Jeff's Daily Intelligencer

When It Rains, It Pours

2008-07-03T12:38:00.002-04:00

In a near repeat of a similar event two years ago, heavy thunderstorms pounded the Toledo area again and again last night and this morning. The weather station recorded a storm total of 4.10" of rain which is less rain over a longer period than the 2006 storm, but for some reason the basement flooding situation here has been far worse. I'm not sure if it's because of already saturated ground or what, but I've been fighting a torrent of water flowing into my sump pit for over 12 hours now. It's coming in faster than I've ever seen, and it's coming in with such force that it's impacting the pump itself, not allowing it to shut off. I have wedged some pieces of 2x4 in the pit to divert the flow away from the pump, allowing it to shut off for around 3 seconds per cycle. Not ideal by any stretch but better than the pump continuously running.

I haven't been out yet today but I imagine others in my addition and elsewhere are suffering more than I am. I have a top-of-the-line pump and if it can't keep up, I'd imagine my neighbors with the default pump are flooding. I do have to go out this afternoon, and it's definitely Jeep weather. I'm not sure of the road flooding situation, but I will try to get as much info as I can before I leave.

New Weather Website

2008-06-26T22:30:00.002-04:00

My weather website that is being run in conjunction with Lucas County Choppers, LCC Weather Net, is live in a pre-launch form at wx.lcchoppers.com. This is certainly not the final version of this site; I hope to add a lot more functionality to it as I become more capable in writing PHP scripts and adapting them to the site. However, this draft version is functional, which is whats important.

I had some serious trouble with Weather Display, the shareware weather software I was testing. I had a power outage during a heavy rainfall when I was at work, and I wasn't able to get the data upload restored until around 5 hours later. When I restarted the program, instead of downloading the actual rainfall data it averaged the rainfall rates from when the power went out down to zero over the five hour span, giving me a total of around 1" more than actual. It screwed up both my Weather Display and Weather Underground data, which didn't make me very happy. So I've abandoned Weather Display (which would have cost $73 to register) and am now planning on using Virtual Weather Station, which will cost a tiny bit more to register but is more stable.

Updates on Monday's Weather

2008-06-11T13:53:00.004-04:00

The National Weather Service in Northern Indiana has completed a few important surveys of the severe weather event that struck the area Monday. First they determined that there was no tornado in Van Wert County...all damage there was the result of straight line winds. Also the extreme wind gusts of 99 mph in Van Wert County and 117 mph in Lyons were erroneous because the measurements were in kph and not mph, meaning the true wind gusts were 62 mph and 73 mph, respectively. There was a ham radio report Monday night of a possible tornado in Springfield Township, but it appears that was never verified.

There are a few updates to this site as well. On the right side of the page below the current weather conditions and the severe weather outlooks are audio links to the local NOAA Weather Radio broadcasts. These are live streaming mp3 files (hosted at www.wunderground.com) that will play in Windows Media Player, Winamp, or whatever multimedia player you use.

Also, I have preliminarily established that my proposed weather website will be an offshoot of the Lucas County Choppers site and will be located at wx.lcchoppers.com. There are a few reasons for this...one, weather is a crucial consideration for motorcycling, so it makes sense, and two, it gives me a convenient home to get my feet wet and get a small site established. I still need to decide on my weather station software, and then I plan on reformatting my desktop computer and turning it into a semi-dedicated weather server...so it will still be some time before things are up and running.

May 2008 Climatological Summary

2008-06-11T00:46:00.004-04:00


     MONTHLY CLIMATOLOGICAL SUMMARY for MAY. 2008

NAME: Brookestone Village   CITY: Sylvania   STATE: Ohio 
ELEV:   686 ft  LAT:  41° 43' 16" N  LONG:  83° 46' 29" W

           TEMPERATURE (°F), RAIN  (in)

                                      HEAT  COOL        
    MEAN                              DEG   DEG                  
DAY TEMP  HIGH   TIME   LOW    TIME   DAYS  DAYS  RAIN  
-------------------------------------------------------
 1  56.1  68.8   2:15p  45.3  12:15a   9.2   0.4  0.00   
 2  63.1  69.8   3:00p  54.3  12:30a   2.9   1.0  0.20   
 3  59.9  69.5   4:00p  47.7  12:00m   5.5   0.4  0.06  
 4  53.1  65.3   6:00p  39.5   6:30a  11.5   0.0  0.00   
 5  59.6  74.1   4:45p  44.5   5:30a   7.8   2.4  0.00  
 6  62.6  79.0   5:15p  47.0   5:00a   6.0   3.7  0.11  
 7  62.8  71.3   1:30p  58.9   1:00a   2.9   0.7  0.13   
 8  51.1  59.3  12:15a  45.8   8:30a  13.9   0.0  0.00   
 9  54.4  64.4   3:45p  47.4   5:45a  10.6   0.0  0.00   
10  56.3  67.6   4:45p  43.1   7:00a   8.8   0.2  0.00   
11  53.6  56.8   5:45p  50.1  10:30a  11.4   0.0  0.73   
12  51.9  58.2   5:15p  47.1   8:15a  13.1   0.0  0.13   
13  56.5  68.9   4:30p  41.1   6:30a   9.1   0.6  0.01   
14  57.9  60.8   7:15p  54.4   8:00a   7.1   0.0  0.13   
15  52.6  57.9   3:45p  44.0   6:30a  12.4   0.0  0.00   
16  57.8  69.9   5:00p  47.1   6:15a   8.0   0.8  0.00   
17  61.5  72.4   3:30p  51.5  10:30p   4.9   1.4  0.00   
18  51.9  59.0   3:45p  43.1  11:45p  13.1   0.0  0.34   
19  51.2  61.8   5:00p  38.6   6:15a  13.8   0.0  0.00   
20  55.2  64.6   5:45p  47.7   6:45a   9.8   0.0  0.00  
21  52.1  61.4   5:00p  44.1   6:15a  12.9   0.0  0.00  
22  52.7  63.4   5:45p  43.7   6:00a  12.3   0.0  0.01   
23  55.6  66.7   3:30p  43.8   6:00a   9.4   0.1  0.00   
24  57.4  71.5   5:30p  40.9   6:30a   8.9   1.4  0.00  
25  61.0  77.3   5:00p  40.2   6:00a   7.5   3.5  0.00   
26  73.2  85.3   3:45p  60.6   5:45a   0.5   8.7  0.11  
27  58.8  69.9  12:15a  46.4  12:00m   6.7   0.5  0.00  
28  51.5  64.5   5:15p  35.8   6:15a  13.5   0.0  0.00   
29  59.3  75.8   3:45p  37.5   4:45a   8.6   2.9  0.00   
30  71.7  83.3   2:30p  60.1   6:45a   1.1   7.7  0.08  
31  71.2  80.4   2:15p  62.6  11:15p   0.2   6.4  0.03  
------------------------------------------------------
    57.9  85.3    26    35.8    28   263.4  42.8  2.07  

Max >=  90.0:  0
Max <=  32.0:  0
Min <=  32.0:  0
Min <=   0.0:  0
Max Rain: 0.73 ON 05/11/08
Days of Rain: 11 (>.01 in) 8 (>.1 in) 0 (>1 in)
Heat Base:  65.0  Cool Base:  65.0  Method: Integration
The mean temperature for the month 
was 1.70 degrees below normal
The recorded rainfall for the month 
was 1.07 inches below normal

A Few Days of Wild Weather

2008-06-10T23:44:00.004-04:00

This past week has seen three distinct instances of severe weather throughout Northwest Ohio. The first event was Friday night when a fast-moving (75 mph!) line of storms blasted through around 9:00 pm. I happened to be working in the airport control tower at the time and witnessed the highest wind gust of my career so far (51 kts, close to 60 mph) which caused widespread blowing dust and debris, transformer explosions in every direction, and power outages all around the airport. The windows and floor of the tower were moving. Interestingly there was almost no rain with this line as it was in a rapid dissipation stage. My weather station at home recorded a gust of 48 mph from this storm, but very little rainfall (.08").

The second event was Sunday afternoon, when my home caught the southern end of a line of storms that was mainly in Michigan. There was a lot of lightning and around .25" of rain, but not much wind.

The big one was Monday evening. I fared pretty well here at my house, with a 45 mph maximum wind gust and no damage, but damage was widespread throughout Northwest Ohio. In Lyons (around 15 miles west of me) a Davis weather station like the one I own recorded a 117 mph wind gust. There are trees down all over the region. High winds derailed a freight train east of Toledo. There was a possible tornado touchdown in tornado-magnet Van Wert County, along with much damage near Fremont, OH. Between that storm and another series of storms early Tuesday morning I received 1.5" of rain.

There will be a break in the action Wednesday and Thursday with another chance of storms Friday.

Quiet Blog

2008-06-10T23:15:00.003-04:00

I apologize for the lack of recent activity on this site. For one, I've been busy with all sorts of little things that have taken my attention away from blogging, and also I've been spending much more time posting and conversing on Facebook than I have in the past. I have no intentions of abandoning this site, however.

So, what has been happening lately? A few weeks ago I bought a guitar, but I've only had a small amount of time to actually sit down and concentrate on trying to learn it. Actually I'm only just in the process of getting it tuned correctly. I really haven't learned any notes or chords yet. I do hope to be able to spend a lot more time at it in the future.

I'm also working on getting back into building model aircraft a little bit. I bought an airbrush a few weeks ago and have a stash of 5 or so planes to get through. My eventual goal is to build very accurate replicas of 122nd and 180th FW F-16s. So as you can see between some newfound hobbies and taking care of my place I've been keeping pretty busy.

I apologize for my weather data being down the last few days...the power went out in a storm Sunday night and I haven't taken the time to reset everything yet. It will be back up shortly. Speaking of the weather station, I do have plans for creating a dedicated weather website in the near future containing my current conditions along with a convenient selection of forecasts, radar maps, and warning data. It will link back and forth with this blog, and I plan to increase the weather content on this page as well (I know, most of my blog posts are already weather related).

Oh, and I can't fail to mention CONGRATULATIONS to the Detroit Red Wings on winning yet another Stanley Cup this year, their 4th in the past 11 seasons. After the heartbreak in Game 5, when they were 34 seconds from the win only to see Pittsburgh tie it and eventually win in triple overtime, the actual win in Game 6 was almost anticlimactic for me. I was very happy about it, but it wasn't nearly as exciting for me as the previous 3 Cups were. Maybe its just a sign I'm getting older.

Turner Cup Game 7 Video

2008-05-13T23:31:00.004-04:00

Does it get any better than this? No, it doesn't.

Video from Channel 15.

Unfortunately Blogger doesn't like this video format for embedding, so I'll have to just provide links instead. At least in Firefox, when you click the links you will get an invalid URL warning, but the video will open in a new window.

High Angle Highlights

Ice Level Highlights

Celebration

Interviews 1

Interviews 2

Fort Wayne Komets Win Turner Cup

2008-05-13T12:01:00.003-04:00

The Komets completed a nearly flawless season last night/early this morning by winning Game 7 of the Turner Cup finals in triple overtime. The game ended at 12:23 AM. Despite my 6:30 AM shift I stayed up until the game was over listening to it on the radio. It's the Komets' first league championship in 5 years.

Things look good for me in the NHL too...the Red Wings are now only one win away from going to the Stanley Cup finals.

Earthquakes!

2008-04-18T11:58:00.005-04:00

This morning a 5.2 magnitude main shock and 4.5 (prelim.) magnitude aftershock have rattled the Midwest. The main shock came at 5:37 AM and started my morning quite prematurely. I was asleep in my upstairs bedroom at my parents' house in Fort Wayne when the shaking woke me up. I knew immediately it was an earthquake, and I turned the news/talk radio station on to find out where it was centered. Given the amount of shaking I knew it was either a moderate earthquake relatively close by or a powerful earthquake along the New Madrid fault. Thankfully it was the former. The aftershock was about an hour ago, and my Dad felt it in his 6th floor office. I still haven't seen any news coverage about this latest tremor, as the Pope is taking top billing.

I'm happy to be back home in Ohio where it's somewhat less seismically active!

