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.

Blog for Relief day

It's Blog Relief Day today, an effort started up by TTLB and the Instapundit guy.

So in case you missed the big red Donate button from yesterday's post, or it's too far down for your lazy finger to scroll too, here it is again. My charity of choice is the Red Cross, but you can make a donation to whatever charity you want. Here's a big long list in case you can't think of one on your own. Just make sure it's a good and reputable one. You want to make sure all or most of your donation goes to help the hurricane victims, and not to lining some telemarketers' big behind.

Oh, and don't forget the animals. They'll need a hand getting out of this mess too.

I've already made my donations. How about you? Who knows, those people stuck there might be you some day. When you're done, go here to log your contribution.

TD 14

With TD Lee dissipating, TD 14 has formed out in the middle of the Atlantic. This one looks like it will stay out in the ocean again and shouldn't be much of a bother. The forecast does have it becoming a tropical storm in a day or so, which would be named Maria.

THE DEPRESSION IS MOVING AROUND THE WESTERN PERIPHERY OF A DEEP-LAYERED RIDGE OVER THE EASTERN ATLANTIC. THE SYSTEM IS EXPECTED TO SLOW DOWN OVER THE NEXT DAY OR TWO AS IT APPROACHES A WEAKNESS IN THE RIDGE NEAR 50W. GLOBAL MODELS ARE IN AGREEMENT ON THE PRESENCE OF A MID/UPPER LEVEL TROUGH MOVING SOUTH BETWEEN BERMUDA AND THE LEEWARD ISLANDS. THIS FEATURE SHOULD EVENTUALLY TURN THE CYCLONE TO THE NORTHWEST AND THEN NORTH BEYOND 72 HOURS AS THE DEEP-LAYERED RIDGE AMPLIFIES TO THE EAST.

Bloggers are a generous lot

Wow, bloggers and blog readers are a generous bunch. Over $230 000 in donations logged at TTLB as of this post so far and still rising fast. Fantastic!

Which Reservoir Dog Are You?

You're Mr. Orange!


Which Reservoir Dog Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Froggie onna wall

Spotted this little guy clinging to the wall next to the front door.

Isn't he cute?

More house upgrades

The parade of house upgrades continues with this new light in the front entry. An acquisition from the wife's recent trip to NYC last month resulted in this and a matching chandelier that I'm about to put up in the dining area. It ended up being little bit on the small side, which has the wife planning another trip back to NYC to get a bigger one. When that happens, this one will probably end up in the hallway.

I have an extra light fixture. 13" diameter, frosted globe, 2 bulbs. Anybody interested? Looks kind of like this one only flush mounted to the ceiling.

Keep an eye out

A couple of areas to keep an eye out on according to this morning's 5:30 Tropical Weather Outlook. One near Bermuda

A WELL-DEFINED LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM LOCATED ABOUT 280 MILES SOUTH-SOUTHWEST OF BERMUDA IS MOVING SLOWLY NORTHWESTWARD. SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS HAVE INCREASED AND BECOME A LITTLE BETTER ORGANIZED THIS MORNING. UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO GRADUALLY BECOME MORE FAVORABLE FOR A TROPICAL DEPRESSION TO DEVELOP OVER THE NEXT DAY OR SO.

and another one off the coast of Florida

A BROAD AREA OF LOW PRESSURE HAS REMAINED NEARLY STATIONARY JUST OFF THE SOUTHEASTERN COAST OF FLORIDA AND OVER THE NORTHWESTERN BAHAMAS. THIS SYSTEM HAS CHANGED LITTLE IN ORGANIZATION THIS MORNING... AND UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE ONLY MARGINALLY FAVORABLE. HOWEVER...UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE GRADUALLY EXPECTED TO BECOME MORE FAVORABLE FOR A TROPICAL DEPRESSION TO FORM DURING THE NEXT DAY OR TWO.

TD 15 as predicted

As predicted, the NHC has designated the system SSE of Bermuda TD 15. The forecast has this system strengthening into a tropical storm (which would be called Nate), but not too much more than that. Looks like this one will also stay out in the ocean and not bother us.

