Wunder Blog : Weather Underground
No, no. Tell me it isn't so. There is an area in the tropics that is looking like a storm trying to form. This will be the season to remember. Or at least I hope it will be rather than an example of what future storm seasons will be like.
I took all of our storm shutters down yesterday. The town has picked up all of the debris such as fence sections and posts that blew down. Most of the landscaping in the neighborhood seems relatively intact but the trees and shrubs still are bare since all of their leaves got blown away. I still have some blown down fence sections piled up on one side of my front yard. I piled them there since they look like they can be used again. All of them belong to the fence on the side of my yard. The tall 8 foot high fence in the back got broken up too badly to be used again. We have no privacy on the back of our house now and it is strange to be looking at our neighbors whom we have not seen for years. I must admit that was intentional since they were very unfriendly when we moved in. The biggest reason for the fence was to wall them off so we would not have to interact with them. The old man is pretty friendly but the old lady is a quite hostile. When the fence guys were here the first time we put the fence up she was following them along every step of the way giving them a hard time. That was a few years ago. She has aged a lot since then and seems to be a bit mellower. At least one time she waved and smiled. Scared me to death when she did that. So sad.
Friday, November 11, 2005
CBS News | Seniors Who Blog Defy Stereotypes | November 10, 2005?14:30:06
CBS News | Seniors Who Blog Defy Stereotypes | November 10, 2005?14:30:06
Makes sense to me. Use those brain cells folks. Start a blog and share your experiences and thoughts. If nothing else it is great fun to look back on what you wrote a few years ago. I guess I must fall into the category of a senior who defies stereotypes.
Makes sense to me. Use those brain cells folks. Start a blog and share your experiences and thoughts. If nothing else it is great fun to look back on what you wrote a few years ago. I guess I must fall into the category of a senior who defies stereotypes.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Wunder Blog : Weather Underground
Jeff Masters reports that the tropics are quieting down. Good news for those of us down here in hurricane alley. I used Dr. Master's weather blog on Wunderground.com through the entire hurricane season. He provides insights and details not found on the regular weather reports. I can highly recommend his blog for those who want a little more than the usual TV weather reports offer. Check out the photos on this particular blog.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Google Adsense
Musings has gone commercial. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the blog you will see some small ads from Google. I mainly wanted to see how the ads work and to learn how to implement them on a site. I don't think they are terribly intrusive. It should be interesting to see if any revenue is generated. This site has a fairly low number of hits so I doubt it will make me enough money to pay for my hosting service. It will be an interesting experiment anyway.
Return to Wilmaland
Wilmaland. Yep, we are back home again. Actually home is West Palm Beach. We drove the Mothership here today from Dunedin RV Resort. We left at 10 am and got here about 3 pm. Just as we were leaving this morning we got a call from the FEMA rep and arranged to meet him here this afternoon. He was waiting for us when we pulled up. What timing. He asked a few questions and took our information. We reported no damage to our house but described to him why we evacuated to Tampa. No power, no phone pretty much sums it up. So, we are now in the system and can be expecting some more forms I think.
Friday, November 04, 2005
Remote Storm Reports
We are still in Dunedin in the Mothership. I had some observations about the impact of Wilma that I posted over on our flight simulator scenery web site. Since many of the reports were by our users I don't feel I have the rights to post them again here but you can go to the discussion thread by clicking here and read them yourself. One of our users has a real knack for reporting.
My interface with FEMA was a kind of surreal experience. You can read my post over on the Freeflow site but basically all I was looking for was some reimbursement for relocation expense. We moved the Mothership up here to Dunedin since the power was off in our neighborhood for nine or ten days. I figured I would apply to FEMA just to get some compensation. I will not repeat what I posted over at the Freeflow site but the bottom line is that I got a big packet of stuff in the mail at home that related mostly to small business assistance loans. My neighbor and good friend called me on the phone to tell me that. Nothing in it that seemed to relate to expenses incurred for moving or for buying a generator. I called FEMA again and they told me to just attach all of my receipts to a note with my FEMA registration number and they would be reviewed for payment. What? I started thinking about what it would be like if I were poor and lived in New Orleans or even in South Florida. I would have no power, no phone, no computer and would be just waiting for someone to help. Ok, so maybe I could get to a phone and apply to FEMA. Then I would get a big packet of forms in the mail relating to small business loans? What if my mailbox and house had been destroyed? There has to be a better way. Got to my Freeflow site here and read some of the observations of our users over there. Very interesting.