New Bike Arrives

2008-04-10T20:03:00.001-04:00

New 2008 Ibex Alpine 550
Originally uploaded by Jeff Hormann

Since I made a post about this bike coming soon, I procrastinated on actually ordering it until earlier this week. After finally ordering, it came very quickly, showing up at my door today. It took me about an hour to assemble, and appears to be a very high quality machine.

I'm looking forward to getting it out on the trails. I still need to buy a hitch-mount bike rack, and I need to replace the rear skewer on the bike in order to use it on my trainer. Replacing the skewer will be a challenge because of the delicacy of the rear cassette.

Severe Wx Expected Here Tomorrow

2008-04-10T19:48:00.003-04:00

The Thursday outbreak did not pan out, barely meeting slight risk criteria. There are strong storms from Iowa to Tennessee, and there have been a few tornado reports, but it's nothing like was feared earlier this week.

Worse weather could actually come to our area tomorrow. The Storm Prediction Center has outlined the Toledo area in what's called a hatched area, meaning there's a chance here for significant severe weather including possible strong tornadoes. I'm not sure yet of the timing of this event, but the wind profiles will definitely support severe weather (rotation especially), and if proper instability presents itself, things will go. Hopefully it bypasses our immediate area.

Severe Outbreak Update

2008-04-09T22:58:00.004-04:00

It's been a pretty nasty night in Texas and Oklahoma, as was expected. Tomorrow's potential might be limited by the leftover convection from tonight's storms...the kinematic ingredients that made meteorologists recall legendary outbreaks are still there, but lack of instability and timing are serious limiting factors that might save many people from a very bad day. The outlook is nowhere near as bullish as it was yesterday or Monday...in fact it's quite possible SPC will choose not to issue a high risk.

The fact that the system is coming in slower than progged means we might see some severe weather locally on Friday. If it comes it will likely be an intense squall line with potential imbedded supercells. Friday's picture will become clearer after tomorrow plays itself out.

Major Severe Wx Event Expected

2008-04-09T00:04:00.005-04:00

Not necessarily for this area, although Friday might require some watching. Our severe potential Friday depends on the time of arrival, cloud cover, and other factors. The predicted high that day is 71 as of now, so atmospheric heating certainly won't be a hinderance.

Tomorrow will see a threat confined to Texas and Oklahoma, but the big show is expected Thursday. More than one meteorologist posting on online weather forums has stated that the synoptic setup of this system compares quite favorably to that of April 3-4, 1974. Of course the mere mention of that date will make a weather geek's eyes become the size of saucers. Now even NWS Offices are chiming in similarly. The Norman, OK office says:

DEVELOPING NEGATIVE-TILT TROF OUT W... WITH UPSTREAM 160-KT JET MAX DIGGING INTO ITS BACK SIDE... HAS THE POTENTIAL TO SET OFF A MAJOR SEVERE WEATHER OUTBREAK WED-THU AS IT SWINGS FROM TX TOWARD THE LOWER/MID MS VALLEY. DEPTH AND QUALITY OF LOW LEVEL MOISTURE WILL BE CRUCIAL... ESPECIALLY AS FAR N AND NW AS OUR CWA WHERE THERE IS STILL A LOT OF WORK TO BE DONE IN TERMS OF LL MOISTURE/INSTABILITY. IF INSTABILITY BECOMES ADEQUATE... THE SYNOPTIC-SCALE SETUP SUGGESTS THAT THIS ONE COULD RIVAL SOME OF THE MORE NOTORIOUS APRIL OUTBREAKS OF THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES.

That last sentence is an obvious reference to the April outbreaks of 1965, 1974, 1979, and 1991. To get a mention like that out of a NWS office is a sign of an impending epic.

The location of the Thursday outbreak is expected to be centered in Missouri and Arkansas, extending into Western Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as Southern Illinois. Look for SPC to place this area in high risk more than 24 hours prior to the event. I believe the most severe stuff should stay south of our local area on Friday, but we do have some potential, and might be placed in moderate risk at some point Friday.

DOJ APPROVES SIRIUS-XM MERGER!

2008-03-24T15:27:00.004-04:00

Hooray! Now the wait begins for merger's results...

...like, what will the company/service be named? What will the channel lineup be? What will the a-la-carte packages consist of? This will be fun...

UPDATE:

It still needs approval from the FCC before it becomes official.

Top Down on the Jeep

2008-03-13T16:48:00.002-04:00

IMG_0080
Originally uploaded by Jeff Hormann

With sunshine and temperatures near 50, my impatience got the best of me today. I absolutely had to drop the top and drive it around a little bit, no matter how cold I would get. It really wasn't too bad, because I left the windows up and the heater on...but I could only stand a trip around the block.

The actual operation of the top wasn't all that bad considering it was the first time I tried it by myself. The most time consuming part of putting it down was tucking the top in and getting the drip rails folded correctly. Putting it back up was pretty straight forward but took some time.

The feel of driving it was different than a standard convertible, because you're more enclosed and sitting much higher. I like it better. It's going to be so much fun to drive this way! Come on summer!

Click here for the entire "top down" photo gallery.

Finally, Good Weather!!

2008-03-13T12:26:00.003-04:00

It's about time...what an awful winter this has been. Today we're looking at temperatures in the 40s, which I consider almost hot given the below-normal temperatures we've seen all winter. The forecast is really good too, with temperatures near normal in the mid to upper-40s for the next 7 days.

This normalcy and stability is a result of the jet stream being oriented in almost a straight line west to east (zonal flow). We'll see a few days of rainy (that's right...liquid precipitation!) weather in the next week as small storms flow along the jet.

There is very warm air bottled up south of the jet in the Southwest and Dixie. In the next few weeks if the jet stream becomes more wavy (meridional flow), we should see a few days in the 60s or perhaps near 70...with a threat of thunderstorms the day after. In other words, springlike weather!

Will It Ever End???

2008-02-24T15:09:00.003-05:00

I need to refer to this post in September and October (when I'm usually ready for it to cool down) to remind myself how much I hate Winter!

From NWS Cleveland:

LUCAS-WOOD-OTTAWA-SANDUSKY-ERIE OH-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...TOLEDO...BOWLING GREEN...PORT CLINTON...
FREMONT...SANDUSKY
303 PM EST SUN FEB 24 2008

...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM MONDAY EVENING THROUGH
TUESDAY EVENING...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CLEVELAND HAS ISSUED A WINTER
STORM WATCH...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM MONDAY EVENING THROUGH
TUESDAY EVENING.

PRECIPITATION WILL MOVE INTO NORTHWEST OHIO MONDAY EVENING. IT MAY
START AS A MIXTURE OF SNOW AND RAIN BUT IS EXPECTED TO QUICKLY
CHANGE TO ALL SNOW. SOME FREEZING RAIN MAY MIX WITH THE SNOW LATE
MONDAY NIGHT AND TUESDAY. AN INCH OR TWO OF SNOW ACCUMULATION IS
LIKELY BY DAYBREAK TUESDAY WITH ADDITIONAL SNOW EXPECTED TUESDAY. TOTAL
SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 5 TO 8 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE BY TUESDAY
EVENING WITH A GLAZE OF ICE ALSO POSSIBLE. WINDS WILL BEGIN TO
INCREASE LATE TUESDAY AND THIS WILL CAUSE CONSIDERABLE BLOWING AND
DRIFTING AS WELL.

A WINTER STORM WATCH MEANS THAT HEAVY SNOW IS POSSIBLE. IF YOU
ARE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...REMAIN ALERT TO RAPIDLY CHANGING
WEATHER CONDITIONS. STAY TUNED TO THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE OR
THE LOCAL NEWS MEDIA FOR THE LATEST UPDATES AND POSSIBLE
WARNINGS.

***

For some reason this has been the most irritatingly long and annoying Winter in a long time for me. I've never been this ready for warmer weather.

New Bike Coming Soon

2008-02-20T23:28:00.003-05:00

I've found the mountain bike I want and will be receiving it soon. I know, I only got the Jeep bike a year ago, but...it turned out to be a poor performer. In a sense it did serve it's purpose, in that it got me out on the trails and it proved that I enjoy mountain biking, but it isn't a good bike for regular use. The Jeep bike has a heavy steel frame and lots of low quality Chinese components...in other words, it's pretty clunky, and it's been difficult keeping it working correctly.

This new bike is made by a direct-buy manufacturer named Ibex out of the Atlanta area. They have in-house aluminum frames and high-quality name brand components. The bikes are available in multiple frame sizes and, although they are available only off the internet, the online sizing help and excellent email customer service made finding the right size easy.

I should be wary of buying another bike online without a test ride, but I'm very confident in Ibex. They get great reviews and have a large, dedicated following among mountain bike enthusiasts. The bike I chose, the Alpine 550, is one of their more "entry level" models, but the quality of components is equal to those on far more expensive bikes found in bike shops. This bike is definitely on another level compared to the Jeep bike and other bikes found in department stores.

The next (and last) bike accessory I'll need is a bike rack for the Jeep. I have to go with a hitch mount, and I need 13" of clearance between the hole in the stinger and the vertical element in order to clear the spare tire. It's hard, maybe impossible, to find a quality rack with a long enough stinger, so I might have to resort to getting a hitch extension. Hopefully I can find a suitable rack shortly, since I hope there will be a few days in March and April nice enough for a little trail riding. :-D

NEWMAN WINS DAYTONA!!!

2008-02-17T19:01:00.003-05:00

I'm shaking and speechless...UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE:

I might have trouble talking to airplanes tomorrow...my throat kinda hurts from YELLING!! :-D

Urban Heat Island

2008-02-14T01:27:00.004-05:00

It's a clear, cold night tonight in the Toledo area, and area temperatures range widely depending on whether the readings are taken in the city or the country. Temps in the heart of Toledo range from 17-19F while it is a chilly 9F out here in the township. This is a very common disparity known as the urban heat island effect.

Now it is my personal belief that the urban heat island effect is responsible for some...*some*...of the recent warming trend known as "global warming". Over the years in many locales, the official place of weather record (usually the city's main airport) has grown increasingly urban, as the cities have grown outward around the airports that were once on the far outskirts. This will undoubtedly have at least a small effect on official average temperatures over time.

Jeep vs. EF-4+ Tornado

2008-02-08T18:28:00.001-05:00

Advantage, tornado. :-0

This was from the only major Arkansas tornado from last Tuesday's horrific outbreak.

Personalizing the Jeep

2008-01-17T21:09:00.001-05:00

IMG_0051
Originally uploaded by Jeff Hormann

Did a lot of work today to the Jeep. We took the back seat out; found a place for my flashlight, fire extinguisher, and tools; and put in the XM antenna and the XM/iPod mount.

Installing the XM antenna required lowering the soft top...putting it up was a challenge in the 55 degree air of the garage, but once we figured out what we were doing it wasn't so bad. It should be a piece of cake to operate in 80 degree weather. Best of all, the thing looks COOL with the top down!!!

The XM antenna is installed as inconspicuously as I've ever seen, and it works great. The mount is placed exactly as I had envisioned and it works great as well.

New Jeep First Impressions

2008-01-16T23:45:00.000-05:00

The Reader's Digest version is pretty simple: I love my Jeep!

I drove the 14 miles from the dealership to my parents' house with a big, dumb smile on my face. Driving it, there's no mistaking it for anything other than a short-wheelbase, Universal Jeep. But for what it is, it has an incredible ride. I feel at home behind the wheel. I cannot believe how quiet it is. Even with a soft top and almost zero sound deadening, the thing is much quieter than my Liberty was (on my Liberty, the roof rack would rattle and the off-road lights created lots of wind noise).

The interior doesn't set any luxury standards, nor should it. It's basic and functional. I find the seats to be very comfortable. Visibility is excellent. The back seat is essentially useless, and will likely spend the rest of it's life under my ownership in my basement under a dust cover. If I need to haul a third or fourth person...that's what my Dodge is for. Even a gymnast would struggle getting in the back seat of this thing.

