August 13, 2008

  It's been over a month since I posted anything, so I figured an update was well overdue. As far as the weather goes, the past month has been pretty uneventful. It has been awesome for August. Both the temperatures and humidity have been low.....very comfortable.

  As for the weather station, the software has been intermittingly loosing connection with the console. This has just started, and for no apparent reason. At the end of June, Davis released version 5.8.1 of WeatherLink. I am currently running version 5.8.0. In the changelog for the new version there are mentions of fixes for the USB driver. When I get some free time, I will apply the update.....sooner if the problem worsens.

  "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." This is a passage of Scripture from Romans 8:28. It rings so true. No matter what happens in my life, I know that all things will work together for good. My Wife and I have been wanting to build a new house for quite some time. The way things have been happening, I firmly believe the time is now. I have the second camera up and going (finally). It is focused on the start of our new house. The footers are in and the blocks are done. With just a little work remaining on the foundation, the next part will be the framing. Hopefully that starts soon!

July 4, 2008

I hope everyone had a great 4th! Rain hampered the first part of the day, but it did let up early in the afternoon. It turned out to be a very cool day, with highs only in the upper 60's, it was perfect for a BBQ. According to WTWO, this was the coolest 4th of July we've had in a decade.

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a new 10MP digital SLR camera. I couldn't resist the chance to take some pictures of the Bloomfield fireworks. The images did not turn out bad at all. If you would like to see them, click the Weather Images link on the left side, then select the Scenery Gallery.

June 16, 2008

You'll notice at the top of this page that I've put up the seven day forecast. This forecast is obtained from the tabular state forecast for Indiana that is provided by the National Weather Service. I am still working with the new code to clean it up a bit, but it is working quite well as it is. Also, the format of the forecast images is rather plain. It will probably take some time, but I am going to create images to go along with the forecast.

I have several pictures of the severe flooding that struck Greene County, but I haven't got around to posting them yet. Look for them soon in the 'Flooding' image gallery.

June 8, 2008

Bloomfield can not seem to catch a break. Last week, there were two days straight where we experienced confirmed tornados. To the best of my knowledge no one has images of the tornados. I find this odd since the tornados last Wednesday struck at 7 am. There should have been many people on their way to work, surely one of them would have had a camera.

I have posted a few images of the flooding along the grade between the White River Bridge and Bloomfield. I have never seen the water that high. From what I have read, no one has seen it this high since 1875! It should crest and start dropping by the first of the week, but that may change. There are more thunderstorms predicted for Monday.

May 26, 2008

I have added the links for the Weather Forecast to all the pages on the site now. The code seems to be stable. I hope to add more features to the program later, including the ability to retrieve and process Severe Watches and Warnings. Since warm weather is here, I don't have much spare time. It is still a fun project and I'll work on it when I can.

May 22, 2008

I've been wanting to add forecast information for Greene County to this site for some time, but have not found an efficient way to do it. It's time to make a way. I've been working on a Linux-based application that will do just that. I've finished enough of the coding, that I am ready to begin the preliminary testing. I have created a page for this purpose, but don't want to create the permanent link on the left side of the page. If you would like to take a look at this page throughout the testing phase, click this link:

http://www.hoosierweather.com/forecast.htm

Now for the disclaimer. For now, the forecast provided on the page probably will not be current. Also, the initial formatting of the page will be very primitive. First I will be testing my applications ability to upload the data. Once I am happy with that portion, I will move on to other things......like keeping it current and enhancing the appearance.

April 18, 2008

At about 05:30 we were awoken by the house shaking. It took about 15 minutes for the USGS site to be updated with the quake info, but I did finally find it. The quake was centered over in Illinois, 24 miles WSW of Vincennes. The quake registered 5.4 on the richter scale. Here is how the USGS describes a magnitude 5 earthquake:

Felt by nearly everyone; many awakened. some dishes, windows broken. Unstable objects overturned. Pendulum clocks may stop.

On a lighter note, it looks like mushroom season has arrived. Last night I found 5 morels, all about the size of my thumb. With the warm weather and the rain that is supposed to arrive today, the shrooms should really start to pop. I'll post some pics a little later today.