We are planning on returning the Mothership to her base next Tuesday. Power has been restored in our neighborhood but the infrastructure down there has been hit hard. It will be months or years before things get back to normal. Years? Hurricane season starts up again in 8 months or less. Hmmm. Think, about that and the fact that all of the experts predict that we are moving into ten or twenty years of much more active hurricane seasons than we have been in for the last twenty or thirty years.
My interface with FEMA was a kind of surreal experience. You can read my post over on the Freeflow site but basically all I was looking for was some reimbursement for relocation expense. We moved the Mothership up here to Dunedin since the power was off in our neighborhood for nine or ten days. I figured I would apply to FEMA just to get some compensation. I will not repeat what I posted over at the Freeflow site but the bottom line is that I got a big packet of stuff in the mail at home that related mostly to small business assistance loans. My neighbor and good friend called me on the phone to tell me that. Nothing in it that seemed to relate to expenses incurred for moving or for buying a generator. I called FEMA again and they told me to just attach all of my receipts to a note with my FEMA registration number and they would be reviewed for payment. What? I started thinking about what it would be like if I were poor and lived in New Orleans or even in South Florida. I would have no power, no phone, no computer and would be just waiting for someone to help. Ok, so maybe I could get to a phone and apply to FEMA. Then I would get a big packet of forms in the mail relating to small business loans? What if my mailbox and house had been destroyed? There has to be a better way. Got to my Freeflow site here and read some of the observations of our users over there. Very interesting.
We are planning on returning the Mothership to her base next Tuesday. Power has been restored in our neighborhood but the infrastructure down there has been hit hard. It will be months or years before things get back to normal. Years? Hurricane season starts up again in 8 months or less. Hmmm. Think, about that and the fact that all of the experts predict that we are moving into ten or twenty years of much more active hurricane seasons than we have been in for the last twenty or thirty years.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Dunedin
We are enjoying a nice mini vacation away from South Florida while the power is being restored there. Interestingly, we are close enough to home that our DirectTV system in the Mothership is picking up the local tv stations from home. We are able to watch the local stations to get all of the latest updates on the situation back home. We are staying at the Dunedin RV Resort, a very nice campground. It is one of the nicest that we have been in with very reasonable prices. If you would like to see more info on our present home click here. This part of Florida is unique for us South Floridians. There are rolling hills and large live oak trees every where. It is really beautiful. This is also an area that has a much higher RV population than South Florida which also means a lot of service for RVs is available. Our only damage, a torn awning over one of our slide outs is going to be repaired by an experienced RV repair guy who will come to our site. Our generator is going to be serviced on Tuesday at an Onan Generator site 25 miles from here. The service will probably be completed on that day but if not the shop has RV hookups and we will just spend the night there and then come back to Dunedin.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Relocation
After the storm we all worked hard at getting our debris out to the street. My neighbor's boys went through the neighborhood helping people clean out their yards. We all burned off our nervous energy by getting everything picked up. Our fence sections are all out on the street now along with a big pile of limbs and broken down banana trees.
I then hooked up our refrigerators, a small tv, and a light to the generator in the Mothership. Since that went so well we also added my neighbor's refrigerators. At one point we even briefly fired up our PCs to check and send a few emails. That worked well for a number of hours. The next morning however, the generator began to act the same way it did just before I took it into the shop. It would start, then run for about five minutes and stop. We checked the fuel filter and the oil. All those simple checks found nothing amiss. One of my neighbors is pretty handy with engines and electrical things so he came over and was able to get it to run briefly by manually manipulating the choke and throttle. We gave up after trying that for a while. Then the phones went dead. That really spooked us because we had phone service the entire time, even through the storm. Also, while watching TV during the period when the generator was on we quickly learned that in spite of our light damage, the South Florida infra structure was badly crippled. As darkness approached the day after the storm we made the decision to use the Mothership for an impromptu roadtrip. We called our daughter who just moved to a new house in Dunedin and she found a very nice campground near their house and made reservations for us. I put the few shutters I had taken down back up with my neighbor and friend's help and we moved into the camper for the night anticipating an early departure.
