Posts from — August 2008

Not only did Pensacola Beach Blog cover Tropical Storm Fay, he took the trouble to find a clip from Florida’s semi-official hurricane movie: Key Largo.

Bogart, Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor in a Richard Brooks screenplay based on a Maxwell Anderson stage play directed by John Huston – the background for a hurricane ravaging the Keys. What’s not to like?

You may have heard that the McCain campaign keeps getting sued for using music belonging to people who either, don’t want to be involved with politics at all, or don’t like McCain’s politics.

Well, Roger Ailes noted that there is someone who shares McCain’s experience of being a prisoner in Vietnam, and I remembered he also has a well-known piece of music.  Maybe Rush Limbaugh could work something out [not that I’m implying anything].

After nine days stuck inside of the Carly Simon song, Anticipation, I checked the official records for my location from yesterday:

Highest sustained wind: 23 mph.

Highest wind gust: 32 mph.

Total precipitation: .28 inches.

That is barely a decent thunderstorm, like the 16^th with a 36 mph wind gust, over 25 mph sustained, and 1.36 inches of rain. We have been averaging .12 inches of rain/day this month.

Fay was a big disappointment.  At 10 PM last night it just quit; it didn’t fade, it stopped. Weird to the end.

This an example of both Imperial Russian and Soviet mapping decisions.

That corridor of Afghanistan that goes to China was a 19^th century decision to separate Imperial Russia from British India, a “demilitarized zone” that prevented “locational errors” from forcing open warfare between two great powers, while they fought the “Great Game” with surrogates. All it really meant is that there were no “official armies” participating in the almost constant warfare in the area. This is the area that Rudyard Kipling was always using as a backdrop for his pieces set in India.

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As I assumed at the 7 PM update, Fay has been downgraded to a tropical depression:

Position: 30.9 N 87.1 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: West-Northwest [285°] near 8 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph.
Wind Gusts: 45 mph.
Minimum central pressure: 999 mb.

It is 30 miles North-Northeast of Pensacola, Florida, but looking at the regional radar, it would appear that Houston, Texas may get more in the way of “interesting weather” than I will [Sorry, Steve].

The rain bands are arching over the top and fading in Gulf.

This storm is just weird!

Position: 30.7 N 86.7 W. [ 7 PM CDT]
Movement: West-Northwest [285°] near 7 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph.
Wind Gusts: 55 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 90 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 999 mb.

It is 35 miles Northeast of Pensacola, Florida.

It is North of I-10, North-Northwest of me, and may be downgraded in the next advisory, so I can start watching Invest 94L.

This is a map of the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia. This area is where my family name comes from, but it was called Prussia when my great grandfather left in the 19^th century to find his fortune and his wife in Berlin, before coming to the US. He spoke both Prussian, which was a Baltic language, and German.

As a result of World War II the area became part of the Soviet Union, and was assigned to the Russian SFSR.

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So, yesterday Microsoft tied up my Internet connection downloading Service Pack Three, having just recently tied up my Internet connection downloading the monthly collection of security patches.

So I shut everything down and started the process.  They tell you, you can continue working, but they prioritize what they are doing, so you are better off just waiting until it’s over.  You already know they will want to reboot, so there’s no point in trying to work.

The first thing they flashed up was a new End-User License Agreement [EULA], and I did a WHOA!  I already have a EULA for Windows XP, what it this all about?  I have no idea because major portions of the agreement are on pages on Microsoft’s Web site.  These are things that they can change and they want me to agree that I am bound by whatever appears on those pages.  I don’t think so.

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Position: 29.7 N 84.2 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: West [270°] near 8 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 50 mph.
Wind Gusts: 65 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 90 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 997 mb.

It is 50 miles East of Apalachicola, Florida.

It is scheduled to arrive here at about 11 PM CDT tomorrow.

Crazy
Black Is The Color
Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
The Circle Game
I’ll Never Find Another You
Different Drum
Put A Little Love In Your Heart
Dancing in the Street
The Look of Love
Walk on By
You Keep Me Hanging On
White Rabbit
Take another little piece of my heart
I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Chain of Fools
The Chain
Barracuda

For whatever reason, today Feedjit decided I was on Eglin AFB.  So if you see Eglin Afb on your Feedjit widget, it was probably me.  I do live within a few miles of the main field at Eglin, but I’m not on the Base.

Kitty Kamo

Ignore him, he can’t see us.

[Editor: Note that the tabby is behind the shredded palm frond, while the blue is confident of blending with the concrete. BTW, I’m not kidding, they really think they are hidden, and in a gray scale world they are, to a great degree.]

Friday Ark

In Memoriam: Phinky of Ignorant Hussy has lost her friend, Lee.

Interesting piece on feral cats who were a bit older – 1.8 million years.

CNN is covering some of the problems.

Two women have died swimming in the Atlantic off the coast, and rip currents are the most probable reason, as tropical storms and hurricanes create the conditions for the currents. The biggest problem is that people tend to choose to swim in areas that have rip currents because the surface of the water is much smoother than surrounding areas. That is one of the easiest ways of spotting a rip current from the beach, unusually smooth surface waters. The currents are channeling water away from the beach and are the result of a low spot on the bottom.

The third death was an individual testing his gasoline generators INSIDE HIS HOUSE! Of course it will kill you, and anyone else in the house, as it fills with carbon monoxide. This is just so needless. The PSAs telling you not to do this are endless on all of the media during storms, but every storm there are deaths.

A new Pew poll shows that Dems have once again missed the wave: Survey: Americans feel churches shouldn’t meddle in politics.

Displaying the amazing ability to miss the trends caused by the “tape delay” effect of the conventional wisdom of the Washington Village, everyone jumped on the “faith” bandwagon after the public has decided that the separation of church and state probably is a good idea.

It isn’t a large majority, but the trend is more important than the numbers. You need to get aboard the trend before it peaks, not while it is dying.