April 7, 2008

In the past couple of days I have been having some stability issues with the weather station software. I really haven't felt like working on it much tonight, but the software should at least stay up now. The only loss in functionality is the Daily Rain and Monthly Rain total graphics on the Current Conditions page. For now, new graphics for those two stats will not be uploaded.

March 19, 2008

  After a couple of days, the rain has finally subsided. The total amount of precipitaion from this storm was 5.33 inches. This makes it hard to remember the 100 degree weather and drought conditions that we experienced last year, doesn't it?

  Did you ever wonder how much water just an inch of rain provides? I too was curious and decided to look it up this evening. According to United States Geological Survey, a one acre plot of land receives 27,154 gallons of water for every inch of precipitation that falls. That means that I received 144,730.82 gallons of water over the past couple of days. Wondering how much water Greene County would have received if the whole county had received the 5.33 inches of rain? Here are the numbers:

Area of Greene County:  541.73 square miles
(Source US Census Bureau)

Gallons of water per sq. mile, per inch of rain:  17,380,000
(Source USGS)

Total:  50,183,375,242 gallons of water
(About 50.1 BILLION GALLONS!!    WOW!!)

March 16, 2008

Back on March 1, I attended the Severe Weather Symposium in Indianapolis that was presented by the local National Weather Service office. The guys over at Skywarn have posted all of the PowerPoint Presentations that were presented that day on their website. The URL is: http://www.w9nws.org/node/52

All of the presentations were good, but if you are interested in storm chasing at all you need to check out the presentation from Prof. Paul Sirvatika. His was by far the most interesting presentation of the day. It is because of his presentation that the NWS has changed their Storm Spotter training sessions (I know it was changed in the Bedford training session).

March 9, 2008

Yesterday, I got back after spending four days in Las Vegas. The temps were in the 70's when I left there. When I got back to Indy, it was 20 degrees with snow on the ground. At least it has warmed up some today.

Today I got the Weather Station hooked up. You'll notice that I've added a current conditions page. This is where the observations can be viewed. There is still more I need to add to that page as well as update the Weather Station page, but I've ran out of time tonight. I should be able to get to it over the next day or so.

March 2, 2008

Yesterday marked the first day of meteorological spring. It also marked the first day of tornado season that runs from now until the end of July. It sure felt like Spring today with high's getting into the upper 60's to near 70. It has sure made the frogs come alive. They have been croaking all day. Unfortunately, the warm weather will not be long lived. After some very heavy rain predicted for tomorrow evening, it is supposed to cool down quite a bit later in the week.

This weekend I purchased a Davis Vantage Pro2 Weather Station. To start setting it up, I set the pole for it this afternoon. Unfortunately, it won't be solid enough to mount the weather station to it for few days. I have already started the page for it, you can see the link on the left side. There will be a lot more on this project posted as I bring it online.

February 11, 2008

Here we go again. We have a Winter Storm Warning in effect from 7pm tonight until 7pm tomorrow night. The NWS is calling for snow accumulations of 4 to 8 inches. The last winter storm prediction was way off, we'll just have to see how close they are on this one.

In a little bit of site news, I bought a related domain last week. Now if you type in www.hoosierweather.net, it too will bring you here.

February 6, 2008

  There is a saying that goes "It thaws everyday in February". I don't recall the part about tornados. The past week we have seen extremes in our weather. On January 29th, we had temperatures in the 50's with severe storms at night. We experienced strong winds, fierce lightning, and lots of pea sized hail. After the storm front passed, the temperature dropped rapidly. The hail that we received did not even have a chance to melt before the temperature fell below freezing. On the evening of January 31st, we had winter storm warnings issued. We were to receive sleet and snow with totals reaching up to 15 inches. Thankfully that prediction was missed. We ended up with about 1/4" of snow and a layer of ice.

  Yesterday, highs were reported in the 60's. Then severe storms that produced a tornado began rolling through the Bloomfield area around 9:00 pm. As bad as these storms were, no one in our area was killed. We should all thank God for this.