Night fell quickly and with no moon our world became darker than dark. With all of our remaining food and clothes in the camper we settled in for the night. It felt like home to us having just returned from a our trip out west. We had no trouble adapting back to life in the Mothership after the 7,000 miles of travel back in August and September. We had no moon and no city light lume in the sky. A cold front had passed through and it was cool and clear. We could see the night sky like never before but it was not a time to relax and enjoy it. We knew from watching tv that the entire South Florida infrastructure was down. We felt very vulnerable. During the night we heard a car or cars racing down our small residential street at what sounded like 80 mph. Not knowing if they were good guys or bad guys made us very uneasy.
We arose at 6am and hooked the car to the tow bars and started out of town. Proceding slowly down our street we were suddenly startled when a large cable or power line popped into view right in front of us. It draped down across the road and it took some careful maneuvering to get past it. Our adrenalin was up not knowing what else we would encounter. Exiting our neighborhood we began to get a sense of the damage. Power lines were down everywhere. There was a surprising amount of traffic on the road for 7am. We proceded very cautiously the short distance to I95 passing our local gas station where we saw the typical tall metal roof structure that covers the pumps twisted and leaning at a strange angle. The one traffic light that we had to pass was completely missing and the traffic treated it light a four way stop. Experience from the last two storms, Frances and Jean, have made locals pros at dealing with this stuff.
I-95 north was almost normal with moderate traffic. We proceded north to PGA Boulevard where it is only a short hop to the Florida Turnpike, the most direct route to Orlando and then Tampa. There were no tolls so entrance to the turnpike was free. Again, traffic was fairly light. The eery thing was seeing cars along the side of the road abandoned. We could only guess that during the mass exodus people had run out of fuel and just abandoned them on the side of the road. We even saw some that looked as though they had been in in accidents and left on the roadside. Traffic flowed well and we set the cruise control at just over 60.
The Turnpike has rest areas with restaurants and gas pumps that are located about 60 or so miles apart. The first one we came to had lines of cars trying to get in. We could only figure that they were the only gas stations pumping gas and with the free tolls local people were traveling there to get gasoline.
The further we traveled the more normal things began to get. We finally came to a rest area that appeared to have no more than normal traffic so we stopped in the parking lot and went inside for a cup of coffee. Inside we found lines of people waiting for coffee at the Starbucks but lighter lines at Burger King and Nathans. There is a quick survey for you in terms of coffee preference. After standing in the Starbucks line for what seemed an eternity we switched over to Nathan's where they had just brewed a fresh batch of decaf. We grabbed our coffee, went back out to the Mothership and cooked a normal breakfast since neither of us had eaten yet. The coffee and breakfast gave us a much needed boost. It was really cool and we were both cold and hungry.
The rest of the trip was a typical trip to Tampa with heavy traffic between Orlando and Tampa. The Tampa, Orlando, Daytona strip is a major corridor with the three cities hurtling towards becoming a megalopilis. For our trip out west we had purchased a Florida Sunpass which is a device that is attached to your windshield with suction cups. It uses a radio frequency sensor at the toll booths to detect your id and deducts the tolls from a prepaid account. After we got up near Orlando the tolls were back in force but with the Sunpass device we were able to breeze right through the toll gates without stopping. That really was a time saver and a new experience for us.
So, here we are in Dunedin, Florida. I have already located a factory authorized shop that will check our generator. I told them we were living in the RV and they said they had power hookups if we had to stay overnight. I have to call this morning and make further arrangements with them for repairs.
