Eclipse 2012
Well I haven’t seen a solar eclipse for years. Never seen a total solar eclipse and this one wasn’t either, but still pretty cool. We all got together to watch it this evening, starting in the garage, then moving to the end of the block after the sun went behind the trees.
Here’s the setup I rigged up. Using the binoculars in my vice and an old JC Penny shirt box. Not bad for scrambling to find stuff in 5 minutes.
It’s beginning! I was even able to see some sunspots. I’d looked at the sun this way before, but either I never noticed them, or just didn’t see them before.
As the sun got lower in the sky, we had to relocate as the neighbor’s trees were blocking all the sunlight into the garage.
Had just some light clouds, only obstructed our view for maybe 10 minutes.
And that’s about the maximum eclipse that we saw from our location. You can see the power pole getting in the way, and after this the sun got too low to get a clear shot at. It was pretty fun. Made me feel like a kid again!
Speaking of kids, here’s Luke checking out the eclipse in this video:
Cutting away
The Guild Wars 2 servers were down for a couple hours, so I decided to go outside and be productive.
Man, I have cut a lot of limbs and trees around here over the past year. I really need to find someone with a truck to help me haul ‘em off.
I chopped down a tree that has been left to it’s own devices for many years. As you can see it has become one with the fence.
Makes for a lot of waste.
And all these…
Speaking of plants, the garden is still alive, though my potatoes got nipped by a cold night. I didn’t notice any frost, but apparently it got cold enough that the plants didn’t like it. Onions did OK, but the potatoes sure looked better a week or two ago. I think the might bounce back though.
And my pumpkins are just starting to sprout!
So onward we go!
Catch-up Post
Okay, well, here we go. I’m running a remote today so I have a little time where I’m tied to the studio here and can’t go anywhere so figured I’d try to get a post cranked out.
Starting middle of the week BEFORE last week, we started streaming coverage of a murder trial here in town. We were going to do video, but couldn’t get the equipment together, so we were at least going to stream audio on our website. Well after the trial was scheduled to start, apparently they were running behind, however someone flipped on the microphone before they were supposed to and the name of a juror went out over our internet stream. So the judge flipped out and banned us from the trial. So that day sucked.
Then, feeling like we got the raw deal on something that wasn’t our fault, got our lawyer involved. That moved about as fast as anything you can expect to move in the legal system. So right about the time I’d given up hope, we were let back in. And by now we’d finally got our video equipment.
So I spent about a week with half of every day sitting in an van by the courthouse monitoring our stream to make sure that nothing like that happened again. Sufficed to say, I was WAY behind on all my work for the week, which included updating about 500 items for our radio auction, and getting audio edited for upcoming charity radio-thon fund raiser. I ended up working 15 hours on Friday to get all the stuff done I HAD to do because we were hitting the road for the weekend.
I did a lot of relaxing at the in-laws’ house over the weekend. That was much needed. And we got to see Titanic in 3D. I’m still not a huge fan of 3D movies, but they did pretty good converting a movie that was originally shot in 2D, I thought. But still, it was the same old movie I remember. For some reason I thought the ship looked smaller in 3D… oh well.
So that brings things up to this week. Not as hectic as last week for sure and I’m thankful for that. Still a lot to do, but I’ve been fairly productive. I would have been more so, but I got really sick Monday night. Terrible sore throat and the chills. I told myself if I didn’t feel any better when I woke up, I’d stay home. Luckily I felt quite a bit better by morning and headed in. One of the nice things about my job is I was able to go take a nap on the couch downstairs when I wasn’t feeling too swell. I’m glad Andrea and Luke didn’t catch what I had… at least not yet.
And now it’s today. I’m waiting for my paycheck to come in. Not something I usually “wait” for, but I got a small bonus on this check which I’m going to use to pre-purchase Guild Wars 2 which went on sale yesterday. I don’t want to wait too long because I don’t want the collector’s edition to sell out. Supposedly very limited supply.
So there ya go. That’s why I’ve been absent from the blog recently and I should be back to posting more regularly now!
Special Treatment
The snow came down earlier this week. They were calling for as much as 14 inches at one point in time. We ended up getting around 5 inches. Seems like that’s the way it always goes. Better to freak everyone out and over prepare, than to catch everyone off guard with a foot of snow I guess.
It’s no suprise Andrea’s car get’s the nice dry garage. But that’s okay. The Toronado is tough. I had to head in to work early the next day and I think I was the first person to hit the roads here in Albert. The Toro trudged through the five inches of snow like a champ.
Snow Fun
Got about a foot of snow yesterday. Shoveled the driveway last night. Then started shoveling again at about 6:45 this morning. Anything to make sure my sweetheart can get out of the driveway, right!?
It did make for some fun pictures today though.