  For storm reports from the NWS and images of the damage, please check out the link that is now at the top of the page.

  Just as an added side note, its now about 10:00pm. It is 31F with a 10mph wind that is blowing around snow flurries. You gotta love Indiana weather!

December 25, 2007

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
From Luke Chapter 2:

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

December 17, 2007

Early Saturday morning, we had our first measurable snowfall of the year. The NWS had posted Winter Storm Warnings for our area, but as the day progressed they were prematurely cancelled. What began as a heavy snow had turned to rain in the afternoon. Most of what we received early Saturday morning melted. We did get some more snow by Sunday, but with the drifting it was hard to measure. I would guess we had a total of no more than 2" - 3" of snow. Even though the weather is supposed to warm up over the next few days, they are forecasting freezing fog overnight. This ought to make the morning commute a blast.

December 10, 2007

After trying several TV capture cards, I have decided to go back to Windows/Chillcam for the webcam server. The quality of the images just was not good enough on Linux. For now, this means there will be no temperature annotation on the images. Camsource only allowed text to be inserted into the image while Chillcam allows for the insertion of a logo in the image.

November 1, 2007

Ah, Indiana weather. Bloomfield has their annual Apple Festival the first weekend of October. I can remember years where it was blowing snow and so cold that you could hardly stand it. This year, that was far from being the case. This year, it was hot, very hot. We've ran our A/C up until the middle of October. Now, in true Indiana fashion, it has gotten cold. With Thanksgiving and Christmas just around the corner, it is a welcome change.

August 28, 2007

Have you ever seen the rain? Well, it's been a while since we have had anything substantial. We did have a very small amount early Saturday morning, but any hint that it had rained was gone by 11:00 that morning. The US drought monitor puts us at Moderate to Severe drought conditions. The image can be found here: http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/drmon.gif. It doesn't look like there is any rain forecast for us even through next Tuesday.

July 4, 2007

  "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

  These are words spoken by the late President Kennedy on September 12, 1962. This is the speech that set us on a course to the moon. We were going to the moon. We were going to the moon, we were going to be first, and the whole world was going to know about it. On July 20, 1969 we did just that, the Eagle landed and Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 all landed on the moon. We set the goal to land on the moon, and we did it.

  As it pertains to Space Flight, we as a nation, seem to have lost our direction. We have gone from moon landings, to , STS-117 worrying about a torn thermal blanket. I'm sorry, a blanket? We have spent billons of dollars on the Shuttle program and our astronauts were talking about fixing the vehicle by sewing the blanket back into place. How sad we have become.

  With the retirement of the shuttles sometime in 2010, NASA is developing Project Orion as the replacement. One article that I have read stated that there would be a three to four year period between the shuttle retirement and the implementation of Orion. I am tired of the failures. I am tired seeing headlines talking about how the Russians are making supply trips to the station because we can not get there. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! We have the money, we have the knowledge. Let us once again have purpose. Let us set our sites on the moon again, and this time not leave. If we don't, others will, and we will have to take a back seat to them.

January 21, 2007

The magic phrase for this weekend is, "Disaster Recovery". Let's just say that my myth box had a minor issue. After the 'incident', I was no longer able to log into SQL. Of course, this meant I was not able to save my myth database. Although I could rescue my recordings, they would not be much good without the database.

As soon as I get done rebuilding it, you can look forward to seeing some new sections on database replication and back-ups. I had been meaning to set this up for a while, but who really wants to do that when it is all running good.... **sighs**

August 23, 2006

  Today, I have lost a friend. He has been sick for the past year or so, and had recently gotten worse. These past couple of months, he has been but a shadow of his past self. Perhaps I should go back a little further.

  Growing up, we had two miniature schnauzers at home, Samson and Delilah. Shortly after I got married, before we had either of our boys, we decided to get a miniature schnauzer of our own. Growing up with Samson and Delilah, I could not imagine a home without a schnauzer. Early in 1998, we traveled to the Bedford area and got Dakota. He liked to sleep with us from the time we brought him home. He would always burrow under the covers and sleep at our feet. I never understood it, but it was his way.

