20th July - Roadside Flowers

20th July - Roadside Flowers, originally uploaded by sephiroth.blog.
These flowers are alongside one of the roads I walk along on my route.

Today, I took the same route I've been taking, but I took the loop part in reverse - going up the hills instead of down them (taking the left path in the second picture here, instead of the gravel path). Even though I walked later in the day, it was a lot more comfortable as the humidity has gone away. Also, I noticed a distinct lack of bugs compared to the last three days. The total distance - 4,913 steps, 3.93km.

So that's how they do it....

It seems that once you have someone or something figured out, another little curve ball gets tossed/bowled/etc. at you.

In this case, a writer in the Sydney Morning Herald's "Stay in touch" blog wrote this interesting description of how TV ratings are calculated Down Under. Here's a little taste -

At 2am each day, all Diary recordings over the past 24 hours are sent to the central Taminondas computer, from which the ratings figures are calculated and sent to TV networks at 8am.

I managed to get that far believing everything that was written. Of course, it was around that point that I started to see the comments correcting this "history" of Aussie TV Ratings. If you want the straight dope, read up over here.

In other news, I've gone and done something quite stupid - allowed myself to get sunburnt. I am aware of the risks of this, and I'm happy to report that I do have some sunscreen, and I also have an umbrella that I can use while outside. I also have the advantage that there is partial shade where I go outside; at least until about 10 am.

The Wet Death

So, it's getting into summer, and the season for strong thunderstorms and, on the rare occasion, tornadoes. However, the situation today is one that has not been seen around here for a couple of years. This is how I summarized the situation at about 1 PM today -

there's a 45% chance of receiving hail 3/4" (2cm) or larger (10%+ chance of hail 2" (5cm) or larger); a 45% chance of receiving storm winds in excess of 50 knots (58 mph, 95 km/h) (10%+ chance of winds exceeding 65 knots (75 mph, 120 km/h); a 15-30% chance of a tornado (10%+ chance of a strong tornado, EF2 to EF5 intensity). And these storms are expected to be moving through at about 60 mph (100 km/h)

Of course, there was one school district that actually cancelled school today. Even the meteorologists were baffled by this choice. The hilarious thing is that they've already had to extend the school year due to snow days, so it's just another day that they have to go next week...

I'm prepared for the storms; I've got my laptop downstairs and turned on, with some radars and the NWS webpage loaded in firefox, autorefreshing every 5 minutes (one of the things that you get from having Tab Mix Plus).

Summer's coming

Seeing that it's almost the end of May, that can only mean one thing - Summer's on its way. Something that is new this summer is the availability full-time of an air conditioning unit. We got it last summer after it was so hot in the latter part of July and basically we reached the breaking point; and now it's just been re-installed today after sitting in the garage over the winter.

The one thing that I had forgotten about the unit was that (as it sits in the window right next to me) it really blocks a lot of the light. It's not a lot, but it is enough to be noticeable. Look at it this way - it's better to have a little light taken away for being able to survive a hot summer day without a fan blowing full blast on your face. :)

Also, the US Blogs community on BumpZee is growing quite nicely - we're up to 16 members now, and I think know that it'll be on the first page of communities within a couple of days. Not too shabby if I say so myself. :)

And to close, a musical interlude -

Breaking News! It's cold

You would think that there was a big snowstorm out there. However, there isn't. It's just cold, as one would expect it to be in winter. We're having the (in general) annual trip below the zero Fahrenheit mark (that's -18°C). The weather service says that it's not expected to go back above zero until Monday sometime, however, they have also issued an advisory about the wind chill until 10 AM Tuesday.

Most people would think, yeah, it's winter; you're supposed to get cold weather. But to the TV stations (who have had consultants tell them that a lot of people like this kind of reporting), they have to tell us in excruciating detail the exact weather. Even though it's close to midnight and very few people are probably actually watching TV, there are two stations who insist on having graphics on screen informing us of the temperature and the wind chill. One of these stations also had a story about the safety in using a space heater, and how to keep warm.

On top of that, invariably, there will be some social functions closing because of the extreme weather (in particular I can think of places that mostly senior citizens would attend, such as Bingo halls). Yesterday one of our vaunted trustworthy local TV stations had a story on if the major school district in the city will shut down on Monday. I could understand this on Sunday, but on Friday? Come on.

Ah well, life will go on even if it is going to get down to 13 or 14 below zero (that's -25 or -26°C). The same people will be crowing about the heat in August, and for one station, the fact that it stays cooler near the lake until then. ;)

About time

Well, we had more snow today, and for the first time all winter there were actually snowmobiles. I guess it was either a lack of snow on the ground, or maybe it was too cold to go out and ride. However, today was the perfect day (I mean, who wanted to watch the Bears beat up on the Saints anyway?) for some folks to head out on the trails.

