This year's season is decidedly calmer than last year. This time two years ago the storms were just starting up while there were already 7 storms this time last year. Last night TD3 developed and was named TS Chris this morning.
Looks like it will be a rainy weekend for vacationers in the Bahamas.
Something called Scenium landed in my lap today. No, it's not a new game. It's some kind of image analysis software for doing analysis on PET brain scans. Currently we're doing qualitative analysis on SPECT and PET images using some software from Hermes Medical.
Haven't found a great deal of info on this new Scenium package yet, and what I have found doesn't tell me much about how it works or what it does. I've got a couple of CDs, so maybe there's something interesting on those.
It'll have to wait until I get back from vacation though.
We are off on a bit of a mini-vacation to the Washington DC area. If I don't manage to find a place to get my online fix around there, I'll be back next week with pictures of our adventures.
Back from our DC vacation. We went up there to visit with the wife's cousin and some of her family there. Had a pretty good time there, although there wasn't as much time to tour around DC itself as we might have wanted. Still got to see a few things.
Arrived at the hotel just north of DC (in Laurel) on Friday. First order of business was to find the nearest dog park. After being cooped up in their crates for 6 hours (with a couple of stops at rest areas to stretch a bit), we needed to get them out and running around. Thanks to Google, we managed to find one that was pretty close to where we were staying and spent some time hanging out there for a while letting the dogs run.
Then it was off to the Bay 'n Surf down the road. Nice little place, good seafood although a little pricey. They do have what is probably the best crab cake ever though.
Next thing we had to do was find a Chinese restaurant that did Dim Sum. Owing to the sad state of Chinese food here in Charleston (a topic for another blog entry), this is something we look for whereever we go. Saturday we jumped on the Metro and went down to Lei Garden in DC's Chinatown area (much smaller than I would have expected) where we found a passable dim sum that was pretty tasty, although somewhat pricey for dim sum. Their selection was also a little smaller than other places I've been to. Then we spent the day downtown checking out some of the National Mall. Sadly I forgot to grab the camera, so no pictures of our adventures. We hit the National Air & Space Museum (very cool and fun stuff to check out) and the National Museum of American History. On the way back to the Metro, the wife spotted a sign for the Hope Diamond exhibit over at the National Museum of Natural History which naturally she just had to go see.
The rest of the evening we spent hanging out with the wife's cousin and family.
Sunday we were pretty pooped out from all of the walking the day before, so we didn't do too much. Went to check out Tony Cheng's Seafood Restaurant for dinner. Pretty good food, but again a little on the pricey side. The dishes are pretty large though, and we did end up getting 2 more meals out of it, so in that respect it comes in pretty resonably on the value scale. Then it was more hanging out with the wife's cousin.
Monday, it was finally time to head back, so all our stuff and the dogs got stuffed back into the mini-van we rented and we hit the road.
With the price of gas these days, I'm surprised anybody can afford to do road trips at all. Our little sojourn up to the DC area and back was maybe around 1300 miles and ran up a gas tab of about $180. Ouch. Well, we still had a good time. Maybe we'll head back one of these days and stay a little longer next time.
After hearing about one of our friends losing one of their dogs, it made me think about our dogs and how to spend more time with them. I also haven't been taking as many pictures as I probably should be, and not nearly as many pictures of Simba as I took of Nala. I need to take more pictures of them.
The wife is away on a weekend trip to NYC so I'll try to get in some quality time with the pups in between finishing up the garage storage project.
In the meantime, here is Simba at 6 months now. He's 50 pounds now and probably another 40 or so to pack on before he's finished growing. He's hiding at the other side of the table and thinks he's playing keep-away with his bone.
Here he's taking a break from chewing on his Nylabone to check out what Dad is doing. He's just so cute looking with his paws splayed out like that.
Lately the wife's been having terrible luck with flying. A couple of weekends ago she was flying out to Durham, NC for a conference. Got to the airport a little late, wasn't able to check her bag and get on so she ended up having to rebook. Then that plane ended up taking off late, so she missed the connecting flight in Charlotte, NC and had to catch a later one.
Today I dropped her off at the airport nice and early at 5AM for a 5:50 AM flight to NYC. A couple hours later she called to say she was still on the plane and hadn't left yet because of "electrical problems". Ended up having to rebook on a later 12PM flight, so now she's stuck hanging out at the airport for the next 5 hours.
I'm thinking after this we probably won't be flying anywhere for a while.
Yesterday's Kinderpuppy class was entertaining in kind of a weird perverse sort of way (why can I never remember how to spell weird?).