We installed the Bestop Flexatrunk today, and it functions very well. However if I choose to discard the back seat, I won't be using the "flexi" function very much. It will do an excellent job keeping stuff concealed and secured, and will prevent stuff from flying out when topless.

The radio is nice and the sound system sounds great. It's so nice to finally have an aux jack for my XM and iPod...no more cassette player noise! Finding a place to mount the iPod and XM will likely present an engineering challenge tomorrow.

My first reaction to the exterior was that it's the biggest little truck ever made...when/if you see it in person, you'll probably think the same thing. It's a very short vehicle, but it's extraordinarily wide and extraordinarily tall. The width is nice for stability. I'm riding on big honking 32" tires, and getting in requires a big step. This factor is what makes getting into the back seat practically impossible.

Those 14 miles were as far as I drove it today; the rest of the day was spent working on it in the garage. But so far so good: I'm happy, I don't have buyer's remorse, and I don't miss the Liberty.

Colts Postseason Ends Quickly

2008-01-13T16:59:00.000-05:00

Not much to say about this, really. The game was an injury-fest, and by the end of the game neither team was in good shape at all. It was a close game with lead changes back-and-forth all game long, but in the end I was kind of hoping the Colts didn't come back to win, because I just know with the injuries they'd go up to New England and get humiliated...I'd rather see them go down to San Diego.

As badly as San Diego appears to be banged up, they'll probably go up to New England next week and get humiliated themselves...I'll still be pulling for them, though.

Finally, my new Wrangler JK is in!!!

2008-01-10T14:53:00.001-05:00

IMG_2969
Originally uploaded by Jeff Hormann

But, I can't get it until Tuesday. :-(

It sits on the dealer lot in Monroeville, IN for now. It arrived this afternoon around 12:30.

I've waited this long, so what's another week? Again, when I first ordered the Jeep, I did not expect it this soon. Also, the other bit of good news is my Bestop Flexatrunk also arrived at my parents' house today, so when I go pick up the Jeep, my dad and I can put the Flexatrunk in as well.

More photos are available at my 2008 Wrangler Photo Gallery.

More Just Unreal Weather

2008-01-07T20:58:00.000-05:00

This unheard of January severe weather outbreak continues to unfold. Tornado watches line the Central US from Oklahoma to Michigan. There is a line of discrete tornado-producing supercells moving over the same areas again and again in Southwest Missouri. Closer to home, a fast-moving squall line has taken shape, and will move through Northern Indiana and Northwest Ohio this evening with possible straight-line winds up to 75 mph.

Together One Last Time...

2008-01-07T16:35:00.001-05:00

IMG_0029
Originally uploaded by Jeff Hormann

With today's warm weather I cleaned out my garage, providing a great photo op for my automobiles. This should be the Liberty's swan song, as my Wrangler is due to arrive any time now...

This is also the first photo taken by my Digital Elph that I've uploaded to Flickr.

Incredible Weather

2008-01-07T16:01:00.000-05:00

Who would believe 67° on January 7? If global warming means temperatures in the dead of winter this warm, I say BRING IT!!

In all seriousness though, this is highly unusual weather,and with temperatures like these and a strong storm system in the plains, severe weather is a possibility. In fact, Chicago is currently under a tornado watch. Tomorrow severe weather is possible from the Toledo area south to Alabama.

Toledo set a record high for the date and for the month today.

I Found My Jeep

2008-01-03T09:43:00.000-05:00

I don't have it yet, but I found it. It's in storage near the factory. It seems the factory lost the shipping order codes on about 5 Wranglers destined for Fort Wayne...including mine. So it's been sitting in storage the last three weeks.

It's not that big of a deal, but I wish I could have had it over Christmas like I originally planned. I just feel lucky that this shipping screw-up didn't result in it getting shipped to Arizona or, God forbid, Massachusetts.

So now that all parties involved know where it's at and where it's supposed to go (big step apparently), it will ship fast. I'll go pick it up Tuesday.

Happy New Year, 2008!!

2008-01-01T00:04:00.000-05:00

What a year 2007 was...a lot of neat stuff happened, but there were also lots of missed opportunities. Here's to 2008 -- in which the possibilities are endless! Make the most of it everyone, and Happy New Year!!!

Quick Wrangler Assembly Clip

2007-12-30T19:29:00.000-05:00

As I wait for my Jeep, I was looking at videos on YouTube, and I found a clip of of assembly inside the Toledo plant. Somehow, this guy was able to go watch his Jeep get built (he must be special or something...).

Bought a New Camera

2007-12-29T22:16:00.000-05:00

Tonight I bought a Canon SD1000 Digital Elph camera. It was a really good deal (on sale for $149.99 at Best Buy). I was wanting a mini camera to complement my large Canon S2 IS...I wanted to have the capability to take a camera with me everywhere. This camera certainly fits the bill: it's about the same size as my cell phone, and smaller than a pack of cigarettes. Along with the camera I bought a soft case that fits on my belt, and a 4GB SDHC card that was on sale. So now I'll be able to take a picture of anything I decide to, as I'll always have a camera by my side. When I'm traveling or doing something that requires a large zoom, I'll use the S2 IS.

I'll have pictures of the camera and from the camera in later posts.

The Jeep: Good News and Bad News

2007-12-29T22:05:00.000-05:00

I still don't have my new Jeep. It remains in "KZ" status, which means it's released from the factory and invoiced to the dealer. It has been in that status for two weeks now.

The holdup is probably a result of holiday slowdowns at the factory and in the shipping department. My dad talked to the dealership today while conducting other business there...the dealership said that they are going to change my Jeep's status to "sold unit", meaning I'll be locked into my 0%/36 mo. financing, which was set to expire Wednesday. They also said they had another vehicle that took over two weeks in KZ status earlier this month, so this wait is not at all unprecedented.

So, the news isn't really that bad...my good finance deal is secured, and all I have to do now is take possession of the Jeep, which I'm really not in that big of a hurry to do. Most of my accessories haven't arrived yet, and as long as my financing is safe, I have no reason to be in a hurry.

Big Winter Storm

2007-12-15T17:27:00.001-05:00

We're just getting started here in Toledo with this weekend's major winter storm. As I type we are already receiving light snow with a small dusting already in place. We're under a Winter Storm Warning until tomorrow evening.

Forecasts have had us in the 8-16" range (storm total), but I'm starting to see things in the "nowcast" that might mean less snowfall for us. Apparently some of the models are tracking the low farther west, a little closer to Toledo, which means the heavy snow band would also move west. I would be happy to see less snow than advertised, although in the snow pool at work I went big (as a weather fan I had to) with 11.8".

Another problem will be the winds. The low is expected to reach a pressure similar to that in a Category 1 hurricane (the winds won't be that high, though), and if it tracks where it's expected to, we'll probably get 30-40 mph winds tomorrow. The low track might also allow me to see a sub 29.00" pressure, which is one of my weather geek goals in life...sad, I know.

Another Jeep Update

2007-12-14T01:11:00.001-05:00

Just found out tonight that the Jeep was built (born?) Wednesday, 12/12/2007. Dealer says that new builds usually ship within 72 hours...so I'd say I'm probably looking at a Saturday-Tuesday timeframe on delivery, which would work out well (I don't have definitive word that it passed quality control or didn't have problems during the build, so delays are possible). I'm still debating on whether to go get it Wednesday (provided it's there) or wait until the following Monday.

I am planning on immediately replacing all 5 of the OEM tires (the same Goodyear Wrangler SR-As that were OEM on my Liberty - hated them) with Bridgestone Dueler A/T Revos (which I currently have on the Liberty). Immediate replacement should get me a good trade-in value on the OEM tires.

My Christmas Present: A Jeep

2007-12-10T17:11:00.001-05:00

Thank you, Santa Chrysler!

Word from the dealer today is that the estimated build date for my Jeep is Wednesday. It would be so much fun to be over at the plant Wednesday seeing it get built, but I'll settle for seeing the finished product.

I should be able to bring it home after Christmas...

UPDATE:

There is some confusion...it's possible that it's already built and Wednesday is the ship date, not the build date. Regardless, I'm not running out to pick it up until I go home for Christmas.

UPDATE 2:

From what I've been reading, I think Wednesday is probably, in fact, the ship date. Also, I get 0% for 36 months!!!! Woohoo!

Windy

2007-11-27T20:10:00.001-05:00

There are few things I like doing less than working local control when the winds are stupid and watching airplanes try to land. Today was one of those days, with winds sustained at 30 knots gusting to 40 knots. Thankfully the winds were pretty much down the runway heading give or take 20 degrees, so they didn't have an awful crosswind to deal with along with the turbulence and windshear, but it was bad enough. The discomfort in the pilots' voices was very apparent. It was a nice day to be on the ground.

The maximum gust I had on my home weather station was 33 mph (29 knots), but I'm convinced the anemometer reads low. I know Micah, I need to get my data back online. Maybe later this evening.

Jeep Update

2007-11-21T23:08:00.000-05:00

I visited the dealership today just to get a status update, and it's not great news...the official status of the Jeep is "passed edit, not available for schedule." The factory has a lot of orders to build, and I'm not at the head of the line. There's any number of things that could be holding up the factory from scheduling my build, but the dealer didn't seem concerned, and I'm really not either. I'm not in a giant hurry to get the Jeep, anyway. It will get here when it gets here.

Right now I would say February at the earliest.

And while on the subject, a note about color. At first I was apprehensive about buying black because I figured everybody and their brother would have a black one too. Well, it looks like everybody and their brother will instead have a yellow one. I checked dealer inventory earlier and almost all the dealers who have Wranglers in the area have at least one yellow one. Also on the enthusiast web sites many are buying yellow ones. I really don't like the yellow, so I'm glad I'll be separate from that crowd. I'll still wave at them though. :-) And even if there wind up being tons of black ones, be certain mine will look very unique!

WX Data Temporarily Down

2007-11-21T00:02:00.000-05:00

My online weather station data will be down until this weekend. For up-to-date data, use the online weather station that's located about 1/2 mile south of my location (link). Their barometric pressure reading is usually a few points off, but otherwise it's accurate.

Expect another weather station outage a few days in length in another week or two.

Another New Toy: GPS

2007-11-20T23:45:00.000-05:00

Tonight I bought a Garmin StreetPilot c530 GPS unit, after having found it for an unbeatable price at Office Depot earlier in the day. This unit, which reportedly cost around $500 earlier in the year, was $180 after rebate. The maps appear to be very good...there are some points of interest that are out of date, but they are 2006 maps (I can upgrade to a 2008 edition for $70...might be worthwhile before next year's vacations). The feature set is pretty sweet, and best of all I was able to download a Jeep Wrangler for my vehicle icon!

What I don't like about it is that it didn't come with computer software that allows me to plan my own route. That software costs $120 and might unfortunately become a necessity since I often like to choose routes that differ from the shortest or fastest ones (like least traffic, or fewest left turns).

Even without the newest maps and without software, this was still a steal, since I would have had to buy those upgrades with any other Garmin unit anyway. For reference, a refurbished c530 from Tiger Direct is $220, so I'm happy regardless of the limitations.

At the same time I also picked up my new office chair. It's brown leather and will look fantastic in my office once I get the room refreshed. It's also insanely comfortable.

Odds and Ends

2007-11-16T11:57:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything, so I thought I'd throw together a miscellaneous post about what's been happening lately.

I've been fighting a nasty cold since Monday that isn't really getting any better. I've had many colds like this before where symptoms change and migrate and it just nags for days on end. I'm hopeful that this one has just about run its course.

My new Jeep hasn't come in yet. I haven't been tracking it's progress very closely, so I don't know if there are any parts holds or anything else that may be delaying it...I doubt that has happened though. I expect I'll probably get it sometime before the second week of December. I need to buy a few aftermarket things for it shortly so I have them when the Jeep comes in.

I've come up with a plan to make my office usable again. That room, and my desktop computer, have pretty much been abandoned since I got wireless internet. I want to completely reformat my desktop computer and limit it's jobs to internet and running the weather station. The only game I'll have on it will be the irreplaceable Nascar 2003. I'm going to take my high performance video card out and replace it with my old video card that has a TV tuner. Other plans include a 19" LCD monitor, new chair, new lighting, and a ceiling fan. I also plan on getting rid of about 3/4 of my radio collection.