THE SYSTEM LIES NEAR A MID/UPPER LEVEL RIDGE AXIS WHICH EXTENDS SOUTHWEST FROM THE DEPRESSION TO THE BAHAMAS...WITH GOOD UPPER LEVEL OUTFLOW IN THE SOUTHERN SEMICIRCLE. THE RIDGE AXIS IS EXPECTED TO DRIFT NORTH OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS...WHICH SHOULD ALLOW FOR CONTINUED SLOW STRENGTHENING OF THE CYCLONE THROUGH ABOUT 72 HOURS UNDER LIGHT SHEAR. BEYOND THIS TIME...THE SYSTEM IS FORECAST TO GET CAUGHT IN THE WESTERLIES ASSOCIATED WITH A LONGWAVE TROUGH MOVING OFF THE EASTERN U.S. COAST. THIS SHOULD INCREASE THE SHEAR AND PUT AN END TO THE INTENSIFICATION. SHIPS MODEL GUIDANCE FOLLOWS THIS TREND...PEAKING THE INTENSITY AT 60 KT BEYOND 72 HOURS. THE OFFICIAL FORECAST IS CLOSE TO SHIPS THROUGH 48 HOURS...THEN CONSERVATIVELY PEAKING AT 50 KT AT 72 HOURS AND BEYOND. THE SYSTEM COULD STRENGTHEN MORE THAN INDICATED...ESPECIALLY DURING THE FIRST 72 HOURS UNDER THE FAVORABLE UPPER LEVEL ENVIRONMENT.

New lighting

The new chandelier is finally up in the dining area. Taking the old light down and putting this one up was actually the easy part. The hard part was hanging the several hundred crystal chains and dangly crystal bits on the darned thing.

Looks really cool when it's all lit up though.

Next job is to put the old light up in the breakfast area so we can finally get some decent lighting there.

Only 7 names left

TD 15 was named TS Nate last night. 3 months left in the season and only 7 names left on the Atlantic hurricane names list.

Fortunately Nate, which is forecast to become Hurricane Nate in a few days, looks to be making a U-turn and heading out to the north Atlantic. People in Bermuda might have to keep an eye on this thing though.

The tally so far:
Tropical Depressions: 1516
Named storms: 14
Tropical Storms: 9
Hurricanes: 5
Major hurricanes: 4 (Dennis, Emily, Katrina, Maria)

The peak of the season has only just started too.

Update:: The NHC has turned the system off the coast of Florida into TD 16 with today's 11 AM update. Forecast has it moving nearly parallel to the eastern coast of Florida and reaching tropical storm strength in the next day or so, making this one Ophelia.

Loitering Ophelia

As anticipated, TD 16 was designated TS Ophelia and just seems to be meandering around off the eastern coast of Florida. These storms that just sit there make me nervous, because they have plenty of time to soak up heat from the warm ocean and get stronger and there's no telling where they end up going.

From today's 11 AM discussion:

OPHELIA IS EMBEDDED WITHIN VERY WEAK STEERING CURRENTS AND IT APPEARS TO BE MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST AT 3 KNOTS. GLOBAL MODELS SHOW THAT OPHELIA WILL BE ASSOCIATED WITH THE SOUTHERN EXTENSION OF A MID-LEVEL TROUGH. THIS PORTION OF THE TROUGH IS FORECAST TO CUT OFF FROM THE WESTERLIES AND REMAIN NEARLY STATIONARY JUST OFF THE UNITED STATES SOUTHEAST COAST...RESULTING IN WEAK STEERING CURRENTS FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS.

THE OFFICIAL FORECAST SHOWS A NORTHWESTWARD AND NORTHWARD DRIFT BUT THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT OPHELIA WILL LIKELY MEANDER JUST OFF THE NORTHERN FLORIDA AND SOUTHEAST GEORGIA COASTS FOR THE NEXT FIVE DAYS.

New toy to play with

Just received a much anticipated phantom today: Phantom Lab's Liqui-phil organ phantom. I gotta say, it's pretty schweet too. Purchased with my first grant, I was expecting to get it a month ago. It's here now, and I'm really looking forward to using it.

At first glance it looks rather daunting. You're confronted with a phantom with lots of small and large bits. There are 6 fillable organ chambers (liver, 2 kidneys, stomach, spleen, pancreas) each of which can be positioned anywhere you want in the main chamber. There are also a number of fillable spherical and ovoid chambers that can be inserted into the main chamber, or into the organ chambers to simulate hot or cold spots.

This is going to be so much fun to play with.

Next step: Learn how to fill and insert all the chambers without making a radioactive mess out of myself.