Class itself was pretty normal. Worked on some more 'Leave it', heeling and recalls. Problem was, dogs were peeing all over the place! One dog let loose just as class was starting. Another one decided to go during play time in the middle of class, and a third just let it rip towards the end of class and left puddles all over. It was puppy firehose action last night I tell ya. After the second incident, several other owners decided it would be prudent to take their dogs outside for a pre-emptive potty break. No such incidents with Simba, although I'm sure he might have been thinking about it. Peeing must be contagious for dogs just like yawning is for people.
The floor of the store where class was held is going to need a good scrubbing after yesterday.
How do you like your eggs? In Benedict form. Particularly the Smoked Salmon Benedict from Joseph's.
How do you take your coffee/tea? Coffee, in the bean wrapped in chocolate. Tea, strong, hot and straight up.
Favorite breakfast food? Cold pizza.
Peanut butter? The crunchier the better.
What kind of dressing on your salad? Italian.
You're feeling lazy. What do you make? Nachos.
You're feeling really lazy. What kind of pizza do you order? Pepperoni, sausage, mushroom.
You feel like cooking. What do you make? A large hunk of roasted meat.
Do any foods bring back good memories? Dim Sum.
Do any foods bring back bad memories? Can't think of any. I've probably blocked them all out.
Do any foods remind you of someone? Don't think so.
Is there a food you refuse to eat? Liver.
What was your favorite food as a child? Beefaroni.
Is there a food that you hated as a child but now love? Broccoli.
Is there a food that you loved as a child but now hate? None that I can think of.
Favorite fruit & vegetable? Apples.
Favorite junk food? Potato chips.
Favorite between meal snack? Cookies.
Do you have any weird food habits? Not really.
You're on a diet. What food(s) do you fill up on? Fruits.
You're off your diet. Now what would you like? Chocolate. All of it.
How spicy do you order Indian/Thai? Spicy spicy. If snot isn't dribbling out of my nose, it's not hot enough.
Can I get you a drink? A frosty pint of Big Rock Traditional Ale with a shot of lime juice.
Red wine or white? White.
Favorite dessert? Anything chocolate. Never met a chocolate I didn't like.
The perfect nightcap? Don't have one. Don't like to drink before bed.
A couple of months ago, the wife and I joined Weight Watchers to shed some extra poundage. Two months later, I've dropped 10 pounds. Woo! I was targeting 160, but the leader folks at the WW center we go to seems to think 170 or 175 would suit me better and going any lower would make me look anorexic.
Back when I was doing a lot of running and cycling, I was maintaining a pretty steady 145-150, so I think 160-165 probably isn't too unreasonable. I felt pretty good at 150 and wasn't overly scrawny or anything. I think if I keep up with what I'm doing, I can reach 165 pretty easily. It's only 10 pounds away.
In the meantime I've definitely noticed that most of my pants are much looser than they used to be. I'm going to have to start wearing belts if this keeps up.
For the past couple of weeks, the garage storage project has been stuck in this state, due to a combination of us being out of town and the hot weather.
Today I finally managed to get the rest of the rails installed on the wall. I have two rails left that could possibly go up at the very top, but I'm debating on how useful and practical having them up there will be.
All that's left right now is to finish driving in the 16d nails that anchor everything to the wall. Right now they're just attached with glue and smaller nails (enough to keep them from falling off the wall while the glue dries). Then it will be time to think about putting a few coats of polyurethane on everything. After that, I can start building shelves and baskets to hold all our crap.
Tomorrow there's supposed to be a baby shower/lunch thing for one of the techs at work, so I thought I'd contribute a little something. After flipping through a few of the cookbooks, I found an apple cake recipe in Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking. It sounded interesting and tasty, and better yet I already had all the ingredients on hand. I consider myself reasonably skilled at cooking and baking, and the recipe didn't seem all that complex. Basic cake recipe using the creaming method. Still as I was reading through it I had this feeling in the back of my head that there was something missing. Naturally, I ignored it.
This was what I ended up with.
Doesn't look pretty, but it is tasty. Hardly presentable though. Think of what it would do to my reputation as a cook!
While doing the post mortem on the 'cake', I realized what that nagging feeling was telling me. There was no liquid in the ingredient list! No liquid means no gluten formation, and no gluten means the cake has no structural stability.
Duh. I need to learn to listen to those nagging feelings more often. I've made enough cakes using the creaming method that I should have picked up on this earlier. For some reason I didn't and now I have a pan full of proto-cake.
The book itself is great, but apparently I'm not the only one to discover problems with the recipes, as a few of the reviews on Amazon point out. Sadly the list of errata mentioned in the reviews has apparently gone offline. Hopefully they'll come back soon because there are some tasty looking recipes in his book.
