Archive for the 'Should We Talk About The Weather?' Category

May 11th 2008
Mother’s Day musings

Posted under Toiling In The Pixel Mines & Should We Talk About The Weather? & ...And Baby Makes Three

More nasty storms rolled through tonight. No damage on our end, but it wouldn’t have been the first damage of the year if there had been; we finally got the write-up from our insurance company on the work to be done on the house, as well as the check to do it with. It’s not what I’d describe as a small check, and not what I’d describe as small work: new roof, new windows all around, new back door, refinish the deck…I’ll admit that I look forward to having screen windows (the paperwork actually specifies screen windows), as well as a new back door, but I was a little surprised by the new roof thing. That’ll be fun. :roll:

In other news, another round of PDF DVDs goes out the door on Monday, due in no small part to me finally openly promoting it on Digital Press and AtariAge. Both communities have a bit of a history of suddenly getting their backs up when someone starts trying to sell them stuff from within, but ya know, I think both communities also know me well enough to know that I’m not a fly-by-night spammer. (Though considering how little I’ve been on AtariAge for the past few years, they might think I am. :lol: What can I say? I just don’t quite have the hardcore Atari tunnel vision that some of the folks there do, and I feel a little out of place.) I’ll admit that over the past couple of weeks since the OKC show, it’s been kind of fun to see where I got with just word-of-mouth and a banner about the DVD in my message board signatures, but it’s time to get down to business - I need a new office chair stat. Mine’s broken and it’s driving me nuts to sit on it. :-p

Speaking of video work, I’ve been amused lately by a TV promo about a grocery giveaway that looks like something I would’ve done with the on-screen text being “printed” on “receipts” that scroll up the screen. The really funny thing? This promo is not running on a station I used to work for - it’s running on a station that’s, technically speaking, the competition. :lol: Maybe I’m having delusions of grandeur, but permit me a moment to laugh out loud at channel 5 aping some of my old 40/29 promo tricks. (Please don’t mistake this for me pining away for the old job though - one thing I’ve enjoyed about the wild weather this year is being home to take care of my family, rather than getting called in or having to stay hellishly late to wipe someone’s butt and worry my head off about my kid.)

Finally, speaking of my kid, some pictures that only a mother could love: Continue Reading »

No Comments »

April 15th 2008
Like…totally?

Posted under Should We Talk About The Weather? & Home Base

Insurance SketchOkay, so maybe we didn’t skate out of the bad weather as unscathed as I thought. Apparently there was some roof damage, nothing big but also not the sort of thing you want to allow to get big over time, and - to my total slackjawed amazement - the insurance adjuster decided both vehicles were totalled. :shock: I really didn’t think they were that bad - yeah, a few dings and dents here and there, especially on the driver’s side of my wife’s vehicle which she uses to deliver the mail - but apparently the insurance company feels like spending money. So…I guess the check’s in the mail, so to speak. In the meantime, either hail or wind or both apparently managed to push our sliding door off its track, something I had to fix tonight.

It could be worse. The house in Fort Smith that everyone’s seen on the news - that one house that was compeltely demolished - is where the doula we hired to help out with my wife’s labor and delivery lives. I’m told that she and her family are in good shape, between insurance and the church they go to going all-out to help, but still…maybe I’m way too attached to all my “stuff” (not a statement I can really honestly say I’d argue with), but I can’t imagine losing my hermitag…uh…house like that.

More thoughts to follow later when I stray somewhat closer to the coherent end of the spectrum.

No Comments »

April 11th 2008
Photos taken by the light of lightning, 4-9-08

Posted under Should We Talk About The Weather?

Anymore, if we have a really bad storm coming in, I’ll designate one of my video cameras as the “death cam” and point it out a window to catch the inbound nastiness. Here are some of the highlight(ning)s from Wednesday night’s death cam tape. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

April 10th 2008
Lord, here comes the flood

Posted under Should We Talk About The Weather? & ...And Baby Makes Three

Looking back at my previous blog entry, it’s easy to tell - mainly from the spelling and punctuation - how tired I was. I can’t really say I’m any less tired now, but I do have some more pictures. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

April 10th 2008
Evan’s first tornado. And his second. And his third…

Posted under Critters & Should We Talk About The Weather? & ...And Baby Makes Three

Tonight was the live fire test of the emergency plan about what to do with Evan in the event of a tornado warning right over our heads.

One baby, three cats, and one big dog.

Behind Evan’s car seat, at floor level, is a cat carrier with Olivia in it; above her in their own cat carriers are Othello and Oberon. You can barely make out Xena next to the cat carriers (sorry about the dark shot; power was out. This is where the cat carriers actually stay, year-round, and we nickname it the Kittycat Hilton. And this kind of gathering is precisely why they stay there. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

April 8th 2008
Argh, part 7,903.

Posted under Should We Talk About The Weather? & Cooking With Code

Albatross!I’m sitting here watching KTUL showing, at almost 3 in the morning, a live shot of a rotating wall cloud marching into Tulsa County, and I’m thinking “man, am I glad I don’t live in Tulsa County.” Still, pretty amazing stuff…to watch from a distance of two hours away. No disrespect intended toward any TV weather guys or gals I’ve ever worked with in the past, but the guys at KTUL know how to make a show out of this stuff. I love the Wall Cloud Channel…so long as it’s not in my back yard.

Regarding some of the site issues yesterday: I have the PDF Media Archive back up and running, though I still need to tweak some stuff to get it back to where it was. Nothing in the database was lost. Scared the crap out of me though. (That’s okay. I don’t need that crap in me.) Still not sure what to do about the Scribblings issues - I’m trying to decide how brave I am about going in and editing the database item by item to eliminate the anomalous data. I’m trying to decide if that’ll just make me exasperated enough that I just want to fill the damned database with creamy nougat and walk away from it. Don’t get me wrong - moving the site as a whole toward a database-driven future has been nothing but a good thing so far. I can stop sweating over code for the most part, and just generate the content. But at the same time, this incident has been a reminder of how much greasy, hands-on control I relinquish in so doing, backups or no.

No Comments »

March 15th 2008
I’ll be (filming) lightning

Posted under Should We Talk About The Weather? & ...And Baby Makes Three

Some lightning shots from the really noisy storm that blasted through in the wee hours of the morning, woke Evan, scared the crap out of Olivia (I swear the cat was trying to crawl up my pants leg), and dropped very little rain:

March 15 storm
Continue Reading »

No Comments »

March 14th 2008
The end of a week

Posted under Should We Talk About The Weather? & ...And Baby Makes Three

Was anyone watching the live coverage of the ‘Bama/Mississippi game tonight when the tornado slid right past the stadium? That was fun. I think that was a very, very, very, very close call - a thin line between a basketball game and an Irwin Allen disaster flick. And that’s not something I say very often. (The Hogs beating Vandy wasn’t bad either, but hey, let’s put our cards on the table - it didn’t have God kicking the crap out of the building in overtime. That’s excitement. Trust me, I’ve been to see the stage musical and gotten autographs.) Hopefully the folks I know in/around Atlanta like Dire51 and Atarigirl are OK.

Sorry for the lack of baby pix lately - I actually got ready to take some today, but the little guy kept urping on himself. He went through no fewer than six outfits today.

There’s more to tell, but there’s also a weatherman on TV talking about rotating thunderstorms heading kinda like toward-my-house so maybe I better go. :shock:

No Comments »

- Older stuff from this category »