Musings of a Meteorologist

Albums of 2008

2009-01-26T00:12:00.006-06:00

Top 10(+1) (in reverse alphabetical order)
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Favorites: Walcott, A-Punk, entire cd!

NY 4 piece band with a diverse background (and it shows) that put together an excellent first album. Makes me want to sing-a-long and even Jimmie tells me she likes it. Now that's saying something!

Santogold - Santogold
Unstoppable, Creator, You'll Find A Way

Another diverse disk from what sounds like a UK R&B/hip-hop artist... except this isn't R&B. Instead this is like angry elctronic-dub-pop or something.

Plants and Animals - Parc Avenue
Faerie Dance, Good Friend

Canadian 3-piece rock band with another notable first effort. I'm also bias because I saw them live, but they have the ability to jam when they want to but also have softer songs with clever lyrics. Works for me.

Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
Id Enganger, An Eluardian Instance, For Our Elegant Caste

Of Montreal... probably one of the more bizarre artists on this list. This can easily be heard if you listen to the lyrics which include such tidbits like "I'm a black shemale" (stage persona) and "we can do it softcore if you want, but you should know I take it both ways". This album is notably different from past releases and is more funky.

The Oaks - Songs for Waiting
The Attraction of the Pilgrim, The Two Calls, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Indie/folk rock from FL. Meaningful music with lyrics telling stories... pretty easy to get lost to as the sound is defintely natural and not over-produced.

Microfilm - The Slingshot Orchestra
Dario Argento, Disco Demolition Derby, Ciccone

Electronic duo out of Oregon. Bonus points for personally responding to me on FB to a linking error I emailed them about. Tracks do an excellent job of eaving different beats/melodies and distorting vocals, etc. I'm a sucker for those sorts of things.

Forest City Lovers - Haunting Moon Sinking
Country Road, And the Trees, Orphans

More folk/indie rock... this time out of Canada (again). Must be the consistent cold weather, but the Canadians always take up a decent chunk of my listening time. THis is perhaps a more orchestra/pop sounding version of the Oaks and switch from male to female vocals.

Foals - Antidotes
Olympic Airways, The French Open, Hummer

Punk/Dance rock out of you guessed it.. the UK. Stick them in the category with Bloc Party, Forward Russia, etc. Fast paced and catchy, it makes me tap my feet and rock the head and attempt to sing with a British accent.

Cloud Cult - Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)
May Your Hearts Stay Strong, When Water Comes to Life, Everybody Here is a Cloud
*** Bonus points for coolest album artwork featuring tornadoes!***

So a relatively local band (Minneapolis) gets a knod on the list. Indie rock that is frankly, at times, bizaare, but I like it. Many of you may have already heard of this group unknowingly... they have a song on einsurance commericals now (which are equally bizarre). With some weather theme going on here, plenty of bonus points for this release.

Beach House - Devotion
Astronaut, Turtle Island, Home Again

Indie/Folk Rock from Maryland. Good music for a rainy/fall day... slow paced and sentimental sounding.

Alaska in Winter - Holiday
Close Your Eyes (remix), Highlander Pt. 1, We are Blind and Riding the Merry-Go-Ground

2nd album from this folk/electronic/indie group. With ties to Beirut, there is no suprise it has some of that balkan sound going. This album is a little more diversified than their first release, however. Amazing to think this all originated from a HS dropout in New Mexico of all places (along with Beirut). Where did that talent come from??? THis album gets runner-up for album artwork haha.

Honorable Mentions:
Bloc Party - Intimacy
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Forward Russia - Life Processes

Albums I still enjoyed but didn't make the cut:
Young Jeezy - The Recession (winner of hip-hop category)
Willoughby - I Know What You're Up To
A Weather - Cove
Bionic Commando Rearmed - Soundtrack
Semifinalists - 2
Portishead - Third
The Organ - Thieves EP
Oh No Oh My - Dmitrij, Dmitrij
Noah and the Whale - Peaceful the World Lays me Down
Mystery Jets - Twenty One
The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath
Islands - Arm's Way - ** Bonus for touring to North Dakota**
Calexico - Carried to Dust

Update!

2008-09-07T00:04:00.002-05:00

Not much to update. Well I suppose there's a bazillion things to blog about since I posted last time, but I'm lazy so I'll summarize.

Summer is over! Cool temps have arrived... I enjoy the fall, however, so it's ok with me - as long as it doesn't get too cold too quick!

I wish I could say I entered the semester well rested, but that would be a lie. Between finishing the paper up, remodeling projects, etc. I could use an actual break. Not sure when that will occur.

This semester will include a flurry of research including revisions to the paper from the coauthors, and then starting a new "sub-project" semi-related to what I'm doing and presenting research in NYC at the end of October. That's pretty darn soon so we'll see how that goes. Also have some other directions to pursue in the normal research. On top of that, I'm TA'n a radar class and lecturing for my advisor's class when he is gone which will be frequent this semester. I believe he has at least 3 ~week long meetings lined up.

With fall also comes softball season! Our co-ed meteorologist team had it's first two games about two weeks ago. I had an OK outing going 2-2 until I jacked up my knee tagging up on first. One of those crazy fluke accidents, but it made a horrible popping noise and gave out of me. Needless to say I'm on the DL for who knows how long. While I can gimp around handily, it still has a long way to go to feel even 50%. The biggest issue is I can not bend it back very far or lock it completely straight. HOPEFULLY this is because of all the fluid and junk lingering around. The doc said my ligaments seemed ok right after the injury, however, he said there is always a concern for cartiledge damage. I'll probably give it another week or two and if it doesn't look like it's making progress, I'll go back in. That will probably involve getting an MRI and seeing what's up. Until then, I'm loading up on some joint medicine, and limiting myself to basically walking.

Old Skool... DOS and Micro Machines

2008-07-13T00:06:00.002-05:00

The internets are an amazing thing...

I recently found out about Dosbox... an emulator for running dos games in windows! I've been catching up on many of my old favorites...

Indy 500 We would play this to see who could make the largest car crash.

Flight sims were also a favorite such as...
Chuck Yeager's Air Combat
A-10 Tank Killer (man did SAMs suck!)
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (amazing because you could man turrets on bombers)
Aces over Series (Europe,Pacific, etc.)
Red Baron

Side Scroller shooters, many by Apogee such as...
Commander Keen
Secret Agent
Duke Nukem 1/2 etc.

Top-down space shooter/RPGs
Star Control
Solar Winds

Then there was teh classic line of Lucas Arts games such as///
X-wing
Tie-Fighter (I remember the tie defender simply owned space)
Dark Forces, etc.

I can thank many of the games above for getting me into computers. I defintely remember learning how to do command line stuff by making book disks and editing autoexec.bat to load the proper amount of base memory (600k!?!?!?) needed.

Another great memory I just recalled is one of my favorite toys... Micro Machines (with the other being legos)! I found a website which is an online museum!

It's amazing how many of these I can remember owning. For example, I remember getting in deep crap for leaving them out in the hallway. One of my favorites, a German ME-109 got crunched by my mom, hurting her foot. WWII aircraft were defintely my favorite such as this one. Others came in crazy color schemes such as this Corsair I had.

A month goes by...

2008-07-08T23:03:00.000-05:00

1. I passed the qual and by a good margin. Yay!

2. Been busy with housework.

3. I had a long post planned, but I forget what it was going to detail. Oh well! I'm too lazy... just wrapped up working around the house for tonight.

The Rumor Mill

2008-06-11T23:34:00.002-05:00

Word on the street says PASS with regards to the qual exam. Yay! Still awaiting official word. Tomorrow stats the laundry list of work on the house... going to tackle the entryway and upstairs hallway and fix the whacked out tape/mud job previous owners did on the drywall. Once that is completed and the walls are touched up... it's painting time!

nothing to report

2008-06-10T00:16:00.000-05:00

it's summer! nothing to report!

Uh Oh...

2008-05-26T21:55:00.002-05:00

Boredom... what's that??? Now I remember! It's amazing how much weight has been lifted off the shoulders. The qual exam has honestly been the biggest fear of my life for the last who knows how many years.

I celebrated Memorial Day by going into the office. Believe it or now, Aaron is disorganized when it comes to some things... especially class notes. I have spent parts of the last 3 days slowly but surely organizing my piles of classwork. I bought drop in folders for my file drawers in the office. I then separated classes into notes and hw/test categories. In the process I filled 1/2 a recycle bin (essentially a garbage can) in our building with paper. There are still shreds of paper ends from my notebooks covering the floor. I feel sorry for the janitor!!!

Sadly, I did not receive the NASA fellowship. I had one really good review, and one review that called us naive. The sad thing is I agree exactly with what the reviewer said, however, I have stressed what he said was not possible wasn't and instead, was trying to show how well these schemes of a model work and where they can be proved. I guess I didn't word it well enough. With a bit of rewording, I'm confident I could of had the fellowship which is what really pains me. Oh well! Live and learn.

In other news, I must be getting crazy cause I finally had the hey it would be nice to have a kid(s) and start a family feeling. Probably cuase I was out biking and saw a bunch of familes out enjoying the weather and crap. I told Jimmie if we could both get in shape we could confront that topic... don't want that to occur to quick so I sit here with some mint m&ms haha. I must really be bored!

Just so everyone knows...

2008-05-24T01:01:00.004-05:00

I expect tornadoes within 60mi of a Yankton, SD -O'Neil, NE today (Saturday).

Qual is over!

2008-05-23T01:09:00.003-05:00

I think the remainder went fine... my hand certainly is tired and I almost got a blister on a finger. I far from "aced" it, however, unless my feelings are completely off, I think I should get the 7/10 avg needed to pass unconditionally. We'll see, never want to count the chicks before they hatch. Now my brain can go through massive decompression. It's amazing how much junk I studied on there... and what stuff that was on there that I didn't. Oh to be the guinea pig!

That crap static news is I decided to forgo the trip to OK to see friends and chase. I have issues with blowing the summer budget on basically gas. I'll be riding to work this summer. The fact that we're already paying for inflated oil prices because of speculation of stronger hurricane season sickens me.

Qual Update

2008-05-21T21:39:00.003-05:00

Day 1 is down... not too bad. I'm ticked about some crap I goofed in dynamics, but overall I think I'll still pass that section. Somehow I used up the full 4 hours even though I'm not sure where the time went.

Anticipated scores (knock on wood).
Dynamics: 7 (individual scores of 6.5 and 7.5)
Physical: 8 (individual scores of 8 and 8).

Overall outcome: too close to call! Hopefully tomorrow goes as well as or a bit better than today. I'm banking on radar and satellite being $$$ problems and the climo section being a strong point for me.

current state of my brain

2008-05-12T00:18:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvV-upQVoFs

A semester comes to a close

2008-05-01T00:41:00.006-05:00

Things are *finally* starting to wind down. I finished several papers for general circulation. Tomorrow is my satellite presentation on cloud mask/cloud top/cloud type retrieval from MODIS data (see some pretty pictures below). I still need to write a brief paper which summarizes the presentation. I'll whip that up tomorrow. Once that is finished, It's a mad dash to study for our general circulation final.

For general circulation, the professor gave us the option of an in-class or take-home final. After 60 odd classes or whatever I've taken in the past 8 years, one grows wise to such questions. In class final all the way! Unfortunately, the prof zinged us by handing out a list of 50 questions that could appear on the final (10-15 which will appear verbatim). DANG! The only solace I can take in such a situation is that general circulation involves the big picture... dynamics, radiation, ocean circulation, etc which will all be topics important for the qual. Studying will help kill two birds with one stone.

Speaking of the qual, it will be a mad dash to cram as much into my brain over a ~14 day span after finals are over. The dynamics questions are only being written by one professor, however, who happens to be a qualitative type of guy. Fine by me! This *almost* guarantees no crazy derivations will show up, all though I'd definitely expect to be able to describe how to get from point A->B. The grad commitee also decided to throw in a 6th question for the tools section since there are six classes. We still only need to answer two, so this is only a good thing. As it stands now, here's how I see the qual going down:

Dynamics section: only dynamics is tested over, so I'll answer 2 of the 5 regardless!

Physical Meteorology: I'm not even bothering with BL. My forecast is for two questions from radiation, two from cloud physics, and one from BL. I'd probably answer eitehr both radiation questions or 1 and 1 with CP/radiation. I suppose it's entirely possible you could combine a radiation and boundary layer question for some fun.

Climate: This section is composed by general circulation, advanced climatology, and Earth System Science. To be frank, all three of these classes are rather incestuous, especially the latter two. It would be EASY to create questions that require knowledge from all three classes combined.

Tools: This monster section is composed of statistical methods, radar, satellite, NWP, OBAN, and measurement systems. Never took measurement systems so that's out. I've had statistics in the past, but unless they pull out something I work with day in and out (2x2 forecaster contingency tables) I'll probably pass on that. Radar and satellite go hand and hand being remote sensing. I'd probably try and answer both of those questions. I won't bother with NWP other than the data assimilation process which was covered in OBAN. Considering how bad I tanked a question on the NWP final, however, I wouldn't be surprised to see that show up again. Hmm.. might look over that just for safe measure. OBAN is a nasty (but highly useful) class with tons of matrix math. I'll gloss over the actual mathematics for that class and focus on some concepts.

So there you have it... 21 days till the qual. Only a few more days till I'm done taking my last classes for credit. Yikes! It's important to go in confident, but defintely not cocky. My only fear is being an idiot and forgetting something simple. These days, my brain is fried! You can ask my friends or wife how many times I've misplaced keys, been loopy, or forgotten things. It's bad!

Red= ice clouds, Blue = water clouds

I histogram equalized this so you can see some of the contrails, etc.

Parellel Universe

2008-04-29T01:34:00.002-05:00

Busy Busy Busy. Stage 1 of Brain fry procedure will be finished early next week when both of my finals are over. THEN I CAN ABSOLUTELY CRAM THE HELL OUT OF MY BRAIN till May 21 for the qual.

I wonder if whale researchers get as excited about this page as we do about local storm reports???

Religion + Bad Science + Global Warming = Oy Oy Oy

2008-04-20T12:07:00.003-05:00

A person on stormtrack posted this article during a thread about global warming. While he stressed he wasn't into the religious stuff, he stated:

Again, no religious argument, just discuss how we had these previous weather changes if the world doesn't change climates over time by itself.

Ay. Here's the problem with the internets. Anyone can write an article and sound intelligent. Many of these articles cross-pollinate half truths, and down-right scientific errors/lies. People curious about what the cause of global warming is(and if you don't believe global warming is real, I'm calling you out as an idiot that can't read graphs), find these articles. Well guess what, they sound somewhat intelligent, so they must be true! We all do it... if I'm bored and see some article on DIGG about how there was some revolution in understanding how ants mate in colonies, I'm not going to think twice about whether there is some underlying errors in the paper.

