Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

It's good to be home

As much as I enjoyed hanging out with the family in Seattle and Vancouver, it's nice to be back home (except for the heat and gazillion percent humidity). Time to tally up the damage from the trip and get caught up on housework. Picked Nala up from the kennel this morning, and I think she was a little bit sad to go. She seemed to enjoy it there, and the kennel staff said she had a good time during her stay. She must have been really active there because she's been napping pretty much since we got back home. I'm sure she's grown taller in the week I've been gone.

More storms forecast

Not surprisingly, the NHC's August update is now calling for 18-21 named storms (up from 12-15 forecast at the beginning of the season) with 9-11 of those becoming hurricanes. There have been 7 so far this season, leaving 11-14 left to go for the rest of the season.

From the August update:

Even though there has already been considerable early season activity (7 tropical storms, with two becoming major hurricanes), most of the activity is still expected to occur during the climatological peak months of August-October.

The favorable conditions predicted by NOAA in their outlook issued May 16th are now in place. These conditions are expected to persist through the peak August-October months of the season. They include 1) lower surface air pressure and exceptionally warm SSTs across the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea, 2) an amplified subtropical ridge at upper levels across the central and eastern North Atlantic, 3) reduced vertical wind shear over the tropical North Atlantic and Caribbean Sea, which results from an expanded area of easterly winds in the upper atmosphere and weaker easterly trade winds in the lower atmosphere, and 4) a configuration of the African easterly jet (wavy light blue arrow) that favors hurricane development from tropical disturbances moving westward from the African coast.

TD 8

Hot on the heels of the NHC's updated forecast comes TD8. This one is a few hundred miles WNW of the Bahamas, and looks to be heading out into the Atlantic, so nothing to worry about (unless you're on a ship out there). It is forecast to reach tropical storm status (but not much higher) in the next day or so, which would make it TS Harvey.

9 comes after 8

With Harvey spinning harmlessly away into the Atlantic, now it's time to keep an eye out on TD 9, which according to the forecast will probably become TS Irene in a couple of days. Considering how much nice toasty warm ocean it still has to cross it shouldn't be much of a surprise when it becomes Hurricane Irene, which the NHC forecasts it to do by the end of the weekend.

Finally getting things unpacked

Finally getting the last of the boxes unpacked and the office set up. Most of the book boxes are unpacked and the books back on the shelves where they belong. The next step now is to move everything out of the bedroom and take up the carpet so we can start Phase 2 of the Flooring Project.

I have to remember to call the store and see if those transition strips I ordered have come in yet.

TD9 taking it's time

TD 9 seems to be encountering a number of conditions hindering development into tropical storm status, but now is moving into warmer waters which should help it gain strength. The 5 day track shows it staying out at sea and making a turn to the north well away from the US. Hopefully it stays there.

From this morning's 5 AM discussion:

GIVEN THE INCREASE IN ORGANIZATION AND GRADUALLY WARMING SE SURFACE TEMPERATURES...SLOW DEVELOPMENT IS POSSIBLE IN SPITE OF THE SHEAR...AND THIS IS REFLECTED IN THE INTENSITY FORECAST. IF THE GFS/CANADIAN UPPER-LEVEL PATTERN DOES DEVELOP...THE SYSTEM COULD GET MUCH STRONGER THAN CURRENTLY FORECAST. IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THE GFDL MODEL...WHICH HAS CONSISTENTLY DISSIPATED THE DEPRESSION...NOW CALLS FOR IT TO REACH HURRICANE STRENGTH IN ABOUT FOUR DAYS.

House prices going up and up and up

The house next door has gone back on the market already. The people living there were just renting the place waiting for their house to be finished. Nice enough folks. Maybe the people who buy it will actually live there instead of turning it into another rental like many of the other places around here.

It's a nice enough house with a nice big porch out front and 2 levels. A little bit smaller than ours but without the wide open floor plan like ours (one of the reasons we didn't put it on our list). I remember walking through it while it was still being built and checking it out to compare with ours.

The selling price is a whole other matter all together. The asking price is almost 10% higher than what we paid for ours and I think at least 15% higher than what the house was originally listed at. It would be interesting to find out how much it ends up going for.

