Entries tagged with weather

Entry tags:

the rain isn't supposed to be indoors, right?

The phrase for the night was "that's why we have insurance".

A big storm rolled through Pittsburgh around 6:30-7:00 tonight. It dumped massive quantities of rain and we had several short power outages. But then it started to die down and I knew of no reason the 7:30 meeting at my synagogue would be cancelled, so out I went, dodging a couple intersections closed by accidents.

I walked into the building to find no one obviously around but the door unlocked, the lights on... and the alarm blaring and two big puddles in the lobby, one at the foot of a staircase. After calling out didn't produce any results, I headed out to the relative quiet of the front porch to try to call the director (failed). By this time another person had arrived for the meeting, and while we were talking about what to do next we saw people moving around inside so we went back in, where we joined a water-diversion effort. The director was already there and told us the sanctuary and chapel were fine but parts of the upstairs were not. The sound of a waterfall in the stairwell confirmed her story. We were then joined by my rabbi and the meeting chair, who had been in the sanctuary tending to torah scrolls (all fine, whew). Most of us headed to the gift shop, where water was pouring in from above and chunks of ceiling were floating in the ankle-high water, to rescue as much as we could. Most of the chumashim were shrink-wrapped; many of the other books weren't. :-(

Apparently we lost part of the roof -- probably two parts, since the gift shop wasn't getting its water from the stairwell. Oof.

It puts the water in my basement into perspective.

Entry tags:

car,
weather

applied physics

Dear certain drivers I had the misfortune to be near today: Write "momentum is not always bad" 500 times or until you learn that on icy uphill stretches there is such a thing as "minimum speed", whichever comes second. Having to plan around your antics is a PITA. Thank you.

Driving this morning was "interesting". Nothing had been plowed when I headed out to the morning minyan, which wasn't too surprising (barely past sunrise). Nothing in my neighborhood had been plowed an hour later either, which was cranky-making. They had managed to plow in Greenfield and the south side, but Forbes Avenue (Forbes Avenue!) and Beacon Avenue were untouched when I left for work. I got up Beacon with a running start, but I had to delay until someone got out of the way and that made the guy behind me initially cranky. I think he figured it out as he followed me up, though; that looked like a wave at the top of the hill.

I got stuck on the way to minyan. I could see that I was going to have to stop on a slight incline; I had enough warning to try to aim for the least-bad spot, and it would have worked if someone hadn't decided to pull up right behind me (so no "roll back slightly" option). When traffic moved I couldn't go forward, and I had to wait for the guy behind me to conclude that I wasn't going anywhere and back up himself before I could move. I was wondering if perhaps my tires are just crap (how are Hondas for that in general? it's not age; the car only has 4000 miles), but on the way back later I saw two accidents in that block, so maybe not. On the other hand, I did some unexpected sliding in other places. I think of myself as an average driver; there are undoubtedly things I could learn that would help in situations like this, but I think I mostly do ok.

Things were better tonight, but parts of Beacon still hadn't been plowed. I guess they're just waiting for next week's thaw.

Entry tags:

Pennsic prep (mostly)

Sunday was a planned work day for my Pennsic camp -- specifically some house repairs. Last year we replaced several sections of siding that had gotten mushy because we didn't know from day one that caulk is important. There were some sections we didn't get to last year, so we attacked those this time. Dani and I had done a scouting mission and several camp members had gotten together two weeks ago to prime and paint plywood, so this "should" have been easy. That noise you hear is heavenly laughter. :-)

When we did that scouting mission (a month or so ago) there were lots of wasps or hornets swarming around. (I was disinclined to get close enough to armed insects to determine which these were.) We've had nests before, so I brought up some chemical weapons this time -- and we found nothing. Ok, we found an occupied bird's nest (they can stay until Pennsic), but no wasp/hornet nests at all. That's great, but a little mystifying.

First lesson learned: a power inverter works better if you have the cables -- or, failing that, if the cables are not in a car at a gaming convention in Columbus. Oops. We were so careful to make sure I had the box before Dani left for Origins; it didn't occur to either of us that the full-looking box was not actually full. Fortunately, alaricmacconnal is handy with copper wire, which he was able to pick up on his way up to Cooper's Lake.