Weatherdorks

Radioactive Jam discussed them today, and I made a note that the people we entrust to tell us the outdoors conditions have a hard time with "thinking outside the box"; the "box" being the border of the county or city that their studio is located in.

Something that always happens is that it might be clear as a bell here but the traffic cameras (and the TV stations' cameras on the, well, taller buildings in the area) will show that there is a bit of reduced visibility. The result? Weather people will be then advising everyone that they need to take it easy on the roads on the way into work today. The reverse is true; it might be foggy enough that you can't see 10 feet in front of you, but the city will be clear, so there's nothing to worry about at all.

We're having another "major" snow event here - in other words, time for the TV stations to send someone out to a pile of salt and look at nothing happening. This means that the weatherdorks are all giving their best shot at telling us, the loyal viewers, how much snow will actually fall. The National Weather Service; essentially officially, says that the snowfall will be somewhere between 4 and 6 inches; one TV station says that it will be the same, but some locations near the lake will see greater amounts. Another station says that the same base amount will fall, but there is no caveat for the lake. Lastly, the third major station says that it will be one inch greater - solely because they use the totals at the lake for the forecast.

Ah well; it's always fun listening to them complain when it's 45° in the middle of May and in the 60s out here. Thanks, lake, for keeping the east cool in the summer; it helps the hot air that eminates from that area of the city. :p

Measuring things up

A thought came to me today while I was watching this video on YouTube - Why can't we start doing something like this over here in the States?

It's not like the TV stations could easily whip up a way to stick a couple of more characters on the weather graphics; I can see this happening - the person reading the weather could say "For Tuesday, Partly cloudy with brisk northwest winds at 20-30 miles per hour and a high of 28 or two degrees below zero celsius. Tuesday night, Clear, low 18, that's minus eight Celsius; winds west at 10 to 20 miles per hour with gusts up to 30." Doing something that simple would go quite far in getting people more literate in this odd thing called "international standards", because let's face it folks, we aren't the only country in the world here.

As it is, it's not like we're not exposed to metric units in every day life as it is - there are some banks who put Celsius temperatures on their thermometer displays; the National Weather service has the option of viewing forecasts in degrees Celsius (though they don't convert the wind speeds to kph or m/s). Almost all products sold in grocery stores have both conventional and metric measurements on them. Bottled water is sold in metric sizes - the most common being 500 mL (marketed as 16.9 fluid ounces). Soda is sold in 2-liter bottles. There are also some dry goods sold in metric units - I've seen 20kg bags of dog food, even 17kg ones. Even taking the simple step of making the metric unit the primary unit of measure on the product would be beneficial.

The one area where you'd probably see the most resistance, however, is distances. For the longest time, when you drove to Chicago, you would see a sign just south of the Airport that read - "Chicago 81 mi 131 km". It was a peculiar oddity, but a neat one. However in the late '90s, the Department of Transportation replaced the sign with one reading only in miles. Again, as with the weather forecasts, it would be quite easy to start to integrate metric units into road signs - most of them have enough space on them to add a little piece of extra material that would read the kilometer equivalent to the mileage listed. Admittedly, it would be strange to see a sign that says "Airport Exit, 1 mile (1.6 km)" but you would adjust to it, and eventually some states would swap the distances.

However, in an odd coincidence, I believe that the UK still has everything measured in miles on road signs and in cars like it is over here. I think that Ireland just made the switch to kilometers in the last couple of years.

The only questions that would linger are ones of people being willing to accept having to finally learn how people outside of this country measure everything. It's by no means trying to force it down the throat; I mean if that were the case, we'd just say "Ok, from July 1st 2007 we're only going to be measuring things in metric units, you better know them now." All I'm suggesting is to try to encourage the integration of the international standard into everyday life, and allow it to become acceptable to use these units.

I will add that I sometimes have to convert back to conventional units to allow myself to get a grasp of things.

Oh, and one last thing - if you switch to kilograms, the number representing your weight reduces by a fact of 2.2...

What month is this?

It was only three weeks ago that we had a massive snowstorm that dumped nearly a foot (30cm) of snow on the ground here, but there is no trace anymore that the snow was even here. Now, it's been raining off-and-on since Wednesday night, and I've even heard some thunder in the vicinity.

If you look outside, you'd swear that it was April, with the mixing of green grass with large patches of brown. It's best summed up with this line from an email sent out from a local meteorologist -

Subject: Which Holiday is this?

Given today's weather, it would be perfectly understandable if you felt we were approaching Easter instead of Christmas. Get the scoop on the unusual weather headed to your location by going to your Personal forecast.