Another tool for the computer geek's utility belt

Forget reinstalling Windoze from CD. Stick it on a USB flash drive. All the instructions are provided for creating a bootable USB flash drive and installing WinXP on it. And if you have a large enough flash drive, all those other useful programs like anti-virus, spyware detectors, CD burning software, etc can go on it too. That will probably save you from carrying around more CDs or hunting around the Net for the software.

Of course, your computer needs to be able to boot from a USB device in the first place. The article says for newer computers this shouldn't be a problem. For middle aged computers, it should be possible with a BIOS update. For old computers, you're probably better off getting a new one anyway.

Ophelia on the crawl

Good news: Ophelia's finally on the move after stewing in the ocean next to Florida. It's not moving fast, but it's started to move

Bad news: Next week could see Ophelia make a loop and turn back toward us. Need to go restock our hurricane kit.

OPHELIA IS MOVING VERY SLOWLY TOWARD THE NORTH-NORTHEAST OR 030 DEGREES AT 4 KNOTS. STEERING CURRENTS REMAIN WEAK AND THE CYCLONE IS LOCATED AT THE SOUTHERN EXTENT OF A MID-LATITUDE TROUGH. THIS TROUGH WILL BRING OPHELIA SLOWLY TOWARD THE NORTHEAST FOR ABOUT A DAY OR TWO. THEN...A STRONG HIGH PRESSURE RIDGE IS FORECAST TO DEVELOP OVER THE EASTERN UNITED STATES. THIS PATTERN WOULD FORCE OPHELIA WESTWARD AND WEST-NORTHWESTWARD TOWARD THE U.S. COAST. ONE BY ONE...RELIABLE MODELS HAVE BEEN CHANGING THEIR TUNE TO MIMIC THE GFDL...AND UNANIMOUSLY BRING OPHELIA BACK TO THE UNITED STATES IN ABOUT 4 TO 5 DAYS.

Puttering Ophelia

Looks like Hurricane Ophelia (again) will leave us hanging for a couple more days yet before eventually heading towards us. Today's 5 PM forecast has it headed towards the Wilmington, NC area as a Cat 1 hurricane and heading inland briefly before turning back out to sea. This storm's been making more turns and wobbles than a drunk frat boy wandering down Whyte Ave...

The uncertainty in the forecast track is pretty broad though, so it's still one to keep a close eye on. Time to start gathering up those loose items cluttering up the yard.

OPHELIA IS A LARGE CYCLONE WITH TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTENDING UP TO 130 N MI FROM THE CENTER. THE UPPER-LEVEL ENVIRONMENT IS FORECAST TO BE ONLY MARGINAL FOR STRENGTHENING...AND THE OCEAN IS A LITTLE BIT COOLER DUE TO THE UPWELLING. THEREFORE...ONLY A SLIGHT STRENGTHENING IS INDICATED. IN FACT...NEITHER SHIPS NOR THE GFDL MODELS BRING THE HURRICANE ABOVE 80 KNOTS.

Ophelia still loitering

Sitting over the same area for the past couple of days has resulted in Ophelia being downgraded (again) to a tropical storm, although it may strengthen again as it starts moving over the Gulf Stream.

Looks like Ophelia will just make the next few days on the breezy side for us. People in NC's Outer Banks should start making preparations though. Ophelia's a storm that will probably keep folks hanging on the edge of their seats for a few more days.

Fortunately there isn't anything else out in the Atlantic that looks likely to develop in to anything. That should mean a quiet week weather-wise (aside from Ophelia).

From today's 11AM discussion:

THE TRACK FORECAST TAKES OPHELIA OVER A SECTION OF THE GULF STREAM...WHERE A MODESTLY DEEP WARM WATER MIXED LAYER...I.E. HIGHER OCEANIC HEAT CONTENT...COULD INDUCE RE-STRENGTHENING. THEREFORE THE OFFICIAL FORECAST SHOWS THE SYSTEM RE-ATTAINING HURRICANE STRENGTH BEFORE NEARING THE COAST.