  Dakota was always different than our other dogs. When he was a puppy, one of his favorite toys was a hanger. It got to be a common site seeing him run around the house with a hanger around his neck or in his mouth. We tried to keep them picked up, but he always seemed to find one somewhere. When my boys came along, he welcomed them into the family. He was very kind to them. They got along well. As he got older, he did mellow some, but he still had that "puppy" spark. I wish the boys could have known Dakota in his puppy days.

  The past couple of years, he did spend a lot of time at my parent's house. If truth be told, it was most of the time. When we would go to my Parent's house, he was always happy to see us. I will never forget the barks as we would stand in the kitchen taking our shoes off. It was almost like he could not wait for us to go sit down. I regret the time we spent apart, but it is all too late now. Now comes the difficult part of telling the boys that Dakota is gone.

  Sam left us in 2004 and Delilah left us in 2005. It does not seem fair having to part with them all so soon. Now I am having to say goodbye to Dakota and I am finding it very difficult. He was my dog, my best friend. He will always have a special place in my heart.

April 8, 2006

On March 31, 2006 and April 2, 2006 Indiana was battered by severe thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes. My area suffered in both storms. On March 31, we were pelted with nickle-sized hail and tornado warnings were issued for the area of Greene County in which I live. Luckily, there was no touch-down in my area. This storm happened after dark, so I have no pictures.

The storm on the night of April 2, brought considerable damage to the area. While tornado warnings were issued, the damage around my home was caused by straight-line winds. This storm too occured at night, but I do have images of the damage it caused. I have placed the new images under "Weather Images" --> "Thunderstorms".

November 22, 2005

I finally got around to putting together some material for my MythTV page. This has really been a fun project, and it is even more fun to use it. My wife is even wanting stuff recorded on it now......this is the sign of true success. lol. To take a look at the page, just click on the link under the "Cool Projects" section in the middle of this page.

November 15, 2005

Today has been an extremely busy weather day. Since yesterday the weather forecasts have been predicting severe storms for our area. They hit the nail on the head this time. Tornado warning were in effect for various counties in our area from around 2 pm until around 7 pm. Although tornado warnings were issued for Greene county, I am not aware of any confirmed touchdowns here. I was in Monroe county when tornado warnings were issued there. I observed something there that I had never seen before. Even though I did not see a tornado, debris just started falling from the sky. It ranged from leaves and small sticks falling, to pieces of insulation and what I think looked like a shingle or two. I don't believe that a tornado touched down in Monroe county, but there had been confirmed reports of touchdowns and severe damage in Daviess county. I do have pictures of the debris falling, but they are nothing spectacular and I probably will not post them.

Here's an update to my MythTv project. I have the box running and it is working great. I am still working on the Myth section and hope to have something up here within the next few days. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

October 23, 2005

Greetings. I made some progress on one of my projects I have been working on in my spare time over the past few weeks......a linux-based DVR box. I have Gentoo Linux installed on a test box running MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org). It looks to be a very impressive setup. I am probably going to set up a seperate page on this site to document the steps that I took to get my box running and any issues that I encountered along the way. I should have something up in a couple weeks.

As soon as I posted the first part of this update, my wife told me it was raining, but it sounded like it was sleet hitting the window. I looked out, and sure enough, it was sleeting......so much for warm weather I suppose.

June 1, 2005

I must have been a little insane this morning. I called at 9:00 this morning and scheduled a Microsoft test for 2:00 this afternoon, with no preparation. The only studying I had was what I could squeeze in before 2:00. Usually I like to read through the exam cram before going, but I had bought the e-book version of it last week and that is what I looked over today. Long story short, I passed it anyways. I can add 'Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator" to that long list of certifications. :)

January 16, 2005

....with talent on loan from God

Yeah, that is the line you hear from Rush Limbaugh all the time. However, if you stop and think about it, it is true. This past Friday, I took the 70-219 exam to complete my MCSE for Windows 2000. It was one of the most difficult certification exams that I have taken to date (took about 3 and 1/2 hours!). If God had not helped me through this one, I would be scheduling a retake this week. It's about time that we are thankful for the gifts and talents that have been given to us.... and I am.