I then hooked up our refrigerators, a small tv, and a light to the generator in the Mothership. Since that went so well we also added my neighbor's refrigerators. At one point we even briefly fired up our PCs to check and send a few emails. That worked well for a number of hours. The next morning however, the generator began to act the same way it did just before I took it into the shop. It would start, then run for about five minutes and stop. We checked the fuel filter and the oil. All those simple checks found nothing amiss. One of my neighbors is pretty handy with engines and electrical things so he came over and was able to get it to run briefly by manually manipulating the choke and throttle. We gave up after trying that for a while. Then the phones went dead. That really spooked us because we had phone service the entire time, even through the storm. Also, while watching TV during the period when the generator was on we quickly learned that in spite of our light damage, the South Florida infra structure was badly crippled. As darkness approached the day after the storm we made the decision to use the Mothership for an impromptu roadtrip. We called our daughter who just moved to a new house in Dunedin and she found a very nice campground near their house and made reservations for us. I put the few shutters I had taken down back up with my neighbor and friend's help and we moved into the camper for the night anticipating an early departure.
Night fell quickly and with no moon our world became darker than dark. With all of our remaining food and clothes in the camper we settled in for the night. It felt like home to us having just returned from a our trip out west. We had no trouble adapting back to life in the Mothership after the 7,000 miles of travel back in August and September. We had no moon and no city light lume in the sky. A cold front had passed through and it was cool and clear. We could see the night sky like never before but it was not a time to relax and enjoy it. We knew from watching tv that the entire South Florida infrastructure was down. We felt very vulnerable. During the night we heard a car or cars racing down our small residential street at what sounded like 80 mph. Not knowing if they were good guys or bad guys made us very uneasy.
We arose at 6am and hooked the car to the tow bars and started out of town. Proceding slowly down our street we were suddenly startled when a large cable or power line popped into view right in front of us. It draped down across the road and it took some careful maneuvering to get past it. Our adrenalin was up not knowing what else we would encounter. Exiting our neighborhood we began to get a sense of the damage. Power lines were down everywhere. There was a surprising amount of traffic on the road for 7am. We proceded very cautiously the short distance to I95 passing our local gas station where we saw the typical tall metal roof structure that covers the pumps twisted and leaning at a strange angle. The one traffic light that we had to pass was completely missing and the traffic treated it light a four way stop. Experience from the last two storms, Frances and Jean, have made locals pros at dealing with this stuff.
I-95 north was almost normal with moderate traffic. We proceded north to PGA Boulevard where it is only a short hop to the Florida Turnpike, the most direct route to Orlando and then Tampa. There were no tolls so entrance to the turnpike was free. Again, traffic was fairly light. The eery thing was seeing cars along the side of the road abandoned. We could only guess that during the mass exodus people had run out of fuel and just abandoned them on the side of the road. We even saw some that looked as though they had been in in accidents and left on the roadside. Traffic flowed well and we set the cruise control at just over 60.
The Turnpike has rest areas with restaurants and gas pumps that are located about 60 or so miles apart. The first one we came to had lines of cars trying to get in. We could only figure that they were the only gas stations pumping gas and with the free tolls local people were traveling there to get gasoline.
The further we traveled the more normal things began to get. We finally came to a rest area that appeared to have no more than normal traffic so we stopped in the parking lot and went inside for a cup of coffee. Inside we found lines of people waiting for coffee at the Starbucks but lighter lines at Burger King and Nathans. There is a quick survey for you in terms of coffee preference. After standing in the Starbucks line for what seemed an eternity we switched over to Nathan's where they had just brewed a fresh batch of decaf. We grabbed our coffee, went back out to the Mothership and cooked a normal breakfast since neither of us had eaten yet. The coffee and breakfast gave us a much needed boost. It was really cool and we were both cold and hungry.
The rest of the trip was a typical trip to Tampa with heavy traffic between Orlando and Tampa. The Tampa, Orlando, Daytona strip is a major corridor with the three cities hurtling towards becoming a megalopilis. For our trip out west we had purchased a Florida Sunpass which is a device that is attached to your windshield with suction cups. It uses a radio frequency sensor at the toll booths to detect your id and deducts the tolls from a prepaid account. After we got up near Orlando the tolls were back in force but with the Sunpass device we were able to breeze right through the toll gates without stopping. That really was a time saver and a new experience for us.