BECAUSE THE STEERING CURRENTS ARE SO ILL-DEFINED...THE TRACK FORECAST REMAINS A DIFFICULT ONE. SOME GLOBAL MODELS...NAMELY NOGAPS AND THE CANADIAN...INDICATE THAT THE BROAD 500 MB TROUGH APPROACHING THE EASTERN UNITED STATES IN A COUPLE OF DAYS WILL LACK SUFFICIENT AMPLITUDE TO PICK UP OPHELIA AND ACCELERATE IT NORTHEASTWARD. THEREFORE WE HAVE THE UNPLEASANT POSSIBILITY THAT THE CYCLONE COULD LINGER NEAR THE SOUTHEAST U.S. THROUGH 5 DAYS. THE GFS AND GFDL STILL MOVE OPHELIA NORTHEASTWARD OVER THE ATLANTIC BEYOND 3 DAYS...BUT THEY ARE SOMEWHAT SLOWER THAN THEIR PREVIOUS RUNS. IN DEFERENCE TO THIS NUMERICAL GUIDANCE...THE OFFICIAL FORECAST IS A BIT SLOWER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE IN THE 3-5 DAY TIME FRAME.

More toys

The latest addition to my collection of phantoms, the Hoffman 3D Brain Phantom from Data Spectrum showed up at my desk yesterday. It's got some refinements compared to an earlier version I worked with several years ago that make it easier to reassemble if it gets taken apart.

It's a pretty cool phantom made up of a bunch of different plates with patterns cut out to simulate radionuclide uptake in the brain. Looking forward to doing a few projects with this one (that list just keeps getting longer and longer).

Ophelia finally getting underway

Looks like TS Ophelia (for now) is finally getting underway, although rather slowly. According to the NHC, it's moving to the NNW slowly as a strong tropical storm, taking it away from us and toward the NC coast. Looks like it will still be lingering around being a bother for the next couple of days though.

From today's 11 AM discussion:

THE LARGER CIRCULATION AND PRESSURE FIELD APPEAR TO BE MOVING SLOWLY BUT STEADILY TOWARD THE NORTH CAROLINA COAST. THE LATEST 12Z UPPER-AIR DATA INDICATES A SMALL MID- TO UPPER-LEVEL HIGH PRESSURE CELL HAS MOVED FROM WEST VIRGINIA TO NEW JERSEY DURING THE PAST 24 HOURS...DURING WHICH TIME THE HEIGHTS HAVE DECREASED BY AT LEAST 30-40 METERS. AS THIS FEATURE CONTINUES TO MOVE EAST-NORTHEASTWARD OFF THE NORTHEAST U.S. COAST...THE STEERING FLOW SHOULD BECOME MORE SOUTHERLY AND ALLOW OPHELIA TO GRADUALLY LIFT NORTHWARD DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. AFTER THAT...THE NHC MODEL GUIDANCE IS IN FAIRLY GOOD AGREEMENT ON THE CYCLONE TURNING SLOWLY NORTHEASTWARD AND CROSSING THE NORTH CAROLINA OUTER BANKS IN ABOUT 48 HOURS BEFORE ACCELERATING EAST-NORTHEASTWARD AHEAD OF A STRONG SHORTWAVE TROUGH AND FRONTAL SYSTEM.

ONCE OPHELIA NEARS THE COAST OF THE CAROLINAS WHERE SSTS DROP BY ABOUT 3F-5F...THERE MAY BE SOME EROSION OF THE INNER CORE CONVECTION. HOWEVER...GIVEN THE LARGE SIZE OF THE RADIUS IF MAXIMUM WINDS...ONLY SLOW INTENSITY CHANGES UP OR DOWN SHOULD OCCUR BEFORE...DURING...AND AFTER LANDFALL. UPPER-LEVEL OUTFLOW IS EXPECTED TO REMAIN QUITE FAVORABLE FOR THE NEXT 36-48 HOURS...SO SOME MODEST STRENGTHENING IS POSSIBLE AND OPHELIA COULD PEAK AT 70 KT BEFORE LANDFALL OCCUR.

Do you think they're bitter?

(names blurred out on purpose)

Another TD in the making?

With Ophelia ever so slowly making its way past NC's Outer Banks, there is another tropical wave moving across the Atlantic that may bear watching.

From today's 1130 Tropical Weather Outlook:

THE VIGOROUS TROPICAL WAVE LOCATED ABOUT 900 MILES EAST-SOUTHEAST OF THE WINDWARD ISLANDS HAS CONTINUED TO BECOME BETTER ORGANIZED. UPPER-LEVEL WINDS HAVE ALSO BECOME MORE FAVORABLE...AND THE SYSTEM COULD BECOME A TROPICAL DEPRESSION LATER TODAY OR FRIDAY AS IT MOVES WEST OR WEST-NORTHWESTWARD AT 10 TO 15 MPH.

