The sight of snow blowing practically sideways today was an interesting counterpoint to the impressive (and just a little bit scary) lightning show not even 24 hours earlier. Nothing’s really making travel impossible here, it’s just nice to look at. Anyway, it reminded me of the early days of the Weather Channel, when “blowing snow” as a weather condition was displayed by the automated local forecast gadget as: … Read more
Well, I got a sharp reminder Friday evening from Mother Nature about what part of the country I live in. I was mentioning not too long ago about having only 40 days to complete PDF Level 2, and that’s accurate…but I may have to revise the number downward. We’re headed into March, the beginning of Some Kind Of Severe Weather Every Other Day season. “In like a lion” is an apt description of March in Arkansas.
Now, I have my Avid and all of its related equipment on a pair of pretty stout surge protectors, but I’ll put it this way: while this Avid came to me insanely cheaply, call it fate, call it the hand of God or whatever you like, I treat it as though the entire lot of equipment would cost me several thousand to replace. Because…well…it would. This is one gift that I do not play the odds with. In the event of bad weather moving in, the Avid gets shut down; if the aforementioned bad weather is a lightning-maker, it gets unplugged, period. My living rests with this machine right now, so I don’t screw around to put it lightly.
I got caught with my pants down on Friday evening though; I wasn’t watching the radar or paying any attention to the sky getting darker, mainly because I was a bit stressed out after an epic bout of baby barfage. I cleaned up the boy and let him take a nap while I cleaned up the mess, and then sat down at the Avid to try to get some work done, and… ZAP. The power went out.
This Avid has to be powered up and down in a very particular sequence; either procedure takes about 3-4 minutes. The outboard SCSI drives’ self-check sequence accounts for the lengthy power-up; the computer’s closedown sequence is why it seems to take forever to power down. Powering down the Avid stack is best done some time before the bad weather arrives because it just can’t be done quickly. And it’s just not supposed to be done by just shutting everything off simultaneously – that’s how you lose a lot of work.
Fortunately, everything checked out – though the SCSI drives, having not had a chance to park their heads, took twice as long to self-check (which had me holding my breath a bit) – but as soon as that was done everything was shut down once more. The lightning seemed like it was right on top of the house, so I may have lucked out.
Just a little reminder from Mother Nature to not get too cozy…and that my “40 days” may end up being something on the order of 30-35 days due to storm-induced downtime. That’s just great. 😛 I know we live in a world where folks have vital systems on a UPS – but that’s just something I don’t have handy at the moment. So the equipment to which I owe nearly every cent that I bring in gets treated with kid gloves. Kinda like the kid does, come to think of it.
Here’s to a less stormy, more productive and hopefully less barfy weekend.… Read more
(That’s the name of an old Commodore 64 game, by the bye.)
In a recent forum conversation about how the public has to rely on either TV stations or the Weather Channel for radar views, I thought I’d try to edumacate folks. All you need for an almost-live animated weather radar view is the interwebs! Here’s the recipe:
You can also click on the radar and zoom in on your city if you like. Or someone else’s! Watch destruction and mayhem rain down on those other guys for a change.
#7 is important – the Weather Service’s web radar is really an afterthought compared to their meteorologists having live data. Call it a nice side effect, but don’t be a bonehead: use this only to give yourself a heads-up advance warning of what’s inbound – there’s too much of a lag to wait until it’s on top of you and then suddenly make life-or-death decisions on 20-minute-old data.
During tornado season, I have one older PC that’s almost exclusively dedicated to running the local radar view, and maybe one out of Tulsa or OKC if there’s some big bad stuff heading in from there. Your tax dollars are paying for the Weather Service bandwidth – use it!… Read more
At least for now, north of Alma, not much has happened here. I just wonder how fast KFSM had to scramble to get that display set up for a Tropical Storm Watch – and how they would’ve done this in the old days.… Read more
Looks like it’s time to batten down the hatches, because the way the forecast is going, there’ll be a freakin’ tropical storm in Arkansas Saturday night and especially Sunday morning. Being something on the order of an entire state inland, this is, to say the least, just a little odd. I have to say that the part I’m really looking forward to is feeding horses Sunday morning with 60mph winds! (I’ll get video if I can, though it’ll probably just look like Deadliest Catch with horses instead of crabs.) (Which, now that I sit there and think about it, might just be interesting except that I’ll be the poor doofus in the heavy weather gear.) What was left of Gustav brought me the first-ever leak in the roof here at the house, so I can’t exactly say that this year’s hurricane season – which I normally watch from afar with weather-geek fascination – is some distant experience that doesn’t impact me apart from vaguely threatening to raise what I pay for a gallon of gas. (Hell, what doesn’t threaten to raise that these days?)
I’m rushing to finish some recent work on the CGE DVD set before I have to shut the Avid down and unplug it from electricity. I’m in the home stretch on my part of that project – enough so that I’m almost confident enough to predict that it’ll be under your Christmas tree this year. However, in this case, I’m not in charge of the packaging or duplication, so I can’t really make that promise. Watch the usual places soon – I know it’s a bit late, but trust me, you’ll get some CGE lovin’ on shiny round things soon.
Evan’s been walking more often, and he’s building the confidence to cross entire rooms now. He crossed 90% of his bedroom today to present Olivia with one of his stuffed animals. The look in her eyes was priceless:
HOLY CRAP HE CAN WALK. THEY NEVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT THIS. I THOUGHT HE WAS JUST AN ECONOMY-SIZED MODEL.
I put a new flea-and-tick-killing collar on Xena today, along with some Frontline, in the hopes that the little buggers will vacate her fur by this weekend, just in case she needs to come inside for a while. What she’ll think about a walking baby remains to be seen – she’ll probably just lick his face. Again. 😆… Read more
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. 🙄
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. 😆 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. 😆 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: … Read more
Okay, 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. 😯 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.… Read more
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. … Read more
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. … Read more
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.
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. … Read more