So, here we are in Dunedin, Florida. I have already located a factory authorized shop that will check our generator. I told them we were living in the RV and they said they had power hookups if we had to stay overnight. I have to call this morning and make further arrangements with them for repairs.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Wilma
Posting this under generator power from The Mothership. She is truly functioning that way providing power to the house from the generator. We are able to run our refrigerators, some lighting, the computer (off and on), and a small tv. We cook with gas so we have that. Our water is city water and that is fine too. Cool weather followed the hurricane so we have no need for air conditioning but if we do the Mothership will provide that.
Yesterday was quite an experience. We went throught the eye of a Cat 2 hurricane. Winds were 101 mph recorded about three miles from our house. The winds increased steadily through the night and became pretty intense throughout the morning. We lost power at about 6am so the fact that the storm came in the daylight hours made it more bearable. With all windows and doors shuttered we could see very little. While we felt very secure in our strong concrete home with metal shutters over every window and door both Barbara and I were a bit anxious and nervous as anyone would be. The wind was the most intense and powerful I have ever witnessed. It built all morning into a powerful crescendo and then eerily subsided to almost nothing as the eye passed directly over us. I went out to take a quick look around and found all of my neighbors in the street in front of my house doing the same thing. We had a quick conference checking that everyone was ok and then went back inside as the west eyewall started approaching. Since a big part of the storm had moved over the gulf stream it had begun to instensify making the west eye wall worse than the east eye wall.
After it passed over we went outside and started our cleanup with all neighbors pitching in to drag debris out to the street. Our board fence was completely blown down with some sections blown across the street into my neighbor's yard. We had moved the Mothership into the shelter of the L shape of our house so she survived ok. She is now truly functioning as the Mothership providing power to the house for our refrigerators, this computer, some light, and a small tv. We cook with gas and the water supply is fine. Our little town did pretty well and we feel almost guilty, but not quite, because we are living quite well since we have the power being supplied by the Mothership.
There is much damage throughout the county and millions are without power. Our son and daughter-in-law who live a few miles away came through ok too but many others did not. We watched the news to see serious damage reports coming in. Many mobile homes were totally destroyed. We heard that the local general aviation airport was completely destroyed. That is KLNA, Palm Beach County Air Park. So, all in all, through careful planning and preparation we came through ok. This storm slightly exceeded our criteria for staying in place. We still will evacuate if another one approaches that is in that intensity range. We learned that our house is very strong and if prepared properly can survive at least a Cat 2 hurricane.
Yesterday was quite an experience. We went throught the eye of a Cat 2 hurricane. Winds were 101 mph recorded about three miles from our house. The winds increased steadily through the night and became pretty intense throughout the morning. We lost power at about 6am so the fact that the storm came in the daylight hours made it more bearable. With all windows and doors shuttered we could see very little. While we felt very secure in our strong concrete home with metal shutters over every window and door both Barbara and I were a bit anxious and nervous as anyone would be. The wind was the most intense and powerful I have ever witnessed. It built all morning into a powerful crescendo and then eerily subsided to almost nothing as the eye passed directly over us. I went out to take a quick look around and found all of my neighbors in the street in front of my house doing the same thing. We had a quick conference checking that everyone was ok and then went back inside as the west eyewall started approaching. Since a big part of the storm had moved over the gulf stream it had begun to instensify making the west eye wall worse than the east eye wall.
After it passed over we went outside and started our cleanup with all neighbors pitching in to drag debris out to the street. Our board fence was completely blown down with some sections blown across the street into my neighbor's yard. We had moved the Mothership into the shelter of the L shape of our house so she survived ok. She is now truly functioning as the Mothership providing power to the house for our refrigerators, this computer, some light, and a small tv. We cook with gas and the water supply is fine. Our little town did pretty well and we feel almost guilty, but not quite, because we are living quite well since we have the power being supplied by the Mothership.