Check Irene off the list

TD 9 got named Irene yesterday morning. May not stay a storm for much longer, but in any case looks to be curving back out into the Atlantic and shouldn't be a bother to the US at all. With nothing else brewing out there at the moment, back to our regularly scheduled enjoyment of the weather.

From this morning's 5 AM discussion:

IRENE IS IN AN ENVIRONMENT OF MODERATE NORTHWESTERLY VERTICAL SHEAR...AND THIS WILL LIKELY CONTINUE FOR 36-48 HR. THIS SHOULD LIMIT STRENGTHENING EVEN THOUGH THE STORM WILL BE MOVING OVER WARMER SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES. AFTER THAT TIME...THE LARGE-SCALE MODELS ARE IN POOR AGREEMENT ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE UPPER-LEVEL WINDS NEAR IRENE.

THE INTENSITY FORECAST IS BASED ON A GRADUAL DECREASE IN SHEAR THAT WILL ALLOW SOME STRENGTHENING THROUGH 72 HR. AFTER THAT...THE FORECAST TRACK TAKES IRENE OVER COOLER SSTS...WHICH SHOULD LIMIT STRENGTHENING. THE INTENSITY FORECAST IS BASED ON THE SHIPS MODEL. IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THE GFDL IS AGAIN DISSIPATING IRENE IN LESS THAN 48 HR.

Wallace and Grommit!

I'm a huge fan of Wallace and Grommit so I'm really looking forward to the feature film coming out in a couple of months.

Of course the wife doesn't understand why I enjoy them so much, but she did like Chicken Run so maybe I can get her to go see this one too.

It's always nice to see a project come together

A few years ago the department director had me work on a project to replace our paper radiology request forms. The problem with the forms were numerous: sloppy handwriting, eaten by the fax machine, faxed to the wrong number, duplicate requests, etc. I had set up a couple of web-based databases already, and word got around that I knew how to do this kind of thing so I got 'volunteered'.

So I created a prototype system that was essentially an on-line replacement for the paper forms. PHP/MySQL powered with everything stored in a database (for future datamining/auditing) and requests being emailed out for legibility. Then it languished for a while because we/I didn't have enough resources to develop it further and lacked the political power to get help developing it or to get people to use it.

Then a resident committee, tasked with finding ways to make residents more efficient in light of the new limitations on resident work hours, said "We spend way too much time filling out and tracking radiology requests. We need a better system". So a new committee was formed to come up with a solution. Out came my prototype for a few demonstrations and discussion. With the backing of hospital administration and medical staff, we were able to take my prototype to IT and get someone with more skills than me to create a production version.

Now a year later the project has gone from my initial PHP/MySQL based prototype to a JSP/Tomcat based solution developed by the IT guys (because they have the resources, skills and know how to connect to other hospital databases that make it more useful) and is being used throughout the hospital now. Even though I've had fairly minimal involvement with developing the current incarnation, I still get a sense of pride at seeing how well the product has been received.

It's like seeing a kid grow up and become successful :)

Something I learned in high school

Way back in my prehistory, my 10th grade math teacher (and school vice-principal) threatened to kick me out of class because all I would do in her class was read a book. Usually not a math book either. This perturbed her mightily, so one day she took me aside to ask why I never paid attention during class while she was lecturing. I told her quite plainly it was because I already knew the stuff she was teaching and had already done the homework (usually I was doing the day's assignment in class while she was teaching us about it).

So she decided to give me a test to challenge me. If I did well, I could spend my time in the library. It was a tough test, but I did very well on it. I told her I just wanted to stay in class and keep reading. She left me alone after that.

Anyway, a couple of years at graduation and being the vice-principal of the school, she gave one of the commencement addresses. There she gave everyone a valuable piece of advice that has stuck with me ever since.

A good speech has a beginning, an end and no middle

It's something I keep in mind whenever I have to do any public speaking. Maybe if more people kept this in mind when writing speeches they would be less boring to listen to.

Relativity circa 1921

I just happened to be browsing around Nature's website and noticed that they were going to be launching Nature Physics in a few months. But, more interesting than that (I thought anyway) was that they've made available (for free) PDF copies of the articles from a 1921 issue celebrating GR.