Case in point from this site.

Biology professor: Hey, didn't they discover that process in corals?
Grad student: No, they discovered that in plants.
Biology professor: That's what I just said!
Grad student: But coral is not a plant.
Biology professor: What? Yes, it is!
Grad student: No, it's not, it's an animal!
Biology professor: Since when?
Grad student: Since always -- go look it up!
Biology professor, after disappearing for five minutes: ******** Wikipedia..

Who knows if this was a true conversation, but it certainly is plausible.

Kayak! YA!

2008-04-19T03:13:00.003-05:00

Nothing like the first paddle of the season! Even the slight swamp smell of the river was refreshing. I cruised around the river around downtown... ended up playing river clean up crew and picked up some malt liquor 40s that were floating downstream. Afterwards, two talkative 5th graders stopped by and asked a bazillion questions which was entertaining.

Right now I'm waiting for this Barnes scheme I whipped up to finish for this satellite/reanalysis program. 4 loops in IDL with dims of 349,277,~1300,2000 = waiting for hell to freeze over.
Some music for your entertainment:

Vampire Weekend - Walcott (2008)

Electric President - Good Morning,Hypocrite (2006)
with some relevant lyrics:

Seems like the roads stretch out like veins, but there's no heart.
Nature's haircut is concrete now, and we played our part.
So we sing ...

I've lost my taste for modern things. They're not for me.
I want mundane: a quiet place, where time is free,
And I can sing ...

Shearwater - Rooks (2008)

Islands - Abominable Snow (2008)

Cut Copy - Lights and Music (2008 or is it the 1980s???)

The Oaks - The Attraction of the Pilgrim (2008)
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (2008)

Louis XIV - Guilt By Association (2008)
love the last min...

Taken By Cars - Uh Oh (2008)

The Fashion - Like Knives (2007)

Kyte - Boundaries (2008)
trippy!

Weekly Update

2008-04-13T01:00:00.004-05:00

Here's a number of updates for the past week (in no particular order I might add)!

ya!!! Water temperatures being recorded above freezing? The water is free at last!!! Today was a balmy ~50F and in the course of several hours, the major ice jams near the bridges and dam completely broke up and traveled down river. While the river is running high (as it normally does in the Spring), and there are still a few large ice chunks floating down the river, the river is basically free to kayak! The major limiter right now is ice stuck on the shore at the boat ramps. Given our forecast, however, I expect these to be cleared up within a few days when we start getting into the 60s.

The bleakness of winter is finally drawing to a close. I took the opportunity today to bike the majority of the greenway between the 2 pedestrian bridges ~10mi? despite the strong wind out of the north. I'll probably start riding into work now as much as possible. Save some gas $$ and it's exercise to boot.

In other news, I went to my first curling match the other day at the last draw for the Men's world championship. Pretty sweet. I got free rain all over the arena with my camera so I shot nearly ~2.6 GB of photos. Overall, I was happy with the results. Thank the excellent quality of the arena lighting!

We also held a party this weekend for Becky who recently (successfully) defended her MS thesis. Good times were had by all, Rona even became the first person to be crowd surfed in the dining room! Stay tuned for round 2 in two weeks for the after-banquet party.

On the work/job front...

The first check finally showed up for my second calendar sale. Four pictures will be featured in this. I should be getting another check for four more thumbnails that will be in the 2009 Weather calendar. Glad to see my photo is good enough for advertising ... too bad that picture won't be on the cover. Now we just need the qual to finish (regardless of the outcome) and get some storms so I can built up the portfolio some more.

For the actual job... things are busy. As I was afraid, the workload is piling on this semester. While this normally isn't an issue, I have a qualifying exam to be preparing for. Too many semester projects and still trying to wrap up some research/figures for a paper are spreading my time thin. While it sounds like I've been busy "playing" (see above), that's about all I've mustered in the past few weeks. Ask Jimmie... she knows I've been busy. I still manage to get some studying done every other day or so for a few hours. It seems like whenever I study one item, something else gets pushed out, however.

Update

2008-04-10T01:07:00.003-05:00

Not much to update. I still have the playoff mustache going on. I think Jimmie is waiting for us to either win/lose (tomorrow is the semifinal against BC) so I can shave it off. The stache' isn't too bad, but my facial hair there isn't very dark so it isn't too noticeable.

After the game tomorow, a bunch of us will be attending one of the draws in the world men's curling tournament in town. It has been busy in Grand Forks lately! Between this event and the Obama/Clinton visit last week, the town has been bustling.

On the weather front, mother nature is trying to rain cross that... SNOW on the parade known as Spring. We dodged the first bullet... which hit squarely on Minnesota. Places ~2 hours away received over 2ft of snow! No snow here which was fine by me. Both models are in agreement that this present negatively tilted wave over the US will amplify nicely into a monster bowling ball Low over the US (heh... and to think I was reviewing baroclinic instability this week for the qual). While this looks like tornado outbreak for the Ark area, it also means snow somewhere (everywhere?) in the N plains/upper Midwest associated with divergence aloft, isentropic lift, etc. The good news is the low looks too far south for us to be on the receiving end of mother nature's stick. That bad news is I don't see how we won't at least get some sort of snow (few inches or less?).

At any rate, whatever we get should melt quickly... and actually, snow is always good for the local rivers. I would prefer higher water levels so the Red Lake and Pembina will be runnable AFTER the qualifying exam is over. After riding the bike around the Greenway tonight, the Red is already melted in many areas. Riverside Dam is only a minuscule perturbation in the water (river is much higher than the dam) and there is an ice jam below it. It's almost kayaking time!

It's been awhile

2008-04-01T15:51:00.002-05:00

I got some "meme" tag thingie so I checked into what it was:

Anyway, I thought I'd start with something fairly non-diabetes-related...Donna's Six-Word Memoir meme! Here are the instructions she gave me:

1) Write your own six word memoir;
2) Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like;
3) Link to the person that tagged you in your post, and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere;
4) Tag at least five more blogs with links; and
5) Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

I'm waiting for IDL to produce some plots so I might as well give it a go. Might be too lazy to comment on other blogs... besides, it would be incestuous for the most part.

memoir:
Work Hard
Play Hard
WOO WOO

Ok I'm too lazy for the rest! At least I got the creative part down.

Keeping Busy While the Wife is at Play

2008-03-21T22:54:00.004-05:00

So I've been on my own for the past week while wifey is on vacation with her family. I've kept myself busy... hockey games, cleaning house, plenty of work, not enough studying, and a trip to Winnipeg to see a band play.

I won't bore everyone with details for most of the first few items, except on the 2nd playoff game night, we put on mustaches to support the Sioux (they are wearing playoff mustaches). Becky did a great job with most of our eyeliner staches'.

And getting caught on the jumbotron (good lord I look extra fat)

Just for fun, I'm letting all the facial hair grow out... we'll see if I can even sport a real mustache.

Yesterday, Adam and I went to see Plants and Animals + All of Your Friends at The Lo Pub in Winnipeg.

More pictures.

During the last song of the encore, I managed to get grinded/dry humped by some random girl. I was obviously standing in the very front of the small pub and felt a person starting to bump into me more and more. It looked like some girl that was pretty trashed so I just minded my own business. Then I felt her arms wrap around my neck/shoulders and she proceeded to violate me. She finished off with a thorough drumming on my back. Immediately after, the girl about passed out onto the steps leading to stage. Yikes! I think the whole episode was pretty amusing to everyone in the front of the audience.

Overall, Winnipeg was an interesting city. Pretty drab architecture, and plenty of ethnic diversity (at least where we were at). Driving in Canada is pretty lame... 100km/hr speed limit = too slow. Perhaps for good reason... once we entered Winnipeg on the main highway (2-3 lanes/divided), a car was broken down in the leftmost lane. No emergency blinkers, no people, no cops, nada! I also enjoyed many of the store names which included: Cold Beer Store, Chinada (Chinese/Canadian restauraunt) and another Chinese place - Delicious Vegetarian Resturaunt.

Oh heck ya!!!

2008-03-14T01:43:00.003-05:00

I just had a random memory surface to the top of my brain. You know what the coolest books were growing up??? Choose your own Adventure!!! Man I loved those books. I'd go back and reread them to get every ending. If I recall correctly, some (many) of the endings didn't go so well for you (didn't they assume you as the main character?).

Other book series I enjoyed in grade school.
Encyclopedia Brown
Hardy Boys
Pretty much anything by Beverly Clearly
Edgar Rice Burroughs series (sci fi)
Clive Cussler: Dirk Pitt series (James Bond but better)
Everything by Tom Clancy
***Night of the Twisters***

SPRING FEVER!!!!

2008-03-11T22:59:00.003-05:00

Today I wore shorts (high of 38F!!!). Snow is melting, and life is pretty good other than the usual day-to-day chore known as school. After getting back from giving an AMS presentation with Becky, Dan, and Kathryn on grad school (which went well), I ate dinner and went outside to enjoy the weather. My main goal for the past two days has been to shovel away snow/ice from gutters, the sides the house, etc. to eliminate any water from draining down the foundation later on in the season.

I also unburied the kayaks and shoveled all the snow from behind the house. This was the bulk of the chore and took a good couple of hours. I first had to shovel the snow to near the shed, and then out to the curb so it can melt and take the water elsewhere. After pulling out the kayaks, I officially have "Spring Fever". The kayaks survived the winter A-OK outside, and are ready to be paddled. It will be especially tough focusing on studying once the ice melts on the river! I'll get out at least a few times... that much is for certain.

DIRTY!!!

2008-03-07T22:11:00.004-06:00

What the hell kind of ad is this???? Designed to look exactly like facebook? Normally my adblocker catches ads in this place, however, not this one. Boo!!!! The site directs to another (which you can see by the link) where you sign up, sell your soul to some advertising firm, then need to complete 7 agreements with other businesses to get an ipod.

It's nearly 3am and I'm at the Office

2008-03-06T02:41:00.002-06:00

Argh! I've been tired lately. My sleep cycle is whacked. I woke up earlier on the weekend than some weekdays. Maybe I'm turning into Jerry? I probably would if I didn't have other concerns (wifey, etc.). I have to keep some sort of slightly sane cycle so we can at least see each other.

I hate the concept of group meetings. They annoy me. Weekly meetings annoy me too. It's like being babysat or some shit. No matter when they fall, they are always at a bad time. It seems like every time one comes up, it would of been better a few days later when I could get more results done. Remote sensing excites me. Climate model parameterizations not so much. IDL not so much. Supercells YES YES YES. Tornadoes Yes. 24 habit microphysics? That's pretty fricking cool too. 2 phase, single moment scheme? Eh. Hail is cool, storm chasing is rad, no olive garden is bad. Dual-pol rocks. I need to get my hands wet it some more convection shit (working on this). What if your advisor has this ultimate plan for you that you don't want? What if it's halfway through spring break and you haven't got shit done for studying because you've been busting ass on research? Tests annoy me. I need a clone.

Kirchoff's Law Applied to my Brain

2008-03-02T22:02:00.004-06:00

My brain is not a blackbody. It may be near a greybody, however, absorbing and emitting knowledge at some value less than 1. That said, the issue is the need to absorb knowledge in the meteorology band, and then emit and some other wavelength...

We have a winner!

2008-02-28T21:40:00.004-06:00

Kathryn and I visited the Maddock, ND school science fair today. The winner goes to the un-motivated individual whose project title was "Which is easier to shoot: a moving or non moving target". Throw in a shotgun, a total sample size of 1 for each case, variable shot distances, and variable target sizes and WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!!!!!!!!!

That said, it was good to see some students interested in science. For being in rural North Dakota, the school actually appeared to have decent equipment. A modern computer lab, a room with a bunch of TVs, and a new fangled- computer linked whiteboard were some of the items I saw on my limited tour.

Where'z we at?

2008-02-24T21:07:00.005-06:00

I thought it would be fun to show where OU's Meteorology Class of 2004 is at today:

There are a few I'm unsure about such as the Alaskan girl (Amy?), Booker, Stephanie, USAF Guy, etc.
Not considering them the breakdown is as follows:

16(17?) received post-grad degrees (42%)
5 are still in it for the PhD (that I'm aware of)
5 work for the NWS (+1 one individual who was with our class most the way)
~5 or 6 work for state-like jobs (climate surveys, mercenaries, etc.)
~13 private sector (6 at WNI!)

Then we have a few random positions

Teacher
Do-it-all Icelandic Weather Master
SSAI/NASA (gov contractor I guess)
1 deceased

Quotes!!!

2008-02-23T23:54:00.003-06:00

In Shirley, Arkansas, letter carrier Tonya Selken and her family picked out the low spot where they put the trailer they called home specifically because they believed it was safe from tornadoes.

Uh oh... this can't end well.

They'd seen several skip past over the years, and she was even home one day when one went overhead without touching it, said her father, Jerry Simpkins.

So how can it be a tornado if it doesn't touch?

Late Tuesday, though, a twister found her. Selken, 36, was among four people killed when storms moved through Van Buren County, and her husband and 14-year-old daughter were seriously injured, relatives said

Doh.

"It came in quick," Judge-Executive Bobby Young said. "Probably, warning devices wouldn't have helped any."

I can only shake my head at this one. If by quick you mean ~10 min lead time...

Additional quotes...

"You don't really think it's going to hit you until you realize it's on top of you, then it's too late," he said.

But Logan and Song both said there are so many tornado warnings in Jackson that they didn’t take them seriously until the storm was almost on them.

Apparently we need to do a better job explaining how we could have a perfect POD and FAR and your house still wouldn't get hit every time. Keep in mind, however, this is coming from the town of Jackson! They've had at least three tornadoes in the past decade that I can think of. If anyone should take tornado warnings seriously it should be their residents.

They kept giving us warnings on TV — this one’s pretty bad, you’ve got to take cover and get to safety now. We didn’t listen.”

How can I feel sorry for people with this mentality? At least they admitted they blew it off.

That's his wrath," she said, looking toward the wreckage. "For some reason, he's not happy right now and this is. ... Nobody understands God's will. I sure as hell don't understand it."

I sure understand human ignorance.

The Selkens — the couple, Ellise and her 16-year-old sister, Corina — barely had time to huddle in a hallway before the tornado reached down into what they thought was their safe haven, Huggins said. From the scene, it appears the storm lifted the trailer, twisted it around and threw it backward up the hill. "

Trailer != safe haven

He put on sweat pants, grabbed a flashlight, drank a shot of whiskey, "and then I heard this noise," Kruger said Thursd... think God was holding my leg, beating my ass, teaching me that I hadn't been doing everything he wanted me to do," he said.

We have a winner!!!

Now it's time for RANDOM CRAP FROM THE HARD DRIVE portion of this blog post.