There is much damage throughout the county and millions are without power. Our son and daughter-in-law who live a few miles away came through ok too but many others did not. We watched the news to see serious damage reports coming in. Many mobile homes were totally destroyed. We heard that the local general aviation airport was completely destroyed. That is KLNA, Palm Beach County Air Park. So, all in all, through careful planning and preparation we came through ok. This storm slightly exceeded our criteria for staying in place. We still will evacuate if another one approaches that is in that intensity range. We learned that our house is very strong and if prepared properly can survive at least a Cat 2 hurricane.
Monday, October 24, 2005
WILMA_N0Z_members.gif (GIF Image, 600x600 pixels)
Wilma has not yet made landfall on the SW coast but we are already experiencing winds of around 25 to 30 mph. We have also had several small power outages. This is going to be quite a ride I fear. The storm is still holding winds of around 120 mph. The shearing that was forecast to weaken her somewhat has not begun. The power went off and on a couple of times while I was typing this post.The house is like a fortress with the shutters in place. We can see outside only through small holes in the shutters or out of the view lens in our garage door. It is 4:30 AM and dark outside anyway.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
FlightSim.Com Review: FREEflow Florida
Nice to get recognized for your hobby work. This review written by Victor Knight sure is complimentary. We had a lot of fun creating this scenery for Microsoft's Flight Simulator.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Patterns
This is an interesting photo. I like the patterns in the roof tiles. Took this vertical shot down onto my neighbor's new roof using my kite aerial photography rig. Maybe this could be a tool for doing roof inspections. 
Moved to New Hosting Service
Even though you didn't see anything change, I have been moving my web site to a new hosting service over the last few days. I have not been satisfied with the support and service of my exising web hosting service so I searched the web and found an interesting site. It is called Web Hosting Jury. The site turned out to be very useful because it contains rankings by users of web hosting services. People place their reviews on the site and give their service a ranking. I found that the service I had been using, name withheld since I only like to post postive recommendations, was ranked terribly. This is in spite of being recommended by a well known figure from the old TechTV days. I selected a top rated site from Web Hosting Jury and moved my files over to it. The new web hosting service is InMotionHosting.com and you can read their review on Web Hosting Jury here. I can honestly say that my first few days with them have been an extremely positive experience. They answer trouble tickets within minutes usually and their support staff are articulate and very friendly in their responses. I am not used to a support ticket being responded to almost like an instant messenger chat. I have tickets I filed with my old hosting service a week ago that have still not been answered. This site as you read it now is running at InMotionHosting. I don't think it is my imagination but the site seems much faster than it did at the old hosting service.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Only in South Florida
We just got our town newsletter. I have to share a notice that was in it. Only in South Florida would one get a notice like this. Dave Barry, are you reading this?
"Code Enforcement Officer Jeff Williams is warning residents to be aware of the growing iguana nuisance. Residents are warned not to feed or touch them because they can carry the Salmonella virus. If you find an iguana on your property, you are alowed to trap it, but then call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission to have them remove it from your yard."
A storm to watch.
A couple of days ago Dr. Jeff Masters in his blog at Wunderground.com discussed the fact that some of the prediction models at the National Hurricane Center showed the unlikely possibility of a tropical system forming east of the Bahamas. He said, "Several of the global computer models continue to forecast that a tropical storm may form near the Bahama Islands on Monday or Tuesday." Well, this morning's Tropical Weather Outlook from the NHC states:
A LARGE BUT DISORGANIZED AREA OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS...
ASSOCIATED WITH A WESTWARD-MOVING TROPICAL WAVE AND AN UPPER-LEVEL
TROUGH...IS LOCATED A FEW HUNDRED MILES EAST OF THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS.
THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY HAS BECOME A LITTLE MORE CONCENTRATED THIS
MORNING... AND UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO GRADUALLY BECOME
MORE CONDUCIVE FOR TROPICAL CYCLONE DEVELOPMENT DURING THE NEXT
COUPLE OF DAYS AS THIS SYSTEM MOVES WESTWARD.
After the pulse of activity that produced Katrina and Rita we relaxed a bit here in South Florida because the outlook for the next couple of weeks seemed to give us a break. Now it looks like things are heating up again. That disturbance east of the Bahamas has me worried as it does show some possibility of intensifying.