Halloween Guitar Hero Party

2007-11-01T00:45:00.001-04:00

P1120766.JPG
Originally uploaded by Micah Maziar

A bunch of us from work got together tonight at Micah's to rock out playing Guitar Hero III, along with sharing a bunch of laughs and having an overall great time.

Pictured (left to right): Brian, Arch, and myself

That Was Easy!

2007-10-05T00:55:00.001-04:00

0922072120
Originally uploaded by Jeff Hormann

There is a Big Red Button next to the scope at West Radar that was designed to delay the release of oxygen-sapping fire suppressant. Now that this system is no longer operational, the button has been converted to a role that is more useful and much more commonly needed. :-)

2008 Vacation Planning

2007-10-04T23:44:00.000-04:00

It's getting to be that time of year again for me: choosing my "prime-time leave", which is in essence semi-guaranteed vacation time. It's probably going to be a month or so before it's my turn to pick my days off, but it's time to start thinking now when I want to take off and where I want to go.

A small group of us from work are tentatively planning a road trip around the shoreline of the lower peninsula of Michigan. We're hoping to only take one or two days off each for this trip, bookending our regular days off. We haven't decided yet which time of year this bizarre caravan of a couple motorcycles and a Jeep will depart. :-)

I'd also like to take a full week off some other time during the year and go somewhere...I just have no idea where yet. Ever get completely disinterested in seeing new places and things? That's kinda where I'm at right now. I do plan on sometime taking the new Jeep to the beach, but not this upcoming year. So I'm going to have to do some research and some thinking to come up with a travel destination. I know I want to stay east of the Mississippi, but that's about it so far...

Wauseon Bike Nights

2007-10-04T23:40:00.001-04:00

IMG_0183
Originally uploaded by Micah Maziar

A group of us from work have been taking part in a fun activity the past several Wednesday nights. At the Dairy Queen in Wauseon, OH, every Wednesday night is Bike Night, where motorcyclists are invited to ride in, show off their bikes, and enter a free raffle for DQ gift certificates. Now, Micah and Kevin are the only two with motorcycles, but Brian and I like to go along as well for the camaraderie and the good food. Despite what is for me a 60-mile round trip, it's a lot of fun just to go and hang out with my buds from work somewhere other than work.

So, What'll It Look Like?

2007-09-26T00:56:00.001-04:00

I haven't been able to find any pictures of a Jeep that's just like the one I ordered. That certainly doesn't mean there won't be thousands out there just like mine, though...(one of the pitfalls of black).

Anyway, the one I found here is very similar.

This picture is an '07 Sahara. The only real differences between this one and mine are:

Mine won't have painted fenders; they'll be the same color and material as the bumpers
Mine won't have the side steps

And that's it...otherwise it will look much like this one when the top is down. The doors, wheels, and tires are exactly like what will be on mine.

ORDERED: 2008 Jeep Wrangler

2007-09-25T23:34:00.000-04:00

The second shoe has dropped in my car-buying adventure, so to speak. Soon, I will be the proud owner of a brand new, two-door Jeep Wrangler. This afternoon I placed the order. Here's the rundown:

2008 Jeep Wrangler "X", two-door (full doors) - "24S" Pkg
Black, with black Sunrider removable soft top
Dark grey interior, cloth seats
4-spd auto transmission
4x4 (obviously), solid axles (Dana 30 front, Dana 44 rear)

Options:
17x7.5" wheels, 255/75R17 (32") tires
6 Infinity speakers w/ sub
Fog lights/front tow hooks
Trailer tow pkg with 2" receiver
Seat mounted side air bags

Planned mods/accessories:
Firestone Destination AT or Bridgestone Dueler A/T tires
Bestop Flexatrunk
On-board window carrier
Safari top conversion
Cab cover
Hitch-mount bike rack
Rollbar mount for XM antenna
Rock rails
Partial de-badging

The Wrangler will replace the 2003 Liberty. The quote I got today was exactly in line with what I had expected and planned for -- the Liberty trade-in knocks exactly half off the price of the Wrangler...I haven't decided yet whether to finance or pay cash on the balance.

So going back through my last two years or so of trying to figure out what to do car-wise, I fell like I've come out a winner here. I made the right call going with two vehicles. I have a very nice low mileage used car which I really like, and now I'll have a brand new Jeep.

Originally of course I planned on the Jeep being used as well, but several factors went into the Jeep becoming a new one. First, nothing holds resale value like a Jeep Wrangler. I don't know why, but it's true. A used 2005 or 2006 Wrangler with 30,000+ miles would have only been at best $5000 less than what I just bought. For that extra, I get a brand new vehicle that hasn't been thrashed on and messed with and is all mine, the new design with all it's fantastic new features (electronic stability, traction control, more cargo space, etc.), and the lifetime power train warranty. No brainer there.

I'm expecting my new Jeep to arrive sometime in November before Thanksgiving, although it isn't outside the realm of possibility that it might get bumped to January or later. The only shame is they can't just haul it down the street a few miles from the factory and drop it off in my driveway. :-)

Colts Put NFL On Notice: We're Still Here

2007-09-06T23:37:00.000-04:00

Wow, what a dominating performance. Those who have already awarded Super Bowl XLII to New England or New Orleans were given a hard dose of reality tonight.

Colts 41, Saints 10.

The Saints only scored 3 points on offense. The Colts were absolutely dominant in all phases of the game. Their only real mistake was a fumble that New Orleans recovered and returned for a touchdown. And the thing is, the Saints are supposed to have a killer offense. If the Colts defense continues to play like this, look out.

Although the Colts are my team, Drew Brees is my boy...so it was kinda bittersweet to see him get absolutely owned by the Colts defense. I hope that his performance tonight was a result of a dominant Colts team and not him all of a sudden losing his touch. Hopefully he rebounds from tonight and has a fantastic season.

I just tuned into SportsCenter...it will be interesting to see what the New England fanboys at ESPN have to say.

Huge Auto News

2007-09-06T12:32:00.001-04:00

Today Chrysler LLC hired Jim Press, the President and COO of Toyota North America, to be their new President and Vice Chairman, in charge of North American Sales, International Sales, Global Marketing, Product Strategy, and Service and Parts for Chrysler LLC.

There's a lot of excitement on Allpar.com (the Chrysler enthusiasts site I occasionally visit) over this...it's considered a coup to have hired the man who led Toyota as it emerged as a US powerhouse to basically run the show at Chrysler.

Just as long as he doesn't force the manufacture of boring refrigerators-on-wheels...that's my main concern with this.

Back to Secor

2007-09-06T12:12:00.000-04:00

Location: Secor Metropark
Distance: 7.00 miles
All other data unknown...trip computer still broke

Brian and I did a morning ride at Secor today...two laps around the long loop. I felt much better during this ride than I did last week, and i attribute that to better and more decisive gear selection. I also lowered my seat a couple of inches, which should have made pedaling harder, but I think it made for a more comfortable ride overall.

With it still being morning the temperature wasn't a major issue, but it was quite humid. We were also attacked by mosquitoes despite our use of bug spray. I'm so thankful for my Camelbak backpack...it makes getting a quick drink so easy, regardless of how fast I'm going. Overall I felt really good on this ride. I think my body is beginning to get accustomed to this exercise thing...and that's a good thing.

Xbox 360

2007-09-05T21:48:00.000-04:00

I broke down and bought the HD gaming system Monday. Overall I'm happy with it; the graphics are remarkable and I enjoy being able to sit in my recliner and play using a wireless controller. I bought two games when I picked up the system: NCAA 08 football and Forza 2 Motorsport. I'm pretty disappointed in NCAA football...the graphics are good, especially the closeups, but there's a lot about it that's just bad when compared to NCAA 07 on the PS2. No alternate uniform options, no create-a-school, no division 1-AA teams (so I can't start a dynasty as App. State), so it just seems bare-bones. You would think a next-gen game would have more options than one made for an old system...but no.

Forza 2, on the other hand, is pure joy. 300 cars, 45 tracks, more car customization options than I can comprehend, and the driving physics are incredible...the graphics are stunning too. I bought the game on a whim without reading any reviews (something I never do), hoping it was basically an Xbox version of the Playstation's Gran Turismo...and thats exactly what it reminds me of. The driving is so incredible that it's fun to just do laps around the track without any other cars out there. The racing appears to be great too, but I haven't done much of that yet.

Hopefully I'll have some Cat 5 cable run under the floor here in the next few weeks so I can get set up on Xbox Live. Also, next week NHL 08 comes out (which unlike NCAA 08 appears to be feature packed...it has all the AHL teams!)...and that will be my next game purchase. Then in October comes Guitar Hero III and the new Les Paul guitar. I'm just appalled at the cost of the games...I'll probably only ever have 5-6 games at a time.

Only one problem so far...I had an unreadable disc error last night. That's a horrible sign. Xbox 360s have a reported 33% failure rate, and typically the problems begin with little errors here and there which get more common and culminate in the "red ring of death", which is three red lights on the console signaling hardware failure. In all honesty I wouldn't be shocked if in two weeks my Xbox is in the coffin heading back to Redmond. :-|

Trail Ride at a New Venue

2007-08-30T19:36:00.000-04:00

Location: Secor Metropark
Distance: approx. 6.4 miles
Avg. Speed: unknown
Max. Speed: unknown

Today Micah joined Brian and I on our now-weekly bike ride. We decided to try Secor Metropark, which was an interesting change because the trail is very different from the one at Oak Openings. While Oak Openings is a pretty straight forward forest trail, Secor is a more "technical" trail (if you want to call it that) with more elevation changes and quick transitions from fast straights to tight corners.

This was a fun ride but it was somewhat more painful than my previous ones. I was slow on my gear changes and that made the climbs very difficult. That is something I need to work on next time. Also I broke my trip computer when I got my wires caught in the tire...which explains my inexact stats this time around.

Overall it was a fun ride and it was nice to have Micah along this time. After the ride we went to Mello Creme to add back some of those burned calories. :-)

Oh Happy Day!

2007-08-30T11:38:00.000-04:00

Buckeye Cable put a big smile on my face this morning...I now have ESPN2 HD, Fox Sports Net HD, and the Big Ten Network in both analog and HD. So now I'll get Red Wings games, college football games, Busch races, and more in HD!! Hopefully Big Ten Network will be as good as it sounds...I'll be disappointed if it's an all-Ohio State/Michigan-all-the-time channel.

Trainer Time

2007-08-28T20:58:00.000-04:00

Location: Basement Trainer
Trainer Setting: 1 of 7
Gear: 2 (Front), 6 (Rear)
Distance: 5.00 miles
Max Speed: 21.00 mph
Avg Speed: 11.00 mph
Total Time: 27.21 minutes

This was a very difficult ride. On the trainer, 5 miles is the equivalent of much more distance on the trail, since it doesn't take into account free rolling. That combined with the increased speed and it was far more exhausting. I found out on this ride why people place a sweat-catching towel under their bike trainer! That having been said, I feel better now after riding than I have all day. I'm happy that I was able to make this kind of distance on the trainer (I had been wearing out around 3 miles before)...hopefully with more work I can increase that distance even more.

Even though it was a beautiful day, I chose to use the trainer because I wanted the controlled environment for this ride...moving the bike back and forth isn't a big deal.

My goal tomorrow is to find a bike rack, a top-tube adapter, and if needed, a hitch receiver extension. We have a trail ride at Secor Metropark planned for Thursday afternoon.

Big Weather Hits The Area

2007-08-24T19:10:00.000-04:00

Major storms impacted Northwest Ohio this evening, as a line of severe thunderstorms moved through around 6:30 pm. Lucas County was placed under a tornado warning because of eastbound radar-indicated rotation near Berkey. I live about 3 or 4 miles due east of Berkey...so this one got my attention. The sky was about as ugly as I've ever seen, but it didn't look tornadic at all. That having been said, I hit the deck pretty much as soon as the warning came across.