Camping at Kanopolis
Took the weekend to go camping for the first time this year. It was just Daisy and me. Andrea was down in Wichita doing some much needed wardrobe shopping. It was nice to get away for a while. It’s nice to be away from the world once in a while and alone in my thoughts. While I’m not a very social person, there’s times when you’re out camping by yourself and about three hours go by and you realized you haven’t said a single word out loud, you feel the need to just start talking, just to say something. I ended up recording a few videos into the camera for no reason. I read a lot of my book, and otherwise just did a lot of thinkin’.
Kanopolis seems like a nice enough lake. I didn’t really stay near the water, I didn’t have a fishing license anyway. But I sure could have. There weren’t that many people camping there at all. Pretty much had my run of the place. And best of all. It was quiet and peaceful! Here’s a few pics of the outing.
My campsite, got a compliment on the car on the way into the campground!
Storms looked to be rolling in most of the evening, but never saw a drop of rain!
Saturday was just too hot for Daisy. She was much more lively on Sunday.
The storms all around made for some cool weather pictures.
It’s officially storm season in Great Bend.
Had a nice rolling thunderstorm come through about 7AM this morning. Nothing severe, but it dumped quite a bit of rain in a short amount of time. Looks like it overwhelmed the drainage system near my house. Nothing flooded, but I did have flashbacks to the apartment in Manhattan!
It was fun watching folks go through the water. Some people slowing… stopping… and then cautiously proceeding. Some flew through blasting huge rooster tails into the air. A couple people briefly stalled out, then got going again. But nobody got hurt.
Ugh. Snow.
I remember when I was a kid there was nothing better than a snow day. The more the better. Now as I slowly transform into a grumpy old man, I find that I could really do without it!
Well that’s not entirely true. I just wish it would snow, but that somehow driveways, sidewalks and roadways were immune. I shoveled my driveway enough to make it passable today, but tomorrow I’m gonna have to hop to it and get the thing cleared out. I guess I’m always looking for a workout, right? hehe
But at least the Toronado handles it like a champ. It just trudges right through that stuff like a big lumbering… lumberer. I can’t help but smirk when I see people plowing along in their little Hyundais letting the snow decide where they go. It’s good to be the king.
Another Toronado not being stuck.
Little weather.
Had a breif whistle of the tornado sirens this evening as a storm rolled through. Andrea and I were just sitting out on the porch watching some pretty heavy rain come down and maybe some pebble sized hail. After it moved on we noticed the clouds moving weird directions (like three directions at once). Right about the time I got to thinking, that kinda looks like “rotation”, the sirens started to blow. Never did see any funnel clouds come to bare, but it was kinda cool watching it all develop. Too bad I didn’t think to grab my camera until after it all passed!
Will it grow?
Well I said after we got back from Hawaii that I wanted to plant a palm tree out front. Turns out that it’s possible… but not too realistic. Well for a few weeks now Wal-Mart has had these palm plants sitting for sale for $12 and I’ve been tempted but convinced myself to walk past ‘em. I mean sure it’s just $12, but then you have to buy a pot and soil. All a gamble because knowing my track record, I’m going to just kill the thing anyway!
But Andrea has been encouraging me to just buy it the last couple times, so we hauled that thing home on my lap in her Mustang! I’m sure that was a sight to behold. So there she is. Hopefully it can get enough light and I’ll keep it wet. We’ll see if it grows or if it dies!
First Snow
Well it’s official. Winter is here. Andrea snapped this picture at lunch of our first real snow so far. Man was the wind blowing. Made it cold, but at least it kept the driveway clear!
Oh HAIL no!
Well we had quite the hail storm roll through late this morning. Golf ball sized stuff and it fell hard. Did a number on my car. I’m going to have to fix the hood, roof and trunk. No other serious damange that I could find.
Figures. In a week and a half my car would have been parked safely in a garage. 
Mud everywhere!
Well for the last two months there’s either been snow on the ground, or the ground has been frozen. Last couple of days have been decent, but now EVERYTHING is mud. My landlord was nice enough to come over with a plow and push snow from the driveway and sidewalk. Unfortunately, he pushed a lot of the gravel with it. So those are mud too.
Let the dog out. Muddy paws.
Take the trash out. Muddy feet.
Get out of the driveway. Muddy car.
Come home. Muddy carpet.
Bring on the sunshine!
Still not 100%
Well power is back and life is kinda returning to normal. Just a few little anoyances remain. Like the three giant piles of limbs that are laying in my yard waiting to get hauled off. I piled up all the stuff I could carry, but the landlord is going to have to come over with a chainsaw and cut up the bigger stuff. There’s limbs so big laying on the ground that I can’t even drag them. Not that I’m Hanz or Franz, but the fact remains, that they ain’t moving anywhere if its up to me to move them. I could start hauling stuff out with the El Camino, but it’d probably take 15 trips. There’s ALOT of tree on the ground. Times like this I wish I lived in the country and could just light ‘em all on fire. Of course if I lived in the country, I probably wouldn’t have my power back yet either. There’s still lots of folks in the dark.