Random text file:

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BILLINGS, MT
539 PM MDT FRI JUL 4 2003

TIME(MDT) .....CITY LOCATION.....STATE ...EVENT/REMARKS...
....COUNTY LOCATION....

0338 PM BILLINGS MT WIND DAMAGE
07/04/03 YELLOWSTONE *** 4 INJ ***
DUST DEVIL PICKED UP TETHERED PORTABLE INFLATABLE SLIDE AND INJURED 4 PEOPLE REQUIRING HOSPITALIZATION...THIS IS A PRELIMINARY REPORT

WUS53 KMKX 231919
LSRMKX

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT ... SUMMARY
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MILWAUKEE/SULLIVAN WI
218 PM CDT SUN MAY 23 2004

.TIME... ...EVENT... ...CITY LOCATION... ...LAT.LON...
.DATE... ....MAG.... ..COUNTY LOCATION...ST.. ...SOURCE....
..REMARKS..

0630 AM TSTM WND DMG 4 NE LAKE GENEVA 42.63N 88.37W
05/23/2004 WALWORTH WI LAW ENFORCEMENT

DELAYED REPORT FROM WALWORTH COUNTY LAW ENFORCEMENT.
OCCURRED ON SPRING VALLEY ROAD BETWEEN LAKE GENEVA AND
SPRING PRAIRIE. A 6 FOOT BY 8 FOOT SHED WAS BLOWN 200
FEET. A 14 FOOT TRAMPOLINE WAS BLOWN FURTHER THAN 200 FEET. A 30 FOOT LIGHTPOLE WAS SNAPPED.

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT ... SUMMARY
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HOUSTON/GALVESTON TX
1140 PM CDT TUE MAY 11 2004

.TIME... ...EVENT... ...CITY LOCATION... ...LAT.LON...
.DATE... ....MAG.... ..COUNTY LOCATION...ST.. ...SOURCE....
..REMARKS..

1250 PM FUNNEL CLOUD 4 S MONTGOMERY 30.33N 95.70W
05/11/2004 MONTGOMERY TX PUBLIC

FUNNEL CLOUD AT FM 129 AND KEENAN CUTOFF. FUNNEL REPORTED TOUCHING TREE TOPS.
PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT...CORRECTED EAGLE POINT REPORTS
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HOUSTON/GALVESTON TX
630 PM CDT THU JUL 24 2003

TIME(CDT) .....CITY LOCATION.....STATE ...EVENT/REMARKS...
....COUNTY LOCATION....

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DES MOINES IA
524 PM CDT SUN MAY 23 2004

.TIME... ...EVENT... ...CITY LOCATION... ...LAT.LON...
.DATE... ....MAG.... ..COUNTY LOCATION...ST.. ...SOURCE....
..REMARKS..

1100 PM TSTM WND DMG 5 N CORNING 41.07N 94.74W
05/22/2004 ADAMS IA EMERGENCY MNGR

*** 2 INJ *** 2 PEOPLE INJURED FROM THE WIND BLOWING OBJECTS AROUND

Thanks for the detailed description!!! I'll see if I can find the jolly rancher sized hailstone LSR one of these days...

I conclude with a random screenshot from this online chat session we had for a radiation class at OU. We had to meet each week to discuss HW online with the prof. Usually we got distracted...

A rant before my storm quotes post

2008-02-22T23:32:00.004-06:00

I've been promising some individuals a post including some of the absurd comments made in the media related to the tornado outbreak earlier in the month. This will have to wait a day or two. I need to ramble rant.

Read this First.

To sum it up, a study by U. Wisconsin found less than 30% of individuals found nanotechnology "morally acceptable". Ugh. I'll be perfectly honest. I believe one of the largest threats to this country (or perhaps civilization) is the extreme religious right. You know... those people that believe creationism should be taught in schools... that their moral beliefs should be imposed on others.

I'll admit right up front I'm bias, but where the hell would we be without science? Why should we limit our ability to conduct research in certain areas because someone feels it is morally wrong? Stem-cell research as an example shows promises of being an amazing step forward in the medical field which may save countless lives. Why should my future health be jeopardized by a portion of the population that feels it is anti-God?

Consider my own personal belief that abortion is wrong. That said, I am pro-choice because I have this amazing concept of not forcing MY beliefs on others.

Another rant topic: these bastards. Apparently, these pathetic low-life scumbags were going to attend some of the slain NIU students' funerals. While I'm all for freedom of expression, doing their rallies at a funeral violates the rights of the families. I wouldn't mind if they accidentally got "taken care of". A few less idiots trying to impose their beliefs on others in this country.

On a happier note, I woke up to some excellent snowflakes sitting on the car. One of these days I need to build an apparatus for taking photos from a stable platform. Until then, I'll stick with these hand held shots which, overall, turned out decent.

This past week, Feng and I received the official class list for the upcoming qualification exam.
The exam overall, is structured like the OU exam. 4 sections. 5Q in each section, we must answer 2.
Here's how it breaks down:

Dynamics:

Advanced Dynamics

Physical Meteorology

Radiation
Cloud Physics
Boundary Layer

Climate

Earth Space System Science
Advanced Climatology
General Circulation

Tools

Advanced Radar Metr.
Satellite Meteorology
Statistical Methods
Data Analysis (OBAN)
Measurement Systems
Numerical Weather Prediction

Overall, it sounds good to me. What's interesting is how different my course load has been from OU to ND. Not a negative thing, just different. The dynamics section is completely different. The prof that will be writing the exam is a very conceptual type. At OU, dynamics was a very quantitative treatment. While I feel strong in dynamics, it also requires the most study time. Dynamics knowledge in my brain is defintely not steady-state. Other than the first principles, it leaks out at a constant rate.

The physical meteorology section doesn't sound terrible. Although I didn't take CP here, I do have experience in the topic are and have already reviewed and prepared my own study guide based off the course taught here. Radiation was this past semester, and I learned a great deal more over the equivalent course at OU. Boundary layer will take some studying (I took the course), however, once again, this was taught by the conceptual prof.

Climate:
All three of these courses merge nicely with each other. It truly is the big picture of the globe (life isn't just supercells and tornadoes).

Tools:
An interesting section. 5 questions, yet 6 classes. Hmm. One must think of the best study approach for this section. Many of the courses could be combined into a question (remote sensing: radar/satellite or oban/nwp->data assimilation as example). I'm inclined to not study measurement systems/statistical methods as much. I'm not sure how much room I have for all the finer points of cloud probes such as 2D-C,FSSP,etc. I consider remote sensing one of my strong points so that's a positive. OBAN/NWP is a necessary evil. The math is brutal, but the concepts are straight forward (garbage in = garbage out).

Overall, I already feel capable of answering most topics conceptually. The question is can I answer the questions in the detail needed to pass? Can I recall enough of the equations to back up my concepts? Being the guinea pig is tough... no prior exams to go on, so the hardest part is figuring out what a question (which we have 1 hour to answer) entails. Will question literally be a single question? Or will it be some massive part A-Z final exam like treatment of a subject.

50F temperature swing...

2008-02-19T02:28:00.002-06:00

What's really trippy is the fact that it is currently 50+F colder than freezing. 50 degrees Fahrenheit!!! 50!!! It's no wonder I wanted to pull out the shorts on Saturday when it got up to a balmy 34F.

Woo Woo

2008-02-17T01:32:00.000-06:00

And across the campus, there are 2,500 students older than 25, considered nontraditional students.

Here's to being a nontraditional student!

Mark your calendars!

2008-02-12T23:57:00.003-06:00

No seriously, I mean it.

I received an email from the publisher stating they would like to use four of my photos for the upcoming 2009 weather weekly engagement calendar. Sweet! Pay still seems mediocre given how many are sold, but I'm not complaining... money is money. For those that are interested, here are the photos that were selected.

UL: Cloud to Ground lightning over north base in Norman, OK.

UR: Mammatus behind some storms. This was taken across the street from our old apartment in the field next to Irving Middle School (location of too many basketball games). As a side note, these same trees were featured in another photo of mine in the Oklahoma Today magazine a few years back...

BL: Moon rises over a storm w/ pileus near sunset E of Norman, OK. This was taken on the way back from a really short case. Storms failed to materialize. We drive home and boom... this sucker starts to go up. It was early season (March), so if I recall, it was more of a chase just to see thunder and lightning rather than rotating convection of love.

BR: Just another one of the tornadoes from the August 24, 2006 chase. They don't come much better than that...

Dreams

2008-02-10T14:56:00.000-06:00

My dreams are whacked out enough when sober. Throw in a few pitchers of beer and yikes.

Dream started off, the entire group (wifey and I) and grad friends were out partying on the town. We had like 12 people loaded into my Caliber... it was intense. I was driving, and we were almost out of gas, so I stopped at a station that appeared to be open (because so many aren't open after 10 in this town). Actually, we were in a strange alternate reality part of Grand Forks which had a ghetto-like area. That's where we were. I went to fill up gas and I stuck the nozzle in and it broke off spewing gas vapor everywhere. Why vapor? No clue. I was like oh **** and went inside to tell the clerks.

Clerks were saying I was going to have to owe money or some crap. We got into a big argument and then I noticed a few cars pulled up. Everyone in the car was talking to the people that pulled up and then they were arguing. Next thing I know and I see everyone hanging out the windows with 40s and cheap (large) wine bottles. The situation escalated and before long, Adam took control of my car and started smashing into everyone (surely a reference to all of us playing Burnout earlier in the evening). They drove off and I was left wondering what the heck happened.

That state didn't last too long, however. Some dude came in and robbed the joint. I was like dude... I don't even have a wallet on me (reference to the real world where I lost my wallet at the bar). The guy let me go and gave me a flare gun for the hell of it. I left and these two dudes tried to jump me behind the gas station in the alley. I shot the flare gun at them and ran like I was 50lb lighter.

I wandered the streets for awhile and then heard commotion... here comes the party bus! aka my car. I joined back up with the crew and we ended stopping at some friend of a friend's house. We got there and all the guys were playing video games. This Chinese dude was taking pictures (a party was going on) and he had a 50mm f/1.2 lens. Crazy! I asked Feng who the heck that dude was, but he didn't know. Then some athletes walked in and challenged us to basketball. It ended up being like 20 vs 5.... with the 5 being Feng, myself, and the other guys we played hoops with earlier on Saturday (and also ran into at the bar, go figure). The guys were getting pissed and being quite aggressive with lots of fouls. The dream then skipped forward a bit when we were leaving. I got outside to discover my car had no scratches or damage. Nice!

26

2008-02-05T00:27:00.000-06:00

Ah... the first meaningless birthday until I get to senior citizen stage. If I were to hit the avg. life expectancy for the US, I've got 2/3 a gas tank let. Not sure I'd want to live much longer than 80 anyway... it's pretty much downhill by then. Then again, maybe I'll have facebook to entertain myself in the nursing home.

Other than the whole weight thing, I'm feeling pretty healthy. This will be (is) a busy semester so I've pretty much nixed the idea of sticking to a hardcore diet. On the bright side, I haven't gained any weight. Regardless, I started working out to compensate. My workout is 40min on the rowing machine which is pretty good for the upcoming kayak season. In 40min it looks like I can get in ~8.5-9km which seems fine by me. I'd like to kick some ass in a kayak race next year. After that, I walk around a bit or do some weights, mainly focusing on the abdominals since lord knows that's where I need the most help.

I couldn't think of much else to put down, so here's my 26 year checkpoint health history other than the common flu/cold/ear infection/yadda yadda:

Age 2: Had half my face ripped off by a dog. Surgeon dude was amazing and I have surprising little scar. one of these days I'll scan a pic in. I know they lost count at 80 stitches or something.

Age 8-12: Really a blur that involved at least 1 ER/urgent care visit a year...

T-ball incident, needed 3 stitches in my knee.

Bike incident, need 3 staples in the back of my ankle

Rough housing incident, needed butterfly bandaids (given the choice vs. stitches) for my eyelid.
Bike incident, ripped a deep hole in my leg, too small to stitch but got some tetnus shots.
Running when I wasn't supposed too, broke the bersa (sp?) water sack thing on my knee cap
Bike incident, totally f'd up my shoulder. Wasn't broken, but I could barely move it for a few weeks.

~Age 13:

first time playing hockey = last time playing hockey. I got high sticked and lost my two front teeth. Root canals suck!
Not sure which exact year, but I got salmonella... defintely the sickest I've ever been.

Age 17: Severe sprain to ankle... crutches for week or two.
Age 18: Wisdom teeth out! Joy!
Age 20: Cut my hand open on glass... bunch of stitches.
Age 23: Heart wackiness with some premature ventricular contraction dealies. Echo was negative so it was blamed on just random human quirkiness. I still feel this once in awhile. Seems less frequent.
Age 25: Filling-o-rama that's what I get for skipping the dentist for a few years.

Amazingly, I haven't suffered any sort of broken bones that required treatment.

How to end arguments in marriage

2008-02-03T23:32:00.000-06:00

First argument: Occurred in Walmart about something. I can't recall what. We're bickering back and forth when a very large dude on a scooter catches our attention by backing up. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. You'd think a dump truck was heading our way. We quickly made our way up the aisle with Jimmie holding her laughter in.

Second argument: Arguing about whether we were almost in a wreck or not (we weren't) on the way home. Radio announcer breaks in and says now here's a song by a band with an unfortunate name " God **** electric bills". Apologies to Becky who called at a bad time during the "close call" and caught a few choice words as I was bitching out the better half. We laughed the rest of the way home. God bless NPR!

I'm a nerd.

2008-02-02T00:54:00.000-06:00

I worked out today... played some full court hoops with a bunch of in-shape individuals. It figures the 3 heavier guys ended up on the same team. I got paired up with some freshmen looking squirt so I was running my butt up and down. Although we lost, I had 3 points which was ~30% of my team's points so I was pretty happy. Made a nice hook shot over a tall dude so that made my day. After hoops, I went and tried out the rowing machines. They should work out nicely for strengthening my upper arms for kayak season. I ended up doing 6000 meters in ~30min which seemed like a good number considering I like 0-6km bulk shear.

In research news...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Aaron Kennedy
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 16:01:17 -0600
From: ******* <******@aero.und.edu>
To: ******* <*******@aero.und.edu>

I have disabled his Linux account because he filled up our shared drive with his home directory, making it unusable by the comp sci and atmos students. Please have him contact me.

So that's why my shell account stopped working today!!! Oops. I've been using my home space as a staging area for loads of North American Regional Reanalysis data. The files are 1.4 GB per month per variable. While I've been moving these files from my shell account to my office computer (and then to our group's data drive), and then deleting the files on shell, I accidentally filled my office computer's disk yesterday. Transfer stopped and files weren't deleted. Although I df -k'd the shell account and thought there was plenty of space, apparently there wasn't. My bad.

ANOTHER LATE BREAKING UPDATE:

Dear Aaron,

Thank you for the reply and your kind suggestion.

