain Contour

A winter weather advisory is in effect until 6 pm today. I looked outside from the terrace and heavy snow is falling. According to the forecast, 5 to 7 inches of snow will be likely from around Brookings area. There is no wind gust. Based on previous experiences, taking the wind factor effect out, it won’t be freezing cold to walk from home to the office.

It is Monday morning. A 10-minute walk from home to Wecota Hall is the best alternative since my car is too powerless for the snow-filled streets. Filled. No more humps. Street gutters are unrecognizable. No more yellow lines. Everything is white that you tend to lose the concept of colors. Apart from the endless snowfall, my morning hike to work will be a breeze — nothing will ever stop me from traversing on foot and singing in the snow. Geared for the battle, I put on my ever-enduring coat that have lasted many worse winters, including my ninja headgear outfit that I sometimes find ridiculous efficient. Ridiculous since it really makes me look like a fighting ninja. Efficient since nothing compares at how it makes my head so warm.

The map below shows the latest results from a Forbes study, using IRS data, on where Americans moved from one county to another during the year 2008. I specifically picked Brookings, South Dakota and I was not surprised to see more of comings than goings. This is most likely due to the influx of students to the county. The South Dakota State University in Brookings is the largest university in the state.

Wow, the 2010 County Health Rankings report shows Brookings, South Dakota topping the list on “Health Outcomes” and third on “Health Factors”. This means the Brookings county rated high in most health specific categories:

1. Health Outcomes (how healthy a county is)
- Mortality (death proportions)
- Morbidity (health state)

Mediacom Internet Service sucks! It was just few months ago when I complained about the sudden interruption of Mediacom’s Cable TV service without any notice. Today, it is Mediacom’s Internet Service that has completely malfunctioned!

According to Mediacom, network problems are responsible for a widespread loss of internet service that began Tuesday night and continue Thursday. The company said that the loss of internet service is not related to the ice storm. Mediacom further said that their network engineers are still troubleshooting the cause of the outage.

I just passed by the new building of the Dacotah Bank in Brookings, SD. A big electronic board was placed in front that says “Dacotah Bank is now open.”

I thought the construction of the building will never be finished. In all those times that I drove along 6th St., it seemed the bank construction has been taking its time. I waited for it to finish because I am planning to open a new account with them. If you want to know its banking hours, I posted the schedule below:

Have you encountered the same problem as mine when you access your Verizon Samsung Trance wireless phone? There seems to be a bug on the Samsung Trance phone units after Verizon updated the software.

Last night, I received a note from Verizon to update the software on my phone. It says that while it is updating, I won’t be able to send messages or make or receive calls. Fine with me. It took only few minutes to update and the phone was back to its normal screen.

Only after I received a message from a friend early today that I noticed I could not access my inbox anymore. Clicking inbox automatically switched the screen to what seemed like a “start screen”. It automatically reboot and then returned to the homepage. Powering the Samsung Trance phone off and back on did not help at all.

Literally, Brookings, South Dakota has a zero crime rate. When you watch the early evening newscast, you hardly hear anything about Brookings. If there is something to broadcast, it will most likely be about road mishaps, or the state of the cold winter weather, or the state of the economy. None of such nature like men in motorcycles firing guns to a politician’s house, or men robbing a bank located just across the police station, or a truck driver intentionally running over a person twice — you know, the type of crimes that some countries consider ok-fine, or ordinary. If you want to see something tragic in Brookings, you would get frustrated.

I think the most catastrophic crime that can be committed in this small city is bike stealing. Funny, but I am quite certain it is. In as much as I would want to believe that there should be a single major crime somewhere, there is just none. Because Brookings knows nothing but peace (should not be translated as boring).

Grab a copy of The Peg Leg Update volume 1, issue 2 from few locations in Brookings. If you haven’t read the first issue, you should.

The Peg Leg Update second issue has improved a lot compared to the first print. The inside layout gives more good-looking pages, presented in columns. The articles are still very interesting and the varied topics are keeping true to what the LeClair wrote in his first editorial — just anything under the sun.