There were lots of reports of damage around the area -- downed trees, power outages and such -- but I came through with no problems. The power went out for just a short time. My maximum recorded wind gust here was 32 mph...and since there were reports of 60-80 mph winds not far from here I feel very fortunate.

The online weather data went down when the power went out...it will be back up shortly.

Another Bike Ride

2007-08-19T21:47:00.000-04:00

Location: Oak Openings Metropark
Distance: 6.64 miles

I went biking again with Brian Friday morning at Oak Openings. We rode a little farther than last time, but it was mainly the same route. I didn't feel as well after this ride as I did after the first one, but I felt pretty sick Friday night and Saturday...so I'm pretty sure I'm fighting a cold.

I definitely need to get riding more regularly...if I do then these relatively short rides will be much easier.

"Climate Science"

2007-08-10T13:57:00.001-04:00

Looking at my climatic data from last month, the temps look pretty normal for July don't they? Only 4 days over 90 degrees...not excessively hot at all.

Most of you who know me well know my opinions on global climate change. I'm not going to go on-and-on about it on this site. What I want to do, though, is share with you a very interesting blog I've found that is documenting the location of official temperature reporting sites.

To start off, let me first explain a few things. One, location of thermometers is critical for recording accurate data. When I installed my Davis weather station, the instructions were very specific on where and where not to place the sensors. Two, it is extraordinarily easy to build a warm bias into temperature recordings by misplacing sensors; it is nearly impossible to build in a cool bias. Things that build in a warm bias include placing sensors too close to asphalt, buildings, concrete, air conditioning units, direct sunlight, or things that reflect direct sunlight.

That all having been said, look at where our nation's official weather sensors, those used to feed data into the climate change models, are located: http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/

July 2007 Climatological Summary

2007-08-05T21:23:00.000-04:00


      MONTHLY CLIMATOLOGICAL SUMMARY for JUL. 2007

NAME: Brookestone Village   CITY: Sylvania   STATE: Ohio 
ELEV:   686 ft  LAT:  41° 43' 16" N  LONG:  83° 46' 29" W

                   TEMPERATURE (°F), RAIN  (in)

                                      HEAT  COOL      
    MEAN                              DEG   DEG         
DAY TEMP  HIGH   TIME   LOW    TIME   DAYS  DAYS  RAIN  
-------------------------------------------------------
 1  66.0  75.0   2:45p  55.0   6:30a   2.2   3.2  0.00  
 2  62.9  74.1   4:30p  48.1   6:15a   5.0   2.8  0.00   
 3  70.8  82.5   7:00p  57.4   6:45a   1.8   7.7  0.00   
 4  72.9  84.2   6:30p  64.6   5:45a   0.0   7.9  0.01   
 5  72.3  84.6   3:15p  60.1   6:00a   0.9   8.2  0.11   
 6  72.1  85.9   5:15p  57.0   6:00a   1.6   8.7  0.00   
 7  74.0  88.1   4:15p  57.2   6:00a   1.5  10.5  0.00   
 8  80.3  94.8   4:00p  63.2   3:30a   0.1  15.4  0.00   
 9  81.9  92.9   2:45p  69.9   6:30a   0.0  17.0  0.00   
10  80.2  92.1   3:00p  70.8   3:30a   0.0  15.2  0.00   
11  73.6  79.6   4:15p  59.0  11:30p   0.3   8.9  0.00   
12  68.7  81.6   3:45p  55.0   1:45a   2.7   6.4  0.00   
13  64.8  78.1   6:00p  49.1   6:45a   4.4   4.2  0.00   
14  68.3  84.3   4:30p  51.8   5:30a   3.7   7.0  0.02   
15  68.7  82.3   6:00p  54.9   7:00a   2.0   5.7  0.00   
16  68.8  84.0   3:30p  51.9   7:00a   3.4   7.2  0.00   
17  69.3  74.6   7:00p  65.0   6:30a   0.0   4.3  0.13   
18  74.7  87.0   5:45p  62.5   2:45a   0.3  10.0  0.25   
19  71.3  80.0   3:15p  62.3  12:00m   0.1   6.4  0.49   
20  65.2  76.2   4:45p  53.7   6:45a   3.5   3.7  0.00   
21  64.9  77.7   6:15p  49.2   7:00a   4.3   4.2  0.00   
22  66.6  80.4   4:30p  49.9   6:00a   4.1   5.7  0.00   
23  68.7  81.6   2:00p  52.5   5:00a   3.0   6.7  0.00   
24  69.8  81.7   4:30p  61.9   4:30a   0.7   5.5  0.00   
25  65.8  75.8  11:30a  59.1   5:30a   1.3   2.2  0.16   
26  67.5  75.9   3:15p  56.9   6:45a   2.0   4.6  0.11   
27  73.9  87.5   5:30p  65.3   3:45a   0.0   8.9  1.56   
28  74.2  82.8   5:45p  65.9   7:00a   0.0   9.2  0.03   
29  72.4  84.7   4:15p  59.9   5:45a   0.9   8.3  0.00   
30  74.1  86.6   4:45p  60.9   5:30a   0.7   9.7  0.00   
31  76.8  92.2   5:30p  60.8   6:45a   0.7  12.6  0.00   
--------------------------------------------------------
    71.0  94.8     8    48.1     2    51.2 238.0  2.87   

Max >=  90.0:  4
Max <=  32.0:  0
Min <=  32.0:  0
Min <=   0.0:  0
Max Rain: 1.56 ON 07/27/07
Days of Rain: 9 (>.01 in) 7 (>.1 in) 1 (>1 in)

Getting Things Ready

2007-07-22T20:20:00.001-04:00

For the first time ever, the Liberty sits in the right bay of my garage. There's nothing in the left bay, the space left open for the Stratus R/T when it pulls into the garage, likely on Friday.

In order to make everything fit I had to condense my stuff into the northwest corner of my garage. In a way it looks like a real garage for the first time...before I had the Jeep sitting in the left bay and all my stuff scattered throughout the right bay...now I have to keep things condensed and organized in order to fit two vehicles in the garage.

I BOUGHT A CAR!

2007-07-17T22:03:00.000-04:00

That last post I made about a 2008 Wrangler Unlimited...disregard.

In the end I decided to stick with the two car plan. On Saturday my parents found more or less the exact car I was looking for in Van Wert, OH...so I drove home today, test drove it, and bought it.

It's a 2002 Dodge Stratus R/T Coupe in Indy Red...it has a sunroof, autostick (semi-auto transmission), and a nice tan leather interior. It has 34,000 miles, somewhat more than I wanted, but the car is in very nice shape for its age...I'll also likely only be putting no more than 6,000-7,000 miles a year on it. I got it for what I thought was a very fair price.

There are a few minor touch-up things they need to do to it, so I'll be taking delivery the middle of next week. Below are a couple pics I took tonight after I completed the deal:

UPDATE:

I forgot to add one of the most important things - the thing drove spectacularly. It was (and will be!) an absolute blast to drive. It was very comfortable, in fact it felt like I'd been driving it for years - it took no getting used to at all...which is strange since I've exclusively driven a high-sitting, heavy SUV for almost four years now. It also looks fantastic. It needs some stone chips touched up on the nose and some other touch-up work done, but when I'm through getting it spiffied up, it will turn heads.

First Trail Ride

2007-07-12T14:49:00.000-04:00

Location: Oak Openings Metropark
Distance: 5.83 miles
Avg. Speed: 9.0 mph
Max. Speed: 18.0 mph

This was a lot of fun. Brian and I went mountain biking this morning over at Oak Openings. I had a slew of bike trouble at the start (loose handlebars, locked disc brake, derailed chain), but once I got everything fixed I had no further difficulty.

My Jeep full-suspension bike took the bumps and terrain with no problem whatsoever, it was a very comfortable ride...I could definitely feel the suspension doing it's job. My new gel seat pad improved things greatly as well.

I was also very impressed with my new CamelBak water backpack. It made keeping hydrated very easy, and also gave me room to take my old 2.0 megapixel camera along with me. I bought the backpack because my bike design isn't conducive to mounting a water bottle on it.

I'm most happy with how well my body took this ride. I was worried that I would wear out after just a few miles, but I felt very good throughout the ride and never felt like calling it a day early. We only stopped twice, once to take pictures and again to allow three deer to cross the trail ahead of us. I think next time I could go a little farther without any problem.

Oak Openings is an extraordinarily beautiful park. There are many variations in terrain and types of trees and plants...a dream for any nature buff. I don't know enough about tree types and whatnot to really understand the significance, but nonetheless it is a great place to ride bikes or hike. Below are a few pictures I took:

Some huge pine trees along the trail

Our bikes at rest

Trip to Maumee Bay

2007-07-12T14:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had to go east of the river to pick up a FedEx package, so I figured since I was over in that area, I'd might as well go to the beach over at Maumee Bay State Park and also check out the new Veterans Glass City Skyway bridge just east of downtown Toledo.

As always, click on the pictures for a high resolution, non-blurry version.

The beach at Maumee Bay State Park

The wind was very strong out of the north, excellent conditions for windsurfing

The Toledo Lighthouse at full 12x zoom - the photo is also cropped. The lighthouse is actually very far away in this shot...it's in the middle of Maumee Bay

I crossed the new bridge on the way home from the lake, but didn't get any pictures. It is a very nice looking bridge, especially from afar. I look forward to seeing it all lit up at night sometime.

New Jeep Ad

2007-07-07T11:41:00.000-04:00

JK Wranglers Recalled/Final Car Decision

2007-07-04T00:30:00.000-04:00

It was bound to happen before too long. The "fix" is a re-flash of the Totally Integrated Power Module -- supposedly a software version which was installed on some 80,000+ Wranglers and Dodge Nitros was buggy. Hopefully this is truly the fix that JK owners have been clamoring for. If so, it's yet another first-year-of-the-model glitch that won't be showing up on the 2008 models.

Speaking of the 2008 models...I've made a decision, and I believe it's my final decision. There won't be any more waffling back and forth between, "do I get two vehicles or stick with one", or the like. I said back in March that I absolutely would not own a 2007 Wrangler because they were so buggy...and that remains true...I won't own a 2007 Wrangler.

At the time, I shifted my plans toward buying two used cars...and that was the plan through last week, but my experience testing that Sebring (which was not a nice car at all) led me to a few realizations:

With overall cost, tax, insurance, and maintenance, going the two car route will never be the more economical route. The only real advantage to going that route would be to have a second vehicle with better fuel economy in case of a gas shortage...something that cannot be predicted with any certainty (remember, "experts" thought gas would be $4.00/gal today...it's $2.79/gal here).
I will have a difficult time being happy with a used car. Most people aren't as meticulous and downright car-crazy as I am...and I don't think I'll find anything "perfect" enough for me.
The auctions aren't producing the great deals I hoped for...it's possible I was just extraordinarily lucky when we found my Liberty.

A few other things also have happened: I've warmed up to the look of the 4-door Wrangler, and I've become more accepting toward the additional cost of the 4-door over the 2-door. After 65 years of the classic CJ/Wrangler design, it took me a while to get used to the look of a 4-door stretch, but after having seen more and more of them in person, they're not that bad...they actually look really cool with the top down. And they are the automotive equivalent to a Swiss Army knife...it will do anything, except deliver good fuel mileage.

Between my acceptance of the design, the elimination of most of the first-year bugs, and the pitfalls of the two-car strategy, it's settled: I'm buying a brand-spanking-new 2008 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, ordered to my specifications. Soon too, this month for sure. The only problem is I won't be getting it soon. Demand is so high that many who ordered 2007s have had their build pushed back to a 2008...so I'll have to get in a long line. I won't be getting the thing until sometime between Labor Day and Christmas, most likely. It should be sweet, though. I'll have more on colors and options once I place the order.

Kilt Twins Become Geek Mag Coverboys

2007-06-27T01:31:00.000-04:00

This isn't a joke, either. They entered their picture in a contest with Wired magazine and won! Congratulations, Brian and Micah!! The now legendary kilts are part of a funny story involving the abominable FAA Imposed Work Rules, the dress code, loopholes, and outright defiance.