Blazingly short life of a PDA

Fruit flies live longer it seems.

PalmOne's T5, introduced in October last year, is apparently already being EOL'd (end-of-life) to make way for new models, according to rumours posted at PalmInfocenter.com. The specs on the rumoured T|X look pretty good, and might be a promising replacement should my trusty T|3 die prematurely on me. None of Palm's recent offerings (T5 or the LifeDrive) have had any of that 'Wow' factor to impress me enough to want either one. I think this is what a lot of people would have liked to see in a PDA a couple of years ago though.

Lets hope my T3 holds out for another year or so to see a Cobalt based PDA tempt me.

No rest for the storm weary

Well, with Ophelia finally out of the way, there's now Philippe, which came while I was out running errands this afternoon, and TD 18, which in all likelihood will become Rita in a day or so.

If Philippe stays on its current track, it probably won't be a bother to us. It does have plenty of juicy warm water to travel over before reaching striking \distance, so it could become another big storm. TD 18 looks to be headed into the Gulf, which could be a concern to people trying to recover from Katrina. More weather to keep an eye on.

If TD 18 does become Rita, then there will be 4 names left on the list before having to resort to the Greek alphabet.

From the 11 PM discussion for TS Philippe:

STEERING CURRENTS ARE UNUSUALLY WEAK FOR THIS REGION OF THE ATLANTIC...AND PHILIPPE IS EXPECTED TO MOVE SLOWLY NORTHWESTWARD AROUND THE SOUTHWESTERN PERIPHERY OF A WEAK MID-LEVEL RIDGE THROUGHOUT THE FORECAST PERIOD. BY THE END OF THE PERIOD...THE RIDGE IS FORECAST TO STRENGTHEN TO THE NORTH OF THE CYCLONE...AND THAT MAY RESULT IN A MORE WEST-NORTHWESTWARD MOTION THAN WHAT IS INDICATED BY THE OFFICIAL FORECAST. THE NHC MODEL GUIDANCE IS RATHER DIVERGENT...BUT IS IN GENERAL AGREEMENT ON THE FORECAST MOTION AND THE FORECAST TRACK IS CLOSE TO THE MODEL CONSENSUS.

PHILIPPE IS FORECAST TO REMAIN OVER 30C AND WARMER SSTS FOR THE NEXT 5 DAYS...AND THE VERTICAL SHEAR IS EXPECTED TO BE LESS THAN 15 KT. THEREFORE...STEADY STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST SIMILAR TO THE PREVIOUS ADVISORY AND THE LATEST SHIPS MODEL OUTPUT.

From the 11 PM discussion for TD 18:

THE VERTICAL SHEAR IS FORECAST TO DECREASE TO LESS THAN 10 KT IN THE 36-60 HOUR TIME FRAME...WHILE THE CYCLONE IS OVER 30C AND WARMER SSTS. THIS WOULD FAVOR RAPID INTENSIFICATION IF DRY MID-LEVEL AIR DOES NOT GET ENTRAINED INTO THE CENTER. AFTERWARDS... THE GFS-BASED SHIPS INTENSITY MODEL GRADUALLY INCREASES THE WESTERLY SHEAR TO MORE THAN 20 KT AND LEVELS OFF THE INTENSITY AT 73 KT. HOWEVER...THE NOGAPS...UKMET...AND CANADIAN MODELS SHOW A 200 MB ANTICYCLONE WITH AN EAST-WEST ORIENTED RIDGE AXIS EXTENDING ACROSS THE FLORIDA KEYS BY 48 HOURS. EVEN THE GFS DEVELOPS A SIMILAR UPPER-LEVEL PATTERN...ONLY ACROSS THE SOUTHERN FLORIDA PENINSULA. THE CLOSE PROXIMITY TO SUCH A FAVORABLE UPPER-LEVEL OUTFLOW PATTERN SUGGESTS THAT THIS TROPICAL CYCLONE COULD BE MUCH STRONGER BY 72 HOURS THAN WHAT IS CURRENTLY FORECAST BY THE SHIPS MODEL. THE 18Z GFDL MODEL RAPIDLY INTENSIFIES THE SYSTEM INTO A 120-KT HURRICANE IN 72 HOURS. WHILE THAT RATE OF INTENSIFICATION MAY BE A LITTLE EXCESSIVE...THIS SYSTEM REACHING STRONG CATEGORY 2 STATUS WITHIN THE NEXT 72 HOURS IS CERTAINLY A VIABLE SCENARIO.