Many of the articles make for interesting reading and provide a neat look back into history.

In 1921, Nature published a special issue celebrating Einstein's general theory of relativity, with contributions from Eddington, Weyl, Lorentz and Einstein himself, among many others. Nature Physics is making that special issue available online for the first time.

Einstein had published his general theory of relativity in 1915, a decade after the special theory. In 1919, observations of a solar eclipse - from expeditions led by Eddington and Dyson - offered some of the first evidence in support of the theory.

Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for physics - not, of course, for his theory of relativity, but for his work on the photoelectric effect. Publication of that work in 1905, with papers on special relativity and brownian motion, marked the annus mirabilis of the Swiss Patent Office clerk. The centenary is now celebrated in World Year of Physics 2005.

Irene still has life

Looks like Irene has managed to get back into warmer waters and more favourable conditions. After being downgraded back to a depression for a couple of days, it got back up to tropical storm status last night and is now headed on a track that takes it much closer to the US than a few days ago. May even become hurricane #3 by early next week.

Hurricane history from tree rings

From the Earth System Processes 2 meeting comes an interesting method of tracking past hurricanes using tree growth rings.

Centuries of hurricane records have been discovered in the rings of southeastern US pine trees. This arboreal archive may contain critical information about how the Atlantic hurricane factory responds over the long term to natural and human-induced climate changes, say researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Apparently a record of past tropical storms and hurricanse can be gleaned by looking at the O-18 concentration in tree growth rings.

What makes drops in oxygen-18 so telling is that it matches up with a little known talent of all hurricanes: they are very good at depleting the air of oxygen-18, Mora says. Consequently, there are unusually low concentrations of oxygen-18 in the water that rains out of hurricanes. So when shallow roots of Southeastern trees like the longleaf pine and slash pine suck up that low-O-18 hurricane rain water, the same unusual isotopic signal is preserved in the woody tree cells that start growing as soon as the sun breaks through the storm clouds.

Neat stuff. Who knew trees could store all this interesting information.

Found via ScienceDaily.

TD 10 blooms

With Irene forecast to spin harmlessly away back into the Atlantic, TD 10 has popped up to take Irene's place. This is another one that looks like will take its time developing. If it does get stronger, TD 10 would become Jose.

9 years ago: Detroit bound

9 years ago today, I got on a plane in Calgary and a few hours later, landed in Detroit Michigan. I was going to start a new job in a new city, and in the US of all places. I was leaving my home of 26 years with just two suitcases containing my most important stuff. I was supposed to have flown out a couple of days earlier, but got stuck in red tape at the airport. The INS guy processing my TN application decided that since my job title had the word 'medical' in it, he needed to know if I needed to be licensed or not, which wasn't indicated in the letter from my future employer. That ended up delaying me a couple of days. But eventually I got there and ended up staying for just shy of 3 years. Definitely a memorable experience.

Going through a box of stuff, I ran into one of my journal notebooks and saw an entry about my move.

August 14/96 Wednesday

Well, I'm finally here in Detroit. Just over 2 hours to Chicago, then a short 1 hour hop over Lake Michigan to Detroit.

The first thing you notice when flying into Detroit is a bluish white haze. Could just be the weather. It's pretty hot and muggy once you get off the airplane.

Found the airport shuttle to the Fairfield Inn, and discovered that they had no record of my reservation. Fortunately I managed to get a room because the guy who came in after me was told there weren't any empty rooms left.

The next thing to do is find a way to get to work tomorrow. I'm told there's a commuter service available.

I think I should have selected a place a little closer to Detroit. Went walking around looking for landmarks so I could locate myself on the map. Couldn't rollerblade anywhere because there are no sidewalks and the only road is a major artery. Argh.

Another thing you notice is that a lot of the roads are made of concrete. From the air, they all look a sandy tan colour.

The first thing I see when I turn on the TV is a tornado watch for the entire area. Hmmm...

As for finding a place to stay, I've picked out a few places down near the river to check out. Rents are pretty reasonable. They're pretty close to downtown though. Do I want to live there? Guess I'll have to check it out tomorrow.

Flooring Project: Phase 2

Our living room has turned into our bedroom now as phase 2 of the flooring project begins. Got everything moved out of the room last night, and today the rug and tack strips will come up and down goes the roofing felt.