We have tested the item. Obviously there is something wrong with the CF
slot of your card reader. Unfortunately we currently do not have any
stocks for this model. I have also contacted our vendors (Newegg) but to
no avail. Neither does Newegg has RCR-103 in stock.

I talked this issue to them and asked them to refund you $11.49. The
credit will be applied to your original payment method. It will take
several days for the bank to finalize the transactions.

Please kindly note that the item is scheduled to re-in stock by the end
of this month. You can purchase another one at your early convenience.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

This is a decent solution and actually beyond what I expected. While I wouldn't of considered this manufacturer again, I probably will now. Kudos to Rosewill!

Greeting Cards anybody?

2008-01-30T23:53:00.000-06:00

So the calendar shot (Jan.) makes its first sale. A person was interested in greeting cards. While it doesn't necceasily net me much $$$ due to the printing costs, it offered the chance to see my photography in a different format, so I was pleased. Here's a sample:
Here are the others in the bundle. 5 each for a total of 20 in a box.

While quite spendy compared to say.... hallmark greeting cards ($30 for a box), obviously there is some market considering the first person bought several boxes. In the scheme of things, the price is quite low compared to what some photographers charge. Then again, photography is their only source of income, so they need to make more per item. At any rate, I may take a gander at some of the local art galleries downtown and see what other local artists are charging. If I'm still reasonable, I may see about selling prints, cards, etc.

In other news...

I saw someone driving a new Chevy Camaro around town. Only things uncovered from the tarps were the doors and windows. Sweet! Must be doing cold weather testing before they go on sale.
It's nice to be on the giving end of paper editing. =)
We should finally be on the upward trend for temperatures. Right? Ehhh we'll see. Looping the hemispheric plots makes it looks like we may go from amplified to a more zonal flow. Still some pretty cold air over the nether regions of Canada, however. If we can make it past the next trough all right, and then go more zonal, I'd be happy.

North Dakota

2008-01-29T00:14:00.001-06:00

You might live in North Dakota if the current observation is:

You might live in North Dakota if:
It takes twice as long to get to work because there are two buicks and a caddy in front of you on the road.

You might live in North Dakota if:
The cats carry so much static they touch your speaker amplifier and produce static., You have to
unplug and replug to remove the interference.

You might live in North Dakota if:
This is the favorite activity on the river
or
or

I love Onion

2008-01-26T03:09:00.000-06:00

The onion

Is this country screwed?

2008-01-25T01:49:00.000-06:00

I realize every generation seems to think the world is coming to an end, but holy S*** we got some problems to deal with. Don't worry, this isn't going to become some global warming alarmist crap essay (although I might touch on this later). Instead, this is primarily going to be about fossil fuels, government spending, and the economy in general. Be warned... my thoughts aren't coherently organized yet, so I might ramble from topic to topic.

First off: fossil fuels. Holy crap.
Oil prices:

Regardless of what you believe about "peak oil" , you can't argue against most of the world's oil (that we know about) is in places other than the US (and in many cases in places that don't like us except for our $$$). The reserves in Alaska are a drop in the bucket. Given our ever increasing population, the dmb***** driving huge SUVs everywhere, and simply the vastness of our country, demand will keep increasing. That means prices will keep increasing. While portions of the country *might* be able to make biofuel feasible, it is in no shape or form an answer for the country. Lord forbid we have more refinery issues (which we surely will with how old most of them area).

If we can't get alternative tech going within 2 decades here are a few plausible possibilities:
a) the economy will shutdown due to the prices just to TRANSPORT goods everywhere.
b) we will go to war over oil fields. This will be WWIII. Everyone will be in a scramble to gobble up the last major sources of cheap energy.
c) Freedoms will be limited. We'll see gas rationing, limited commercial air travel, etc. Travel will become a privilege of the socially elite. The class gap will increase.

Our economy/government spending: What a mess. While I'm all for a strong military and kicking some terrorist ass, lets do a cost-benefit analysis. I'll ask you this. When we look at our current time period in the future, what will considered more damaging to the country. 9/11? Or the bazillions of dollars wasted on Iraq?

The war (primarily in Iraq) is plummeting us into so much debt it's not funny. The dollar keeps deflating and hell ,before long, will it even be the measuring stick in the world? We are mass consumers that feed off cheap prices. Our economy is a hollow shell of crap. 90% of the junk we buy is manufactured in other countries. You simply can't have a feasible economy based off credit and consumerism. Oh and guess what? The government decided they'll issues us a credit to "stimulate the economy". Stimulate what!? There goes inflation and value of the dollar. Before long, we'll be wiping our asses with benjamins. Please note I won't be complaining when the $$$ shows up in the mail. After all, I'm also a consumer.

I suppose the real question is how can we resolve these problems. Back to alternative energy we go. In my opinion, we need to start a new Apollo program except this time, develop clean alternative energy for transportation. We also need to embrace nuclear tech... it's the lesser of many evils. I hate to say it, but I wouldn't complain if atmospheric science lost research $$$ to renewable energy research. Way more important than improving model forecasts out another 72hr or whatever. We have to figure out the energy thing at some point, otherwise we'll just be cavemen at some point in the future.

Benefits of the US becoming the leader in alternative energy:
a) Up goes the dollar. We produce tech/goods EVERYONE will need.
b) We won't need to give a **** about the middle east any longer.
c) as a bonus, less pollution, and less chance we will alter the climate.

A few more comments on our consumerism:
How free should we be? If we can't figure out the energy thing, we'll HAVE To restrict freedoms to succeed as a country. Ban SUVs to sorority girls, etc etc. Perhaps the best way around this is to heavily tax those that waste energy. Force people to recycle, etc. Not bad ideas in my opinion.

What it really comes down to is sacrifice. People these days simply aren't willing to make the sacrifice, and although we may get away with it during our lifetime, we won't forever. We can either step up to the plate now, or start the collapse of our society. Sort of like an exam... you can either study for a week in advance, or cram the night beforehand. Guess who scores better?

This Compact Flash Reader Sucks

2008-01-21T18:55:00.000-06:00

To go along with my recent camera expenditures, I also decided to upgrade my CF reader from USB 1.1 to 2.0. I went on newegg and found a seemingly ok reader for $12. it fits in your floppy bay, and has a USB jack on front too so I figured it was a good deal. It had an average rating of 4 stars so it seemed to be ok.

This drive shows up and it is the crappiest POS I've ever seen. The thing just wants to fall apart if you hold it. The CF slot isn't really a slot... there is open air above it. Other than the faceplate, nothing is protecting you from bending pins. Then there's the design that only allows you to mount it with 2 screws so it will sit flush with your case. Who the hell places the screw holes within a few cm of the front??? I can't think of a case where this would work correctly.

Despite these issues, I'm willing to look past them if it runs well... afterall, it was only $12. Well, no can do. This thing has so much voodoo it isn't funny. If you plug a USB 2.0 device into the front, it works fine so I know my motherboard/drivers aren't the issue. Download images off a flash card, however, and it takes literally 10 minutes to transfer a few hundred megabytes!!!! WTF!!!! The sad thing is it isn't worth returning it. Shipping would be as much as replacing it. I contacted their technical support and this is the response I get:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contact Rosewill.

We apologize for the inconvenience that may have caused you.

I have forwarded the email to our related department. They will have a
test in the lab and find out the cause. I will get you updated when I
receive a feedback from them.

Thank you in advance for your patience.

Sincerely
Tony

H O L Y C R A P. Not getting my hopes up now. Hopefully the test they come up with is taking their remaining stock and throwing it in the dumpster. I went back and looked at the reviews on newegg. There are actually ~25% which report the same issues as myself. Dang.

The POS

Here's the email I sent back:

"Tony",

I look forward to hearing back from you. For future conversations, please consider my grammatical corrections.

Warmest Regards,

Aaron

Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting Rosewill.

We apologize for the inconvenience this problem may be causing you.

I have forwarded your email to our related department. They will perform
a lab test to figure out the cause. I will update you when I
receive feedback from them.

Thank you in advance for your patience.

Sincerely
Tony

Weekend update!

2008-01-19T19:06:00.000-06:00

It's flippin cold. Can we hit -30F????

North Dakota driver moron of the week: The guy that hit our trashcan and put a nice dent in our snow pile. Now the trash can has a bit of a wobble.

Real musical talent = Andrew Bird
If anyone deserves 3 arms, he does for the stuff he does during his live shows to pull off what's done in the studio.

Reseach update. It's been a chaotic week. Probably my largest low and highs thus far. Feeling pretty good right now. Here's a plot depicting my emotions:

Warning - This Post is Disturbing

2008-01-18T00:45:00.000-06:00

I was victimized today. I was sitting down taking a crap at work. I look over. There is a crap-encrusted corn kernel stuck to the side of the stall. This is absolutely disgusting. I don't even know how this is possible. That is all.

On a more positive note, the new camera gear came. The 60mm macro is simply amazing! The camera bag is great... I can fit all of my lenses in it and my flash. Sweet! I'll try out the wide angle lens tomorrow hopefully. It will be handy for storms in the summer months. Yes, I have cabin fever considering the low the next two nights should be -25F -> -30F.

Macro sample of a small knife. The blade is only an inch and a half long!

Ants!

2008-01-17T00:38:00.001-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQERRbU23bU Wait till 3min or so. Holy Crap!

North Dakotans are a fickle bunch.

2008-01-13T23:46:00.001-06:00

According to the GF Herald, half of ND is in an uproar over an article. This article in National Geographic discusses the ghost towns of ND primarily in the western half of the state. All-in-All it was a pretty decent read although the photography is perhaps below average for NG standards. Don't tell that to locals, however, who feel this article was a stab to the heart. Here are a few select comments from the newspaper site:

"National Geographic should send a real reporter to North Dakota instead of a clown."

I'm pretty sure they aren't clowns...

"I haven't read the NG article but am extremely dissappointed. ND is a great state to live in. Yes there are small towns but there are big ones too."

This is why you should always READ the article first. Jeeees.

"Maybe these people should move to north dakota and help us out! I think it is a great state and wouldn't want to move anywhere else."

There's a reason why ND's population (in the west) has decreased substantially in the 20th century. You can't just create business and make money.

"If NG wants to do a piece on depressing places, there are lots of other places to try: Wisconsin (where we live now), New York, Virginia, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska (where we have lived) or Vermont (where our son went to college). The piece on North Dakota almost made it feel like it was the only place on earth with small struggling towns."

Has this person even driven in rural North Dakota? It is DESOLATE. Not like the random small towns that are failing in more populated states.

"I never thought I would see the day where NG would be engaged in negativity and actively promote such a thing."

In a piece about ghost towns, do you really expect the article to be happy and positive?

"The article was from the author's perspective. I'm a subscriber to the magazine, and I never felt he was trying to intentionally attack my home state. The reality is, while his language might embellish the situation, the stuff he wrote about exists."

Hallelujah, we have intelligent people in this state (this guy is also named Aaron ironically).

"It is untrue drivel produced by a lazy author who hasn't taken the time to research his subject adequately. Absolutely disgusting."

LOL. Thankfully, I've pulled an unbalanced cross-section of comments from the paper to make a biased piece. They were actually split 50/50. North Dakota is what it is... isolated in the middle of nowhere with most of the fruit bearing (farming) in the Red River Valley. That said, I like desolation and horizons with few buildings so I think ND is great. One of these days (this summer?). I'll make my way out there and take some pictures of the abandoned towns.

Until then here's another great feature to ND: nice optical phenomena!

I was rimed alive (and lived to tell about it)

2008-01-11T00:36:00.000-06:00

Off and on freezing fog has created a pretty darn wintry scene in the Grand Forks area. Most objects (not facing the ground or buildings) are covered in a nice (and thick) coating of soft rime. I went out for a few hours to get some pictures. I figured since I was studying cloud physics anyway, I might as well take a "field trip". By the time I was finished, my camera gear and I were victims of ice deposition.

http://people.aero.und.edu/~kennedya/RIME_011008/

I'll go out tomorrow morning and get some pictures during the daytime assuming it doesn't sublimate too quickly.

In other news... just busy. Classes sound good, however, may be quite the workload. While I don't mind work, this isn't the semester for it considering I plan on taking the qual in late May. I'm at the point where I'm starting to feel confident about qualitatively describing whatever, however, specific equations (other than basics covered in undergrad) are alwyas a sticky point. Since this is the first go of the qual at UND there is no testbank to try and guage what sort of questions will be asked. Feng and I are the guinea pigs. Yay! Speaking of guniea pigs check out a song of the same title by Desmond Reed. Pretty funny.

Flat Panel Goodness

2008-01-07T00:47:00.000-06:00

No... we didn't get a TV. Nor can I really justify getting HDTV when we still have no *reasonable* way of getting half of our local stations in HD without mounting a huge a** antenna on the roof.

The future is bright, however. Someday, our future kids will give us crap about how we use to have TVs a foot thick (let alone the traditional projection TVs)!

Check out the new pioneer concept plasma tv that was unveiled at CES. 9mm!!!! thick. Holy Crap. Then of course there is their new high-contrast plasma.
Wow!

Yeah!!!

2008-01-06T02:21:00.000-06:00

My favorite 80s song ever.

Random Ramblings on a Friday

2008-01-04T22:04:00.000-06:00

The most important properties making 'Cavendish' the main export banana are related to transport and shelf life rather than taste; major commercial cultivars rarely have a superior flavour compared to the less widespread cultivars. Export bananas are picked green, and then usually ripened in ripening rooms when they arrive in their country of destination. These are special rooms made air-tight and filled with ethylene gas to induce ripening. Bananas can be ordered by the retailer "ungassed", however, and may show up at the supermarket still fully green. While these bananas will ripen more slowly, the flavour will be notably richer, and the banana peel can be allowed to reach a yellow/brown speckled phase, and yet retain a firm flesh inside. - wiki

You learn something every day!

Aaron's Summary on Politics:
Huckabee scares me.
Ron paul would die in office.
Hillary is too far left.
Obama seems ok.
I scare myself with how many of Ron Paul's ideas I line-up with.
For all the TV time alternative energy gets, why isn't it considered an "ISSUE" on CNN's lil politics thingie. I'd argue decreasing foreign dependence on oil (and pushing towards alt. energy) is one of our biggest issues and concerns for the long-term welfare of our country.

Aaron's Summary on Africa - FUBAR

I always considered Kenya one of the more stable countries, but not anymore! Add up one more African state with senseless violence and genocide.

Along with this topic, ABC (or is it FOX) is advertising some new gameshow where you have to answer really tough questions truthfully. I like the question that asks whether the contestant really cares about the African children.

Story of the day (cause it ain't the F***** Bowl)

2008-01-02T22:23:00.001-06:00

FYI everyone: my 405 number is no longer, and hasn't been for quite awhile. Too bad for the poor girl that has been receiving various messages from friends of mine over the past week. At least 3 ND peeps said they either talked/or left messages with the girl.