Philippe in the Atlantic, Rita Gulf-bound

8 hurricanes so far, a little over 2 months left in the season, and soon we might see Rita become the 9th hurricane.

Fortunately for us, neither of them look like they will bother us. Folks in the Gulf probably won't be pleased to see Rita heading there in a few days time though. Forecast has it possibly becoming a Cat 3 hurricane towards the end of the week.

Word of the day

Kerfuffle:

Pronunciation: k&r-'f&-f&l
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of carfuffle, from Scots car- (probably from Scottish Gaelic cearr wrong, awkward) + fuffle to become disheveled

There seems to be a lot of it going on today.

How badly can you hurt him?

Stair Dismount (Porrasturvat) was a cheesy fun little game I found a few years ago. The premise is simple. Select an impact point on the dummy's body, click at the desired impact power level and watch it fall down the stairs. See how much damage you can dish out to the dummy.

Another variant, Truck Dismount (Rekkaturvat) puts the dummy in a truck with positionable ramps and 6 different dummy locations. Some of the hits the dummy takes make me wince.

I'm not sure why I find it so amusing. Maybe it's a strange fascination to push stuff down stairs and watch it tumble. Maybe it's watching the dummy's head pop up when you hit it right, or the contortions it goes through as it falls. Could be the cheesy porn movie music, or the sound effects with each impact. Whatever it is, there's usually something that makes me chuckle.

MUSC in GoogleEarth

I started playing around with GoogleEarth during one of my procrastination moments and labeled a bunch of stuff around work. Check it out.

It's kinda cool. I can see myself wasting entirely too much time messing around with GoogleEarth.

Hurricane #9

From tropical storm this morning all the way to a Cat 2 hurricane after lunch. NHC's 2 PM discussion puts Rita at a Cat 2 hurricane. Judging from the NWS' Key West radar, it looks like Cuba is getting the brunt of the rain from Hurricane Rita though.

Looks like Rita has it's eye set on the southern Texas Gulf shore.

My Googleprint

Inspired by Blogus Maximus' footprints in the internet post, I decided to see what kind of 'Googleprint' I had. I've been around the net for a good long time, so I was expecting it to be reasonably substantial.

Googling my name returned 237 000 results, with me having a significant presence in the first 5 pages. Sporadic mention in the next 3 or 4 pages, but still there. I didn't go much farther than that.

Googling my name in quotes returns 644 results with the majority of it actually referring to me. Many of the results are things like mailing list/newsgroup postings or trails I've left behind at Amazon.com

Googling my Net alias yields 517 results, the vast majority of them belonging to me (board/blog/newsgroup postings making up the bulk).

Not as much as I expected, but I guess it's about right considering Google's only been indexing for the past 7 years.

Oh, and as a side note, I am not this guy:

Police in West Vancouver, British Columbia, said in April that they had stopped a three-year petty-crime spree in a neighborhood of upscale homes when they arrested multimillionaire Eugene Mah, 64, and his son, Avery, 32. According to police, the two are responsible for stealing hundreds of minor and even tacky items, such as garbage cans, marginal lawn decorations and even government recycling boxes, and keeping them at their own posh home. Mah's Vancouver real estate holdings are reported at about $13 million (U.S.), but among the items he allegedly stole were one family's doormat and, subsequently, each of the 14 doormats the family purchased as replacements.

It's a Floyd deja vu

It's all over the news. People evacuating Houston only to get stuck and/or stranded on the highways. It's deja vu for Charleston residents, who experienced the same thing during the evacuation for Hurricane Floyd. I was lucky enough not to get caught in it, since we left early. I was heading out to Atlanta anyway to take the ABR board exams, so we just left a little earlier than planned. A friend of mine who was supposed to take the same exam left a little later and got stuck in the gridlock. 8 hours to drive what normally takes 2 hours.

After Floyd turned into a non-event for Charleston, there was heck to pay.