I guess I'll have to go empty handed now.
Haven't gotten back to running aside from short jogging spurts, but I have gotten back to walking on a quasi-regular basis. It's the dogs. They need to get out more and after listening to Cesar Milan's Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems in audiobook form, I've committed to taking them out on longer walks more often.
So lately we've been going out early in the morning and making the 2.5 km round trip trek up the street to the main road. It's been made a little easier the last couple of days by some moderately cooler weather. The dogs seem to be enjoying the walk and like Cesar Milan says, it seems to give them a sense of purpose. Nala could also stand to lose a few pounds too.
It's been going well. After about a week of it I've managed to shed 2 more pounds and am down to a much trimmer feeling 175.
The house a couple doors down had a For Sale sign on it yesterday. According to the little info sheet the listing price is considerably more than what it was probably purchased for last year. Like 50% more. If it ends up getting sold for even remotely close to the asking price, then I suppose that will be a good thing for us when it's time to sell. Prices around here aren't just climbing...they're leaping.
If I didn't share the area my office is in with other people, I would put a big sign on my door saying "The person you're looking for is probably next door".
It usually happens at least once or twice a week. Someone will poke their head in my door with a lost look on their face and say they're looking for so-and-so. I tell them they're next door and off they go. Now, if these people would just read the signs on the doors, it should be pretty clear that the person they're looking for is next door and not here. Nobody seems to ever do that though.
Sometimes I tell them "Next door" before they even say anything. I can do this because hardly anyone ever comes to my office, so anybody who pokes their head in my door is almost always looking for someone else.
The wife wants a treadmill.
This was something we considered a couple of years ago, but didn't have the money or space for at the time. Now she's serious about getting one and has given me two weeks to find and purchase a good quality treadmill. Not one of the cheapo department store ones either (although some of the higher end NordicTrack models Sears carries would probably do). She wants a solid quality machine like the ones you find in fitness centers. There was one store we ran across across the river in Mt P that specialized in this kind of stuff. Now I just have to remember what the name of the store was and where it was located.
Yesterday I had my first experience at a southern Baptist church. A Missionary Baptist church in Wilmington NC. The wife's mom decided to get baptized into this new church, so we went up there to share the big moment with her.
It was definitely an experience. It really is like you see on TV.
There was some serious preaching going on and more than a few people getting into this freaky weird frenzied state. "Getting the spirit" the wife called it. One lady in front of us who looked to be about 7 months pregnant was getting some serious spirit. I was afraid she might go into labour right there! Another lady got so much spirit she collapsed on the floor. I said to the wife that I thought EMS should be standing by for these church sessions. According to her it was all quite normal.
For me it was all a little over the top and too frenzied for my taste. Definitely not my style. When we left I felt like I needed to get away just to restore some of my calm and serenity. To each their own I suppose.
I have a few gripes with x-ray equipment manufacturers when it comes to their digital radiography (DR) offerings.
From Slashdot and SciFi comes news that SG-1 isn't coming back for an 11th season. I guess TPTB have decided SG-1 has run it's course. At least SG: Atlantis will be back.
*sigh* That's too bad. Another good TV show bites the dust. I'm looking forward to seeing how they wrap everything up though.
As just about every PDA owner will attest to, there comes a time in a PDA's life where digitizer drift sets in: the PDA registers a screen touch in a different location than where it actually occurred. My first Handspring Visor suffered from this before eventually dying. My Tungsten T3 currently has a mild case of this.
Palm PDAs have a built in digitizer program that's supposed to help recalibrate the digitizer. Most of the time it works...for a while. Sometimes it doesn't help things at all, or ends up making things worse.
There are a few programs out there to help stricken PDAs. DigiE was one that I used before that helped a little, although the middle of the screen would still be off. One problem with DigiE I had was that it kept turning the PDA on (software bug), so you either have to move it to the SD card, or uninstall it after calibrating.
Then I stumbled onto a new program called PowerDigi. It's pretty slick, offering 3 different levels of digitizer recalibration utilizing different numbers of screen taps. Works beautifully and cured my T3 of digitizer drift (for now at least). One thing I have noticed is that Grafitti recognition is kind of slow when using the DIA. Otherwise I can tap all over the screen and not worry about guessing where I need to tap.
Severe digitizer problems? Try PowerDigi. 14 day trial mode, and it's pretty cheap.
5 stars out of 5.
Starting to head into the peak period for hurricane season now. There's TS Debby brewing out in the eastern Atlantic.