Then the next step will be to figure out just how we're going to mirror the octagonal tray ceiling on the floor. The wife and I both have different ideas about how to do it. Her plan seems pretty intricate and involved to me, and pretty far above my rudimentary skills with power tools. My plan is simpler, but still above my rudimentary skills.

It will probably require more tools too. Go figure.

Intuition test

Not exactly the way I think of myself. I would put myself more to the upper left, but then again the questions are pretty subjective, and you're likely to get different answers each time you take the quiz.

More Scientific You have: 62% SCIENTIFIC INTUITION and 47% EMOTIONAL INTUITION

The graph on the right represents your place in Intuition 2-Space. As you can see, you scored about average on emotional intuition and above average on scientific intuition.Keep in mind that very few people score high on both! In effect, you can compare your two intuition scores with each other to learn what kind of intuition you're best at. Your scientific intuition is stronger than your emotional intuition. Your Emotional Intuition score is a measure of how well you understand people, especially their unspoken needs and sympathies. A high score score usually indicates social grace and persuasiveness. A low score usually means you're good at Quake. Your Scientific Intuition score tells you how in tune you are with the world around you; how well you understand your physical and intellectual environment. People with high scores here are apt to succeed in business and, of course, the sciences.

Found via KDLB

You forgot your message

Either there are a lot of people at work forgetting to type in the body of their email or there's some worm/virus spreading through the hospital. All day I've been getting blank email messages from people in the hospital. I suppose there could be some glitch with the mail server that's sending message bodies into the bit bucket.

I think I'll go make sure my anti-virus software is updated, just in case.

I'm not sure I'd want to store things in one of these

Saw this GoogleAd on a website I visit regularly. I'm not sure I'd want to buy something flammable to store things that are likely to catch fire and/or explode. I'd prefer those cabinets to not catch fire thank you very much.

Halfway through with the bedroom

There's nothing like hearing that you're going to have company in two days to make you hurry up and finish something.

Some of Yaenette's family decided to make the trip down from NYC, so out goes the octagon we were trying to work out how to do. We'll just have to settle for plain floors. So off to the equipment rental place I went to pick up the nailers and in the space of 4 hours we went from a bare room with a few boards racked up

to half-way finished.

I figure I should be able to get the rest of it finished tomorrow night or Saturday morning. That leaves us a few hours to take the nailers back, move everything back into the bedroom and clean the place up to make it presentable before the horde descends.

It's finally done!

Finally the floor in the bedroom is done. Naturally of course, the wife's visiting relatives decided to change their minds and come Monday evening instead.

Worked most of yesterday evening on it on my own (wife was busy with other things...no need to rush anymore anyway) and finished it off this morning. Put in the trim and some of the other transition strips in the rest of the house too. Just a couple more transition strips to put in (between the floor and carpet and for the bathrooms), a little bit of clean-up and we can start moving back into the bedroom!

Crate #4 and counting

Nala will be 8 months next week, and she's outgrown yet another crate. There she is sitting in crate #4, a big jumbo sized 41" long travel crate from SuperPetz (and the largest travel crate they had in the store). Her last one #Crate #2) was a 36" long travel crate that she was getting a little long for. Crate #3 is a 42" wire crate that stays at home.

I think this will be the last crate we get. Any bigger and we'll have to get a bigger vehicle. This one barely fits in the trunk, and pops the trunk door like a jack-in-the-box.

I need a bigger computer

I've been wanting to add some USB 2.0 ports to my desktop for quite a while now, and after saving up some hard earned allowance money I picked up an IOGear 5 port USB PCI card from Amazon.com. Go to stick it in the computer, and thanks to the extra-wide graphics card, I discover there's no more room for another card. There's still an available PCI slot, but it's rendered unusable by the graphics card.

Crap. That means I have to take something out. There's the modem, but that's got to stay (at least until I decide I want to shell out for broadband). Soundcard...well I'd like to keep that around. IDE controller...got the big hard drive attached to that, so it has to stay. That leaves the video capture card. Since I have no TV/VCR/DVD to feed into the card yet, it's not doing much at the moment. Sucks to lose the Firewire port on it though, but it's the most expendable card right now so out it comes.

