Posts from — May 2013

The other two flea traps arrived today, so I started the testing at 3PM CST.

I deployed all three, putting them in places that my ‘bare shins’ test [standing in place while wearing shorts] indicates there are infestations.

I’ll leave them in place to see how they do for several days.

Oklahoma City just can’t catch a break. They got nailed again with a cluster of twisters tonight. I have part of my extended family living in the area, so I check on it.

This year has been strange with a group of tornadoes in the Plains in January, then the traditional time for the storms was quiet, and now they have been occurring daily.

Watching them was weird. At one point the radar indicated that a tornado made a right turn to the south. Tornadoes normally head to the northeast. Things are not acting properly.

The warm moist air for these storms is being pulled out of the Gulf, so we have periods of cloudiness and rain in the forecast, but it still hasn’t happened here, it is flowing to the Plains.

The Gulf will be replenished by the flooding that is occurring at various places in the Mississippi watershed. Rains this heavy aren’t breaking the drought, they are washing away the topsoil.

Update: NBC reports on the multiple tornadoes that hit: 9 confirmed dead, flash flooding taking place, baseball-sized hail, I-40 is littered with overturned vehicles, and a Weather Channel crew found out what it’s like to be inside tumbling dice.

The local NBC affiliate, KFOR, has experienced tornado teams, and one almost got wiped by the twister that suddenly turned south.

Busy, Busy

Did you want something?

[Editor: Froggie pauses on her hunt for something to chase, to see if I’m doing anything interesting.]

Friday Ark

They had their parade this evening, and with luck, the Local Puppy Trainer will shed some light on what was going on at the end of the parade in the street north of my Mother’s house. I finished my travels early so I wouldn’t have to deal with the traffic jams.

I was keeping an eye on Eastern Pacific Hurricane Barbara. It went from a tropical depression to a Category 1 hurricane in less that 24 hours, and then came ashore in the Bay of Tehuantepec in Mexico’s Chiapas state. This morning it had transited the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in enter the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical depression, but the wind shear in the Gulf took it apart. It was a small storm but it dumped more than 16 inches of rain in the mountains of Mexico.

They have the White Fire near Santa Barbara contained and are doing mop up operations, while we are mopping up multiple wildfires in my area. We have had over a week of warm dry weather, and the pine forests in the area are getting tinder dry. There are thunderstorms in the forecast, but no rain yet. Fire officials are hoping that they won’t get light rains with the thunderstorms because that often produces smoldering fires in the forest. Lightning strikes ignite the duff on the floor, but it doesn’t burst into flame because it is damp. Then, at some point it dries out, and a wildfire springs to life.

Michele Bachmann decides to ‘honor a commitment’ she never made to an eight-year term limit, so she could spend more time with her attorneys and unspent campaign money, and all of the snarky political people have hit the fainting couch. She may have been one of the easiest Congresscritters to mock, but she is hardly the only one. She tried, but she was never really in the same class as Louie Gohmert of Texas. [Forget birth certificates or drug tests, this requires DNA testing to determine species.]

Stop whining, you’ve had too easy for too long. Get out there and turn over a few rocks. The Tea Party has created a target rich environment in the House, so find a new object of ridicule.

Keep in mind that by holding your choice up to ridicule, you are increasing their political profile, and they might run for President. 😈

In order to generate “local excitement” [sell stuff] the chamber of commerce is once again annoying people with the Billy Bowlegs Festival. This year the unavoidable part runs from Thursday, May 30^th and finishes up on Saturday. The really obnoxious parade on Thursday screws up traffic and sends a lot of noisy people through my neighborhood.

Almost at bad as the parade traffic jam are the Friday fireworks. I know a lot of people enjoy fireworks, but they probably have not seen what loud noises and flashes of light can do to people and aircraft – I am definitely not a fan.

With luck it will rain the rest of the week… 😈

Sitting in a box in front of me is a credit card sized circuit board. I am trying not to get involved with it at the moment, but I really doubt my ability to resist.

The label says “Raspberry Pi Model B Revision 2.0 (512 MB)”.

OK, so I downloaded the software, but I haven’t put it on the SD card yet. I have some will power.

The White Fire started in the Los Padres National Forest on Monday afternoon and burned through over 2000 acres in the mountains overlooking Santa Barbara. High winds and low humidity are fueling the fire, and if the winds shift, the city is in trouble.

There was a comment in this morning’s briefing that this was an August fire, but they are occurring in May now.