Second lesson learned: the circular saw really is too big for the power inverter (I think the person who thought it worked last year was mis-remembering), but a jig saw is good enough to make straight cuts in plywood. (A lesson we learned last year is that you can't really measure for the replacement piece until you've removed the old piece, which means cutting on site.)

Third lesson learned: rain is wet. :-) Ok, we already knew that, and we knew we were gambling some on the weather. We got rained on twice, but each time only lasted about 15-20 minutes and people were smart enough to come down from the big metal ladder. :-) A bigger storm rolled in as we were finishing, so we got to drive home in that.

We've had some impressive storms in the last few days. I don't think we got the predicted hail this afternoon, but on both Saturday and Sunday there were some pretty fierce winds and impressive light shows.

After I got home (and cleaned up) Sunday night I was able to visit with college friends from Seattle for a couple hours. I'm not certain they had had their first kid when last I saw them, and they were in town this weekend to drop him off at CMU's pre-college program. Wow -- been a long time. It was good to catch up some (though it was incomplete).

Entry tags:

weather

ambiguous weather

(Email post, second try.)

This morning I wondered whether the stuff falling from the sky was water or ice. I don't have a thermometer, but I have an internet connection.

Local weather: 30 degrees, "unknown precipitation". They couldn't figure it out either. :-)

(The snow already on the ground was crunchy, but the roads were fine where they didn't have mounds of slush on them. The precipitation hitting my windshield seemed to be liquid. Let's hope that's the worst of it.)

Entry tags:

pennsic,
weather

home from Pennsic

I'm home from Pennsic. If you've posted entries in the last dozen days that you want to make sure I see, please point them out (comment, email, whatever).

A longer post will come later. Most of this week has been wet, with several storms, which spawned some quotes:

"'30% chance of rain' means that 70% of people who aren't you will stay dry." (Dani, I think.)

During the third storm on Thursday (after the tornado warnings):
"And if that doesn't work, what's Plan B?"
"Plan B is we all run for [my] house and try to land on a witch on the way down." (Degan)

The drainage ditch on (and through) our block partially did its job. We didn't have a repeat of Lake Atenveldt, exactly, but Pond Carillion appeared (pictures later). However, with people from my camp applying shovels to the ditch, it was gone in an hour. (Some people in the barony camp definitely got wet and one tent failed. This was earlier in the week, not yesterday.)

I had a near-miss in the parking lot. Understand that I parked a week ago (in the grass lot) at the end of several days of scorching heat and no rain. I've been going to Pennsic long enough to know not to park on any obvious slopes in the wrong direction, but that still leaves a lot of room for potential problems. I was concerned about what the last several days of rain had done and I had to get home today, so I fetched my car early (trading off reduced sun-drying for reduced wear and tear on the dirt roads from others). My row was just fine, fortunately. The previous one was a total loss; I'm not sure even 4WD would have helped get through that lake.

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random bits

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Entry tags:

pittsburgh,
weather

driving fun

Dear City of Pittsburgh,

I'm not unreasonable; I don't expect pristine roads while snow is actually falling. But you've known this was coming for days, and it's not off hours, and Forbes Avenue is kind of a major road (to say nothing of the lesser roads). I really expected to see some evidence of plowing or salting this morning.

No love,
Monica

Dear driver from Ohio,

You should be familiar with the white fluffy stuff from back home. No one else on the highway is having difficulty maintaining the posted minimum speed of 40mph. If you really think that's twice what's safe, could you at least have the decency to stop swerving between lanes and slamming on your brakes at every little twitter of fear? And maybe consider getting off at the next exit and taking local roads?

But hey, at least I know my horn works now.

What is the law (and etiquette, for that matter) concerning stopping for accidents you witness but aren't in? Ever since I was run down by someone speeding through a red light, and not one of the several witnesses stopped to support my story (or see if I was ok -- I was thrown several feet), I've tried to stop if I actually see the accident and I can. I always stop if I see clear fault (and especially if I think the underdog is going to take the hit unfairly, like when the bicyclist or pedestrian really was being stupid), or if anyone seems to be injured. (Well, unless police or an ambulance just happen to be there...) But I didn't stop for either of the two fender-benders I saw on my way to work today, because they looked minor and what would be the point? It got me wondering about what my obligations are in all of these cases, from fender-benders up to major squishings, in light of my observation that no one else ever seems to stop. Does everyone just assume that the insurance companies, police, and ambulance crew will work it out, and your testimony or other help is irrelevant?