In the next week or two, I will be taking the 70-218 exam to receive my MCSA for Windows 2000. For more information on my certifications click on the 'My Certifications' link on the left side of this page.

December 23, 2004

UPDATE: 13 inches of snow @ 10:05 am 12/23/2004

The Day After...... A snow emergency has been declared for Greene County, and the county in which I am employed, Monroe County. The storm is finally over. Last night we added an additional 6 inches of snow to the 7 we already had. The snow is starting to drift pretty good, but after taking measurements at several points, it looks like we have a grand total of 13 inches of snowfall. I have some additional pictures from this morning that I am placing on here. If you would like to see them, click on the Weather Images link on the left, then click on the Winter Weather link to view the images.

December 22, 2004

UPDATE: 9.5 inches of snow @ 10:20 pm 12/22/2004

Let's sum this up with one word ............"Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr". Winter Weather is making its presence very well known. We have been under a Winter Storm Warning since the early morning hours of today and will continue to be under a Winter Storm Warning until tomorrow evening. We have already received 7 inches of snow and it is predicted that we will have a total of 8-16 inches with isolated amounts of 20 inches!! This is just about all of the snow that we receive in an entire winter. Most of the snow that we already have fell early this morning. After a break from the snow during the afternoon hours, it is now beginning to snow again (5:10 pm). This ought to make things interesting.

I have posted a few pictures that I have taken. Click on the Weather Images link on the left, then click on the Winter Weather link to view the images.

November 19, 2004

Another month has went by, which means it's time for another update. It's been quite busy (that seems to be a pattern here lately). There is one project that I started that is worth mentioning, replacing my home PC. This is something that I have should have done months ago. It is rather depressing when the minimum requirements on the newer games blow pass the specs on your box. Here are the major specs on the machine that is being 'retired' and the one I am building now:

Specs of retiring box:

Pentium III 650 MHz
512 MB of PC133 RAM
ChainTech GeForce 4MX 64MB Video Card

Specs of the box I am building:

ASUS P5GD1 Socket T MotherBoard
Pentium 4 3.4 GHz Socket T
1 GB Corsair XMS Extremely Low Latency Gaming Memory w/ LED Activity Lights
ChainTech GeForce 6600 GT 128MB PCI Express Video Card

October 18, 2004

Were you beginning to think this was an ummaintained? Well, so was I. I got to looking at the date of my last update, and could not believe that it was all the way back in May. Several things have been happening at both work and home. Since Fall is setting in, I am finally starting to wrap up some of my outdoor projects. As far as PC stuff goes, I have been picking up some programming skills..... well trying to. I have been messing with C and Visual Basic.

I am at the end of my fuse with SBC. These slow connection speeds are going to be the end of me yet. Couple that with the poor quality of the phone network, and it is enough to drive someone insane. I am considering putting up a site called 'Battle with a Baby Bell'. This would mainly document my progress in getting upgrades for our phone network. We'll See.

May 27, 2004

Late this afternoon and into the evening hours, severe thunderstorms passed through our area. Both Thunderstorm and Tornado warnings were in effect for Greene County. A Tornado was spotted over Lyons, and the same storm moved into the Bloomfield area. I obtained samples of Hail that fell in the Switz City area about 5:15 pm. The hail measured 1.25 inches in diameter. Hail damage to vehicles occured in Bloomfield (including my wife's mini-van). I took several pictures of the storm as it passed through Eastern Greene County. Unfortunately, I missed getting photographs of the Tornado. Click Here to view storm images from this evening.

I am still working on getting the rest of the Cicada images put online, it has been very busy around here. Next weekend, I will have pictures from a conference that I am attending in New Orleans.

April 1, 2004

Ah, Spring is here. It is still a bit chilly, but it is here none the less. You should even notice that in the Weathercam images, the grass is greening up.