A LARGE BUT DISORGANIZED AREA OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS...
ASSOCIATED WITH A WESTWARD-MOVING TROPICAL WAVE AND AN UPPER-LEVEL
TROUGH...IS LOCATED A FEW HUNDRED MILES EAST OF THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS.
THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY HAS BECOME A LITTLE MORE CONCENTRATED THIS
MORNING... AND UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO GRADUALLY BECOME
MORE CONDUCIVE FOR TROPICAL CYCLONE DEVELOPMENT DURING THE NEXT
COUPLE OF DAYS AS THIS SYSTEM MOVES WESTWARD.
After the pulse of activity that produced Katrina and Rita we relaxed a bit here in South Florida because the outlook for the next couple of weeks seemed to give us a break. Now it looks like things are heating up again. That disturbance east of the Bahamas has me worried as it does show some possibility of intensifying.
Monday, September 26, 2005
The Everglades and South Florida
The area known as "The Everglades" is divided into four major areas, Water Conservation Area 1 which is managed by the Feds as the Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge, Water Conservation Area 2, Water Conservation Area 3, and Everglades National Park. These are all artificial boundaries imposed on one large ecosystem that is basically a giant freshwater marsh that flows south from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay north of the keys. It is a monotonous landscape unless you are down in it and then it gets interesting. The sawgrass grows about ten feet tall and will slice your skin like surgical scalpels. The alligators will probably not bother you but there is now a population explosion of Burmese Pythons out there that are giving the alligators a run for their money. It is a natural system turned crazy by the ten million people living along its boundaries mostly on the east in the cities of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach. The drainage system is purely artificial and regulated by giant pumps and spillways much as they do in the Netherlands. It is an area that is both strange and fascinating. An area whee we see Iguanas crossing the road every day and parrots in our backyards. A place that gave Dave Barry at the Miami Herald a lifetime of material to write about and Miami CSI seasons of scripts for their shows. You either love it or hate it.
GIMPshop! at Plastic Bugs
Here is GIMPshop based on GIMP, Gnu Image Processor, sort of the free version of Photoshop. I have used GIMP in the past but my complaint has always been that it just does not look like Photoshop. Well, now it does. If you scroll down and get the 8mb GIMPshop for Windows you will have a free software package that is every bit as powerful as Photoshop but costs $0 instead of the $600 or so the PS costs. Get it. It is GREAT.
Get the download for WindowsXP here and read about Gimpshop and its various distros and view some screenshot comparisons here at http://www.plasticbugs.com . The various elements of GIMP have simply been rearranged to agree as closely with Photoshop as possible.
Update: The plasticbugs.com site seems to have been swamped. You can get the windows install for Gimpshop here at http://blog.yumdap.net/archives/20-GIMPshop-for-Windows.html
Get the download for WindowsXP here and read about Gimpshop and its various distros and view some screenshot comparisons here at http://www.plasticbugs.com . The various elements of GIMP have simply been rearranged to agree as closely with Photoshop as possible.
Update: The plasticbugs.com site seems to have been swamped. You can get the windows install for Gimpshop here at http://blog.yumdap.net/archives/20-GIMPshop-for-Windows.html
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Katrina Landfall
Katrina is making landfall down south of us around the Broward/Palm Beach County line. That is about 40 or 50 miles south of us. She is a minimal hurricane now with sustained winds of 75 mph. It is rainy and windy here. The winds must be sustained around 40 mph with gusts to 50 mph. We have heard no thunder but the wind is howling like a banshee. It is not a major storm event up here on the north side of the storm but it is blowing hard enough to do some minor things like blowing limbs out of trees and blowing any loose objects around. The storm should begin decreasing in strength as soon as it starts moving over land. The good thing, knock on wood, is that so far we have not lost power. That is a very good thing.