Entry tags:

short takes

A few days ago I got a check-out coupon for Coke Zero (which I'd bought on that trip). The text on the coupon says "we noticed you like it (not that we track that or anything)". I appreciate the sense of humor on the coupon-writer's part. (Actually, I prefer Pepsi One, but not when the price is half-again. And Pepsi One didn't give me a coupon.)

On a whim I bought a few cans of the store-brand cat food, which was on sale. Erik loved the beef-flavored one I gave him last night. Must remember that.

How to wash a cat, from osewalrus. You've probably laughed at the text version; now laugh at the video. (Speaking of cat videos, I'm glad I don't have this problem.)

This comic (forwarded to me by Dani) has a lot of truth to it.

Yesterday we finally got up into double-digit temperatures. Sure, the first digit was a "1", but I'll take it. (Monday was symmetrical: the high was 5, and the low was -5.)

Entry tags:

photos,
weather

snow

Happy Tu B'Shevat, the new year for trees, which sometimes has connotations of spring.

(Tonight's low: 2. Tomorrow's high: 10.)

( two more pictures )

Entry tags:

weather

April showers

It's 67 degrees out and my dafodils are blooming gloriously. What do you mean, "snow showers likely after midnight"? And a tornado watch currently in force, too. Must be April.

Entry tags:

weather

oh dear

Dani just called to warn me that the roads are really hazardous. Dani is one of the most "optimistic" (but not reckless) drivers I know; if he thinks there's a problem, that's significant.

Entry tags:

weekend and short takes

Big fluffy snow! I wonder how long that will last. (It also seems to be somewhat slippery, at least for cars. Maintaining traction is mostly fine; acquiring it while turning (e.g. making a turn from a stop) requires a bit more attention. Or did a few hours ago, anyway, and the multiple noisy near-misses at the intersection in front of our house seem to confirm.)

Dani's company's holiday party was this afternoon. They held it at the children's museum, which seemed an unusual venue for small gatherings (I don't think of museums as having party rooms), but on the way in we passed a sign directing people to a birthday party. Ok, that makes sense -- a child's birthday party at a children's museum makes sense, and they won't turn down adults. :-) (There are about a dozen people at the company, and we and one other couple are the only ones without children.) To clarify: it's a museum filled with stuff interesting to children, not a museum displaying children. I suppose the latter would be, properly speaking, the "child(ren) museum". :-)

Yesterday morning, alas, instead of enjoying Shabbat services, I was at the vet clinic with Erik. (Why yes, I do think health of a pet trumps Shabbat. For myself, for anything short of Major Injury or Impending Death, I'd wait.) Fortunately, the problem was only a pulled dressing and not, as I had feared, pulled stitches. They fixed him up with a bigger dressing with more adhesive, which seems to be holding up well so far. But not the most calming way to spend (part of) Shabbat.

Yesterday afternoon and evening we played another game of 7 Ages. This time we ran from the first age through the beginning of the fourth, but it took a long time. At 9:00, in the middle of the third age, it seemed reasonable to set that boundary. At midnight it was less obvious that it was correct. So, still some calibration to do, but it's a fun game (though I got thoroughly whumped this time).

Short takes:

Ah, that's why there were a bazillion messages waiting in the moderation queue for an SCA mailing list today. Someone posted a query about sewing machines. That's kind of like posting a query about editing tools to a software-developers' list. :-)

Interesting if true, but entertaining either way: legal complications of a bizarre death (link from Dani).

My sister has never read the Narnia books and would like a copy. Does anyone know if the ones currently in print have been altered (from the ones we read in childhood) other than to change the order? (I can solve the ordering problem if I buy individual volumes or a boxed set rather than one of the compedia that's out there.)

Entry tags:

short takes

The weather has been strange lately. Aside from a couple of very minor glitches, the temperature began rising Monday morning and continued doing so for 48 hours. Nights were warmer than the previous days, twice. The temperature then dropped all day today (and is still doing so). Weird!