The Weathercam has been down for a few days because of some software issues. I have also been looking for a different software package to run the Weathercam on. Right now, I believe I am going to try a package called Webcam32. This one looks to have some cool new features. The one feature that I am waiting to try out is the avi function. This would allow me to put the Weathercam images into a movie-live format. By the end of the week I should have it back up and going again.

I've also started redoing the site just a bit. For the most part, the layout is the same, but the color scheme and logos are changed. I was going to wait until I had the entire site redone before posting it, but the heck with it. If some of the pages on this site look funky, that is why. They should all look normal within a week or so.

Soon, I will have some Cicada pics up. This is the 17th year of the Cicada, the last one being in 1987. I was only about 11 at the time, but I still remember them quite well. The brood that is coming out this year is called Brood X. These guys are quite harmless, but I remember from last time them being everywhere. They are supposed to start coming out by the end of this month I believe, so check back for pics!

I think that about wraps it up. Hopefully I can get all of this done soon, it is almost time to start mowing the grass again and gardening. When that happens, it seems like there is never enough time to get everything done when I get home from work.

February 7, 2004

I love the snow, but at this point I can not wait until spring arrives. About a week ago the temperature got down to 20 degress below zero, which is extremely cold for this area. Warm weather and green grass will get here none to soon for me.

I am just about ready to take back everything bad that I have said about SBC. Up until this point my internet connection has been absolutely terrible. Yesterday, DSL became available in my area. I FINALLY GOT TO ORDER IT! Minus a little more testing, I may have it installed in about a week. Is it too good to be true? .............we shall see.

December 13, 2003

The website is updated again! I added to the Build a Weathercam page. There are also updated pictures on the Winter Weather page that include pictures of our first snowfall. Today it has been snowing all day, and still is as I type this. It is almost over, and we are only supposed to get an inch or two.

I have been looking around at weather stations lately. I've got my eye on a Vantage Pro from Davis. Who knows, I may have one installed by Spring. ;)

Merry Christmas!!

November 29, 2003

So what's been going on around here? That just happens to be a long story. First of all, the camera was down from November 21 until this evening for a couple reasons. The first reason, is I am looking for a new Linux Distribution to run. Red Hat, in all of their corporate wisdom, is dropping their personal line of Linux to focus on their 'Enterprise' version. Their replacement is Fedora.......I am not that thrilled about it. BAD Red Hat. Shame on you for abandoning us!

The second reason for the downtime is a network revamp here at home. I am upgrading some systems to wireless and adding some services to my dual-processor Linux server.

For now the webcam server is running on Windows 2000 professional and Chillcam for the capture software. I have used chillcam in the past, and have really been impressed with it. It has several features that I wish the Linux packages would have. I will probably end up putting the webcam server back on Linux, but I have to find a new distribution first.

On a side note, I am working on a new design for this site. When I get a little bit more done I will post a link to it, so you can get a sneak peak before it goes live.

MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL!

October 19, 2003

A few things have happened lately in relation to this site. First, I bought a new digital camera...woohoo! I went out this weekend and took some pictures to 'test' the camera. As a result of this, I added a new section to the Weather Images page called Scenery........pretty cool. (I had to test out the camera)

Second, I had taken down the Weathercam Server to look at putting a different software package on it last week. As it turns out, the packages I was looking at, while offering some features I wanted, left out a couple of important features. Some things came up, and it took me a few days to get the server back up. However, it is up and running again.

September 28, 2003

If you had not noticed, the Weathercam has been down since Friday evening. The past few times it has rained, water had collected on the outside of the lens (it looked like the camera had a serious case of chicken pox). I have taken it down to add an aluminum shield, and it should be back on by this afternoon. Also, I am doing a slight site redesign. The original color scheme was getting to be a bit much for me already. Some links may not work today, but they will slowly be coming back online.

September 18, 2003

Minus a little tweaking, the site has been done for about a week now. I finally have decided on a new name and have bought the domain name! I am hoping it will be live tonight.

September 4, 2003

A new site design is up! (mostly) Not all of the links work, but I am still working on that.