Here's the latest courtesy of Pam:

(10:19:49 PM) pam: LOL
(10:19:56 PM) pam: you gave up your 405 #?
(10:19:58 PM) OUWxGuesser: ya
(10:20:01 PM) pam: LOL
(10:20:02 PM) pam: poor guy
(10:20:03 PM) pam: or girl
(10:20:06 PM) OUWxGuesser: OH SHit are you serious
(10:20:09 PM) pam: i have just been harrassing
(10:20:23 PM) OUWxGuesser: poor girl
(10:21:10 PM) pam: seriously
(10:21:12 PM) pam: i feel bad
(10:21:49 PM) pam: well i was texting you about the game
(10:21:52 PM) OUWxGuesser: haha
(10:21:53 PM) pam: and she was like what game
(10:21:55 PM) pam: who is this
(10:21:57 PM) OUWxGuesser: hahaha
(10:22:00 PM) pam: and i was like what do you m ean what game
(10:22:06 PM) pam: and was saying pwn3d and latrix
(10:22:11 PM) pam: and i thought you just oculdn't figure it out
(10:22:13 PM) pam: lol

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T03:49:00.000-06:00

You see late in the evening
F***** up on my computer and my mind starts roaming
I create like a heathen
The first cycles of this virus I can send through a modem
Infiltration hits your station
No Microsoft or enhanced dos will impede
Society thinks they're safe when
Bingo! hard drive crashes from the rendering
A lot of hackers tried virus's before
Vaporize your text like so much white out
I want it where a file replication is a chore

I wanna devise a virus
to bring dire straits to your environment
crush your corporations with a mild touch
trash your whole computer system and revert you to papyrus

Hah a classic hip-hop track. Deltron 3030 - Virus

So what's the meaning? Only an idea for an upcoming post... a walkthough Aaron's musical interests history. This promises to be a lengthy yet fulfilling ride.

Mr. January

2007-12-29T21:18:00.001-06:00

After getting my first random email from being the January Pinup in the 2008 Weather Guide calendar, I decided to update my photography website. Added more images and added another category for snow since we live in the tundra now. Perhaps I'll get a new camera lens in the near-future with NASA $$$. I could use both a super-wide angle and a macro... =)

In other news, I have watched 0 downs of college football this bowl season. With dwindling football watching, so too has my lust for a new TV... HDTV can wait, I'd rather spend the $$$ on upgrading my computer. At least then, I could convert my current WIN box to linux and take it to school.

3 days

2007-12-28T01:37:00.000-06:00

3 days till it's new year resolution time. Not that I'm a big sucker for these things, but I have two main goals that I'm going to work towards.

A) Study my butt off for the qual and pass it (and finish up classes this semester). I've looked at some material off and on, but it's time to go all-out. JoY!

B) I've been slacking on the diet, and while I haven't gained the weight back (other than a few lb over the trip to IL), I still should be trying to lose more. So I'll stick with what worked before... nix most of the sugar intake and keep to healthy foods. Not sure how much exercise I'll get in this semester due to A), but we'll see.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-21T00:53:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone has a great holiday season. It's nice to see the University go all out with Christmas decorations... no one gives a s*** about PC bullcrap*. Actually, the lack of diversity in this town is problably to thank for that. Nothing like living in state with 97% white folk.

This got me thinking... is there even a synagogue in town? Sure enough there is... with a whopping total of 40 members. I'm guessing we have a few more muslims in town. Not quite like northern IL.

Christmas song of the year: Christmas 2040 (look under the category: "Best Seasons Greetings from a future inhabited by cyborgs")

*Where PC bullcrap does not include the Fighting Sioux nickname issue which is a big CLUFU

First sledding injury of the season

2007-12-17T00:26:00.001-06:00

Assuming simple bruises that cover half your ass don't count, I suffered my first sledding injury of the season. Although I was well prepared for the "bump" that lets you get a bit of air, I was completely unprepared for the jolt that followed a second or two later. That inhomogeneous part of snow covered ground wasn't there on Wednesday! The sudden jolt caused my teeth to mash up my tongue pretty good. I spit out blood all for a few minutes before it finally clotted up. Nothing like turning snow red! Tongue sores are the worst... continuous throbbing and talk about tough to eat.

The bright side of today was setting more distance records with the 66 inch plastic toboggan. I was surprised at how wussy everyone was out there. A few groups showed up, went down once or twice, then took 30 min breaks. Back in the day, we went to the local earthen dam for an entire day. I'd work up so much sweat I'd go down in my snow pants (those ones with the suspenders) and a shirt. We'd spend half the day building up jumps so we could get as much air as possible. I recall a few landings that left blue streaks from my jeans where the dye wore off.

KA3AK

2007-12-14T22:15:00.000-06:00

This license plate puzzled me. Key clues: various european stickers on the back of the car including a black on white RUS oval (Russia).

Google search yields dozens of results with KA3AK and russian... so we have a lead.

It's a very popular online screen name... I found a resturaunt with the same name, except it also referred to it as "kazak".

Kazak happens to be short for Kazakhstan... Here's an old flag from the communist days.

Looks like we have it figured out! The person must be a "kazak" or is at least very fond of the country.

BTW: Here's a nice reference referring to the translation between Russian (Ka3ak) and English...

The power of beer

2007-12-13T00:28:00.001-06:00

First things first: moronic driver of the day.

You're sitting at a stop light in the left turn lane. You suddenly realize you need to turn right. No traffic is coming from the street you are turning onto. What do you do? You turn right in front of the other two lanes of parked traffic (at the red light) and proceed on your way.

License plates seen today: IBCUTNU, 2QTE4U

I went bowling with the buds (for Rona's birthday) at the lanes in GFK which were surprisingly quite nice and smoke free to boot. First game: 62 ouch. During first game, Aaron consumes two beers. Second game? Aaron scores a 163... I only had two frames without a strike or spare. Need I say more? Obviously beer has magic powers. Better dancing? check. Making women look better? check. Dramatic bowling score enhancements? check.

shua!!!! mua bo bo!

Nuclear Energy = Long Term Solution

2007-12-10T00:12:00.000-06:00

More people are starting to realize our current alternative energies sources won't cut it.

Hydro? At capacity except for maybe wave driven generators near the coast (which could use more research).

Coal: We have the ability to burn this pretty darn clean and sequester the CO2, but cost for these tech is expensive. North Dakota might be one of the few places to pull it off since we have a crapload of coal in the state.

Wind Power: Wind is a great supplement to the grid, but you're SOL when there is no wind.

Solar Power: Horribly inefficient and expensive. Takes up a crapload of area too. Can only use it in areas where you have plenty of sun (deserts).

Nuclear: ding ding ding. Canada has plenty of uranium, you get plenty of output, and it's clean other than that oh so pesky nuclear waste issue. Considering this all comes down to a cost and benefit analysis, I'll take the risk of radiating the middle of Yucca Flats for the good of mankind. Contrary to many peoples' beliefs , current reactor design is quite safe. The article above points out that the US Navy has been operating hundreds of nuclear reactors over 50 years on their ships with no incidents.

Aaron's Albums of 2007 you haven't heard:

2007-12-09T21:05:00.001-06:00

Stars - In Our Bedroom After the War (Canadian indie rock)

Loney, Dear - Loney, Noir (Swedish indie)

Saturday Waits
And I Won't Cause Anything At All
Hard Days

65 Days of Static - The Destruction of Small Ideals (instrumental post rock)

Little Victories
Primer
The Conspiracy of Seeds

Crystal Castles - Crimewave (electro indie video game soundingish)

Menomena - Friend and Foe (indie rock)

Minus the Bear - Planet of Ice (indie rock)

Radiohead - In Rainbows (do you need any explanation???)

Jose Gonzalez - In Our Nature (acoustic guitar)

Killing for Love
Teardrop (Massive Attack cover)
How Low

Beirut - The Flying Club Cup (sentimental folk pop)

Guyamas Sonora
Cliquot
St Apollonia

Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog (indie rock)

House by the Sea
White Tooth Man
Peace Beneath the City

Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew - Spirit If... (indie rock)

TBTF
Safety Bricks
Backed out on the

Alaska in Winter - Dance Party in the Balkans (sentimental folk pop)

Lovely lovely love
Rain on every weekend
Balkan low rider anthem

Caribou - Andorra (Canadian electronic influenced indie rock)

Piano Magic - Part-Monster (indie rock)

Halfway through
The Last Engineer
Great Escapes

Editors - An end has a start (indie rock)

The National - Boxcar (indie rock)

Young Love - Too Young to Fight it (indie rock)

Blonde Redhead - 23 (indie rock)

!!! - Myth Takes (hyper crazy indie rock)

Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha (indie rock)

Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship even Sank (indie rock)

Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City (indie rock)

Overall, albums of the year for me go to Modest Mouse, Andrew Bird, !!!, Young Love, and Alaska in Winter.

I'm not sure what's coming out for next year, but I can't wait for ¡Forward, Russia!'s new album

Another Record Low

2007-12-08T12:24:00.000-06:00

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE EASTERN NORTH DAKOTA/GRAND FORKS
635 AM CST SAT DEC 8 2007

...RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE AT GRAND FORKS AIRPORT...

THE TEMPERATURE DROPPED TO 24 DEGREES BELOW ZERO AT 352 AM ECLIPSING THE PREVIOUS RECORD FOR DECEMBER 8 2007 OF 21 BELOW SET IN 1960 AND TIED IN 1972. AS OF 6 AM THE TEMPERATURE HAD DROPPED TO 26 BELOW AT THE AIRPORT. ANOTHER REPORT WILL BE ISSUED WITH THE FINAL LOW TEMPERATURE AFTER THE MERCURY STARTS TO RISE LATER THIS MORNING.
$$

That's the third record low of the week I believe (the others were -19 and -17F).

As a side note, the first reports of ice are coming in from within our house. So far the front of the house is ice-free. We have a bit of ice on the inside corner of the foundation near the rear entry. Might need to get one of those draft blocker things... the weather stripping still seems ok for the most part, it's just simply the result of having a raised foundation...

Moron driver of the day (ironically, at the same intersection I drew the diagram for a few posts ago): Driver decided to use the left hand lane instead of the turn lane to turn. Oncoming traffic was coming, so they held up traffic while waiting for the intersection to clear.

Must See TV

2007-12-06T02:13:00.000-06:00

I was waiting for Jimmie's banana bread to finish cooking before going on some errands so I turned on the TV. This in itself is a rarity considering football wasn't on. As I was flipping through the channel guide, I couldn't help but notice some of the amazingly named adult entertainment. Here are some of my favorites (titles that is).

Sex Crazed Prison Girls<<< Don't bend over!
Busty Lusty Thrusty<<< In this order?
Spread'em 911
Big Honkin Cans <<< sounds quality
Kneel for cream<<< pretty sure they aren't talking about sour cream.
Well Hung: Shaft Lickers <<< Sounds gay to me.
Big Sausage Pizza<<< Every delivery boy's fantasy? A
sian Sex Acadamy 7<<< Sort of like police academy with infinite sequels
Snatch Away
King Dong Returns
Deviant Gymnast Fantasies <<< I bet some Russians are involved in this one.
2 Chicks, 1 Stick

Snow

2007-12-04T22:03:00.000-06:00

Two systems later, I've gotten my fill of snow for the season. We're guaranteed a white Christmas now and probably colder than Siberian temperatures in Jan. The latest Alberta Clipper system provided us with ~8in of snow, and unfortunately, drifts of at least a foot across our sidewalks. While I don't mind shoveling, I dread snow that falls while we are at work. Because of our driveway setup, I end up having to move approximately 3x the area of a car down the driveway then out to the yard. Pain In Da Rear (back)!

Some comments on the latest system. While I don't consider myself a forecaster (outside of severe storms at least) and I'm all too guilty of model gazing, I'm perplexed by the product issuance by our local NWS office. Overall, this system was predicted quite well by both the NAM and GFS. Both models produced ~6-10in for a narrow swath centered from NW to SE of GFK. Our office seemed to pick up on this and issued winter storm watches ~36 hours in advance with expected signifcant snowfall totals (6+ in). The day before the event, however, this product was removed and we were converted to a winter weather advisory. Predicted snowfall... 3-6in. The discussion left in some blurb about letting later shifts issue heavy snow warnings, however.

Despite the change in products from the NWS, the models were consistent during this entire time period. My guess was for at least 6in... probably 8ish given the models (GFS did a pretty good job with the earlier event too). So I wake up this morning and we're in heavy snow warning with snowfall estimated around 6in. Preliminary totals have us at a little over 8in. While I don't really care about 2in or so, I'm still perplexed about the downgrade to the winter weather advisory. The paper had a quote about how the meteorologists underestimated the moisture with this Clipper system (which typically don't produce 6+ in of snow from my understanding). The only issue: two models sure didn't, and the GFS was even mentioned in their forediss.

Another day in GFK

2007-12-01T14:24:00.000-06:00

You know, I like Grand Forks. Compared to other cities I have lived in, the crime rate (especially violent crime) is pretty low. It also seems to be a decent place to raise a family. That said, we sure have some crazy stuff happen on our street. Lets recap the past year:

Hit and run (parked car) accident. Heard the boom, looked outside and saw the car drive off. Called the cops and gave them my description of the vehicle. The neighbors vehicle was pretty old so it was totaled.
Next door neighbor's dog hit by car. Probably one of the worst things I've heard... the sound of a severely injured Chihuahua. That was a mess considering our former redneck neighbors (who have since been evicted) were blaming the dog and talked about suffocating it in a bag to kill it outright. Eventually we got animal control to come and take the dog to a vet (it was put down)

Now for today's story. Yesterday we went to the Aerospace College winter celebration and afterwards, hit up $1.50 pitchers at DownUnder. We eventually got home around 12:30-1am or so I think. Becky, Dan, and I then played some multiplayer FPS games. We finished that around 2am or so and I started checking the 0z models for the snow forecast.

A short time later I was interrupted by loud pounding and yelling at the door. I was able to make out the words of a women yelling "help me" over and over. I grabbed a pair of pants in my office, my metal monopod, a cellphone and ran downstairs. Having watched too many hollywood movies, I peaked through the door to make sure it wasn't some sort of ambush and only saw the lady out front. I opened the door and was confronted with a hysterical lady (in her early 20s I guess) yelling to please help her, two men were trying to steal (or were stealing her car). "They pushed me out, I have scraped on my side" she shouted.

Out front was a silver grand prix parked on the curb. Once it became apparent somebody was home (I came out with a large baton like thing in my hand). Two guys got out of the car and started yelling about how the lady was a psycho and they were just getting a ride home from the bar until she freaked out. I dropped a few f bombs to act tough and it basically became a furball of frantic yelling between the guys and her. From what I could make out, they had all met at the bar and she offered to drive them home. Needless to say, all 3 probably shouldn't of been driving (although I didn't smell alcohol on the girl's breath).