Katrina Approaches
Tropical storm Katrina is approaching the coast of SE Florida. Right now the forecast track takes her to landfall at Fort Lauderdale, a good sixty miles south of us. We are getting rain showers and gusty winds. At this point they winds are not as bad as those we get in thundershowers. The core of Katrina is small at this point but she is forecasted to intensify slowly and should be a minimal hurricane at landfall. We are just far enough away to miss the damaging effects of the core winds but with hurricanes one can never be totally certain about what they are going to do. We have our hurricane shutters in place having put them up for our trip out west. Of course, they will remain in place during this storm and probably for the remainder of the hurricane season. I will update the blog if any unusual weather events occur during the day. Landfall for the storm is not predicted to happen until tomorrow morning.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
DSL Again
It has been very frustrating since we returned home because when we turned our computers on we found that we could not connect to the internet. Well, halleluja we are connected again. It has been an all day effort to do so but now all of our desktop computers, laptops, and MSNTV are connecting at high speed. Why did it take all day? It is a long story but if you have the time I will tell you about it.
Yesterday, Friday August 19th, I spent about an hour or two on the phone with Bellsouth and a helpful young guy in India or somewhere helped diagnose a few things and determined that it would be necessary to send a technician out to the house. A nice young lady named Kate arrived on the scene this morning and spent about half an hour diagnosing a few things only to determine that my old DSL modem had bitten the dust. She got a new Westell DSL Modem out of her car and installed it for me. This one is about half the size of the old one. Then I started tinkering because I had to get my wirless connection running using my Linksys Router. That turned out to be an all day project. No matter how hard I tried I could not get it to work. However, I did have connectivity on one computer when connected directly to the modem so I started searching the online resources. DSLreports.com as usual provided all the answers. Seems that the new modem has to be reconfigured as an bridged ethernet device to relinquish its built in router functions over to the Linksys router. After following the instructions carefully I finally got the router working. Barbara's computer came online next and then my laptop. Those required a bit of tinkering and configuring since the laptop connects wirelessly and I setup my new wireless network with 128 bit encryption I had to manually enter the WEP encryption key in the setup. After getting that to work I tackled the MSNTV box which turned out to be the toughest challenge. I had been using a Linksys Wireless Game Adapter for that connection but no matter how hard I tried I could not get it to work. I then remembered that it came with a USB Wireless Connector and so I plugged it in. Immediately it asked me for the WEP encryption key and I knew I was in business. I typed it in and, Voila!, we have connectivity on all of our computers and devices. Whew! I don't think it has to be that complicated but a lot of it is because we have a network with three computers and a set top box, the MSNTV, and the network is both wired and wireless. Probably not the typical home computer setup.
Yesterday, Friday August 19th, I spent about an hour or two on the phone with Bellsouth and a helpful young guy in India or somewhere helped diagnose a few things and determined that it would be necessary to send a technician out to the house. A nice young lady named Kate arrived on the scene this morning and spent about half an hour diagnosing a few things only to determine that my old DSL modem had bitten the dust. She got a new Westell DSL Modem out of her car and installed it for me. This one is about half the size of the old one. Then I started tinkering because I had to get my wirless connection running using my Linksys Router. That turned out to be an all day project. No matter how hard I tried I could not get it to work. However, I did have connectivity on one computer when connected directly to the modem so I started searching the online resources. DSLreports.com as usual provided all the answers. Seems that the new modem has to be reconfigured as an bridged ethernet device to relinquish its built in router functions over to the Linksys router. After following the instructions carefully I finally got the router working. Barbara's computer came online next and then my laptop. Those required a bit of tinkering and configuring since the laptop connects wirelessly and I setup my new wireless network with 128 bit encryption I had to manually enter the WEP encryption key in the setup. After getting that to work I tackled the MSNTV box which turned out to be the toughest challenge. I had been using a Linksys Wireless Game Adapter for that connection but no matter how hard I tried I could not get it to work. I then remembered that it came with a USB Wireless Connector and so I plugged it in. Immediately it asked me for the WEP encryption key and I knew I was in business. I typed it in and, Voila!, we have connectivity on all of our computers and devices. Whew! I don't think it has to be that complicated but a lot of it is because we have a network with three computers and a set top box, the MSNTV, and the network is both wired and wireless. Probably not the typical home computer setup.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