We played D&D last night. Third edition is inconsistent in one way -- usually high die rolls are good, except when determining whether something goes wrong during teleports. Those were my only high rolls of the night. Bugger. Well, that's what healing spells are for and third time's a charm, I guess. (I have an in-character explanation for why this happened at this particular time, but the out-of-character explanation is "Monica's dice lice were in open revolt".)

I talked with our associate rabbi this morning. Our senior rabbi, who leads the informal Shabbat morning service, isn't going to be there this week or next, so I had to find out if the associate rabbi is planning to take over or if we're supposed to take care of it on our own. It turns out that he would be delighted to just be a congregant and have us lead things (he's not a regular so he doesn't know the routine very well). He views it as a good learning opportunity for some of the folks in the group. Ok, now I don't need to find a way to make that suggestion. :-) This will probably strike some people as weird ("wait, there's a rabbi here but he's not in charge?!"), but that's actually perfectly normal in Judaism. Any competent adult can lead. So we'll do that for a couple weeks and see what happens. (Fortunately, I have two people I can tap for torah reading on short notice.)

Entry tags:

weather

snow!

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wind and stuff

Impressive winds last night. At one point I woke up to the sound of the metal cover in the (decorative) fireplace in the bedroom rattling around. In other words, wind was coming down the chimney with enough force to do that. I've never heard that sound in my bedroom before.

Note to future self: when you buy your next car, make sure it weighs as much as your current one. (They make 'em out of plastic now, so it might not.) This morning's winds were still strong enough to push my car around. (Low-profile, but small.) And wow -- hail! In November! Little hailstones, but hail nonetheless. It was kind of neat, from an indoor vantage point.

This morning at services a couple of the guys asked me when I'm going to lead the service. I said I need to learn the service better (that is, the chazan's part), and that I'd actually tried to buy a copy of the siddur but Pinsker's doesn't carry it. So Joe told me to borrow one; I was concerned that they didn't have enough to lend one out, so he picked one up, turned to the "donor" plate in the front that has his name on it, and said it was ok. Gee, I guess they're serious. :-)

A bug in our infrastructure code is preventing me from effectively debugging my application. The relevant developer should appear any moment now with a workaround. I hope.

Entry tags:

short takes (pretty random)

I awoke today to frost. Apparently the temperature got down into the upper 20s last night. I'm used to light-sweater season, as opposed to jacket season, lasting more than four days. Perhaps it will return. (In case you're wondering, the four seasons are T-shirt season, light-sweater season (also known as sweatshirt season), jacket season, and mega-jacket season. They are not of equal durations; T-shirt season usually lasts about 5-6 months.)

I found this rant about Usenet interesting. And not solely applicable to Usenet. Thanks to autographedcat for the link.

Template for a badly-written poll: "Does X change your opinion of Y?" Sure it can, but neither "yes" nor "no" actually tells you anything else useful. If what you mean is "does X make you less inclined toward Y?", say that. (A current instance of this is a CNN poll, where Y is Schwarzenegger and X is his comments about Hitler.)

We had a very good On the Mark practice Wednesday. Robert, Kathy, and I will be performing at Darkover (without Ray, who can't make it), so we've been juggling some things around to make them work with just three people. We've also added a couple new pieces that we can just plan for three from the start. Things are sounding good, and we've still got more than a month and a half to practice. Kathy's been taking voice lessons and that's paying off, too.

( Jewish stuff, including some geeking )

Entry tags:

short takes during a long build

Java compilations are much, much faster than C++ ones were. I must remember this when I get impatient.

One lane of the Boulevard of the Allies has been closed for a couple weeks due to construction. It's only closed for a block, and generally it doesn't hinder traffic flow. Today, however, traffic was crawling there, and I have no idea why. What, did last night's spectacular storm cause drivers to be afraid of puddles or something? Sheesh.

The storm was quite loud and bright last night. I think I jolted awake from proximate thunderclaps at least three times. This made the cats who were sleeping on/near me unhappy, but it wasn't exactly under my control. This morning it seemed to have cooled things down and sucked some of the humidity out of the air, though the effect apparently didn't last. (I haven't been out since morning.)