And now by appearing on a limited circulation version of this month's Wired cover, they have etched their place in the annals of geekdom. ;-)

Watching the Jeep "Stall Bug"

2007-06-27T00:08:00.000-04:00

As I've referenced in several previous posts, the 2007 Jeep Wrangler (JK) has a serious issue with stalling at highway speed. Basically, the vehicle cuts out (losing engine power, power steering, power brakes, radio, lights, etc) for around 2-5 seconds, and then everything comes back on as if nothing happened. Depending on one's traffic situation, this could obviously be quite dangerous.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is now investigating complaints on this issue. Their press release cited 53 complaints, but it's obvious from reading the several Jeep online forums that the problem is much more widespread than that, affecting a large percentage of the JK population. It appears that many JK owners have taken the power blips in stride, without turning the occurrences in to their dealers or the NHTSA.

Some new posts to www.jk-forum.com have me hopeful that a solution has possibly at long last been found. A poster said that he called several different dealers in his area and all said the throttle control harness needs replaced. With several dealers apparently on the same page, it seems that corporate is finally engaged in fixing the issue. Hopefully we will see a resolution here in the next several weeks.

This is important to me because, while I have hopefully found my car, the Wrangler TJ market has dried up around here. My dealer in Indiana isn't finding any on the auction circuit, and I'm finding no good candidates at the local dealers or on the internet search engines (in the home of Jeep, no less). The JKs have been out for nearly a year now, and in less than a month the plant down the street will be cranking out 2008s. This means that, since the corporate auctions are typically made up of late model vehicles, I might have to get a JK in order to get the features and low mileage I desire. If this turns out to be the case, I'm optimistic that most of these annoying first-year bugs will have fixes by the time I get one.

Jeep JT

2007-06-23T19:40:00.000-04:00

This little truck based on the JK Wrangler is a concept developed by Chrysler's "SkunkWerks". There's no word on production, but I would doubt it. As cool as it is, for actual sales it would only appeal to a small niche group. I certainly wouldn't find it useful, although I would like to see this color on a Wrangler Sahara.

For a full, hi-res photo album of this vehicle, click here.

I wonder if the JT stalls all the time, too?

Bike Issues

2007-06-20T17:22:00.000-04:00

I was all set to go biking tomorrow morning...I bought a new seat cushion and a hydration pack, I pumped up the tires and went for a short test ride. The last step was to put the bike in the Jeep...

Uh oh.

Putting the bike inside the Jeep was always going to be a temporary solution; I was going to get a bike rack eventually, but I wanted to wait until I bought the Jeep's replacement (yes, it's still coming soon...hopefully) so I would have one that would be guaranteed to work for a while.

To make a long story short, the bike doesn't fit in the back of the Jeep. It comes close, but it won't squeeze in there. This surprised me, but it's a pretty tall bike. So now for one, I probably can't go riding tomorrow, and two, my hand has been forced on buying a bike rack. I'm researching it today and I'll probably be buying tomorrow so I can hopefully have the thing by next weekend. I'm probably going to get a spare tire mount rack that will work both on my Liberty and the prospective Wrangler (which I'm getting a little impatient with). Chances are too low that my Wrangler will have a trailer hitch for me to go with a hitch mount. Hitch mounts are substantially more expensive, too.

Toledo-based 180th FW F-16 Down in Iraq; Pilot Killed

2007-06-16T02:40:00.000-04:00

It's a very tragic piece of news for everyone, especially for those of us who work with the Air Guard on a daily basis. Word is that the crash was an accident - indeed it is highly unlikely that the aircraft would have been brought down by enemy or friendly fire. Although the F-16 does have a pretty good safety record, it is definitely not uncommon for them to have "issues" that require emergency handling. So from that standpoint, it's not a surprise that an aircraft was lost; it is just so incredibly sad that the pilot was lost as well.

Thoughts and prayers go out to the 180th servicemen/women and their families - for a safe remainder of their deployment and a safe return home.

Online Data Is Up

2007-06-15T00:43:00.000-04:00

I decided to go ahead and do it...it turns out the unit that's plugged into the computer has it's own barometer and thermometer, so all the extraneous data that was in the main display console won't be sent out. I have the data uploading to Weather Underground...the main data updates every 2.5 seconds, and full data is uploaded every 5 minutes (I might back that down to every 15 minutes in the future). My station ID is KOHSYLVA2 and you can link to my station's site here or by clicking the sticker on the right side of this page.

My station is also showing up on Weather Underground's Google Earth map.

Weather Station Installed!

2007-06-14T15:59:00.000-04:00

My dad and grandma came up to my house today to help me put up my weather station. It went up pretty easy. We decided to place it near the back of my property near the center (to keep it from being too close to the neighbors' yards)...this placement maximizes the reception of easterly winds while keeping the anemometer low enough to be easily accessed and hidden from the street.

I decided to use a treated 4x4 although I placed it at the edge of the property. Compared to pipe, it's more rigid, cheaper, and looks more natural. Overall, I'm very happy with the placement and look of the station.

As always, you can click on the photos below to view them in high resolution.

The outdoor sensors. On the left, the white box is the solar panels and wireless transmitter, the black cylinder is the rain gauge, and the white piece hanging below the rain gauge is the thermometer/hygrometer. On the right is, of course, the anemometer.

The display console is placed next to the patio door, near my living room chair for easy viewing. Not the prettiest thing hanging on my walls, but definitely the coolest!

The next step is to install the computer hardware and software, and start recording data to both my hard drive and the internet. I kind of dread doing this because I have a tendency to break stuff on the computer when I install new hardware. Regardless, I'll probably get started on this tonight. I'll post links to my data when it's up on the net.

UPDATE:

So far the station is working very well. I'm happy with how well I'm receiving the northeast wind. I'm going to hold off on setting up the "online edition" until at least tomorrow, because I have erroneous data from today...the barometer was initially not taking my elevation above sea level into account, so it spent the entire afternoon correcting itself. I don't want to publish that I was reporting an erroneous 990mb pressure earlier today, so I'll wait until I have at least a full day's worth of quality data.

Boo GoogleSync

2007-06-14T00:21:00.000-04:00

Up until tonight, I was using GoogleSync to synchronize my Firefox bookmarks between my desktop and laptop computers. Since I rarely use my desktop computer to surf the internet, I decided tonight to start up Firefox on the desktop for the first time in a while and synch over all of my laptop bookmarks. Well, what happened instead was around 85% of my laptop bookmarks got zapped. That was like the last thing I needed to have happen. I don't know if it was because I had two different versions of Firefox (laptop has 2.0.0.4, desktop had 2.0.0.3 at the time of the disaster), or what. GoogleSync never seemed to work well with Firefox; I always had odd, random bookmark separators showing up.

So now I'm doing two things: I'm (angrily) completely redoing my laptop bookmarks, and I'm no longer using GoogleSync. From now on I'll just copy my bookmarks file over to my desktop every once in a while.

Weather Station Received

2007-06-13T17:57:00.000-04:00

UPS delivered the Weather Station today. It's a nice, high-quality piece of equipment. I'm very impressed with design of both the instruments and the display console. The entire thing won't be very difficult to install once the post is planted in the ground and leveled.

That all having been said, I'm disappointed in that I don't think my data will be of much value outside of my own curiosity. The anemometer (wind indicator) will be next to useless, I'm afraid. I'm not allowed by association covenants to mount the thing where it needs to be in order to get accurate readings. If I place the anemometer where I'm planning on placing the rain and temperature instruments, it will not register east, northeast, and southeast winds. If I place the anemometer up a little bit on the back of the house, it probably wouldn't help much. It needs to be on the peak of the roof to come close, and I can't do that. Unfortunately, inaccurate wind readings will negatively affect other weather station products, like wind chill and the forecast.

I might be installing it tomorrow...my dad and I both have the day off, and the weather will be favorable. But, there is so much left up in the air with exactly where I'm going to place everything that I may want to wait and figure out how to get it right first instead of rushing it. It will require some research and a little creativity.

UPDATE:

The station will be going up tomorrow. I'm still undecided as I write this as to where it will go, but my dad and I will decide that quickly tomorrow. If it goes out at the edge of my property, I'll be mounting it on a 1 1/2" pipe. If I place it next to my patio, I'll be mounting it on a treated 4x4. I'm hoping someday to have a better placement for the anemometer than I'll have tomorrow. I'll have pictures up tomorrow or Friday.

Geekery: I Bought a Weather Station

2007-06-07T01:25:00.000-04:00

A home weather station, that is. I've always wanted some sort of weather equipment so I could have temperature and humidity information at a glance, and being a big-time weather geek, I wanted a good one. Well, I didn't want to skimp, so I went for it and got a Davis Vantage Pro 2 Wireless.

The dang thing does it all. It will more or less tell you everything an airport weather station will except for visibility and cloud cover (those sensors cost tens of thousands of dollars). Along with the items pictured above, I also bought the connector and software necessary to share my data online, and also a specialized wireless router which will allow me to mount the display console in my living room and retransmit the data to the router in my office, which will be connected to the computer (and the internet) 24/7. So...you can imagine it got pretty pricey. But, weather is both a passion and a hobby for me, and there's nothing wrong with dropping some coin on your hobbies.

Given the fact I live in a housing addition with strict covenants and restrictions, I was very concerned about whether or not they would let me install the outdoor instruments. I checked with both the developer and an association trustee, and they didn't think there would be a problem. In fact, the small size of the instruments (especially the anemometer) might allow me to take some liberties. I'm also concerned about keeping those ubiquitous paper wasps from building nests in the outdoor sensors.

A neat thing about this setup is I will be able to check things like rainfall rates and rainfall storm totals remotely, provided I have internet access, which means I'll have a much better idea of potential basement flooding crises when I'm out of town. Also I'll be able to provide data to the area mesonet, which is composed of data from both airport stations and personal weather stations. If I mount my anemometer high enough, the data might even be useful to the National Weather Service (it's unlikely I'll do this at my current residence).

Another result of this will be a second website that will display all my weather data in real time. My data will also be seen on The Weather Underground, and probably some other sites as well. This new website would be a sister site to this one, but this site might eventually become a segment of the new one...we'll see. In any event, this will be a fun new toy. I just ordered it tonight, so it will probably several days before I get it, and several weeks before it's operational.

Blue Ridge Parkway

2007-06-02T00:43:00.000-04:00

A more beautiful drive through the mountains you would be hard-pressed to find. It's hard to imagine how much better it would be in an open-topped vehicle in the fall with all the colors. As it was - a sunny day in late May - it was fantastic.

The beginning of the ascent

Tunnel entry "speed shot". There were many tunnels on this section of the Parkway.

Along the Parkway there are many overlook areas where you can pull off to the side. Each overlook has a sign marking the location and elevation.

The Parkway is a simple, narrow two-lane road

The pinnacle. By any standard, this is "waaay up there!"

NOTE: This photo set, more than the others, shows how degraded the photo quality has to be in order to fit in my template. Simply click on the photos to view them in a much higher resolution. This works for my other photo posts as well.

More From The Outer Banks

2007-06-02T00:27:00.001-04:00

I've been back for around a week and a half, but I've been neglecting posting pictures. This will be a two-parter, first some more OBX stuff, and then the Blue Ridge Parkway:

Hatteras Light, up close and personal

The quaint island town of Manteo

The Manteo town weather tower, one of only a few left in existence

The magnificent Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse in Manteo is a 2004 reproduction of a 19th Century structure which was set on piles in the middle of the sound

NC

2007-05-20T16:00:00.000-04:00

I'm not working air traffic in Toledo right now, and I'm loving it. I just wrapped up 2 1/2 days at the beach at the North Carolina Outer Banks. Thursday and Friday were rainy and nasty...the temp might have reached 60 for a couple minutes between those days...it was mostly in the upper-50s. Yesterday was far better - about 65-70 and sunny. Still not perfect beach weather by any means, but I had a great time...proving a nasty day at OBX is still better than 95% of nice days at home.

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

The Definitive OBX Automobile

Big Surf at Cape Hatteras

At Cape Hatteras National Seashore, when you drive to the beach, you really drive to the beach! (provided you have a 4x4)

Right now I'm in Asheville, NC - in the mountains. Tomorrow I'll be traveling the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountain National Park, which should create many more great photo opportunities.