The lady said they still had her keys so I asked the guys where they were (on the car) and made them get them and hand them over (they were reluctant at first). The guys walked off once they realized I was calling the cops to get this mess straightened out. The operator talked to the lady to get her take on things. At some point, Jimmie had come down to figure out what was going on. After hanging up with the dispatcher the lady started apologizing over and over. At that point she took the keys and decided she needed to jet too. I pleaded with her to stay put till the cops came, but I wasn't going to go to the point to physically restrain her since that could have other sorts of ramifications. I ran out in the snow and got her license plate # as she drove off. I called the cops again and gave them the description of the car and plate number. Within a minute or two a cop drove by and I gave him my information and that was that.

Just another night in the Forks! I suppose we'll never know what really transpired. The only thing that is clear is the three had met in the bar and were trying to go home. The lady was convinced they were trying to steal her car. It was interesting to note the guys didn't run off while they were leaving, they just remarked that they needed to find another way home and walked off. No one wanted to hang around to talk to the cops (typical).

Looking back 120 years in the past.

2007-11-29T22:26:00.000-06:00

We got some stuff to remove the wallpaper trim in the dining room the other day. Much simpler than I thought it would be. See Jimmie's blog for pix. In the process, however, I decided to go ahead and open up the area of plaster in the SW corner of the room that will need to be removed and replaced before we paint. In this area, it was cracked severely and bulging off the wall. While a simple fix would be screwing it back to the lathe (wood backing), it seems too brittle. Besides this, it won't lie flush without cracking further.

I received permission from the wife to put a small hole in the wall. Why? Well frankly I just want to see what the insides of our walls look like considering the house was built in 1888. We'll be fixing this soon before we paint anyway. This isn't your simple studs and sheetrock construction. Here are some pictures below... you can see the main crack and how the plaster is bulging outwards:

It's cool to think this stuff was last touched 120 years ago. Now we just need to find the secret money stash hidden in the wall =).

The wood boards behind the wall attach to studs. This is the lathe. The gaps between them are on purpose... a compound made of lime, animal hair, and sand (bottom two pictures) fills the gap and on top of the lathe (the key). On top of this are maybe a brown coat (not sure what this is) and then the finish coat. Surprisingly, there only appears to be maybe 2 recent coats of paint. The current creme color, and then of course the gawd-aweful light blue/green coat that used to cover the entire house. Below this is I'm assuming the original finish when the house was built. Note to self: time to get a decent mask... there is a good probability the older coats were lead based.

It's pretty easy to see why these walls are more durable/soundproof than sheetrock. The first coat feels like concrete, plus you have the lathe behind that. The big question is of course how to fix this. This will depend on how much plaster I need to remove to get the wall to sit flush again. If it isn't much it may be possible to mud and use this stuff: http://www.bigwallys.us/. If not, then we can stick a piece of sheetrock in there and mud it to be flush with the wall.

On a side note, the internet is amazing. What in the heck did people do to figure out how to fix crap before this series of tubes came into existence? DIY person's dream.

How to stay warm in temps that would freeze ass hair off a yeti

2007-11-29T01:10:00.000-06:00

Over the past year I have revamped my wardrobe. While I still have plenty of shorts, I was severely lacking in cold gear after living in OK for 6 years.

Baselayers:

Under Armour compression cold gear. One of the few companies I'll pay full price for an article of clothing. I absolutely love their stuff for working out (or as a baselayer).
Columbia/Patagonia/Wickers longsleeve crews/turtlenecks.
Thermal tights (longjohns) . Kinda queer, but they work so whateva!

Primary layers:

T-shirts (some things don't change)
Fleece crew
Various Hoodies

Outer layers:

DOWN filled jackets. I ended up getting this Cloudveil ski jacket. Simply amazing. Plenty of pockets, place for anipod, button elastic waistband inside to keep air/snow out., etc. Lightweight to boot.
Balaclava with wicking like crap for the face, and a fleece neck gaiter.
Thermally insulated boots (wool socks inside)
Windproof gloves

To sum it up, I am willingly wearing long sleeves and turtle necks. Do you need any other proof hell (or North Dakota at least) has frozen over?

How I got myself in and out of the doghouse.

2007-11-27T23:55:00.000-06:00

Today was our weekly lunch outing for several of us graduate students. After eating lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings, I reached down to play with my wedding band like I do on a daily basis. Ask anyone: I am king at fidgeting. Be it shaking my leg, tapping my hand, chewing on a pen, playing with my ring... I'm always moving. Today, however, I did a different form of fidgeting when I discovered the lack of metal on my finger.

SHE**!@T. I never take my ring off so I was at a loss of when it could of disappeared. After wearing something for so many years, you get of use to it and I wondered how long it had been missing. The only scenario I could come up with was an accidental loss while taking off gloves. They weren't in my driving gloves, so I when I reached home, I checked the gloves I was using to shovel snow with. Not there either. Hrmph. Thankfully, I called my dad and he suggested checking near the bed. Sure enough, the ring was lying on the floor underneath the bed.

Considering I have lost weight since getting married, the ring is actually somewhat loose on the finger. It won't slide off on its own, but I must of loosened it while sleeping. I'm just thankful the cats didn't run off with it. Then again, most of their toys end up scattered around the bedroom (where some of their play huts are), so it remains entirely possible they could of picked it up and placed it there.

Now it's time for a new segment. BAD NORTH DAKOTA DRIVERS. Considering some (many) of my experiences in the past year, this should become pretty common. Before I dive into today's example, lets recap some of the highlights in the past year:

-Driver reading a book along I-29.
-Driver receiving road head along I-29. This was especially amusing given the look on his face, their speed of ~55mph, and the fact that his partner was laid across the front seat with her legs dangling out the window.
-Elderly lady who changed into my lane and forced my sudden braking and turn towards the median despite my honking. SHE NEVER NOTICED AND COMPLETED THE LANE CHANGE ANYWAY.

So back to today's scenario. Here's the setup. I'm stopped at a 4way light waiting for the train crossing to clear just N of the intersection. Like always, several people try to cram into this small area between the intersection/RR crossing and congest traffic. See the figure below. A guy heading eastbound turned left to try this. Instead, his car ended up halfway through the turn and blocking part of the RHS west bound lane of Demers.

The big problem with this set of train tracks is it leads directly into a 25track wide railyard immediately to the east. Trains often slow down and even stop, backup, move forward, etc. at slow speeds. With our luck today, nearly all of the train passes to the east, EXCEPT FOR THE LAST FREAKING CAR which blocked half the crossing and thus stalled traffic. Thankfully, the train moved forward again in a short amount of time.

At this point, the light turned green for N/S bound traffic so we proceeded towards the crossing (I'm heading north). Only problem was for those next to me in the left hand lane. The guy who didn't completely make the turn was in llalal land and stopped in the intersection without completing the turn and proceeding on. Even after the car pulled up behind him and honked, he still sat there for a good 20 seconds or so. It didn't appear that his car stalled out... he was just oblivious to what was going on. Maybe he thought he could get a nap in or something. Not surprisingly, this man was elderly. I'm going to make the assumption that like many of his friends, he probably cruises around town going 20mph in 40mph zones frustrating people with leaded feet such as myself.

Hello Mr. Winter

2007-11-27T00:21:00.000-06:00

Apparently out Canadian freinds decided to bring some cold air advection with them during their latest shopping trips. It's already subzero and we may even see -10F tonight. What does this mean? Well for one, the shortwave accompanying this cold front brought our first decent amount of snow (an inch or two), so I was out shoveling. Since we live close to a school, I feel obligated to shovel the sidewalks for the kiddos. Cold temperatures also mean it's plug-in time for the cars! The block heaters and battery warmers are on a timer so they'll come on from about 6-9am. End result is less harsh starts and quicker heat for the morning "commute".

RWIC Webcam on top of our building from today: first image is 3pm, 2nd is 5pm.

Things to do

2007-11-25T02:06:00.001-06:00

~~Kayak while it is snowing and break some ice in the process.~~
Pictures: On facebook
Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=uD-I4O7JZYs

Short term:
-finish climo homework
-prepare 15 min lecture on green skies in thunderstorms for radiation
-do climo project (what should it be?)
-write paper for NASA grant thingie so I can hopefully get it renewed again next semester (a nice chunk of $$$0

Long term:
-study for qual

House stuff (in no particular order):
- new carpet for upstairs bedroom/hallway ~(<$500 installed?)
- touch up drywall/remove kiddie stickers from office and paint (cheap)
- touch up drywall paint select walls in foyer/upstairs hallway (<$100)
- take down wallpaper border in dining room, fix plaster in corner of room, paint (<$200)
- install ferring strips to ceiling and put up tin or faux tin ceiling tiles and install border ~(<$2000)
- install matching paneling on bare walls in basement and fix panel above stairs for basement (<$100 but need skil saw)
- rip off and replace baseboards in main basement room (<$100?)
- paint basement floor with dryloc+paint stuff (already have)
- install carpet tiles in same basement room (<$200)
- renovate main bathroom (tile floor, tub surround) (~$2000)
- relandscape north side of house so there is more gradient, better waterproofing. (basically free other than my labor)

Assuming the qual goes fine, I'd at least like to tackle the basement stuff next summer since it should be relatively simple, and offers good bang for the buck. I also think we can take off upstairs/foyer odds and ends. The only stuff assistance would be needed is the ceiling (getting the ferring strips lined up since I suck at that sort of thing), and the tile job (once again this involves lining crap up). Tile is actually pretty cheap since our bathroom is pretty small. I'd expect labor for the job to be the big portion of the $2000. The hardest part is admitting to myself (well ourselves) that the list doesn't have to be completed overnight. We'll be here awhile, so we have plenty of time to slowly fix things up.

From the list, the house sounds like a disaster, but actually, it's nice for going on its 120th birthday next year. The former residents did all the hard work (new kitchen, new siding/windows, etc.). It's just with a bit of cosmetic work, we can take this house out of the North Dakota norm (see below). A gamma distribution while normally used for DSDs in meteorology, probably closely approximates the probability distribution function for % of wallpapered walls in ND homes. While I'm too lazy to plot the mean and standard deviation, I'm fairly certain we fall outside of 1 standard deviation. Of course are ultimate goal is to modernize the house (well as much as you can for a home built in the 1800s ;) ).

It's been so long

2007-11-22T23:18:00.000-06:00

It took me 10 min to figure out how to login to this account. Apparently blogger somehow merged with google. Anyway, I figured it out and considering wifey is blogging now, I might as well too. When I have something to say I'll update this!

The long-awaited update

2006-10-15T22:01:00.000-05:00

So it's been nearly a month since I updated this thing. My bad! I've been too busy lately.

So what's knew?

School:

School is keeping me busy. I had an oban midterm a week or two ago. I kicked ass on that so no issues there. The big problem is the earth-system-science midterm tomorrow. I've been sick as heck (like bad cold/sore flu crap) this weekend which was supposed to be my prime study time. I keep forgetting two simple definitions over and over so I've stopped worrying about that for now. As long as I am capable of getting my ass in the backrow seat, I'll consider the test a sucess.

In addition to classes (which seem to have endless homework), I've been busy catching up to speed in my new research group (going slowly due to lack of time). I have also been busy getting my two journal articles ready for submission. I'm happy to say that one has already been submitted to WAF and the other should be within a few days to EJSSM (out of my hands).

Of course it wouldn't be me if I didn't want to throw more on my platter. I'm slowly working on some additional research as an extention to my MS research. I hope to get another 1-2 articles out of that. I also got travel finally aranged for the Severe Local Storms conference in STL during the 5-12 of Novemember. That means I'll have to prepare a poster in a short period of time. That shouldn't take too long, however.

After giving my seminar a few weeks ago, I've been thinking about things lately. While I think my peers enjoyed the talk, I had this general severe weather downer vibe. Of course I didn't expect the same response as from OU.... svr. wx. capitol of the world, but I was still a bit dissapointed. So what to do about this? We've got a dual-pol radar AND we defintely get severe storms up here; August 24th was proof of that. In an effort to both contribute to the program and build up my resume, I'd like to get a proposal together to teach an intro. convection/severe weather class. Now for those of you that have read this far, I can imagine the responses... your crazy.. you just typed a few paragraphs about how busy you are! Well I've known that... and I'm sure Jimmie does too. This wouldn't be something I'd jump into in the near future... we're talking a few years out... preferably after the qual exam and after classes are over. In the mean time, I need to draft together some sort of outline. For you OU folk, Think of a Ming's class but taught properly. Hmm I smell a winter vacation activity!

North Dakota:

By now, most of you have seen the pictures from ND. There is some random stuff out there! If you haven't figured it out yet, I do have some sort of fascination with cold war era stuff/ nuclear energy. Next spring I'm going to visit a few other deserted sites that have more structures. I also want to get a kayak and hit up the Pembina river. It looks like a really pretty area, and supposedly is the Moose capitol of ND.

So election time means state sponsered tv commericals in this state. The state runs two pieces, one describing how to fill in bubbles so your vote counts, and one reminding you to bring your ID so the election booth knows you are legit. ND is the only state in the union to only require an ID to vote... no voter registration!

It's the most wonderul time of the year! For ND residents that is. Another commerical commonly heard around this time of the year is for truck drivers for transporting sugar beets and potatoes. Everywhere you go, you see beet trucks dropping off loads. The interestate is covered with beets near bumps where they bounce off the truck. Many people apparently take work off just to go drive. Pay is around $15-25 an hour and supposedly you can make up to $2000 in two weeks.

That's all for now... I think I've flashed between too hot and too cold several times in the course of writing this!

Stardom:

So knock on wood, a group from Dodge is coming out to do a photoshoot of me with my Caliber. LOL. This all started when A Dodge employee on an internet forum mentioned they were looking for pictures of new owners with their vehicle. I of course use it for storm chasing, so I have an interesting use for the car. To make a long story short, the editor of the Dodge Owner's Magazine contacted me and said they loved the pictures. Apparently, the email got send around to all of the company (cool). A week or so ago he said it would be great for a feature in their mag... and they wanted to do a photoshoot of me! Hah! I didn't expect that... but hey whatever. I'll keep people posted to what happens... they need to work out some of the logistics on their end.

Aaron
PS: ND drivers still go way to slow.

Busy as a Beaver

2006-09-22T00:02:00.000-05:00

Title sums it up. Lots of homework + seminar tomorrow + moving into house = busy Aaron. Nothing crazy to report... our new neigbor has a TV room with at least 2 big screens... maybe 3!

Aaron

I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS MAD AT THE REFS

2006-09-16T18:40:00.000-05:00

Oh wait... yes I have... TX Tech last year. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!? Sooners... 3-0 baby!!!! (in my mind)

Busy!

