Messages

46

General Discussion / Re: When did you start watching The Weather Channel?

« on: July 21, 2010, 02:50:30 PM »

Couldn't remember the exact date, but it was sometime in 1991. Mostly discovered it by accident; although urban legend is that it was pure luck, as on the cable lineup (TCI...remember them?) TWC was channel 28 and Nickelodeon channel 29.

So I've watched TWC for about 20 years! 

47

General Discussion / Re: What is the last thing you bought?

« on: July 18, 2010, 04:01:41 PM »

$7.50 for laundry. Yea, how fun. Before that, chicken sandwich, fries, and a drink at the Arches.

48

General Discussion / Re: The Front Porch

« on: July 18, 2010, 04:00:31 PM »

It's hard to believe it's already Mid-July. Pretty soon, school will be around the corner. This summer has been flying by.

Wait until you get older as it'll seem to go even faster.

exactly...i go back to ASU in less than a month 

Ugh, college...don't remind about it. I have yet to visit college campuses. This year will be a busy one as I start to visit some colleges in mind and see what the campuses have to offer. I have been thinking of Penn State or Rutgers for meteorology but I'm taking extra math classes (Precalculus and trigonometry)  this year to cover that.

You could be me and haven't been off campus in over a year...summer classes so I can graduate before the spring. (Six years! Ugh. Don't ask. Under penalty of being beat by a crooked-eyed smiley with a chicken wing.  ) Go to Penn State. Weekend life is better than Rugturds. Plus, nothing beats football games and the Mifflin Streak.

49

General Discussion / Re: EAS Test

« on: July 18, 2010, 03:55:16 PM »

AMBER Alerts are intentionally made part of the EAS because of the timeliness. A lot of it has to do with saturation of eyewitnesses. Figure that 1 out of every 100 people watching TV will be on the lookout. In a state with 10 million people, that means 100,000 extra pairs of eyes looking for the abducted child. It has nothing to do with annoyance, mostly because people generally ignore the EAS regardless.

And yea, I agree with having text and/or internet alerts. The problem is that, well, should it cut off calls in mid-chat? Should it control your computer for the time it is on? And if so, could it be abused (political and/or commercial interests? Imagine if the code leaked, and you received an ad for a Nigerian bank account while you telecommute.)

50

Local Forecast / Re: TWC Songs you've heard in other places

« on: July 17, 2010, 11:28:23 PM »

I actually owned Eric Clapton's "Signe" and "Reptile" long before I ever heard them on TWC. Also, "The In Crowd" by Ramsey Lewis Trio was a favorite of mine from long ago that I had as an MP3 when I was 14.

I also heard samplings of the 2005 Storm Alert music on Pittsburgh's ABC affiliate in a weather promo.

51

General Discussion / Re: Report cards

« on: July 17, 2010, 11:23:56 PM »

Yea, it's kind of messy right now. I bailed out of Meteorology last year around this time after finding out I couldn't do the math. But there are lots of people who can do it, just not me  Usually, the mathematical part's in the classes - most operational and TV meteorologists tend to NOT use it (at least in my experience). TBH, there's not a lot of jobs in the field, regardless....and OCM's make no more than $25k out of school and usually don't make big bucks for the workload.

I just hope everyone's as good in college as they are in high school - usually the first year of college separates the wheat from the chaff. You will have to work harder in college, because the material is harder and you're expected to know the material better with little or no help from the actual instructor. It's not all parties, dorm lounging, and everything. I've been in college six years - my social life is terrible.

52

General Discussion / Re: Oil Slick In The Gulf

« on: July 15, 2010, 07:27:21 PM »

Apparently the most recent report is that BP has been able to stop oil from flowing into the Gulf.  But, they also maintain that this is not over, and that the vent will have to be reopened eventually.  Story: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/15/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html?hpt=C1

And don't blame it on "global warming", either. You'd be asking for trouble if you did so. 

53

General Discussion / Re: Report cards

« on: July 15, 2010, 07:18:52 PM »

Looking through all these grades, I'll say this: I can HARDLY wait for you folks to hit college (especially if you are going into meteorology or engineering). You'll be all suave going into the exam room, thinking about Friday night and hooking up with a few beers and ladies, and then Monday BOOM, you get a D on the Calc II Midterm. Worth 20% of the grade. And then you go home crying to the elders.

I'll say this: I wish I could get the grades I did in High School again. You'll realize after about 2 years of higher education that high school teachers were SERIOUSLY doorknobs when it came to teaching his/her subjects.

BTW to stick with the subject, I'll give my grades for the past year or so:

Sorted by grade:

A:
-Meteorology Internship

A-
-Intro to Cultural Geography
-Understanding Climate Change
-Economic Geography
-Natural Hazards
-Intro to Landforms
-Landscape Ecology
-Thinking Geographically

B+
-Geography and Statistics

B-

-Biogeography

The B- actually made me miss the Dean's List for the spring semester; made it the fall. (And the spring semester was 5 classes straight, 2 days a week, 3 classes 1 day a week, and 1 class 1 day a week. Although it sounds like a typical high school day, remember this: No breaks, no lunch, and the stuff's 100x harder to learn. And then you take it home for the next day with 5 hours of HW.)

54

General Discussion / Re: EAS Test

« on: July 15, 2010, 07:06:23 PM »

In State College, I'm not really sure what Comcast does for around here, but I know that in Pittsburgh, at home, Tornado Warnings, Child Abduction Emergencies, and the weekly/monthly tests get the mandatory scroll.