Snow photos

Well, I promised that I'd have some photos to share with y'all by now, but it would appear that Blogger has broken the upload mechanism (along with all of the other buttons for text formatting); and I'm not going to try to do batch uploading on flickr at 1.45 AM, so I should have them posted one way or another by this time tomorrow or so.

By the way, the final photo count ended up at well in excess of 300. :)

Snow, big time!

The first day of December, considered by meteorologists as the first day of winter (as measured by the fact that December, January and February have the lowest average temperatures). Coincidentially, we're having the first snowstorm of the season. There was a large storm back in February, but it didn't recieve the same attention from the local media mainly because it didn't affect the city.

This is a common complaint of mine - it seems that if something is occuring outside of the city, it gets totally ignored by the media (unless it's of major proportions, then they go overboard).

It is interesting how the stations here cover the snow; they insist that people want to know every minute detail about what is going on, so they are on the air for way too long on these days - one station had their news on from 4 am this morning; they finally decided to go to other programming at 10.00; the other two main news stations in this area have also been on since 4 AM (when the snow had just started); one has said that they will broadcast until noon, and the other is still broadcasting as of 12:30pm. The fourth station in the market has had network programming on, but they've been running the "standard" closings bar at the bottom.

This storm is so bad that the weather service actually issued a blizzard warning for some of the counties in the region. The main reason for a blizzard warning is the high wind that has resulted from this storm. This is an excerpt from the actual warning that was issued by the National Weather Service earlier this morning:

THE MORNING COMMUTE WILL BE TREACHEROUS. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS
SITUATION. TRAVEL IS NOT RECOMMENDED HOWEVER PERSONS DECIDING TO
VENTURE OUT ARE URGED TO SLOW DOWN AND DRIVE WITH CAUTION...AND
ALLOW YOURSELF PLENTY OF EXTRA TIME. REMEMBER YOUR SAFE WINTER
DRIVING SKILLS!
IF YOU LEAVE THE SAFETY OF INDOORS...YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR LIFE AT
RISK. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL...BRING ALONG A WINTER SURVIVAL KIT AND
STAY WITH YOUR CAR IF YOU BECOME STRANDED.

And this is the full text of the latest advisory; you'll note that the last line remains the same:

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MILWAUKEE/SULLIVAN WI
1228 PM CST FRI DEC 1 2006
...SIGNIFICANT WINTER STORM SHOWING ITS LAST GASP...
.THE MAJOR WINTER STORM WHICH HAS AFFECTED SOUTHERN WISCONSIN IS
NEARLY OUT OF THE AREA BUT STILL HAS A LITTLE WAYS TO GO.
WIZ066-071-072-012100-
/O.CON.KMKX.BZ.W.0001.000000T0000Z-061201T2100Z/
MILWAUKEE-RACINE-KENOSHA-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...MILWAUKEE...RACINE...KENOSHA
1228 PM CST FRI DEC 1 2006
...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 3 PM CST THIS
AFTERNOON...
A BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 3 PM CST THIS
AFTERNOON.
MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOWFALL WILL CONTINUE THROUGH 3 PM. ADDITIONAL
ACCUMULATIONS OF ANOTHER INCH IS POSSIBLE. NORTHWEST WINDS OF 15 TO
30 MPH WILL CREATE SOME VISIBILITIES OF 1/4 MILE OR LESS. TOTAL
ACCUMULATIONS OF 12 TO 18 INCHES IS LIKELY.
TRAVEL REMAINS TREACHEROUS. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS SITUATION.
TRAVEL IS NOT RECOMMENDED HOWEVER PERSONS DECIDING TO VENTURE OUT
ARE URGED TO SLOW DOWN AND DRIVE WITH CAUTION...AND ALLOW
YOURSELF PLENTY OF EXTRA TIME. REMEMBER YOUR SAFE WINTER DRIVING
SKILLS!
IF YOU LEAVE THE SAFETY OF INDOORS...YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR LIFE AT
RISK. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL...BRING ALONG A WINTER SURVIVAL KIT AND
STAY WITH YOUR CAR IF YOU BECOME STRANDED.

I'm going to venture out and take some photos of the scenery around here (I've already taken over 100 photos now, but they're mostly from one window), and seeing that the snowplow hasn't come through yet, the road should do well to serve my purposes

What a difference a day makes...

This is one of the joys of November here - the changing weather. Yesterday, it was 61°F (16.1°C) when this picture was taken at 2.55 PM.

9 Nov 2006 14:55
Today, the weather couldn't be any different. The temperature (these are at the local airport, as reported to the National Weather Service) at the moment is 34°F (1.1°C), and it's snowing bad enough to get the roads all messed up (the nearby freeway had to be closed for a while because there were so many cars in the ditch or involved in accidents). I should also add that there's been a bit of lightning as well.

10 Nov 2006 16:34
It's not long now before the snow covers everything in a layer of white :)