2006-09-13T21:37:00.000-05:00

I'm busy with school, so expect fewer posts. There is not too much to report. We got our first minor frost a few nights ago, people still drive way to slow, and it is POTATO WEEK! Let me act excited. Tomorrow we have walkthrough for house, and then close on Friday. Yippee!

Laboring over Labor Day

2006-09-05T01:02:00.000-05:00

It has been a productive weekend!

Football:
Having ESPN gameplan and the FSN sports multipackage, I watched my fair share of football! Yay! Sooners did OK. I think the big news is we played bad enough to point out areas we need to improve, yet well enough to win. This is something we can' t say for our opener last year. If we come out and woop up on Washington, I will have a bit more faith for the season, but as of now I'd mark down a loss at Oregon and Texas... and perhaps one other opponent on the road. PT is going to have to step up... every defense in the world will be focusing on AD.

So which teams impressed me this weekend? Hard to say. The teams that wooped up were generally those that played bigtime cupcakes. Texas' QB did look decent unfortunately :(.

Labor:
I celebrated labor day weekend by laboring. While academia has benefits I can't do without (flexible schedule), you will work quite often. Regardless of what the wife will tell you, I DO typically put in over 40 hours of work a week during the school year. This weekend I knocked out a rough draft for a 1000 word essay for one of my classes. I also completed a 2nd draft for one of my first publications in the works. Finally, I worked on calculating a few additional items for my other journal article. Hopefully I can knock that paper out within a few days. I have to merge these two papers to create a conference preprint by Sept 14.

Grand Forks/Neighbors:
Jimmie and I went out to eat tonight on the other side of the river. As we walked over from our apartment (only 3/4 mile or so), we noticed tons of loud music at the townsquare. Apparently it was Grand Forks' rockfest! On the way over, the band playing sounded pretty decent. On the way back, it was some scary heavy/death metal band. Yikes. The band members looked like they were direct descendents of Vikings. Grand Forks was even able to gather up a 4 person "mosh pit"! Hah!

When we left for dinner, some random people were cooking out in our back yard. Hope they had fun... the bees are out in full force. It doesn't help that Gar Gar (our neighbor's cat) has turned into a red squirrel assasin. We now have several squirrel corpses half eaten laying about the property. Apparently these are a tasty treat to the local yellow jacket union... they have been swarming over them nonstop.

BREAKING NEWS: The neighbor's clothes are now gone from the dryer after ~2 weeks. I guess they needed something clean to wear!

Just an update

2006-08-29T00:24:00.000-05:00

24 August 2006 storm chase:

Here's the log and the pictures. Quite sucessful to say the least. Ironically, I've seen as many tornadoes in SD now than I did in all 6 years in OK. (I've seen additional tornadoes in KS and TX)

School update:

I'm back to the grind. OBAN will take time and effort, but the other two shouldn't be too difficult. It's hard (or not so hard) to believe this is my 13th semester of college!

Grand Forks Stuff:
-A MN tagged vehicle with a Texas longhorn sticker and the owner's names... I can't remember the guys, but the lady's was Olga :P
-A non pimped out SUV driven by a white guy with the plate ND: 2PAC Guy would probably get shot in any real city.
-A car that looked like the cast of queer eye for a straight guy. Vehicle had a bumper sticker that said "2Q2BSTR8" Yikes.
-Everyone drives so slow!!! 20 in a 30!? Arghhhhhh

Neighbors:
The neighbors had their bash... one of their freinds was wearing a BAMA hat. In other words, they were declaring their redneckhook. JAmes mentioned they bought $100!!! in buffalo meat. How you can afford that when you get paid $11/hr is beyond me. Luckily we didn't go... instead we went to family dinner with the UND grad students (fun and tasty).

Cyclic tornadic supercell in SD

2006-08-26T02:43:00.000-05:00

Here's a small teaser photo... full report to follow later.

My NOSE BURNS!

2006-08-22T00:06:00.000-05:00

I have never smelled such a horrible odor in my life! My nose currently burns thanks to the sugar beet (sugar making) factory located somewhere in town. The smell is a cross between cattle feedlot, dairy farm, and cat pee. It is THAT bad. I spent 15 minutes wondering how on earth the cats took such a big shit... then I did a whiff test around the apartment and realized it was coming in from a window.

Read all about it, and be thankful you can't smell it. The stench is so putrid it is making me gag!

Another weekend summary!

2006-08-21T00:24:00.000-05:00

Saturday:

On Saturday, I got my first chance to play basketball. Zhe Feng invited me to come out and play at the older sports complex on campus. While I *thought* it would be a bunch of meteorologists, it actaully ended up being a dozen super-fit asian exchange students, myself (the overweight white boy), an older white international guy, and an athletic one-armed white dude. Initially, we played 3vs3 and 4vs4 half-court. I did ok and my team won two close contests. More showed up, and then we played full-court! Ahhhhh! I chugged along, had one great game, and made sure my man didn't score. Now I'm sore and have a slightly tweaked knee. Tis' ok... I'll be ready to play more next Saturday.

That night, there was a chance for aurora so I periodically checked outside. Sure enough, I saw a green glow on the northern horizon around midnight. Jimmie was babysitting for a big-wig at EERC so I headed out. Here are the results.

Sunday:

I got back from taking picture of the aurora around 1:30am. Sin City came on TV so I watched that movie for the first time. Overall, the film was lackluster. It was quite gory, but the story was disjointed and felt more like parts of a comic stuck together.

I went to bed around ~3:30am and Jimmie got home a bit after that. Needless to say, we slept in till late (11-noon). Ran some errands then I sat on my butt for rest of the day.

Neighbor:
James came over around 7pm; he needed help moving a dresser. We moved this crappy dresser from a house one block down the street. It was actually fairly difficult... all of these old homes have narrow staircases. I guess Americans in the 1800s were midgets or something. Combined with a ~5ft long dresser, it was a 3 man operation. We got it downstairs, loaded it into his friend's pickup, then delivered it to our front lawn. It seems James didn't want me to go in his apartment... the puppies trashed it that bad! He mentioned that he had the carpet cleaners come, and he is going to look into recarpeting the "house". Which reminds me: even though he lives in 1 of 4 apartments in the house, he always refers to it as his "house".

Random stuff:
-Unfortunately, ND drivers rank up there with Okies... two almost ran into me today. The first backed up out of a spot without looking... then gave me a dirty look! The second was an old granny distracted by something to the left. She drifted into my lane and missed my vehicle by a foot or two.
-The last few times I was out on my walk, I noticed wannabe skater kids doing "tricks" with those retarded shoes with the skate wheel built in. Wow.
-Our backyard is starting to resemble a junkyard. James has deposited numerous furniture items near the trash can. I don't think he realizes the garbagemen won't take them away.

Mexican food

2006-08-19T00:21:00.000-05:00

I went to my first Mexican joint in GFK with Jimmie tonight. We decided on Paradiso, a restauraunt only a mile or so away from us. They have a flashy sign and this annoying theme that goes "chips are free, dinner is extra". Mark that as the #1 sign that you aren't in OK/TX. I thought free chips were standard at every Mexican place? The next sign was the lack of Mexicans or latinos on the staff. Welcome to the amazingly non-diverse state of North Dakota!

Overall, the dinner was ok. I actually had a hard time deciding what to have; the menu was fairly complicated with all of the combos. Strangely enough, not every entre came with rice/beans. There's your third and final sign!

The neighbors mentioned they were going to have a big bash next weekend. Stay tuned! I sense there may be a few stories to tell in the future ;)

More Nodakness

2006-08-16T00:09:00.001-05:00

As promised, here's the southern engineered Dish setup. (Picture)

Today's Dakotism:
I saw an obvious sorority girl (big sunglasses, cell phone, etc.) driving a early 90s minivan. Wow. That is one thing you won't see in Norman!

Orientation:

Here's my recollection of orientation today. bla bla bla bla we're here for you bla bla bla bla we want to see you graduate bla bla bla bla bla bla. bla bla bla bla. Here's a $5 ticket for lunch. bla bla bla The student senate has a service called cab crawler. With this, you can get $1 cab rides during the night from any bar. Nice!!!! bla bla bla bla

Overall, UND it is your typical university. The new wellness center opens on Sept. 25 which I am pumped about. I will then be able to start lifting weights again.

House Stuff:
I found cheaper homeowners insurance, and to boot, we got a better auto rate. Saving $$$ always works for me. Today was supposed to be the appraisal on the home. In addition, the underwriter supposedly was going through our loan application. We hope to hear good news tomorrow. If for whatever reason is bad, I might have to get Jimmie a bottle of Malibu :P

Walk:
No sickness this time. There were a couple of Native Americans getting drunk under the overpass along the walking/bike route, however.

Neighbors:
We are now going on 2 days for my neighbor to do his laundry. He lets his shit sit overnight... If it isn't gone by tomorrow afternoon, I will have to have a word. I'm running low on undies! The rest of the building also appears to have power issues. The 2nd floor unit has to keep resetting the circuit breaker. Luckily, we only have some sporadic flickering downstairs.

Thank you mr. high pressure man

2006-08-14T22:35:00.000-05:00

The weather in GFK is absolutely gorgeous. Today it was mostly clear with a high of ~78F. Now at 3:30Z, it is a mild 60F! I feel like either yelling “it’s Football time in OOOOKlahoma" or heading off to a apple orchard/pumpkin patch to get some fresh apple cider and pick some pumpkins.

The day:
I woke up rather late today (11) and headed in to the office to get some things completed. My main goal was to see if the computer had been wiped clean (it had). I installed a few essentials (firefox/itunes), and then sought out the local computer guru so I could get a license for IDL. In the process I met the new postdoc in our research group. I headed home around 5 so I could be there for the satellite installation.

Sat. Install:
Unfortunately, the landlord was pretty anal about us not touching the roof, so the sat. installer and I worked up some "southern engineering". We grabbed a piece of table from the front lawn and pushed it against the back of the house. We found a burned up piece of wood and mounted the dish to it, then weighted this down on the table with some concrete landscaping pieces we found around. Surprisingly, it is fairly stable considering the ghetto rigged install. As long as we don't get any downbursts or strong gusts, it should work. I'll get a picture of the setup tomorrow... it really puts the finishing touch on this decrepit place in my opinion.

Walk:
Once the install was completed, I left Jimmie alone with HGTV so I could go for my walk. Walk was typical except for the last quarter. While walking near the railroad tracks on the bike path, I caught a whiff of some sort of fume. Within a few minutes, my saliva glands went out of control and I felt the urge to vomit. I puked a couple times within a few minutes, but after that, I was A-OK other than being a bit clammy. Not sure what in hell I inhaled, but if it happens again, I may need to adjust my walking path. Strange to say the least!

North Dakota Tidbits:
Today I found out you can get a license when you are 14! in ND. It is actually a restrictive license (can't drive at night or with peers), but that's still pretty amazing. Another weird thing about ND is that it is the last state in the union to not require voter registration.

NCAR/RAP:
Random complaint of the day (Thanks to Christy for reminding me)... NCAR/RAP has gone to the shitter for UA data lately. Most of the time their UA maps are completely whack missing either observations or the analysis.

Weekend Summary

2006-08-13T22:11:00.000-05:00

Most of this weekend was occupied by our trip to Minneapolis. There, we met up with my parents, my sister, and her friend at the Holiday Inn Express. The following day we hit the Mall of Amierca hard; Jimmie needed a couple of things for work and I looked for a jacket and perhaps some back to school clothes (which Jimmie thinks I need ;) ).

Trip Report:
Jimmie and I left GFK at 5pm after she got off work. Before leaving, I used gasbuddy to find the cheapest gas prices. Fargo was the lowest location in ND @2.99, so we held off till there to fill up. While the trip itself was pretty uneventful, we did see something amusing in between GFK and FAR. At one point, we came upon a old pickup doing well below the posted limit. Hanging out the passenger window were a pair of legs. As we passed the truck, there was an extremely happy looking redneck hunched over the steering wheel... all while the passenger was no where to be seen. Looks liked someone was engaging in extracurricular activities!

We arrived in MSP around 10pm. Hung out for a bit then enjoyed the king sized bed. Much better than our temporarily solution at the aprt; a matress on the ground. The next day we woke up at 8am and went off to the Mall of America. I'll gloss over the details... I found nothing, and Jimmie found her required items. While the norm is usually for stores to put out stuff for the next season well in advance, I found absolutely no winter coats. Figures!

By 2pm, my feet/legs were tired... and this is coming from a guy that has no problem walking 4mi almost every day. We said our goodbuys to my family and headed off to IKEA. There, we found way to many things to put on the list for the new house. Needless to say, we'll be heading back in a few months to rack up the cc bill. I still need to measure the back of my car to see if the dining room table we picked out will fit. We left IKEA around 5 and headed home. First, however, we needed to stop at some outlet malls.

At the outlet malls, I picked out a couple of shirts from Nautica and a pair of jeans from Old Navy. Good enough for my back to school shopping! Once again, I came up empty for a winter coat. I'll have to wait awhile to fill that neccesity.

We finished the visit to the outlet mall in Albertville, MN with a dinner at Space Aliens Bar and Grill. Pretty cool place, and it is especially oriented towards kids/sci-fi freaks (DUH). I failed to try any of their signature items. While my sandwich was ok, it was hardly "out of this world". Fries were pretty good though, but not for the diet obviously. I'm back to hitting that hard today, however. I may have a chance in the future to check out Space Aliens... they are building a new restaurunt in Grand Forks apparently (2007).

So enough of the boring crap... now lets talk about life in GFK.

GFK:
Today was absolutely beautiful. Cloudy early on, but it cleared our around evening. The thing to scream about was temperatures! The mercury didn't rise above 70 today. I'd suggest taking bets on the first day it stays below 70 in OKC. I'm going to go for late October(Oct 23.). make sure to IM me your guess and we can have a lil contest.

Jimmie and I went for a walk past The Kegs and then downtown. Greeting us was the excellent music of a 14 piece Jazz ensamble playing in the city square. This is actually the 3rd occasion I've heard live music from here in the past week. Overall, I'm impressed with the level of activity in GFK... I suppose they are getting it all out before winter sets in ; ). On the way back from the walk, we ran into our neighbor James and his friend Adam. Adam used to live in the same unit as us.

Daily neighbor update:
This blog wouldn't be a proper update without news on the neighbors. Today, as I mentioned above, we were introduced to Adam. Adam is a pet lover and used to live in the apartment with his new wife (then gf at the time). While they were moving out, the apartment flooded and they were stuck with the carpet cleanup bill. Yikes! Mark one more reason we want to get out of here quick. At any rate, Adam is a truck driver. During the summer, he drives gravel trucks for construction. To make life a bit more interesting, he drives tow trucks during the winter. What is now becoming a seemingly never ending explanation, we had to explain why we actually moved to GFK. No one in this area (outside of university folk) seem to understand why you would want to move here. Adam left me with us with a bit of advice... don't go ice fishing (no shit).