When I interned in Evansville, IN, that was a different story. Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Watches and Warnings, CAE's, and the weekly and monthly tests all were televised.

If you go to my YouTube page, there's a bunch of vids of EAS advisories, if you enjoy watching them. (My username is RedOctober90.)

55

General Weather Chat / Re: Northeast Heat Wave :)

« on: July 08, 2010, 01:27:00 PM »

It's only 91F right now in State College, but I was outside for an hour (Arts Fest, big outdoor art trade show) and was sweating like mad. I drank two bottles of water and almost passed out on the bus after I got in the A/C.

Philadelphia appears to have gotten the taste of a good-size sea breeze front which apparently cooled it off a little bit, which is good. We're going to probably remain high and dry (but hot and humid) for now. Frontal system tomorrow...not great lapse rates or shear, so just regular ol' thunderstorms, but you can never rule out a good soaking. (Bad thing is there's probably half a million dollars worth of art out for display across State College. You know, you give, you take.)

56

General Weather Chat / Northeast Heat Wave :)

« on: July 05, 2010, 09:14:58 PM »

I know that a lot of people that I have spoken to across the country have noted that this week coming up could be the hottest it's been in awhile, especially here in Pennsylvania (Last year, Pittsburgh had one day over 90F. Now, all week is forecast to be in or near the 90s, with the highest temps to be tomorrow and Wednesday, both at 95, according to NWS. Philly, you ask? 100F, with humidities expected to increase as a front nears the region.) Lots and lots of record highs expected to be set.

I would expect that since a lot of you live along the eastern seaboard, that you're going to see likewise in the next couple of days.

Now, for discussion's sake, a couple of questions that I'd like to have answered (and I'll answer myself):

-What do you usually do to cool off when temps are this high? (Stay inside mostly, although occasionally I'll cool myself spraying a hose on mist straight up).
-What was the hottest day you remember? (Probably for me, OCMD, in 2004. ~96 and a ~73 degree dewpoint, heat index ~111. Thank God it was the beach.)
-Do you like hot weather as opposed to cold weather? (Yea, mostly because it's easier to turn on the A/C as opposed to heating up my car.)

The good thing is it's weather and not climate, so it should cool off later in the week. (Or so we hope.)

57

General Weather Chat / Re: Poll: Spring 2010 Severe Weather Activity

« on: July 01, 2010, 04:52:19 PM »

It's been a little bit busier than normal in Central/Western PA, but not terribly special. It seems like York and Lancaster counties have been getting the usual Tornado Warnings every time we're under a Slight risk  but at least here in State College, not much. Pittsburgh's been getting hit in groups of three or four days, then you have times like this where it's sunny for an entire week.

Severe thunderstorms should be more rare in theory because of the raising of minimum hail size from 3/4" to 1" (sounds like a very small difference, but simple math shows that a 33% increase in hail size means the hail's volume is 77% larger, meaning the updraft has to be a lot stronger - and much more rare. Thus, less warnings issued.)

58

General Discussion / Re: Overrated, underrated, and guilty pleasures (in music)

« on: July 01, 2010, 04:46:12 PM »

Somehow I'm not surprised you would say that.

Yea, I didn't plunk down $120 to go see the new arena and not Paul McCartney in August. And TBH, I could care less about TWC music. I was a big fanboy of it back in '06, but no vocals takes its toll. In truth, the human voice is an instrument, so there is no such thing as "non-instrumental music".

But I don't understand how The Beatles can be overrated...they've sold over a billion albums and are the most successful group in the history of the world, possibly the Universe. They definitely deserve to be on top of the world.

And yea, Matt, I think a lot of what you said is poor choices...they form the bulk of commercially successful music in the past 50 years, and most of it is definitely better than what has come out in recent years. But that's just me. 

59

General Discussion / Re: Overrated, underrated, and guilty pleasures (in music)

« on: June 29, 2010, 09:30:59 PM »

Yea, I'd yank The Beatles from being overrated. Chances are they're better than the off-key donkey whinnies we listen to everyday on the 8's Billy Joel, U2, Eric Clapton and Elton John can get off that list, too.

Ashlee Simpson, Mandy Moore, and Ke$ha are my guilty pleasures right now.

60

Local Forecast / IntelliSTAR Gone Mad (during severe weather, of course)...

« on: June 23, 2010, 11:16:55 PM »

Today, we had some severe thunderstorms move through. Prior to the issuances of watches and warnings, Comcast's IntelliSTAR (#26280 for reference) went offline for a few minutes (probably a reboot of the system, but could have been anything - jumbled satellite signal, irresponsible janitor switching off the fusebox), but when it comes back and has to play "catch-up", some weird things happen.

I caught some of the events on my DVR, which was running but not recording at the time the "mayhem" began. Random warning tones and several warnings piled up on top of one another quickly, as the IS was probably digesting all of the warnings that were issued in the prior moments. Then, I hit Record about 1/2 way through, and watch what happens.

Video here:

The IntelliSTAR Has Gone Mad!

Note the random music bits cutting in and out, narrations overlapping each other, and random slides interspersed with national segments (Flavor X, I guess). Too much stuff to describe here (although if you're really dedicated, you could make a moment-by-moment of this video). A couple of people have already commented...hope you guys get a laugh out of it.