9 USB ports on board (4 USB 1.0, 4 USB 2.0, 1 internal USB 2.0) should give me plenty of expansion room for now I figure.

Next on my upgrade wish list is one of these and maybe some RDRAM. That should keep my system usable for a few more years.

TD 11

TD 10 fizzled out and now there is TD 11, which looks like it won't be much more than a big rain event for central Mexico.

From today's noon discussion:

UPPER-LEVEL OUTFLOW IS VERY STRONG AND THE WATER IS WARM...HOWEVER...THE SYSTEM DOES NOT HAVE VERY LONG OVER THE WATER TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE FAVORABLE CONDITIONS. ALTHOUGH NEITHER THE SHIPS NOR GFDL INTENSITY GUIDANCE MAKES THIS SYSTEM A TROPICAL STORM...I PREFER TO ERR ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION IN FORECASTING THE DEPRESSION TO REACH STORM STRENGTH.

Jose has left the building

Looks like TD11 grew into TS Jose yesterday evening while we were busy cleaning house and getting ready for the horde to descend.

That makes 10 named storms for the year so far. Next up...Katrina. From the 0530 TWO, it could be this one:

THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY HAS BECOME BETTER ORGANIZED IN ASSOCIATION WITH A LARGE TROPICAL WAVE LOCATED OVER THE EASTERN ATLANTIC OCEAN ABOUT 700 MILES WEST OF THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS. THIS SYSTEM HAS THE POTENTIAL TO DEVELOP INTO A TROPICAL DEPRESSION DURING THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS AS IT MOVES WESTWARD OR WEST-NORTHWESTWARD AT 10 TO 15 MPH.

or this one:

CLOUDINESS AND SHOWERS EXTEND FROM EASTERN CUBA AND HISPANIOLA ACROSS THE SOUTHEASTERN BAHAMAS AND THE TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS...AND INTO THE ATLANTIC FOR A FEW HUNDRED MILES. THIS ACTIVITY...WHICH IS POSSIBLY ASSOCIATED WITH THE REMNANTS OF TROPICAL DEPRESSION TEN...HAS BECOME MORE CONCENTRATED THIS MORNING NEAR THE SOUTHEASTERN BAHAMAS. ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF THIS SYSTEM IS POSSIBLE DURING THE NEXT DAY OR TWO AS IT MOVES WEST-NORTHWESTWARD AT ABOUT 10 MPH.

Need more power Scotty!

Wow, I remember when 350 W power supplies were beefy. 450-550 W supplies are pretty normal now. Here comes Enermax with a 1000 W power supply! And it draws some serious power too at 1400 W and almost 12 A. An ordinary 10A circuit isn't going to cut it with this puppy. You'd have to run a 20A circuit just to provide power for this thing.

I suppose it would be useful in a big server chassis where you need to power lots of drives and/or CPUs. I bet it would be fun to have a box that would require one of these...

Found at Slashdot rewop

Canuckian trivia games

Canucklehead quizzes sent to me by my sister. A fun trivia game to test your knowledge of Canada. And trivia it is indeed. Is there anything more obscure than Canadian trivia?

Dog QOTD

Got a kick out of this quote nabbed from oaklandbay's sig over at the Lab Retriever forums.

If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them. -Phil Pastoret

Accessibility and the WWW

Looks like my next project (whether I want to do it or not) is to work on making our department websites accessible by everyone. Something called Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. The hospital is also going with W3C's Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

It doesn't look like it will be too bad. I think I should be able to accomodate the requirements with a few style sheet and template changes without too much pain. I suppose I should go ahead and run it all through the Validator while I'm at it.

TD 12

Well, TD 12 didn't take very long to sprout. There it is smack dab in the Bahamas and headed toward Florida. Might even become a tropical storm by tomorrow. Guess I'll have to wait a few more minutes to see what the NHC has to say about it. Definitely one to watch.

TS Katrina

An 8 AM update from the NHC upgrades TD12 to TS Katrina. Still heading through the Bahamas on the way to southern Florida.

RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT DATA INDICATES THAT TROPICAL DEPRESSION TWELVE HAS STRENGTHENED INTO TROPICAL STORM KATRINA... SHORTLY BEFORE 8 AM EDT...REPORTS FROM AN AIR FORCE RESERVE UNIT RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATE MAXIMUM SUSTAINED SURFACE WINDS IN THE TROPICAL DEPRESSION TWELVE HAD INCREASED TO AT LEAST 40 MPH ...MAKING THE SYSTEM TROPICAL STORM KATRINA.

The accidental monacle

This morning as I'm puttering around getting stuff ready to head off to work, the thought pops into my head that it's probably around that time when I need to call and schedule a routine eye exam. It's been about 2 years since the last one so it's time. I go to adjust my glasses on my face and *pop*...I hear a lens land on the floor and I suddenly have no depth perception and can't see out of one eye.

Crap.

I'd had a problem with this when I first got the glasses and ended up having the lady at my eyeglass shop using an extra long screw and glue to hold it together. Now I have a feeling the threads are worn with age and it's going to take some slightly more extreme measures to hold these glasses together until I can get new ones. With an eye appointment scheduled for tomorrow, that's probably going to be at least a couple of weeks. Back to my eyeglass lady to see what she can do with them.

Maybe it's time to ask my optometrist if that Lasik thing will work for me.

Update: My eyeglass lady was able to put my glasses back together with a new screw and a healthy application of clear nail polish. Hopefully this will keep everything together for the next couple of weeks until the new glasses come in. Maybe I'll stop at the store and get some Crazy Glue on the way home...just in case.

Houseboat Hooligans: T-Shirt Project

For Hooligans, the annual houseboating trip/pilgrimage is what Mecca is to Muslims, or Jerusalem is to Christians.

For a number of years, it was an annual ritual at the end of the summer, just before school started back up. For each of the trips someone came up with a theme for a t-shirt for everyone. Many of the shirts were based on some movie poster with some suitable Hooligan touches added in.

And so I bring to you, the Houseboat Hooligans T-Shirt Project. My t-shirt collection begins with Houseboat Hooligans 2 1/2: The Smell of Beer. For some reason I'm missing the shirt for Houseboat Hooligans 7. Either I didn't make it on that trip (unimaginable), I was too drunk to remember the trip, or I've lost the shirt.

To my fellow Hooligans, help out with the project by sending a digital photo of any Houseboat shirts you might have that you don't see here. The original photos were captured as 2288x1712 TIFF images and reduced down.

Update:Thanks to Mike who reminded me that HH7 was Houseboat Hooligans: Beerheart. I know I definitely have/had that shirt. It's just a matter of digging around and finding it now.

On to the rest of Florida

Hurricane Katrina has its sights set on the rest of Florida now after dumping much rain and wind on the southern parts. With all that warm Gulf water to go over, Katrina will probably get even more intense.

STRENGTHENING TO A MAJOR HURRICANE IS EXPECTED. IN FACT...A RECENT DROPSONDE REPORT RECEIVED FROM THE RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATES MAXIMUM WINDS ARE NOW UP TO 80 KT.

RIP Roomba

Got home the other day to see the lights on Roomba's base station blinking and no power light on Roomba. Blinking on the base station means something's wrong, and sure enough putting a volt meter on Roomba's transformer brick showed fluctuating voltages. Not a good thing for something that's supposed to be putting out DC power. I have a feeling it probably got knocked out by one of the brownouts/power surges from the storms we've been having lately.

Good news: I bought one of Best Buy's 4 year service plans to go with Roomba. So I just take it in, have them fix/replace the transformer brick and Roomba's back in action.

Bad news: Best Buy's brick and mortar stores don't carry Roomba, and the best they can do is issue me a refund in the form of a BestBuy gift card. But they tell me that I can use it to buy myself a brand spankin' new Roomba from BestBuy.com!

More bad news: BestBuy.com doesn't carry Roomba anymore.

Rats. Now all I have is a Best Buy gift card, and no Roomba. I'll have to shell out more $ for a new Roomba from somewhere else, and find something to spend this gift card on.

Argh. If I'd known this was going to happen, I'd have just bought a replacement transformer brick to begin with.

Quick, while everyone else is distracted...