So Adam was over here delivering some scary leather furniture to James. They are apparently relatives and James lamented why he even had to pay for the stuff. James asked Jimmie about how to clean the couches since in his words "women know how to clean shit". He mentioned that He'll just make Jade (his girlfriend if you recall) clean it. I got a chuckle out of this.... Jimmie would of beat my ass if I said these words! I can't talk... with Jimmie being the Sugar Momma, I tend to be the house-hubby. With that, we have some updated info about Jade.

Jade works at Walmart. In a few days she is celebrating her bday in Canada. I asked James straight up why anyone would want to do this in CA. "Because she's turning 18, she'll be able to drink legally there" was the response. Oh of course!!! Why didn't I think of this!?!? Wow. So James is ~21 Jade is 17. Of course I'm wondering why in hell are you 17, a HS dropout and working out walmart. *shrug*

So Jimmie, James and I chatted a bit longer. I can't recall the complete path the convo took, but we did find out how James and Jade knew the criminal that beat the granny. Apparently he was as James put it the "fuck fling" for Jade awhile back. That ended badly when she stopped putting out compelling the guy to become even more psycho. This all reads like some crazy sort of Springer episode. Other than that, we found out only a few more things. For one, James wants to buy half a head of cow for food. Why? I don't know. Does he even have the money? I doubt it. Where in hell is he going to put it? Beats me! James is also waiting for Jade's grandpa to kick the bucket. Apparently he is mean old man that owns a 6acre farmstead. James wants to take over the farmhouse once the grandpa croaks.

That's it for now. I leave you all with two signs you live in the stix/ag town.
#1 A younger woman wears a shirt that says "Save a horse, ride a tractor" (John Deer shirt)
#2 You see an old pickup truck with a large vinyl "Cabela's" sticker on the hood with a #24 on the side.

Oh yaaa

2006-08-10T19:35:00.000-05:00

Livin the good life. I'm currently listening to Frosty the Snowman and taking a break from giving myself brain cancer. I've been on the cell phone at least 4 hours the past two days trying to figure out homeowners insurance.

Insurance:
Our current insurance provider is USAA which I am normally quite pleased with. When it comes to homeowners insurance, however, blaaa! We went through some replacement cost calculator for the house and it came up with a value of ~$250k! This was more than twice the market value of the home. Are you kidding me? Apparently they insure based on how much it would cost to recreate the current home you have (which was built in 1888). Due to the antiqueness of the house , this causes it to be much more expensive. Except that it isn't that antique other than a few plaster walls... Or at least that's the line of crap they gave me. Sounded more like a line of overinsurance bullshit to me. As a result, our yearly premium would be $1400... more than $600 more than the estimated cost on our mortgage worksheet stuff.

I talked with my advisor today and he suggested his broker who works for State Farm. She actually is the husband of a MS graduate from UND meteorology so there is some homie hookup going on. Using their calculator, we came up with $150k. Much more reasonable. Total cost would be ~$900. I can live with that. She was extremely friendly and helpful (not to mention the metr connection), so I'm not sure how much I'll hunt around for rates. I believe our rate will still be quite a bit higher than normal still due to the age of the house. I'm sure that factors into the risk. The double suck is we also have to purchase federal flood insurance. That will come in at ~$700 a year for building coverage. Because floods in GFK are well predicted (you have prior warning), I don't see the point in covering contents. Even if it did flood, the first floor is raised, so only belongings in the basement would be damaged. FEMA insurance doesn't cover these items anyway, so content coverage would be pointless.

So all-in-all, whatever. The bottom line per month isn't a big deal... but having to fork out the year of flood/hazard insurance in advance for escrow will suck. Oh and the kicker? The city's dike system is almost completed (enough to protect us from floods probably)... and once the gov. certifies it, we shouldn't be required to carry flood insurance. The dike system kicked the city's 5th highest flood on record in the ass last year.
Pictures from the 2006 flood

Flooding:
Speaking of flooding, it rained quite heavily in GFK today which sparked a flash flood warning (ah life in a flood plain). We even got some pea-dime size hail at the aprt. I also got to see stairaga falls... it seems that there is a crack in the foundation, so rain water poors down the left side of the stairs when it rains hard. Luckily, a rug soaked up the water before it could reach our aprt. door. The water was then directed over towards the coin operatd dryer and then down to the sump pump. Most of it is dried up now (other than the rug) so I won't bother to take a picture.

Crime:
Remember the pistol whipped granny? Here's the criminal. Like most, he was pretty stupid. After tying up the granny and beating her, he left and broke into the home next door. He remained there, hiding in the bathroom, till cops took him away. What the hell? I figure the guy must of been high on some shit.

The terrorist plot news:
So in other news, intelligence worked for a change and thwarted a terror plot. Props to the British agent. The bad news is our country is full of a bunch of pussies. I keep reading crap about how people are now afraid to travel this week. Are you kidding me? Now's probably the safest time to fly. Either way, your odds of getting blown up in a terrorist attack are extremely low. I've got better things to worry about thank you very much! The day we life our life in constant fear is the day the terrorists win. Or at least in my eyes... I guess by their standard they want all of us westerners dead. Just another reason I'd like to pick up one of these bad boys: Berreta CX4 (in .45 ACP of course). I guess that's why I don't consider my self a complete democrat. I have no problem with the right to bear as many arms as you can in your two hands ;) .

I believe that's where conservatives go wrong. They bash democrats for being wusses, but in reality, I believe the majority of us have no problem with going in and kicking terrorist ass. The problem is they say something along the lines of "...but you are against the Iraq campaign, so you must be a coward". That's not it! The problem with Iraq was no clear plan. It shouldn't come as a surprise that we're still tied up in that country with threat of civil war looming. Anytime you go in and remove the ruling party and replace it with their opponent you are going to have issues. Now we still have a country in turmoil, soilders getting killed, and even more muslims hating our ass. Looks like we'll have plenty of terrorists to terminate in the future!

yeehaw!

2006-08-08T22:46:00.000-05:00

Today started off with our home inspection. Overall, it went quite well for a home that was built before even many(all?) of my great-grandparents were born! The inspectors/contractors only pointed out a few minor issues that can be easily remedied. In case you haven't seen the house yet...
The House

After the inspection, I went home and took some pics of the apartment. I figured we might as well back up our claims of its scariness. I will admit the pictures make it look pretty good. You can't see the sketchiness in the bathroom, the missing baseboards revealing rotten drywall in two of the rooms, and you can't get a good feel for the nasty carpet which ranks somewhere below shag or astroturf. The apartment does have one thing going for it: an actual Taco Johns booth! Perhaps I should try and bring that to the house...
The Apartment

Later in the day I went into the office to see how my computer stuff was progressing. Internet is now hooked up (Yay!), but I needed to put in an order for the computer to be wiped clean. This should be accomplished by Friday, although I'm not getting my hopes up. The university is certainly taking their time in getting keys made for me! I BS'd with my advisor and a few of the other grad students in our research group. The advisor said our new home will be the party house and that he'd bring the beer. I'll have to find a replacement for Shiner Bock. Luckily, you can still get Blvd. Wheat up here.

I got back around 4 and chilled a bit till Jimmie got home. We sorted out some mortgage crap (ugh!), and our neighbor knocked on our door wanting to know if we would join the grill out. Wanting to be good neighbors, we went on up. It was my turn to cook dinner anyway, and I was planning on heating up some tomato chicken brats.

The BBQ
So on to the BBQ we went... but first we had to take a pickaxe and chop up the pallet for firewood. To add to the fresh pallet toasted taste, we included the rusty nails. If I ever get cancer, I'll blame it on this event. BBQ went ok other than the yellow jacket jihad. Good freaking lord... send those f'rs to Lebanon and Israel will have the war won. Those mofos were all over us and the food like an illegal immigrant in the Rio Grande.

At the BBQ we learned some shocking news. A granny got pistol whipped just a few blocks down the street today! Not surprisingly, one of the neighbors knew who the suspect was. After the BBQ the neighbors and a few of their friends that had come over got a game of hackey going. Hackey!? If the mary jane phone cover didn't give it away, this was official confirmation we live with a group of stoners.

Other Grand Forks tidbits:
Every day I see more and more roller bladers. You'd think this place was like a city-wide middle school birthday party at skateland or some crap. I know it's a hockey town but damn....

Another site I saw today was the "Community Service Police" vehicle. I'm not sure what the hell that is. I did some checking online and here is what I came up with:

Here's a quote from the website:

CSB’s goal is to not only reduce crime, but also reduce the fear of crime. This increases the quality of life for all.

If you are seriously afraid of crime in GFK, you need to get the hell out of your bubble and take some prozac. This place is a freakin' preschool compared to any of the other towns I've lived in. Folks of Grand Forks I have news for you: no real gangstas live in your town. Do you really think gangbanging is going on when it's -20 outside with 10in of snow on the ground? Hell No! Time and time again we hear that the area around our aprt. is the ghetto. In actuality, it's just your typical American low-income side of town.

That's all for now. I'll leave ya with some bonus pictures from our move:
The move

North Dakota update

2006-08-07T22:58:00.000-05:00

So I might as well post about our experiences in North Dakota thus far. Overall, the town is great. Much smaller than Norman, but with 95% of the goods. Whereas I walked around scenic east Norman before (not) , I now walk around a large stretch of downtown Grand Forks.

We currently live in a ghetto aprt. with nice, but uneducated neighbors. The neighbors deserve a much longer writeup so I'll go on. The basic situation is we share a home with 3 other apartments. Ironically, only one unit has controls to the hvac in the building, and this also happens to be unoccupied. While we are in the basement, James and his gf Jade are on the first floor. Jamie lives on 2nd floor and once in awhile her punkesque bf comes over. We are the oldest residents of the building at a ripe age of 24. The others are somewhere around 21-22.

James and Jade:
James and Jade are really friendly, but not educated. James mentioned they were going back to school to get their GEDs. Currently, James washes semis, but he is about to start his old job of assembling wind-turbine blades. This job pays $11, and he said they are hiring plenty of more people. He suggested I should look into a weekend shift to go along with school. Another interesting tidbit is they love animals. They currently have a large dog, its 5 puppies, 2 cute cats, a rabbit, and a lizard. I can't recall who owns the snake in the building. Everyday, James asks me how school went (beats me!) and tells us to prepare for the monster BBQ they are going to have soon. For firewood, they use an old pallet that sits behind the house. James also loves to bike. Today I came back from my walk to see him popping wheelies on his mountain bike with neighborhood kids.

Jamie: Don't know much about her other than she probably works for some sort of food delivery service. All three of our neighbors like to smoke which is unfortunate. Living in a basement apartment, we need to leave the windows open to get ventilation to remove mildewy stink. This results in the lovely smells of dog shit and cig smoke to waft in occasionly.

Grand Forks:
As I mentioned earlier, GFK is a great town. Adding to the experience is the absolutely fantastic weather. We are running about 15 degrees colder than OKC for high temps. and even colder for lows (upper 50s). Everytime I step outside I feel like I should be jumping in line for football (something I will miss :( ). I even had the oppurtunity to storm chase the other day with Jimmie and a few UND grad students. Not much more to report other than my intestines are still recovering from Taco Johns.

UND:
I have a great office at UND on the 4th floor of Clifford hall. I have a row of windows (although some are blocked by building supports), and NICE solid wood furniture. For now, I am the sole occupant (yay!) although my advisor mentioned they may need to put another student in there in a semester or two. I also get a semi-new computer. Dual P4-2.8ghz with 1gig ram and a 19" flat panel... works for me! I may bring my spare 17" panel to school. Pimpin aint easy yo!

House:
For those of you behind the times, Jimmie and I found and signed a contract on a house. This home is in the historic district of GFK and is listed on the national register of historic places. The house was built in 1888 which is before ND even became a state! As one might expect, it has had plenty of updates... new siding, windows, doors, newer shingles, brand new kitchen, remodeled basement. Two downsides are the lack of the garage and current requirement for federal flood insurance. This may change in a year or so when the dike construction is finally completed. Tomorrow we have the home inspection and then an appraisal later in the month. As long as the home passes these exams, we'll be good to go. Tentative closing date is 9/29.

ND funnies/oddities:
-A GFK weed removal truck's motto was "We'll smoke all of your weeds"
-Jimmie reports the following from her first day at work:
-In general ND residents dislike Canadians
-"holy buckets" is a popular phrase as well as "oof da".
-ND residents love to travel to MN to hang out at lakes
-There is a sonic-like drivein near our aprt. named "the Kegs" this building is a small drive-up with two large kets on both sides.
-I have heard "eh" and "you betcha" on occasion.
-The walmart is approx. 10 years behind the times.
-GFK bar scene appears to be hopping on weekends. Lots of traffic in/out of the 4 or 5 bars I passed on my walk in downtown

Sort of forgot about this...

2006-07-23T15:49:00.000-05:00

This is still better than xanga, so I'll start updating this more as I approach the move to North Dakota!

Weekend Review

2005-07-17T22:14:00.000-05:00

Well, the weekend is pretty much over so I guess I can sum it up. Yesterday, I went to the Wichita mountains near Lawton, OK with Ben and Brian (fellow SOM grad students). Even though it was 90+F, we had a good hike and saw lots of lizards. Sadly, we saw no snakes, although the prairie dogs were up to their normal activities; they always makes good photo subjects. I still need to fan out and find more run-down buildings in OK. My portfolio is still pretty small in that area, and it would be nice to get a few more shots. A project in the works is looking for those type of pictures.

Pictures from the trip are at: http://www.convectionconnection.com/WICHITA-071605/

Today was a work day. So much for the holy sabbath! Overall, I got everything pretty much accomplished. I wrote the second test for my college class I am teaching, and made sure I had lectures prepared for M/T. I briefly made an outline for my young kid's summer severe wx class. I'll finish that up tomorrow before the college class. Afterwards, I came up and worked on getting some pictures ready to be proofed. I need to get them printed within a few days for an upcoming meeting. Side note: www.whcc.com is an awesome photo lab!

Later in the day, I ate a small dinner and played basketball. Now I am downloading radar data for research. I can't wait until Aug, 2. Then I'll be free of all of my commitments except research. Yay!

Aaron

The Dark Side

2005-07-16T01:19:00.000-05:00

After discussing blogs with a few chaser friends... I've finally decided to go to the dark side. That's right: I've started a blog. We'll see how often I update it! Almost every day something ammusing/interesting happens and I'd like to share these tidbits with the world... even if I'm the only one that cares.

I'm hiking in the Wichitas tomorrow, so off to sleep. Adios!

Aaron