The Houston problem is a probably as bad or worse than what happened here. I imagine there will be much accounting and many people being taken to task once everything is over. Well, at least people seem to be taking the potential threat seriously and evacuating. Hopefully my friend Joe is making out ok. Last I heard via another friend was it took him 8 hours to go 60 km. It almost would have been faster to walk that distance.

With Rita back down to a Cat 3 storm, I expect that it will be less catastrophic than most people were anticipating back when it was a monster Cat 5 with 175 mph winds. Fortunately the NHC forecast doesn't have Rita getting much stronger as it heads towards the coast.

From the 5 AM discussion:

TRACK GUIDANCE IS NOW CLUSTERED ABOUT A LANDFALL ON THE UPPER TEXAS COAST IN ROUGHLY 30 HR...WITH THE MODEL TRACK BEING SPREAD BETWEEN SAN LUIS PASS AND SABINE PASS. THE FORECAST TRACK UP TO LANDFALL IS ESSENTIALLY AN UPDATE OF THE PREVIOUS PACKAGE. AFTER LANDFALL...THE GUIDANCE BECOME VERY DIVERGENT AS HIGH PRESSURE BUILD TO THE WEST AND POSSIBLY NORTH OF RITA. GIVEN THE SPREAD...THE FORECAST TRACK WILL CALL FOR LITTLE MOTION AFTER 72 HR JUST AS THE PREVIOUS FORECAST DID. THIS STALLING WILL POSE A SERIOUS RISK OF VERY HEAVY RAINFALL WELL INLAND.

Appeasing the referring physician

My job is to make sure what you want me to do is the same as what I'm going to do. - cardiology resident to referring physician.

Atlantic hurricanes in Google Earth

Browsing around the Google Earth Community BBS can turn up a lot of interesting things to mess around in Google Earth with.

Thanks to pseabury, you can find a collection of Atlantic hurricanes as a series of .kmz files organized by decade, which you can then load into Google Earth. It's really kind of neat to have 250 years of storm tracks showing up on Google Earth. What's even neater is turning them all on. It really drives home the fact that pretty much wherever you live on the Gulf/Atlantic coast, some day a storms going to hit that area.

I thought I'd check out how many storms went past the Charleston area in the past 250 years. With a little bit of clicking, I counted 17 storms that passed through or near the Charleston area (within about 30 miles or so, give or take). Most were tropical storms, with only 1 or two hurricanes. Not as bad as I thought it would be for this area.

Getting ready for Christmas dinner

Now that we have a house, the wife decided that we would be doing Christmas dinner at our place this year. That means instead of us heading out of town, the horde will be descending on our little house.

This year, instead of the traditional roasted turkey, we decided to try cooking it on the grill. So to practice, I threw my first turkey on the grill yesterday. We stuck with Alton Brown's tried and true Good Eats Roast Turkey (from the Romancing the Bird episode. The bird was brined overnight and then a basic BBQ rub spread liberally over and under the skin. Placed a drip pan under the rack over the two middle burners and fired up the two outside burners. Made a little foil packet filled with mesquite wood chips and tossed it on the grill. Once everything got nice and hot, on went the turkey and some sweet potatoes. Roasted everything until the thermometer in the turkey read 165°F (I never roast anything without a thermometer anymore) and everything came out just about perfect. The only problem was an area on the back of the turkey that didn't get cooked all the way. Must have been near a cool spot on the grill. Not a place where there's much meat for eating anyway, and the rest of the bird turned out fine. It didn't come out quite as smokey as I was hoping (a lot of the smoke escapes out of the grill), so I think next time I'll try to fashion some kind of foil tent to put over the turkey and wood chip packet. Still, it was a mighty tasty bird.

Don't let your guard down yet

With everybody dealing with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita still, and more finger pointing ever, NHC's Tropical Weather Outlook says:

SHOWER ACTIVITY WITH THE TROPICAL WAVE ENTERING THE WESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA IS CURRENTLY LIMITED AND DISORGANIZED. HOWEVER... UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO GRADUALLY BECOME MORE CONDUCIVE FOR DEVELOPMENT... AND THIS SYSTEM COULD BECOME A TROPICAL DEPRESSION DURING THE NEXT DAY OR TWO.

Still two months left in the official season.