Our cable hasn’t been hooked back up yet. I understand that there’s a lot of customers down, but when we called them to let them know, they wouldn’t even take our address. They just said they’re going to go from house to house and see who’s out. I dunno how long that’s going to take, but I’d guess it could be months. I’m sure they still want me to pay my full monthly bill though. Yeah, it’s a bad deal for everybody, this storm, but I bet if you were losing income off the deal, you’d be a little more motivated to get out there and get people hooked back up. If its not hooked up tonight when I get home I guess I’m going to have to call and be the squeaky wheel. I bet they have a list for THOSE people.
Being without the internet is an inconvience, but it’s not that bad really. I’d probably be more tore up about it if I hadn’t been out of power for three and a half days and realize how nice it is just to have a warm place to sleep. That kinda helps put things in perspective. I’ve still been able to efficiently waste my time. I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XII and having fun with that game that I’ve been putting off for a while. Watched some movies and lots of Friends episodes with Andrea.
So its not all bad, but it will still be nice to be able to settle back into the old routine again. I suppose it’s good to mix it up once in a while though!
Got power back…kinda.
The landlord called today at work and said he got a generator hooked up to the house. WOO HOO! Its not enough to run the whole house at once. But its enough to run the heater, the fridge and the lights. Probably no TV, but I can live with that until the power comes back on for good.
Just glad not to have to use the dog and cat as an electric blanket at night anymore. At one point last night all four of us were curled up under the many blankets.
So as long as nobody steals our generator, we should be good!
Some new pics of the ice.
Welp. Still no power at the house. It wasn’t quite freezing when we got there this morning but it was close. You could see your breath in the house.
Reminds me of the stories the old folks tell how they’d have a glass of water by the bed when they went to sleep and when they woke up it’d be ice. Ha ha.
It’s a bum deal. Looks like it might be a couple days before we’re back up because they’re going to get all the mainlines up before they start connecting individual houses. 6-9 days before everybody has power they said. But they’re hoping that MOST people will be back up by Saturday night.
We stayed at Jason Marsh’s place last night. He hasn’t lost power the whole time. Wouldn’t you know as we were sitting there the power started to flicker. He almost kicked us out saying we were bringing it with us! It did last the rest of the night though.
According to the website, outages are still being reported faster than power is being restored. About 1,000 more homes are without power now than there were this morning. Over 12,500 houses with no power in Riley County alone right now.
So it’s gonna be a few days before this whole mess is put back together. I’m not too worried about it, because there’s nothing I can do. But it’s pretty easy to get stressed out when you’re basically kicked out of your home. All is good though, couple deep breaths and you just go back to doing whatever there is to do.
Little bit of ice.
Here’s some pics of what happened overnight last night as the ice storm rolled through.
Pretty crazy. I think the El Camino is okay, but I wasn’t going to run out there and check. It was like a war zone man. Trees were literally falling from the sky. You’re hear CRACK! POP! WHAM! as a limb would fall from a tree. A guy could get killed just standing around out there. I had to go clear the driveway so Andrea could get her car out for work and it was like being in a minefield. Just hoping you don’t step in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We’ve been lucky not to lose power yet. Our power lines are pretty vulnerable though. I think they’re running straight through a tree or two. So I’m almost just waiting for it to happen. They’re calling for another half to 3/4 an inch of ice throughout the day. Who knows what I’ll come home to. Good thing the pets have fur coats.
We’re doing fine though. Andrea made it to work, and I’ll head that way in a bit. Nothing is broke yet that I can tell, and it’ll be up to my landlord to figure out what to do with all the big ass limbs. I’ll be nice to pile ‘em all up for him though!
Cold and Ice
Boy, today was one of those days that you get up, you get on the road and say, “Man I wish I didn’t have anything to do today.” I left the house for a remote today at around 9:00, and the roads were black ice. Saw 4 cars and a semi truck in the ditch on my way over to the radio station. Everybody on the interstate was doing about 40 mph. Except for the dude that thinks its cool to “just drive normal.” I like to think those people are having to get towed out of a snowbank a few miles later down the road. It was SLICK!
Didn’t cancel the remote though. Didn’t have too many people show up, but it could have been worse. There were actually a lot of people out and about. Between everyone Christmas shopping, and K-State graduation, there were a few too many idiots on the road for my taste. I took enough hits in the old car, I don’t really want to start getting this one beat up! I’ve put too much work into it now. =P
Tomorrow is probably going to be better though. Its supposed to actually snow instead of this freezing rain crap. Slush, snow, packed snow, I can dig that no problem. “Just drive normal.” Ha ha!