Major Thunderstorms

2007-05-01T17:21:00.000-04:00

Today has been quite a day for thunderstorms so far. We were predicted to have a slight chance of severe thunderstorms today, but the general thinking was it would be a squall line ahead of the cold front later this evening. Instead, a complex of small tornadic supercells has developed along the warm front, right in this general vicinity.

So far the majority of this activity has been to my south, and it appears that it will remain so. Earlier we had tornado warnings for Wood County, and right now we have tornado warnings bracketing this area...right now in Hillsdale County, MI and Lucas and Wood counties here in Ohio. I just got a good listen of the tornado sirens about 10 minutes ago, but the dangerous part of the storm is around 10 miles south of me. There have been reports of tornadoes touching down south of Wauseon and again near Waterville...lots of reports of quarter to golf ball size hail, too.

EDIT: There are now tornado warnings for Fulton and Henry counties, along with a funnel being tracked near Bowling Green...so there's stuff happening all over the place. This is the worst cluster of tornadic storms I've seen in this area in a long time.

I took a couple of pictures earlier today before the bulk of the severe weather began:

Below is a picture of the cumulonimbus that resulted in the first tornado warning of the day in Wood County. This picture is from when it was just west of the airport.

Below is a picture of some mammatus clouds that were directly overhead my house, during the second storm of the day. Not the most impressive looking mammatus ever, but definitely mammatus.

UPDATE: Lucas County is now under it's second tornado warning of the day...Wood County is under it's THIRD tornado warning of the day. All staying south of me thankfully.

Finally, An Online Photo Album

2007-04-29T19:29:00.000-04:00

It took me long enough, but I finally established an online home for my digital photos, in order to both share them and back them up. I set up a Flickr Pro account, which only costs around $2/month and gives me unlimited upload space and unlimited bandwidth. It's only restriction is that photos can't be any larger than 10mb each, which will never be a factor with my current camera (my max res pictures are around 1.5mb).

Although I show occasional "flashes" of brilliance, most of my pictures are nothing to write home about. I mainly wanted to have an online backup of my photos, in case my writable media ever fails me. I do have quite a few really cool shots that I want to share with the world, though.

Flickr has a ton of really neat features. Using an online map, I "geotag" my pictures - this displays on the map where the pictures were taken, and also gives the location of where a picture was taken in the lower right portion of the individual picture's page. Flickr also gives the capability of sharing photos between friends or interest groups. I'm currently a member of the "OBX" and "Lighthouse Lovers" groups, and I'll probably join quite a few more groups soon.

Since you can view all of the pictures that Flickr members make public, one of the most fun things to do on the site is look at everyone else's masterpieces. It's inspiring to look at so many high quality, professional looking shots - it makes me want to learn more about photography and take more interesting, higher quality pictures. I'm hoping to learn some tips and tricks I can use for my trip next month to the Outer Banks.

You can find a link to my Flickr photo album on the right side of the page near the top, in the green section, under the heading "Me, Elsewhere."

Storm-Based Warnings Coming This Fall

2007-04-15T18:38:00.000-04:00

Beginning in October, the National Weather Service will begin issuing warnings for tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, flash floods, and marine hazards based on storm size, direction, and location as opposed to their current method of county-based warnings. For example, this means instead of issuing a warning for, say, Allen County Indiana, a warning will be issued for a discrete polygon drawn on a map by an NWS meteorologist. I'm assuming by debuting this in October, they will be using this year's severe weather season as a test for this new method.

There are still quite a few unanswered questions in regard to how this will work. How will the the weather radios with SAME technology, which use FIPS codes that function with the Emergency Alert System on a county-by-county basis, adapt to this new method? How will the television warning graphics adapt? I'm sure this is all worked out already, but I haven't found information on it yet. It will be interesting to see how this works when it comes online in October.

The National Weather Service Storm-Based Warnings page is here.

Will It Blend?

2007-04-08T19:31:00.000-04:00

This is great. A commercial blender manufacturer proves the mettle of their product by doing all sorts of "don't try this at home" demonstrations.

Many more videos at www.willitblend.com.

The Wheels Are In Motion

2007-03-30T12:43:00.000-04:00

Pun intended.

I talked to the car dealer today and gave him some paperwork that outlines what I'm looking for in my next Jeep and car. He's going to try to acquire the vehicles through the same process we used to get my Liberty 4 years ago. It shouldn't be a problem getting the vehicles, but it could take a while (several months) to find the right ones. Since I'm not in a big hurry, it should work out well.

The only concern is they stopped making the Stratus R/T in 2005, so one might be harder to find. That's worrisome because I would ideally like to get the car before the Jeep. Hopefully we can eventually find one somewhere. If you're thinking, "a Stratus? Are you nuts?", let me explain. The coupe shares underpinnings with the Mitsubishi Eclipse and Gallant. The R/T model, which is what I'm angling for, is not a muscle car but it's pretty quick for what it is, and it shares no parts with it's Stratus sedan cousin. The coupe definitely deserves a name that doesn't make one think "boring family car."

The Jeep shouldn't be hard to find and I should be able to acquire a low-mileage 2005 or 06 in my price range without much trouble. I just worry about getting a Wrangler (and having to trade or otherwise sell the Liberty in the process), still waiting on the car, and be stuck with just the Wrangler for a couple of months. I could live with this scenario, but I really don't want to have to...if it happens though, I'll just deal with it.

Testing Out Plan B

2007-03-28T22:46:00.000-04:00

After deciding that a 2007 Jeep Wrangler would not be a good decision, based on its current quality control issues and other factors, I decided to move forward on my fall-back plan today by test driving one of the previous-generation Wranglers, the TJ. I drove a 2004 TJ Sahara this morning in Van Wert, OH.

The TJ is different from the JK, but not overwhelmingly so. The interior is narrower and more cramped, it doesn't feel as refined, and it doesn't have all of the modern goodies that are now on the JK like power windows, power locks, and side airbags, but in their absence the TJ has a much more utilitarian Jeep-like feel. You feel like you're driving something that could be running around on a battlefield somewhere. In the TJ one can really feel the link to the old military Jeeps, where the JK drives much more like any old SUV.

On the plus side, rear visibility is much better than the JK, the pedal feel is much better, the engine is very loud and obnoxious (I thought the JK engine was way too quiet), and in my opinion, the TJ is a better-looking vehicle. And it's more mechanical and less electronic than the JK...and given the JK's massive electronic bugs, that's a good thing. Most all of the bugs are worked out of the 2004-06 TJs...they're very solid vehicles. And it also comes with the world famous, bulletproof 4.0L I6 engine, which can be good for 200,000+ miles if well maintained.

However, the TJ is definitely not as comfortable to drive overall, compared to the JK. The interior storage space is far less...it's just small on the inside. You had better be good friends with the person sitting in the passenger seat, because they're right next to you! The TJ would not work for me as my only vehicle, period.

The good news is a.) it's not intended to be my only vehicle, and b.) I want one...bad. I still have some dealing to do, but it looks like by the end of summer (at the very latest), the Liberty will be replaced by two low-mileage vehicles for which someone else has taken the big depreciation hit, and together cost about the same as a 2007 Wrangler. That's at least the goal...we'll see how it goes.

Another Jeep Delay -- This One Not So Slight

2007-03-20T20:53:00.000-04:00

It's going to be a while yet before I get a new Jeep. Unfortunately, an almost unbelievable array of problems have arisen with the new model, some so severe that there is no way I'll buy one until they're resolved. I might have to wait until the '08s come out, if not longer.

The most unacceptable problem is one that causes the vehicle to simply shut off for at least 2 seconds, sometimes 10 seconds, sometimes permanently. The engine stalls, all the electrical components shut off, and you're dead in the water...and it doesn't matter how fast you're going, what gear you're in, or what you're doing. It's completely random...but it has happened to so many different JK owners so far that the chances of it happening to me would be very high. It's a very widespread problem that I believe rests in the power control module.

A recall of all 2007 models to fix this issue is expected, but apparently DCX isn't able to identify the specific problem yet. I think this issue is extremely serious because it is already known to have caused minor fender-benders and close calls, and has the potential to cause a devastating accident. I don't need a new Jeep that bad.

There are other annoying quality control problems that are creeping up...weird electrical glitches, loose exterior parts, an interior that scratches easily, etc. Now it is very common for problems like this to exist with the first year of a new model, and it is also very common for a slew of fixes to come to the second year of a new model. My current Jeep is the second year of what was then a new model, and it has been all but bulletproof. The first year Liberties had their problems, too. I have high hopes that the 2008 Wranglers will have similar improvements. But unless some fixes and recalls are announced soon, I won't be buying a 2007 Wrangler. I'll either wait to see if the 2008s are vastly improved, or do something different altogether (i.e. Jeep TJs don't stall).

Regardless, I'm glad that I decided to read a lot of owner comments before I made a final decision to order; it probably saved me some grief and heartache.

Slight Jeep Delay

2007-03-10T23:45:00.000-05:00

Or at least I hope it's slight. I want a late-availability feature, the Sunrider soft top, which allows for partial as well as full retraction. When the top becomes available, it will be a standard feature. It's hard to get definitive word on when the top will begin to be installed at the factory, but everything I've seen says Job #1 is 3/19. Now, I don't know whether that means they will begin to be installed 3/19, or if they will be available for order 3/19...so I'm going to play it safe and wait until at least 3/19 before I order...that will at least give me some time to figure out what's going on.

It will also give me some more time to consider color. I saw my first actual photograph of a black/khaki 2-door today...and my first reaction wasn't entirely enthusiastic. I thought it would look a lot sharper. What do y'all think??

I like the color combo (it's growing on me), but I think Jeep Green/khaki or some other combo with a black top might look a tad better...I'll have to think a little more about it. Problem is, there are just a few color combos that don't look good. It's hard to decide which of the good choices is the best.

Hopefully the soft top and color issues are worked out in a couple of weeks so I can get this thing going. I'm set on all my other options and am very confident that this is the vehicle for me. I hope that waiting an additional week or two to order doesn't screw up the timing and shove me to 2008 allocation. I can't believe the demand for these things!!

Some New Weather Features

2007-02-22T23:19:00.000-05:00

As we are now only a week away from the beginning of Meteorological Spring, I'm working on adding some enhanced severe weather features to the site.

The best new things are the Day 1 and Day 2 Severe Weather Outlook maps from the Storm Prediction Center. They fit very well on the right-side column and a click of either map will take you directly to the SPC's outlook page. Less impressive is the active regional radar loop. It's a direct port of an approximately 500x400 radar image, so it's resolution is marginal at best. If it wasn't for the lakes giving a good point of reference, the map would be worthless. I'm not sure whether I'm going to keep the low-res loop or go back to the better-res still image. Clicking the map brings up the full-res image.

Some additional new features may be on the way as well, as I look for some more cool weather stuff.

I also amended the blog archive from a hierarchy to a simple pull-down menu, in order to free up space on the right-side column.

XM AND SIRIUS TO MERGE

2007-02-19T15:12:00.000-05:00

Wow.

Although it was rumored for a long time, I never thought it would actually happen. It is reported as being a "merger of equals" where the heads of both companies will have a role in the new merged company. The CEO of Sirius will be CEO of the new company.

Not very many other details are available yet. One of the few things that has been said is that there will be an "a la carte" option, which hopefully means I can opt out of getting Howard Stern and subsequently save some money. I'm not sure what this will mean for subscription costs...I don't really expect a rise in rates, because even though there will no longer be any actual satellite radio competition, it won't be a true monopoly because of the options of listening to terrestrial radio, CDs, iPods, etc. This all, of course, is subject to approval by Federal anti-trust regulators.

More concern comes from what happens with the hardware. Sirius and XM have very different satellite orbit methods and operate on different frequency bands. I assume that big changes are going to come in this area. Many more details are to come, I'm sure.