Sounds like development of Debby won't be very fast, and the forecast track seems have it staying out in the ocean and not coming close to the US. Still lots of time for that to change though. Plenty of storm season left to keep watch on too.
From today's 5 AM discussion:
DEBBY WILL BE ENCOUNTERING DRIER MID-LEVEL AIR AND SLIGHTLY COOLER SSTS OVER THE NEXT 36 HOURS OR SO...WHICH SHOULD KEEP INTENSIFICATION SLOW IN THE NEAR TERM. THEREAFTER... THE CYCLONE WILL BE PASSING OVER WARMER SSTS...BUT SHEAR IS FORECAST TO STRENGTHEN WHICH MAKES FOR A DIFFICULT INTENSITY PREDICTION. THE NHC FORECAST BRINGS DEBBY TO HURRICANE STRENGTH IN 4 DAYS...WHICH IS VERY CLOSE TO THE CONSENSUS OF THE GFDL AND SHIPS...BUT IS LEVELED OFF IN DEFERENCE TO THE POSSIBILITY OF INCREASING SHEAR.
Shamelessly stolen from a Lab Board posting
A Doctor was addressing a large audience:
"The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. But there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have, or will, eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?"
After several seconds of quiet, a 75-year-old man in the audience raised his hand, and softly said, "Wedding Cake."
Augh! I've been tagged!
TS Ernesto looks to be the first storm of the year to keep a sharp eye on as it makes a beeline for Jamaica and then into the Gulf by the middle of next week.
Last night the wife and I went out on a date to Oak Steakhouse. It was a very pleasant evening, although it got a little loud at our second floor corner table with all the noise from people waiting at the bar echoing off the ceiling towards the end of th evening.
The food was quite spectacular and we ate ourselves a little silly. Really, how can you not at a place like Oak. I started with a carpaccio of beef while the wife went with the foie gras. Both very excellent. I'd never had a carpaccio before, so it was an interesting and tasty experience. Not at all like what I expected.
By the time we finished our salads (ceasar for me, the spinach salad for her), we were already getting full. The dressings on the salads were perfect, and we just couldn't stop eating them.
Then came our entrees. At Oak, being a steakhouse and all, large hunks of meat are the star items on the menu. All of them grilled, and all of them very yummy looking. I went with the 36 oz bone-in ribeye which came out on a hot cast iron pan. The wife ordered the 28oz porterhouse. For some reason ours didn't come out sizzling like the other diners' plates did. Anyway, it was a carnivore's dream. The ribeye was a bit charred on the outside, but cooked to a nice medium/medium rare on the inside. I sliced off a decent sized 5 or 6 oz serving (no way I was going to be able to eat the whole thing at this point) and started eating. A bite of the ribeye with the accompanying foie gras was utterly sinful. Buttery sweet texture and flavour of the foie gras went perfectly with the ribeye.
We left with enough meat to last us through at least 3 more meals. Definitely a place we would go to again, although probably not too often.
4.5 stars out of 5 (-0.5 stars for the rather loud atmosphere on the second floor. I bet the third floor would be much quieter).
Ernesto underwent a lot of changes overnight and was upgraded to hurricane status early this morning. The forecast track also shifted to the north quite a bit putting Cuba squarely in Ernesto's sights and then the Florida Keys by mid week. The longer 5 day forecast even has it curving around and going over north central Florida by the end of the week. If that track holds up, Ernesto could be bruhsing past the Georgia and SC coasts by this time next week.
The wife noticed some water collecting around the base of one of the toilets, so I think I'm going to have to add some basic plumbing to my knowledge base. It doesn't look too difficult from what I see in the Home Depot Home Improvement book. Turn the water supply off, make sure the water is gone from the tank and bowl, undo the water line and a couple of bolts and pull the toilet off. I suspect a problem with the wax seal, so hopefully it's something simple to fix. Pop a new seal on, stick the toilet back on and fasten everything back up again.
Hopefully I don't flood the place.
The forecast track for Ernesto (downgraded back to a tropical storm last night) has shifted to the east some more and has it going through Florida and then up the coast. The 5 day forecast puts it pretty much right off the Charleston coast Friday night and early Saturday morning. Should get windy and rainy well before then though.
Time to start collecting all the loose things in the yard and putting them somewhere safe.
Wow, the clever guys over at Butterfat have created this totally cool weather aggregator that harvests info from different places and collects it together. Check it out. There are some great maps and imagery there.
Thanks to Matthew for the link.
Not quite sure what kind of spider this guy is, but I spotted it hanging out by the back door. I think the top side of it was a whitish gray with dark stripes. I thought the bright orange spots were kind of cool
The latest 5 AM forecast track for Ernesto carries it a little further east making another landfall over the Myrtle Beach area instead of on top of Charleston. That's good (at least a little better than before).