With everyone focused on Hurricane Katrina, TD 13 has popped up east of the Lesser Antilles. This one looks like it might not be of much concern though. Still early though, and plenty of time to watch it.

A WEAK BUT LARGE SURFACE CIRCULATION HAS DEVELOPED IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE TROPICAL WAVE EAST OF THE LESSER ANTILLES. THE DEEP CONVECTION IS DISORGANIZED AND IS LOCATED MOSTLY TO THE WEST AND SOUTHWEST OF THE CIRCULATION DUE TO NORTHEASTERLY SHEAR. INITIAL INTENSITY IS SET AT 25 KNOTS AND ONLY SLIGHT STRENGTHENING IS INDICATED IN THE FORECAST. THE DEPRESSION COULD REACH TROPICAL STORM STATUS DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS.

THE BEST ESTIMATE OF THE INITIAL MOTION IS 300 DEGREES AT 11 KNOTS. CURRENTLY THE DEPRESSION IS LOCATED ON THE SOUTHWESTERN EDGE OF THE SUBTROPICAL RIDGE AND THIS PATTERN SHOULD KEEP THE CYCLONE ON A GENERAL WEST-NORTHWEST TRACK WELL NORTH OF THE LESSER ANTILLES. THE DEPRESSION WILL LIKELY TURN TO THE NORTHWEST BY THE END OF THE FORECAST PERIOD DUE TO A WEAKNESS IN THE RIDGE WHICH IS FORECAST TO BE PLACED ALONG 65 DEGREES WEST.

And a little further to the east is yet another tropical wave coming off the African coast that has potential to develop into something too. Looks like the storm conveyor belt has started back up again.

MT Style Generator

Just an entry to remind myself of the new MT Style Generator to use for whenever I get around to upgrading to MT 3.2.

Cleaning up after Katrina

Now that Katrina is just a big rain event, and people are getting out to assess the damage, it's pretty major. Huge areas of just rubble fields where houses and buildings used to be in Louisiana and Mississippi. Insane amounts of water where it shouldn't be and hundreds of thousands of people displaced. And with breaks in the levees in two places, the bowl that is New Orleans is filling up.

There are a lot of people needing help, so take a few minutes out of your day to make a donation to the Red Cross. I'm sure they'll take whatever you can spare.

TD 13 resurrected

Well, a few days ago TD 13 dissipated. But it seems now after basking in some more nice warm waters, it's regenerated enough to become a tropical depression again. Fortunately it's not forecast to become much more than a tropical storm (in which case it would be called Lee) and looks like it will be staying well out into the Atlantic.

VISIBLE SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW A WELL-DEFINED CYCLONICALLY CURVED CONVECTIVE BAND TO THE EAST OF THE CENTER BUT THE OUTFLOW IS RESTRICTED. IT APPEARS THAT THE DEPRESSION IS VERY NEAR TROPICAL STORM STRENGTH AND IF IT NOT ONE NOW...IT COULD BE ONE LATER TODAY. NO SIGNIFICANT STRENGTHENING IS EXPECTED THEREAFTER.

Update:With the 5PM update, the NHC has decided to name TD 13 TS Lee

THERE IS AN UNCERTAINTY IN THE INTENSITY OF THE TROPICAL CYCLONE AT THIS TIME. HOWEVER...THE CLOUD PATTERN HAS BECOME A LITTLE BETTER ORGANIZED AND THE LOW-LEVEL CENTER IS ESTIMATED TO BE UNDER THE CONVECTION...BUT THE OUTFLOW IS LIMITED. BASED ON 2.5 DVORAK T-NUMBERS FROM TAFB AND SAB RESPECTIVELY AND AMSU ESTIMATES FROM CIMSS/NESDIS...THE INITIAL INTENSITY HAS BEEN INCREASED FROM 30 TO 35 KNOTS. THIS REQUIRES UPGRADING THE TROPICAL DEPRESSION TO TROPICAL STORM LEE...THE 12TH TROPICAL STORM OF THE 2005 SEASON. THE INTENSITY FORECAST CALLS FOR ONLY A SLIGHT STRENGTHENING SINCE THE OCEAN IS RELATIVELY WARM BUT THE UPPER-LEVEL ENVIRONMENT IS NOT VERY FAVORABLE.