Category: Miscellaneous babble

This past weekend I ended my ‘No TV’ experiment after 2 months. Wasn’t exactly planned, but I saw that Discovery Channel was showing “When we left Earth: The NASA Missions” (Discovery Channel web folks: TV show pages + Firefox = FAIL. Fix please.).

Being a bit of a space geek, I just had to watch it and wasn’t disappointed. The first two episodes covered the Mercury and Gemini missions with historic footage and recent interviews with astronauts and Mission Control staff.

There wasn’t anything really new from a historical perspective, but there was a lot of cool archival footage. I enjoyed watching the first two parts of the series. People who only know the space program through shuttle launches will probably be impressed once they realize how much technology has changed between the early missions and now.

The first named Atlantic storm, Arthur, made an appearance this afternoon reincarnated from the remnants of the first named eastern Pacific storm, Alma.

Like Alma, it looks like Arthur will be fairly short-lived and be mostly a rain event for southern Mexico.

NOAA’s 2008 hurricane season forecast calls for another busy season this year, possibly influenced by a La Niña in the Pacific. 12-16 named storms, 6-9 hurricanes and 2-5 of them major hurricanes. “Busy season” is starting to seem pretty normal these days.

From the forecast:

The Climate Prediction Center’s 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook calls a 90% probability of a near-normal or above-normal hurricane season. An above-normal season is most likely (65% chance), but there is also a 25% chance of a near-normal season, and a 10% chance of a below-normal season. See NOAA’s definitions of above-, near-, and below-normal seasons.

The likely (60%-70% chance) ranges of activity for 2008 (each of which is seen in about two-thirds of similar seasons in the historical record): are 12-16 Named Storms, 6-9 Hurricanes, and 2-5 Major Hurricanes. Most of this activity is expected during August through October, the peak months of the Atlantic hurricane season.

The second key predictor for the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season is the possibility that the La Niña-related patterns of tropical convection and winds will persist, and therefore may be conducive to increased Atlantic hurricane activity. As discussed by Gray (1984), La Niña favors more Atlantic hurricanes and El Niño favors fewer hurricanes. The combination of La Niññn active hurricane era increases the probability of an above-normal season.

When you eat you Smarties do you eat the red ones last,
do you suck them very slowly or crunch’em very fast,
eat the candy coated chocolate, but tell me when i ask,
when you eat your smarties do you eat the red ones last?

I don’t know why, but the song suddenly broke into my head while I was working and caused all kinds of havoc.

Then of course, I had to search YouTube for one of the old commercials.

For the past oh, 18 years or so, I’ve been sustained largely by the epic tales of Terry Goodkind (Sword of Truth) and Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time). Little did I know when I started them (WoT started in 1991, SoT in 1994) that they’d both grow into 11 and 12 volumes respectively and take up so much of my time.

Now that the Sword of Truth series has finally wrapped up and with the end of the Wheel of Time series near, I’m on the hunt for something new to read. During the wait between volumes, I’d go back and read the previous books, or re-read other books in my collection (namely Dune and <acronym title=”Lord of the Rings>LotR). I also read the Dune pre-and post-quels for something a little different (which turned out to be not quite as different as I hoped). Aside from textbooks, programming books and journal articles, I really haven’t expanded my reading circle all that much.

Now I’m ready for something different. I feel like digging into some sci-fi once again. During my trip home for the reunion, I spent some time digging through the boxes of books still stored in my parents’ basement. Picked out a small box worth of books (small enough to bring as carry-on on the plane) and freecycled the rest, including all of my undergrad textbooks (boy was that tough to do). Most of what I brought back were sci-fi genre and whetted my appetite for more.

I think it’s time to reacquaint myself with the library. I wonder if my library card is still any good.

Feel free to offer any suggestions.