Looking at the NWS radar for Miami, most of the rain is on the left side of Ernesto, which is the side Charleston would be on. Ernesto ends up staying over warm water a little longer too on the current track, giving it time to strengthen. That's not so good.
From today's 5AM discussion:
AFTER ERNESTO EMERGES BACK OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN IN ABOUT 18 HOURS OR SO...IT WILL BE MOVING NORTH-NORTHEASTWARD RIGHT OVER THE GULFSTREAM AND BENEATH A FAVORABLE UPPER-LEVEL OUTFLOW REGIME. FRICTIONAL EFFECTS CAUSED BY THE FLORIDA PENINSULA WILL LIKELY TIGHTEN UP AND IMPROVE THE OVERALL LOW-LEVEL CIRCULATION OF ERNESTO TODAY...WHICH WILL ENHANCE THE OPPORTUNITY FOR ERNESTO TO RE-STRENGTHEN ONCE IT IS BACK OVER WATER. IT IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE THAT ERNESTO COULD BE NEAR HURRICANE STRENGTH JUST BEFORE IT MAKES LANDFALL AGAIN...
So where does one go to get sandbags? And where do you go to fill them up without raiding sand from the beach?
The wife is worried about the garage getting wet with water by Ernesto. When there's big rain, a little water sometimes makes it past the garage door seal into the garage. Nothing that doesn't dry up in a few hours though. She likes to be conservative and on the safe side so now I'm looking for sandbags.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I think I can solve the garage water problem if I just angle the eavestrough downspout away from the house a little more. That reminds me, I should probably get up there and make sure the eavestroughs are clear before all the rain starts.
Update: Postscript's Stormwatch blog provided me with the answer.
City of Charleston fire department has sandbags if you need them
Spotted a new plugin for incorporating TeX into MT
[tex]x^2+y^2[/tex]
[tex]\Large f(x)=\int_{-\infty}^x e^{-t^2}dt[/tex]
[tex]\Large e^x=\lim_{n\to\infty} \left(1+\frac~xn\right)^n[/tex]
[tex]\Large\left.\begin{eqnarray} x+y+z&=&3\\2y&=&x+z\\2x+y&=&z\end{eqnarray}\right\}[/tex]
[tex]\Large\hspace{5}\unitlength{1} \picture(175,100){~(50,50){\circle(100)} (1,50){\overbrace{\line(46)}^{4$\;\;a}} (52,50){\line(125)}~(50,52;115;2){\mid}~(52,55){\longleftar[60]} (130,56){\longrightar[35]}~(116,58){r}~(c85,50;80;2){\bullet} (c85,36){3$-q}~(c165,36){3$q} (42,29){\underbrace{\line(32)}_{1$a^2/r\;\;\;}}~}[/tex]
Very cool. I like it. Doesn't work for dynamic publishing yet though.
The latest 5pm forecast for Ernesto has moved it back to the west and puts it just off the coast of Charleston by around 2ish tomorrow afternoon.
It's a tropical depression now, so any strengthening it does over water once it leaves Florida will probably only bring it back to tropical storm status. This is good. It will still be windy and rainy tomorrow though. If the Melbourne, FL radar is any indication, very rainy.
I will have to remember to bring along an extra pair of socks, shoes and pants tomorrow, just in case I have to swim to get to work.
From Bureau 42 comes news of a new straight-to-DVD series of B5 episodes featuring some of the original cast. Should be interesting to see the kinds of stories JMS comes up with.
And for the truly die-hard B5 fans, the complete set of B5 scripts written by JMS is being compiled and released in a 14 volume set (volumes 1-8 are available now). Not sure how news of this got by me, but it sure would look cool on the bookshelf..
With most of the rain from Ernesto moving away toward a projected landfall just west of Wilmington, NC, it's time to wait for the flooded streets to drain before life gets back to normal. Lots of rain, flooding in all the usual places and some power outages, but so far I haven't heard of much in the way of damage.
Before people start celebrating though, there might be more rain on the way later tonight associated with a front currently moving through Georgia.
Also from NHC's Tropical Weather Outlook, this might be the next system to keep an eye on.
A TROPICAL WAVE LOCATED ABOUT 700 MILES WEST-SOUTHWEST OF THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS HAS BECOME A LITTLE BETTER ORGANIZED THIS AFTERNOON. ADDITIONAL SLOW DEVELOPMENT IS POSSIBLE OVER THE NEXT DAY OR TWO AS THE SYSTEM MOVES SLOWLY WESTWARD.