Am I the only one who doesn’t lose sleep over the environment?
Lets be honest…how many of you go to bed each night worrying about all the carbon emissions you put in the air as you drove to work, errands, heating your home, you know…the things that make day to day life possible? Even IF this global warming is a man made creation…Never mind that you’re an infantecimal part of a global trend. Worse case scenario, you’d just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And even if you DO decide to step out of the line and “go green” the guy that was behind you will still be the tipping point. You just decided to make your life a bigger pain in the ass in the meantime, before the whole world spirals out of control. Although you will be entitled to preach how you are holier than thou, while we all burn a fiery death.
Welp, sorry. I’m not going to buy into the status of it all. Like somehow making it known that I spend more money than a person has to just to reduce my carbon footprint makes me less of a narcissist. And don’t give me the “what about the children crap?” My children won’t care because they won’t know any better. You know there was a time when jet contrails didn’t criss cross they sky 365 days a year. What about that unspoiled beauty that I missed out on? Thanks a lot baby boomers.
But no matter how much I say, I can’t say it as well as C. Montgomery Burns:
“Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she’s losing! Well I say, hard cheese”
Thar be snow!
Welp. It snowed more than I thought it would. Still only around an inch or so. Just enough to make it look pretty. Looks like I’ll have some pretty scenery on the way to Sabetha today!
Who’s ready for winter?
Well it looks like my prediction of snow by Halloween won’t be fufilled. It’s been damn near a heat wave around here lately. Almost hit 80 here today! But we’re gonna get slammed, and when it happens I say bring it on!
I really don’t think I’ll mind the snow. Especially now that I’m not living in Manhattan where everyone drives like an idiot on a nice day. I’m lucky to see a car or two on my way out of Ogden, so hopefully I can avoid any collisions this year. I’m just looking forward to having a house to decorate with Christmas lights this year. Sitting by the window, watching the snow fall drinking a warm cup of cocoa. I just love winter.
Someone posed the question…
With so many millions and billions and trillions of stars out there, and many of them with planets orbiting them, is it really possible that we are the ONLY life in this universe?
The above isn’t a computer generated image. It’s an actual image of deep space captured by the Hubble Space Telescope of the biggest known galaxy cluster. Thousands of galaxies, some even bigger than our own. It’s reasonable to assume with so many chances at life, that we aren’t alone. We were discussing it on oldspower.com and this was my response.
It’s really hard to fathom. The universe that is. Google Earth is awesome now that it also show a catalog of they sky from the Hubble and other telescopes. It’s amazing to look at the stars and then to really zoom in and see just as many whole galaxies as there are stars! We truely are one of a billion+ tiny rocks, going around one of a billion+ tiny stars, going around one of a billion+ galaxies (that we know of).
My philosophy on whether we’re alone or not has a lot to do with my faith. By whatever means God created the universe, its entirely possible that we ARE the only life that exsists in it. While I wouldn’t say we ARE, I would say there’s an equal chance of either.
Should life exsist elsewhere in the universe, I think its highly unlikely that we would make contact prior to the extinction of either ours or their race. Not to say we couldn’t detect them, but interaction would be out of the question due to the sheer scale.
I rather postulate that the vastness of the universe is an attribute of the Creator. The more we learn about the universe, the more we learn about God Himself. If man were able to see to the end of the universe, or be able to magnify the smallest particle, it would only be a finite matter of time before the fundamental workings of our universe were understood in their entirety. Once man has learned all there is to know, what purpose would their be to seek God? What purpose would man serve? Knowledge would be capped, and the only variable to remain would be time.
Man’s power to create could possibly equal God’s at that point. But in an infinitely detailed universe, there will always be an unknown, something always unexplained, and something that can only be explained by faith. HOWEVER, to simply write off the unexplained as supernatural and not investigate its origin, is passiveness. I hate it when Christians do that. We should FOCUS on that which is unexplained, if only to better understand that which created it.
Anywho. That’s my take on it. Just from what I believe, observe, and think about.
Gimme a floodin’ break!
Well, I apologize that it seems like all I’m doing is complaining lately. It’s just weird times I guess.
Our apartment complex flooded AGAIN! It’s just friggin a pain in the ass. Luckily I got out this morning before the waters had risen to the parking lot again. But I had to drive my car through about a foot of water just to get off our street. And the bad part is it could do this all summer long if we don’t get a decent break in the weather.
This house we’re looking at may or may not come through, but I’m to the point that I just want to move, even if it’s to another apartment. As long as it’s not friggin’ flooding every couple weeks!