Sharon and Elliott have a new cat. It's shaped like a Siamese, but it's all white. Elliott told me that because it has green eyes it is an "Oriental Shorthair"; if, instead, it had blue eyes, it would be an "Unpointed Siamese". Eye color is a defining characteristic of the breed but pointing is not? I didn't know that.

Entry tags:

house,
weather

rain, rain everywhere (but outside would be better than inside)

Not long ago, there was a very heavy, sustained rain outside. (Now there's just regular rain.)

There is a lake where the patio is supposed to be. It's draining, very slowly.

There is water oozing into the basement from many directions. There is a sustained gurgle as that water makes its way, slowly, to points of egress, leaving flowing tendrils all about. We've seen water in the basement before; we always assumed it was pipes backing up, not a water invasion. The various folks we've called to bring in snakes and stuff when that happens have never done anything to dissuade us of this idea.

Lovely. Just lovely.

On the positive side, this is probably the sort of thing that's covered by homeowners' insurance. (I am often amazed at what's covered by homeowners' insurance.)

On the negative side, it's going to be a pain to get this diagnosed and fixed, I don't know if they can fix patio drainage (if that's a source of problems) without ripping up huge amounts of our yard, and the guest room is in the basement (see previous entry about imminent guests). Obviously we'll come up with some other solution for the guests, but still...

And Shabbat starts in less than half an hour, so certainly we're not going to call anyone in for a quick fix tonight.

Current Mood: indignant

Entry tags:

weather

weather weirdness

It is currently 74 degrees (F) in Pittsburgh.

What do they mean, "chance of flurries Saturday night"?!

This is just wrong. :-)

Entry tags:

car,
weather

working from home

I'm working from home today, not because of the snow but because it's car-inspection time and public transit doesn't really serve the office's location very well even when buses aren't way off schedule due to weather. So last night I FTPed a bunch of stuff to an intermediate machine (and then retrieved it from home), because the CD burn crapped out a few minutes before finishing, after an hour (!), and I wasn't going to wait around to try again. The internet to the rescue. :-) (It was only about 200 meg; it shouldn't have taken an hour anyway.)

I took the car to the garage at about 8:30 and they gave the impression that they'd be looking at it soon (not many cars in the lot, either), but they haven't called yet. The last few years inspection has been an exercise in patching problems to eek out a few more years. Some year, the cost of repairs will exceed a reasonable annual fee for keeping the car, and I'll have to buy a new one. (That's why I'm doing this now, although the current inspection is good through March.) I'm hoping that's not for another few years, because I'm interested in the hybrids but don't want to be an early adopter. We'll see. (One of my requirements for a car, and this is harder now than it used to be, is being a hatchback. Nothing else I've driven comes close on visibility combined with carrying capacity. And no, I don't want a van; I want something small.)

This is the first car I bought new. I bought it 14 years ago. I guess I just can't wrap my brain around the mentality that says that you replace your car every 3-5 years. Car shopping is way too much trouble. And hey, my insurance costs are low, which I certainly factor into the "fix or dump?" evaluation every year at inspection time. And I've found a mechanic who understands my approach and doesn't try to sell me on unnecessary repairs (best I can tell, anyway).

Last night I shovelled a bunch more snow from the "driveway", but I was tired so I settled for producing something I could drive over, rather than completely clear. I had some trouble getting out this morning, though, so I shovelled a bunch more when I got back from dropping the car off. Last night I also shovelled a path from the road up to our front door, but didn't do the sidewalks along the rest of the property because I was tired and no one else on the block had either. Dani did a little shovelling but tired out quickly. I don't think of myself as being in particularly good shape, but judging from last night my endurance is much higher than his. Odd.

Still, I'm glad that someone came around this morning offering to exchange shovelling services for money. The sidewalk and walk in front are now clear. My back has been a little sore today, so I might not have been able to do it tonight.

And apropos of nothing, why must obfuscating a jar (Java) be such a royal pain? Hasn't anybody written a tool yet that'll crawl through your code looking for dynamic class references? We have spent way more time on this part of the release process than seems reasonable.