Off Season Workouts Part 1 - The Oreo Mountain
Saturday, April 2, 2011  |
| We voted 99% in favour to adopting this as official office policy. The Prime Minister Vetoed it. |
During the 'Long John Index Off-Season', occasionally we get asked to help out in other areas of the Government of Canada. So when the Department of 'Parks, Playgrounds, and other things Parents don't let their kids do anymore' came by to ask if we would assist in their annual Rockie Mountain Inspection, we did the only thing we could do: unplug the phone, turn off all the lights and hide, ever so quietly under the desks.
Unfortunately, one of the interns sneezed, and three hours later, we were packing up the office to head out to Jasper National Park to Inspect mountains. 300 hours of hiking, 900 pencils, 9300 litres of coffee and 7 cougar attacks later, we were back in the Home Office in Edmonton. We won't bore you with the details here, because they are classified as 'Top Secret', and visible only to several government departments, The Military, the Prime Minister's Office, and Gordon Lightfoot. However, we can say that there IS a Mountain in Jasper National Park, that is made entirely of Oreo Cookie.
The Rocky Mountain Inspection was a good time to get some reviews in, and we batted around the following ideas:
1. A Recommendation to the 'Canadian Weather Broadcasters Association du Canada' to describe Sunny as being 'Undercast', seeing as how Cloudy is described as 'Overcast'.
2. Another Recommendation to the 'Canadian Weather Broadcasters Association du Canada' to scrap forecasts all together, and describe weather forecasts as being 'Better' or 'Worse' than the day previous.
3. Doubling the Long John Index Thresholds from 5 levels to 10, adding in extra thresholds for various windchills, in order to add more accuracy. Also looked at replacing numeric values all together, and replacing them with various smiley or frowny face emoticons, in order to appeal to Canadians of all languages (except Klingon. The line needs to be drawn somewhere).
We should point out that No major decisions regarding the Long John Index will be made in April. There will be lots of ideas floated around, improvements, suggestions, ways to make things worse etc. As always we would happily like your input, so if you have suggestions on how to make the Long John Index better or any other ideas when it comes to the weather, be sure to comment on the blog, or comment on that Facebook Page!