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.

Tornados On The Tube

Tonight I watched the latest installment of Discovery's Storm Chasers. I think it's a great series that shows a realistic viewpoint of the frustration chasers face most seasons. That being said, this episode went a little overboard with the drama. At one point the narrator states Reed is getting pelted by 100 mph winds while filming outside his vehicle. There were quite a few other times during this episode I found myself chuckling at comments made. Don't get me wrong, I've said a few stupid things while the camera is rolling, and I don't fault any of what the chasers said while out there, but what the narrator says after editing / production is another story. Reed and team do show how to get it done though!
Another thing that caught my attention... Seriously, the DOW team has no one technical enough to troubleshoot a faulty monitor cable out in the field??? I realize I'm a computer geek, but com'on. With all the people that travel with them, surely one should be a tech, especially given the technical difficulties they seem to run into. If I didn't want to catch more tornadoes I'd offer to tag along... ;)
On another note, My Name Is Earl had a tornado theme tonight too... That was only good for some great laughs.

11/5/2008 Chase

Things shaped up nicely for a chase on Wednesday. Steve Miller OK and I met up with Aaron for what was to be a mud slinging good time. We started out by heading to Morrison, where we met Aaron, then headed towards I-35 and up N of Perry to catch a cell developing there. At this point it was still early, so not much rotation yet. We then decided to head down I-35 towards Guthrie to catch the monster cell headed there from El Reno. We intercepted it just N of Edmond, and followed it from there, the whole time watching cyclic wall clouds. This led to the mudding adventure through back roads S of Langston, S of HW 105. After Steve got over his white knuckles (the Dodge is rear wheel drive : ), we jetted E on 105 to catch up to it again (didn't take much - these storms we slow moving for Nov). Staying on it as it had more lowerings, up to Cushing and E on 33, it never did produce any funnels. Finally we called it in Drumright as it was past sunset.

All in all, a fun day, nice to be in the weather again. It's also good to know Steve can be forgiving when I keep saying "The road ahead should be paved", as road conditions worsen. I have video of a stern faced Steve for $30 / sec if anyone is interested. j/k :)