Paper writing time

It's not often I get a chance to write a paper for submission to a journal or meeting. But when I do, I always seem to be torn between choosing to write it using plain old MS Word, or going with TeX/LaTeX. I've always liked look of TeX generated documents. Problem is I've learned enough TeX/LaTeX to be able to generate some simple equations, but still haven't learned enough to make a full fledged document. A couple of TeX books sit on my shelf to help me learn more (one of them seems to be missing...), but it's always a slow process, because some of the things I end up wanting to do always seem to be things that have a hard time finding solutions to.

And then it comes to crunch time, and usually I end up falling back to MS Word, because it's quick and easy. Just doesn't look quite as nice or sophisticated though.

This time, though, I'm determined to do it in TeX. I have a working TeX environment in the form of MikTeX and what appears to be a decent TeX editor in TeXnicCenter (used Emacs before).

Time to go get started...

The 4-way stop conundrum

There are a couple of 4-way stops around work that I usually walk past once or twice a day. Over the years I've noticed a few things about drivers' behaviour at these intersections, particularly older drivers. I think it must be one of those 'southern politeness' things.

Driver N pulls up to the intersection and stops, followed shortly after by drivers E, W and S. Now normally, whoever gets to the intersection first. That way people get to go through nice and orderly.

However, people in the south tend to be extraordinarily polite, especially older folks. So Driver N, trying to be polite waits for the other drivers to go. Drivers E, W and S sit there waiting for Driver N to go, since he was there first. Everybody waits, holding up traffic until someone decides to go. Naturally, everyone decides to go at the same time. So they advance into the intersection, but suddenly, seeing the others go too, they stop (don't want to get into a fender bender after all). Then you get this Mexican stand-off type of situation going where everybody is waiting for the other person to go.

Finally someone reaches the end of their patience and zooms through the intersection and traffic begins flowing again, until the next person comes along wanting to be polite.

OoTS on first

Today's OoTS is a highly amusing variant of Abbott & Costello's Who's on First routine.

Very funny stuff.

Off to Houston again

It's an early flight tomorrow morning to Houston for a short course on PET/CT at MD Anderson. With the arrival of our own PET/CT unit coming sometime in the next couple of months, it will be a good learning experience for me and a chance to get some hands-on experience working with them. Things are shaping up to get busy in the coming year once the unit gets up and running.

It will also be an opportunity to meet up with friends from back home who recently (relatively anyway) transplanted themselves to the area. Looking forward to the trip.

Coincidentally enough, it's almost a year to the day since my last trip.

Going, going, gone!

The For Sale sign in front of the house next door disappeared yesterday. I wonder if the new owners will actually live there, or if it'll become just another rental again. Would be interesting to find out how much it ended up selling for. Might have to pick up the Sunday paper for the next few weeks and see if it shows up in the real estate transactions section.

A long first day of PET/CT learning

The first 6 hours of PET/CT lectures are over with. Long day listening to a lot of stuff. Most of it wasn't anything I didn't already know...CT basics, PET basics. A couple of good lectures on PET/CT artifacts and PET/CT shielding. Lots of good information out of those two lectures.

Hands on stuff tomorrow...looking forward to some of that. Should be interesting.

MD Anderson is quite the sprawling medical metropolis. There are these cool Access kiosks scattered in strategic locations that show you how to get places or find places if you're lost. And it'll even print out a map and directions for you too! MD Anderson's own Mapquest you could say.

The walk from where I'm staying (the Rotary House) is about as far away as you can get from where the course is being held, but there's a nice convenient walkway, the Skybridge, that lets me walk there without having to go outside. I've heard it called the 'Green Mile' by the locals, probably referring to the distance and the green carpeting. If you get tired, there are electric golf carts you can hitch a ride on too.

It's an early start tomorrow, and another late finish.

Stan in the making?

Looks like TD 19 could become TS Stan in a couple of days. That would make it the 18th named storm of the year. Fortunately it looks like this will be another one that stays out in the Atlantic and won't be much of a bother.

From today's 5 PM discussion:

A CONTINUED SLOW MOTION IS INDICATED IN THE OFFICIAL FORECAST FOR ABOUT THE NEXT 24 HOURS... UNTIL THE LOW TO THE NORTH DEPARTS NORTHEASTWARD AS FORECAST BY MOST OF THE DYNAMICAL MODELS. THIS SHOULD BE FOLLOWED BY A TURN OF THE DEPRESSION TOWARD THE NORTHWEST AND EVENTUALLY NORTH... WITH A GRADUAL INCREASE IN FORWARD SPEED