They have almost a dozen aircraft of multiple types working the fire, as well as over 600 personnel on the ground, but it is only 10% contained.

Just in time for the hurricane season a major satellite is malfunctioning:

For the second time in less than a year, a key weather satellite is ailing, forcing a spare satellite into service, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The satellite malfunction comes shortly before the kickoff of the 2013 Atlantic Hurricane Season, which NOAA expects to be an active one.

And while the offline satellite will not impact weather forecasts now that the backup satellite is in place, it leaves weather forecasters without a fallback in the event that the backup satellite also experiences technical difficulties.

In addition, experts say, it calls attention to the erosion of America’s weather and climate observing infrastructure due to budget difficulties and poor management.

These satellites provide the data needed to determine where storms are, and where they are going with a hell of a lot more accuracy than we have ever had. Imagine what the aftermath of Sandy would have looked like if the coast hadn’t been warned in advance so they could evacuate.

Too many of our weather satellites are on borrowed time, having exceeded their design life, but their replacements haven’t been built, much less put into orbit.

‘Combat weatherman’ is a military specialty because the weather is a national security issue, as well as a public safety issue.

This is more of our crumbling infrastructure.

Digby discovered an amazing thing – the New York Times actually looked and found that some of the groups complaining about being targeted by the IRS, were heavily involved in politics.

They also found out that the questionnaire with all of the ‘strange requests’ was developed from court decisions involving 501(c)(4) applications, and not a random fishing expedition.

I was personally gratified that the individual who was in charge of the process back in 2000 had the same low opinion of the IG’s report that I did. The IG seemed to think all he had to look at was what happened to tea party groups, rather than the entire process.

One thing we still don’t know is what the entire list of names to watch for looked like. It has been implied, but not confirmed that the listing wasn’t limited to tea party et al., but contained other keywords that aren’t associated with ‘conservative’ groups.

Duncan noted a New York Times piece about a program to update hundreds of tactical nuclear bombs that were created to counter the assumed Soviet forces superiority in an attack on NATO.

These weapons shouldn’t be upgraded, they should be dismantled. First off, they don’t need to be all that accurate, they are bloody nuclear weapons. Close counts with nuclear weapons, OK? But, a potentially bigger problem is that they are small, relatively speaking, and I have lost all confidence in the ability of the current US military to keep track of nuclear weapons.

We don’t need them, so we should get rid of them to make the world safer. Even without these weapons, we still have more than enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on earth. Use the money for something more useful, like a pay raise for the troops so they don’t qualify for food stamps.

This is a picture from one of the columbariums at the Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of many of those who served the United States since the middle of the 19^th century.

That is my Father’s marker. He didn’t know those located around his marker, but they all shared service to their country as part of their life.

The country continues to ask for service and people still respond to that call. As you think about the sacrifices represented by Arlington and other cemeteries, ask yourself if you have done what you could to prevent misuse of the willingness of some to serve.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

One of the local consequences of climate change is that we haven’t had a hard freeze in over three years. While most people would be thinking: “Well, you live in Florida, why would you want a freeze?” Freezes kept down the bugs.

Before when we had a cold front move through it would rain, and then when it cleared out things would freeze, including the wet ground. A freeze would really significantly reduce fleas and fireants. Without the freeze, the numbers just get larger.

This year my favorite flea medication for the cats, Frontline Plus, stopped working. I have been using it for years, so the current fleas are descended from those who are resistant to the chemicals in Frontline.

My house and cats are infested, and I have to plot a course to fight the fleas.

I will switch the cats to Advantage II because the fleas haven’t encountered that one, and I have ordered three different flea traps to see if I can find one that is effective. None of the traps use chemicals, they all essentially use light and heat to attract the fleas that are then stuck on adhesive pads.

I considered removing the cats and bombing the house, but most of the flea bomb use the same chemicals as Frontline, so that won’t work.

He has lost a lot of weight in the last year, but was still eating like his old self. I haven’t posted any pictures of him because he looked gaunt, rather than his former roly-poly self.

Yesterday he didn’t eat in the morning, but bounced back in the afternoon, so I thought his stomach was upset. He also stopped grooming recently which is a bad sign. Then today he lost strength in his rear legs and fell from the chest he normally sleeps on.

It was probably a stroke, but whatever the cause he stopped eating, refusing food all day, and making futile attempts to regain the top of the chest.

It was time and putting it off wouldn’t make it easier for either one of us.