It’s been a busy and exciting year, full of ‘firsts’ for us. First dog, first house, and yesterday we went shopping for our first live Christmas tree! Nala even got to see her first horse too. She seemed a little bit nervous at seeing such a large animal, and barked a few times at it. We didn’t let her get too close to the horse though.
Rather than going to the commercial tree sellers that pop up on every parking lot this time of year, we found this tree farm over on Johns Island where you can pick and cut your own tree. Most of them were plain old pine trees, so not as full looking as the fir trees most people get, but they were nicely shaped and manicured. Some of the trees were cypress-y looking things, that looked pretty nice, but didn’t seem as fragrant as the pines. We picked out a reasonably nice looking pine tree that was about 3m (~10′) or so. They let you tag a tree and come back later to cut it, so you can get it home really really fresh.
So in about 10 days, we’ll head back, go find our tree again and get it cut down and strapped to the car so we can haul it back to the house and set it up in the living room. I think decorating it should be fun and interesting.
Today, if the weather holds out and cooperates, we’ll be decorating the outside of the house.
GX270 go up, GX270 go down
The Dell Optiplex GX270 that I use for a Fedora test platform and number crunching station has been behaving badly lately.
Symptoms: Abrupt system shutdown characterized by the screen going blank and a brief whir from the CD drive. System completely unresponsive, although power light remains on. Completely dead. System must be powered off to be restarted. Attempting to install FC5T1 reproduces the shutdown pretty reliably. Otherwise the shutdowns occur intermittenly.
History: CPU fan failed a couple of months ago and was replaced, with problems starting shortly thereafter.
Diagnosis: Suspect the cause is heat related hardware related. Shutdown is abrupt, with no messages logged by the OS. Perhaps there was some thermal damage to the CPU when the fan died. Consistent shutdowns during software installation attempts further suggest heat related hardware failure, with increased heat build-up from CD drive contributing to the problem..
Treatment: May have to resort to calling the Helpdesk to see if I can get a replacement system.
Will the season never end??!!
Yep, there it is. TS Epsilon(2005), making it the 26th named storm of the year. Looks like this one will just spin around in the middle of the Atlantic and not bother anyone except shipping.
From this morning’s 10 AM NHC discussion:
CONVENTIONAL SATELLITE IMAGERY…NEARBY SHIP AND BUOY OBSERVATIONS…AND 29/0938Z QUIKSCAT SATELLITE WIND DATA INDICATE THE LARGE NON-TROPICAL LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM LOCATED ABOUT 730 NMI EAST OF BERMUDA HAS ACQUIRED ENOUGH CONVECTION NEAR THE CENTER TO BE CLASSIFIED AS TROPICAL STORM EPSILON…THE 26TH NAMED STORM OF THE APPARENTLY NEVER ENDING 2005 ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON. THE INITIAL INTENSITY OF 45 KT IS BASED ON BLEND OF 40-KT QUIKSCAT WINDS IN THE NORTHWEST QUADRANT AND A 29/0800Z 996.0 MB…EQUAL TO APPROXIMATELY 55 KT… PRESSURE REPORT FROM BUOY 41543 THAT WAS LOCATED ABOUT 90 NMI SOUTH OF THE CENTER.
THE INITIAL MOTION ESTIMATE IS 270/07 KT. EPSILON IS EXPECTED TO MOVE GENERALLY WESTWARD FOR THE NEXT 24-36 HOURS AROUND THE SOUTHERN PERIPHERY OF A HIGH-LATITUDE RIDGE. AFTER THAT…THE CYCLONE IS FORECAST TO SLOW DOWN AND TURN AND NORTHEASTWARD AS A DEEP-LAYER TROUGH AND ASSOCIATED FRONTAL SYSTEM CURRENTLY OVER THE EASTERN UNITED STATES MOVES EASTWARD AND BEGINS TO TURN EPSILON BACK TOWARD THE EAST. BY 96 HOURS… EPSILON IS EXPECTED TO ACCELERATE RAPIDLY NORTHEASTWARD AND BECOME EXTRATROPICAL OR POSSIBLY EVEN BECOME ABSORBED BY THE MUCH LARGER EXTRATROPICAL LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM. THE FORECAST TRACK IS SIMILAR TO THE NHC MODEL CONSENSUS.
Another season ending storm?
Last year’s hurricane season was ended by TS Ottowhich sprouted up Nov 30, the last day of the season. This year we might see the same thing happening. From this morning’s Tropical Weather Outlook:
CONVECTIVE ACTIVITY ASSOCIATED WITH A NON-TROPICAL AREA OF LOW PRESSURE CENTERED ABOUT 900 MILES EAST OF BERMUDA HAS BECOME MORE CONCENTRATED ABOUT THE CENTER DURING THE NIGHT.
SUBTROPICAL OR TROPICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THIS SYSTEM IS POSSIBLE OVER THE NEXT DAY OR TWO AS IT MOVES SLOWLY WEST OR SOUTHWESTWARD.
Aching shins
I must have been doing more high impact stuff with the dog than I thought. Boy do my shins hurt when I run. Guess I’ll have to take a bit of a break and stick to walking for a bit.