3/10/2010 Chase

Steve and I headed out today around noon even though everything looked worse as the day went on. After heading up to Bartlesville, meeting up with Aaron, and waiting around for a while, we headed West to the storm by Perry and got some good shots/footage of a shelf cloud as it passed by. It was definitely cold core as we nearly froze our asses off when it passed by. The wind picked up and it dropped nearly 20 degrees down to 42 F. After it passed, we headed West again and saw the ground and houses covered with pea to dime size hail. On the way back to OKC Steve and I stopped just North of Stillwater as a smaller cell passed over. Some more cold wind and small hail later and we were on our way again. Overall not a bad day for a first outing.

Emerging from hibernation

Today likely will mark my first chase of the season. I'm kicking myself for not getting out on Monday, as I missed a great photogenic tornado close to home. Aside from recovering from the stomach flu, there was no good reason I shouldn't have been. We'll be heading for NE OK to SE KS, I pick Miami specifically, though the models keep moving the action to the East as time passes. I'll be keeping an eye on the low moving through tomorrow and although I'm not as excited as I was yesterday evening, I still feel there is a good chance of some descent storms later today. I just keep telling myself the models, especially the composite products, don't do as well with these early season cold systems. More in the morning.

Texas bound

Here's steve checking data as we near the OK Texas border. Watch us live at www.chasertv.com

Chase Day Today

Yeah... Don't you hate when work gets in the way. All the best laid plans fell by the wayside due to a heavy workload. Life goes on.
Tomorrow looks like the first classic setup of the season. I'll be heading out with Steve Miller and Aaron Tuttle - should be a fun time. I still think NAM has the front a little farther south than it will end up. Head too far south and the lower level helicity won't be as good, nor will LCLs. My target for tomorrow - Vici, OK. Best time frame - 7 pm to dark. After dark will still be favorable, but storms will likely be HP, so no fun to chase. We will probably head west on I-40 around 1 pm or so. Sorry for the poor torn graphic... It's late and I'm using a touchpad. :)

Another note, I have been on 4 chases so far this year, my apologies for not posting chase accounts. I'll reiterate them in the coming week.

Content Hijacking

For the next month or two I will be posting about rebuilding my 98 Eclipse GST, with some standard content sprinkled in.  I had a rod bearing spin back in 2005 and parked it.  I decided late last year it was time to fix it and sell it, so I put a new rod bearing in and crossed my fingers.  No luck, as with most spun bearings, it did it again, which means replacing the rod and machining the crank.  I figure if I'm going to pull the engine, I might as well do it right and go for a complete rebuild.  Now I figure if I'm going to do that, I might as well keep it and put a few mods in along the way.  My current debate is whether to go with a 6 bolt block (used, a bit stronger) or stick with my 7 bolt.  The 7 bolt is good up to 350 HP, so I'm inclined to stick with it, at least for now.  Much more to come.

Second Topic: ChaserTV.com  This is a project I'm excited to see come out this year.  The features are the best I've seen yet, and this looks to be much less of a hassle than what we played with last year for streaming video.  For anyone interested, go to ChaserTV.com and read for more info.  They're even talking about a test tomorrow in prep for their launch.

Third topic: I'm really ready for the trip to Denver for the National Storm Chaser Convention.  It's like a hit for a junkie to tide me over till Spring.

Mental Break

Long time, no blog... The end to the trip to Cali was a pain in the ass, and I will not be flying United again unless I absolutely have to. The gallery is having some technical issues I haven't had time to work out yet (catching up on Linux, and getting Imagemagick to work properly), but will be finished soon. Speaking of technical notes, I've played with phpBB 3.0 this week and love the new features. I installed it for the work intranet, and the ldap (active directory) integration works nicely.
Upcoming events; looking forward to the trip to the National Storm Chaser Convention in Denver. I've made more attempts to social network this year, and am getting excited to put more faces to names in addition to the technical aspects of the convention.
Miller's Redneck New Years celebration was a blast, literally, as it always is. Apparently I continue to boggle minds with the speed at which I can process alcohol. I will say that the party is a lot more fun when you're only buzzed.
I'm also determined to get back in shape. I hit 195, and 200 is my freak out limit. So I've started working out every morning, alternating jogging and weight training. With my and Becky's busy schedules the only time to go is in the morning before work, which means I've also committed to going to bed at a decent time (10 or 11).
Yeah, I'm sure everyone wanted to know all that, but I'm just getting caught up - so deal.

