It finally came. My bag of crap that I got on April 1st. Actually, I’ve had it for a couple weeks, but I’m just getting around to posting it now. Oh, and yes, there’s another woot-off going on.
2 3-ring binders
1 Targus Travel Bag
1 Wall-wart power supply for something….
1 PS3 Wireless Control
1 Headphone Ear-bud style
1 White Envelope
Although if I said the taxman got me, that would be a pretty good excuse, too. A quite a bit has been happening lately, so I’m sorry for the lack of updates. As you may have noticed to the left I took some new pictures. Mom & Dad’s 40th wedding anniversary was last weekend so we all went up to spend the weekend. Saturday night we went out to eat and then Sunday was used for moving things to Allison. Allison? Oh yeah… my parents sold the house in Clarksville and now are becoming “city folks” in Allison… well, that is if you can call living in Allison being “city folk.” The new house is really nice, but smaller than the farmhouse, so some thinning of the possessions has been going on.
At work, I guess I’m now “officially” trained on running ENG. For us, ENG is basically the tape playback person during the newscast. It’s a little stressful right before newstime, but I’m okay with that. I just wanted to finally get the chance to do something different once in a while.
For the new storm season I finally got my APRS tracker up and working again. This means all my stalkers can once again follow on my travels around town or even up and back from my trip to home this weekend. Java is required for this new map to work, but it should refresh itself. You can always find the link in the left sidebar called Track Ryan. Also, I’ll be leaving the live radar up for the weekend since there is a chance of light precipitation on Tuesday. Have a Happy Easter everyone.
I’ve added another new feature for the website… Live radar! Well, almost live anyway. If there is ever a threat for some active weather I will fire up the radar program and post them to this page. The page is set to automatically refresh the image when a new scan comes in. If you want to check if the radar is updating, look at the time stamp on the bottom right of the image. The time is in UTC, but you can still figure out the minutes to see how old the image is. Sometimes, images may be up to 10 minutes delayed. And, just so you don’t have to read this post every time or bookmark the page, there is now a link to the live radar along the left side of this page.
I finally had a good chance to head out and take my first lightning pictures with my new camera. For rushing it, I think I did pretty good. A few good pictures came out of the expedition. Now I need to add another item to my wishlist… a shutter release cable for the camera. Camera shake isn’t that big a deal for me, but you’d be surprised how cold your fingers feel when it’s only 53 out and raining.
Monday through Friday is Severe Weather Awareness Week in Iowa. Monday’s focus is NOAA All Hazards Radio. Want an incredibly easy way to keep your family safe? Get a weather radio. Actually, scratch that… get a weather radio, and use it! Just out of curiosity on Saturday I checked out the weather radio that the day care center had. It was plugged in, but the battery backup was dead which means sometime in the past the radio probably had lost its programming information so it wasn’t even receiving a signal. A simple way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to change your weather radio batteries and smoke/CO2 detector batteries when you change your clocks forwards and backwards for Daylight Saving Time.
And, just for you, the readers of my website, if you have a weather radio and have no idea how to use or program it, I’ll help you! Yep, that’s right… for an unlimited time only, if you ask for help on programming your weather radio I’ll help you get it setup right.
Also, since this is severe weather awareness week, there will be a tornado drill on Wednesday morning. So, if you’ve ever wanted to sign up for my SMS text alerts service for your county, now is the time to let me know. I’ll get it setup in time for the drill on Wednesday morning and you’ll get a chance to see what the text messages look like. The only requirement is that your cell phone must have an email address associated with it. If you don’t know what it is, that’s alright… I’ll probably just send messages to
I normally do something with my site on April 1st, but I decided against it. ?esrever ni si gnihtyreve nehw tsop siht gnidaer yrt ot tnaw uoy dluow ,yllaer ,naem I .tuoba gniklat m’I tahw aedi on evah ll’uoy ,daer ot gniyonna ylsuolucider os teg lliw ti yllautnevE So that is why I’ve decided to not do anything for April Fools’.
