Position: 16.7N 88.9W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [290°] near 9 mph [15 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 30 mph [ 45 kph].
Wind Gusts: 40 mph [ 75 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1007 mb ↓.

Currently about 40 miles [ 60 km] Northwest of Monkey River Town, Belize.

It finally got organized just before it came ashore. If it can hang together across the Yucatan, it might spin up over the Bay of Campeche.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

I have actually been spending a lot of time on a plumbing problem that is turning into the project from hell. There are two shut off valves on the line I’m trying to fix, and both of them gave up the ghost. They not only don’t shut off the water, they leak. As they are in 50-year-old galvanized piping, I am avoiding any major applications of torque, as that will probably just break something else.

Hopefully I will be able to fix the primary problem tomorrow, and then can consider how to fix the shut off valve problem.

Along with my ‘wrenching’ problems, I’ve been making some software changes that haven’t been working. I use Filezilla in Linux for uploading, so I decided to finally dump the ancient FTP program I have used since Win95 and use the Filezilla version for Windows to maintain cross platform compatibility. I fought with it for hours, reading FAQs and Help pages before it finally occurred to me that I had been using the wrong Port Number. I have used Port 21 for FTP for so long, I had been automatically typing it in, when I really needed Port 22 for the SSH/SFTP connection.

At some point I will probably convert this place to a secure connection via HTTPS. I need a certificate for that, and the choice of vendors is ripe with con artists. I’m not going to sell anything, so I don’t need 2048-bit encryption, but it will annoy the contractors if they can’t see clear text going to and from this place. They are going to have to read it to find out what’s going on.