I am really looking forward to this merger because although I like XM's programming better overall (and am subscribed to XM), there are quite a few channels on Sirius that I wish I had (Radio Margaritaville, the NFL, NA$CAR...), to the point I at one time considered subscribing to both. It will be incredibly interesting to see what the combined channel lineup will look like. This is all pretty exciting to this satellite radio fan.

Daytona Wrapup

2007-02-18T23:28:00.000-05:00

I could just as easily titled this entry "The Death of Racing", but that would imply that it didn't already die several years ago.

In many ways this was a typical Daytona 500: a 150 lap parade followed by a 50 lap demolition derby. It did provide an exciting finish, but it was a finish that typifies why racing is no longer with us.

Ryan Newman, fellow Purdue alumnus, was doing incredibly well for the majority of the race. He spent most of the time in the top-5, and looked to have a car capable of contending. He went out around 3/4 of the way through with "engine trouble." That's all the television coverage said: "Newman has retired with engine trouble." Gee thanks, TV guys. Now I know the guy's name isn't Earnhardt, Gordon, or Stewart, and he doesn't drive a Toyota, but I think a little more in-depth coverage is required for a guy who was a threat to win and all of a sudden goes to the garage. At least tell us the nature of the problem (a fluke malfunction, driver error, a potential chronic problem that might afflict other Dodges, etc.), maybe even get an interview. Nothing. That was really pathetic.

Now onto the finish. See, NA$CAR has this little rule that when the caution flag comes out, the standings are immediately frozen...no racing back to the finish line. They also have had this little rule, at least since the 1940s, that says when cars start spinning, hitting the wall, and sliding upside-down along the track, the caution flag comes out.

Today, NA$CAR decided to alter the rules to provide a spectacular finish. A huge wreck occurred coming out of turn 4 on the final lap, involving cars third place on back. They didn't throw the caution until the first two cars crossed the finish line, allowing a race to the checkered flag. Now I'm all for racing back to the finish line...I think deciding to not allow it was one of the nails in racing's coffin...but NA$CAR needs to be consistent in their application of the rules, even if it means the show won't be quite as dramatic.

Basically, the reason I think racing, at least in NA$CAR, is dead is because they're gradually taking racing out of it. Killing the race back to the flag is part of it, homogenizing the cars is another part of it, and one of the one's that really displayed today...the pit lane rules...are another part of it.

In my opinion, the slow agonizing death of NA$CAR began when they disallowed racing on the pit lane. It was done in an attempt to make the pits safer (after all, when the cars are only going 55 in the pits instead of 120, how can't it be safer?). Here's how. Along with instituting a pit speed limit, they also decided to close the pit lane immediately when a caution comes out. What this means is that the cars have to form up behind the pace car before they can pit. This causes all 40-odd cars to pit at the same time instead of scattered cars diving into the pits before they form the pacing line. 40 cars on the pit lane at the same time causes chaos and danger. Just today there was one accident and a couple of crewman injuries. Just about every Daytona 500 for the past 15+ years has had accidents and crewman injuries on pit lane. Not to mention how it's commonplace in the 35 other races as well. It's idiocy that defies common sense, as a measure that's supposed to make things safer actually makes things more dangerous.

I guess the same could be said about the "temporary solution" restrictor plates, which are still "temporarily" in use 20 years after the fact, but I digress.

Congratulations to Kevin Harvick; that was a heckuva power move that last half lap. It's just a shame that even a finish as good and close as that can be marred by NA$CAR's inconsistency and stupidity.

Is GM Going to Buy Chrysler??

2007-02-17T00:54:00.000-05:00

Maybe, according to many news stories that have emerged in the past few days. The story, in essence, is that Daimler Benz bought the highly profitable Chrysler Corporation in 1998, sucked it dry, and is trying to spit out the carcass. There are many possible scenarios including a spin-off, a buyout by a non-automotive entity, or a buyout by another auto manufacturer. Possible buyers, outside of GM, would be Renault or (worst case of all) one of the Chinese companies.

I would most prefer to see a spin-off or a private consortium buy Chrysler. If it has to be a carmake buying Chrysler, I hope it is GM. It would keep the company's remains here at home, and it would (hopefully) help GM in the fight against Toyota. It's an intriguing thought considering just how a GM/Chrysler marriage would play out. Would it just be platform sharing or a complete merger? Which (if any) nameplates would survive? Would my next Jeep actually be a Humm...mmf...umpf...whew...I just threw up there a little bit...I'm okay. I hope that doesn't happen. In all actuality, I think GM would value the Jeep nameplate.

Anyhow, there are tons of news stories on this, and I have to think where there's smoke, there's at least a little bit of fire. If nothing else, the two companies are talking at very high levels over something. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out...the impacts to the economy will be enormous.

Three Dog Night

2007-02-15T01:11:00.000-05:00

With the snowpack and the cloud cover only scattered tonight, it is getting COLD! The last temperature recording from the site closest to me, Toledo Suburban Airport, was -8°!! I haven't seen it that cold in a long time. Forecast low tonight was like 3°, but it is hard to accurately forecast the low temperature when perfect cooling conditions such as these exist.

Speaking of the snowpack, I finally found the official storm total snowfall for the area (courtesy NWS Cleveland):

...LUCAS COUNTY...
  TOLEDO                14.8  1100 AM  2/14 
  MAUMEE                 9.5  1100 AM  2/14 
  TOLEDO AIRPORT         8.9  1100 AM  2/14 
  SYLVANIA TWP           8.6  1100 AM  2/14 
  TOLEDO-PT PLACE        8.0  1100 AM  2/14

I'm dubious of that Toledo total, but the rest seem plausible. I didn't think that I got 8.6", but it's so hard to tell with all the blowing and drifting.

Winter Storm Update Final

2007-02-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

The storm's over. It stopped snowing at 7:00 this morning (or so I'm told...I wasn't actually awake then) after having snowed for about 24 hours straight. Given how long it snowed, we didn't get a whole lot. I'd say it was no more than 6 inches up here in Sylvania. There was far more snow to the south in places like Fort Wayne and Findlay.

It certainly wasn't a blizzard here...visibility never fell below a mile or so. Snowfall was always very light, but the blowing and drifting caused a significant problem. I had some 2' drifts in my driveway that my snowblower had major difficulty with. The county was under level 2 and 3 snow emergencies all day, so I'm glad I had today off.

The forecast hit very close to the mark, the snow line just fell a little south of where the computer models put it about 36 hours out; this was a very good showing for the models. I'm happy it wasn't more than a nuisance here. For the areas south and west of here - and in the northeast where they're getting buried today - the Blizzard of 2007 will be long remembered.

Major Site Update

2007-02-14T18:10:00.000-05:00

I changed to Blogger's new GUI-based template layout system and took the opportunity to change to an altogether new template. Beside the overall new look, you will see that there are some missing elements on the right sidebar, along with some new ones. The new layout editor will make it very simple to add and remove site elements, so I will be working to find replacements for the stuff I lost in the changeover. I'm an HTML idiot, so I'm skeptical that I'll be able to get my old sidebar elements integrated into the new template structure.

The main disadvantage of this new template is it requires any pictures I post to be narrower by about 40 pixels. I've edited the pictures on the current front page to comply, but any wide pictures in the archives might look a little funky.

More Fort Wayne Komets on YouTube

2007-02-14T00:31:00.000-05:00

More good stuff from the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum is showing up on YouTube. Below you'll see what a Komets goal looks (and sounds!) like from the upper arena, and perhaps the greatest save you'll ever see, period, courtesy of Kevin "Frenchy" St. Pierre.

Small Site Update

2007-02-14T00:02:00.000-05:00

Just a heads up for a small new feature on the site. On the right side panel under the Archives is my Google Reader shared items. What this is is a discrete website that will list items from blogs and other RSS feeds that I find interesting. Using Google Reader I read many news and blog sources, and if I find something I want to share, I'll tag it and it will show up at that link.

For more information about Google Reader, check out http://googlereader.blogspot.com/. It's a very useful tool.

Keep an eye on this link; I'll be posting stuff to it frequently!

Winter Storm Update #2

2007-02-13T14:20:00.000-05:00

Blizzard Warning.

The forecast I've been running on here the past few days is in the process of verifying. Latest reports out of Fort Wayne are very heavy snow falling with drifts beginning to pile up. Here at Toledo, not so much yet, but evidently it's coming.

Right now it isn't snowing hard at all. The wind is blowing at around 25 mph with gusts near 40 mph, causing what little snow has fallen to blow and drift all over the place. Evidently it's supposed to be much worse, because NWS Cleveland has just issued a Blizzard Warning for me here in Lucas County. This is the first time I've been under a blizzard warning, to my knowledge. I think it's mainly because of the high winds and blowing snow reducing visibility and wind chill. The official forecast for Toledo and Fort Wayne both is 8-16" in total.

So, it's a blizzard. I'm happy that I'm home safely for the weekend, and I have nowhere I really have to go. I only have to decide whether to blow off the driveway this evening or wait until it's all overwith tomorrow.

Winter Storm Update #1

2007-02-11T21:50:00.000-05:00

The latest run of the NAM computer model is complete. The general consensus among the meteorologists on the message boards?

Bullseye: Fort Wayne and Toledo.

Prepare for the biggest snowstorm in years, perhaps decades.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE 10:27pm SUNDAY:

The main snow line is still showing LAF-FWA-TOL. I'll call it 12-16" with very isolated amounts up to two feet. Someone, somewhere in this storm will get 24"+, it's just a matter of where...hopefully not here. This has the potential to be a legendary blizzard. Central and southern portions of Indiana and Ohio might get 1" or so of ice.

I just hope that everybody stays safe and that the power stays on...really, I hope that the storm track continues to trend south and takes us out of the heaviest snow band. Right now though, we're showing a track that will cause conditions reminiscent of the Blizzard of 1978...

Major Winter Storm Setting Up for Tuesday

2007-02-11T19:49:00.000-05:00

Heads up to everybody both in Fort Wayne and Toledo: a big, big storm is coming. A major snowstorm is developing is developing in the Colorado Rockies and will quickly move eastward through the middle of the week. It will remain very cold in this area which will keep the precipitation all snow...lots of snow.

The heaviest snow will likely fall in a narrow band...but that band is currently forecast to develop on a line from Fort Wayne to Toledo. The National Weather Service office in Northern Indiana is currently predicting 12-16" of snow to fall in this area, along with sustained winds of 35+ mph. Those conditions would likely lead to major whiteout conditions and basically every other thing consistent with the definition of blizzard.

Now there is a lot that can change between now and Tuesday. A slight shift in forecast track will mean a big difference in both snowfall amount and wind speed. Hopefully the forecast track will shift south and spare this area of the heavy snow or any mixed precipitation that could result from a northern shift. I'll update this as things change.

WORLD CHAMPION INDIANAPOLIS COLTS!!!

2007-02-04T22:21:00.000-05:00

THE COLTS ARE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!

2007-01-21T22:50:00.000-05:00

In shocking, unbelievable, record-setting fashion. I'm still in a state of shock...if I tried to speak, I probably wouldn't be coherent. I just can't believe it after what happened in the first half. Wow!!

Cautious Optimism a.k.a. Extreme Jitters

2007-01-18T02:16:00.000-05:00

Team Catalyst - Free Safety Bob Sanders

This is not good. It's only Wednesday night/Thursday morning, and I get nervous when I think about it. By Sunday, I may not be able to think at all.

Everything is in place. Our first AFC Championship game at home...we're 9-0 at home this year. The opponent: the arch-nemesis. The winner gets tickets to Miami.

This isn't huge. This is in some unknown realm that's well beyond huge. It's the culmination of over 20 years of personal football frustration. Enduring 1-15 seasons and awful first-round draft picks...later, being the favorite to win it all and then choking in spectacular fashion, year after year.

This is an aging team whose best chance to win it all many think has past. A loss on Sunday would be devastating, because the chance to make it this far may never come for this team again. I would see a win on Sunday as a monumental event regardless of what happens in Miami on Feb. 4. A win in Miami would be so big it would make all three recent Red Wings championships, combined, look insignificant to me. It would be by far this fan's greatest sports triumph.

I don't even want to think about this until Sunday...