Chase Day

It figures it's a decent chase day and I'm stuck clear across the country in Cali. Who am I kidding, I probably wouldn't be chasing today, especially since we are without a chase vehicle (see here). Who likes chasing that far East anyway? Congrats Steve on the new truck, looks very nice! Not sure if I'm sorry I missed the first nasty weather for OK and am here in the 70s / sunny weather. I kind of enjoy nasty weather. There wasn't much else to post about yesterday, other than the casualty count grew to 3. Sorry if this post seems choppy, but lunch is almost over and I'm back to training.

Interesting Day

I will blog later this evening about most of the day, but here's some breaking news: a FA-18 fighter plane crashed in a neighborhood less than a mile South of our hotel. It happened while we were at training a couple miles North, but I snapped a few pics on the way home. The pic above isn't much, but you can see the work lights just to the right of the center of the pic. Authorities of course had the neighborhood closed off. The fighter was trying to land at Miramar air force base, and crashed in a residential community just to the West of the base. Scary stuff. So far, there are 2 civilian casualties, with 2 more still missing. It destroyed two houses. The pilot ejected prior to the crash, and is fine.

San Diego and Gallery

Enjoyed the trip to Co Springs last week, got home just fine. I got plenty of pics on the way home, including The Garden of the Gods, as well as the southern Rockies and a volcano in New Mexico (took the south route home).
I should have pics online before too long. I just got a server up and running at home to handle my new galleries: gallery.chasinghans.com and gallery.schroeder5.com (not up yet). Shouldn't be too long (this week hopefully) before both are fully operational and have some pics up. BTW, some apps can be a PITA when getting a Linux server up and going (been a while since I've had to deal with source code).
This week I am in San Diego for some training for work. Scott (fellow Net guy) and I arrived this eve. It was an interesting trip over. We nearly missed our OKC departing flight, as we showed up 5 mins after they were supposed to start boarding. They had closed the doors and "un-checked" us. We got on ok, but had to re-check in at Denver. Luckily it didn't affect our luggage, as it was waiting for us in S.D. Also, lucky for us, we got new seats in Denver for the 2nd flight, as the flight was nearly full. Once in San Diego, we used Priceline to grab a Sebring for $20/day, not bad, since the cheapest we found on the rental sites was $40/day. Embassy Suites Hotel San Diego-La Jolla‎ has been great so far, aside from the $17/day parking and $25/3 days internet access. It's a very nice hotel though, across the street from the UTC-Westfield Shoppingtown‎ mall.

Here's home for the next week:

Colorado Springs and Black Friday

Up in Colorado Springs, arrived Wed eve, no snow on the ground, and as you can see Pike Peak was even mostly clear. On Thanksgiving, we had a few flurries, and last night we got enough to cover the ground and roads with a couple inches. The girls are happy! It made getting out for the black Friday deals fun though. Surprisingly Wal-Mart was packed; no parking spaces. Once I got in there was two 50 people lines for the electronics dept. Good thing my brother Dirk, who was shopping online at his house, found the same deal (items intentionally left out) online with free shipping at Circuit City. So I headed over to Office Depot to grab the other items I was looking for (2 4GB CF cards and a 16GB mem stick), but they were sold out. I then decided to head to one of the other Office Depots in Colorado Springs, and, luckily, they had mislabeled the prices, so I got everything I needed! Yay! More pics later hopefully - heading to the Garden of the Gods.