It was 75 yesterday here in Virginia. It's going to be 80 today. In early FEBRUARY.

Man, I can't wait to transfer. Of course, we'll probably end up in Florida…

Okay, so we weren't strictly speaking about storms. Riding The Storm, yes. But this is related.

Have you heard about the teenager who got struck by lightning while wearing an iPod? For some reason the story won't die here. And each time I hear it, I grit my teeth.

"Lightning Strikes Teenager Wearing iPod."

All the stories make it sound like he was struck BECAUSE he was wearing an iPod. Um…let's see…he was outside in a thunderstorm while mowing the lawn. Could it be that he was struck because he was OUTSIDE IN A THUNDERSTORM while attached to a giant wad of METAL????

Advice from experts: Don't talk on your cell phone or listen to your iPod while outside in a thunderstorm. Er…how about just, don't go outside in a thunderstorm????

And yes, I get that they're saying that the electronic device can potentially cause MORE severe injuries than a lightning strike alone, but geez, the message is sort of getting lost here. ANY lightning strike is bad. Stay out of thunderstorms. If you can hear thunder, you are close enough to be struck. iPod or not.

This safety message brought to you by someone who didn't get a single minute of sleep last night thanks to a thunderstorm that sat over my house ALL night. Probably waiting for me to come outside with my iPod.

Okay, so I THOUGHT the spam problem was fixed. And yeah, MOSTLY it was. I mean, yesterday alone, my new spam catcher caught 700 spams. But gobs still got through. So I shut down comments for the night so I wouldn't have to get up and have a bazillion notices jamming up my inboxes.

Am angry. But I'm also determined to beat the bastards. So today I'm going to be making some modifications, totally taking up time I should be spending on writing, but dammit, I WILL win. *wrings hands and cackles* Yeah, baby, I'm taking off the gloves, throwing down the gauntlet, and all those other cliches.

Will someone PLEASE develop a program so that when you get spam, you can push a button that will send a surge through the internet and cause the spammer's equipment to blow up? With the spammer? <–bloodthirsty

K, off to fight.

Wish me luck…

Okay, I've temporarily turned off my blog comments until I can upgrade my spam protection. Over the last 24 hours, my blog has been slammed by over 2,500 spams, which wreaked havoc with my blog, my website mailbox, my server mail, and my Outlook program.

Am NOT happy. :mad:

WHY is spamming not illegal? Argh!!!!

And yo, people who hire spammers: I will never, EVER use your product BECAUSE you spammed me. Granted, I wasn't planning to try any of the porn sites anyway, but I DO buy life insurance, car insurance, cars, and some pharmaceutical items. I will NOT, however, buy from anyone who spammed me. Yeah, seems like brilliant marketing strategies to me…

Jerks.

Anyway, sorry, but comments are temporarily turned off. I'll keep posting though, just to taunt the spammers. :razz:

This is funny. :lol:

There's a reason I call this blog my "soapbox." And right now, I'm going to get up on it and shout to the world.

Back in the late nineties, I was the supervisor at a NWS weather station in Astoria, Oregon. My observers and I were operating from 6 A.M. to 10 P.M., and our job was to augment the readings taking by the Automated Surface Observation System (ASOS,) because the thing just wasn't good enough by itself. Basically, the machine is designed to give current weather readings at an airport–cloud ceilings, current weather (rain, snow, fog, etc.) wind speed and direction, pressure, etc. Unfortunately, it takes a very small sampling because there are a limited number of sensors–in Astoria, there were two.

When the government, in its infinite wisdom (and desire to cut jobs) decided to close the station (meaning, fire human observers and let ASOS run on its own,) I caused a stink. A big one. I got senators and congressmen involved, forced them to have to fly to Oregon to talk to me, forced NWS personel to fly to Washington to talk to congress, etc. My stink made the news, and boy, was I ever in trouble. But damn it, I was convinced that ASOS was going to kill someone.

Well, guess what?

Now, I don't know the full story, and the news report doesn't give all the details, but apparently (word from those there) the ASOS indicated that the ceiling was approximately 400 feet, and the helicopter pilot decided to go below the ceiling for better visibililty. Problem was, ASOS was reporting ONLY the weather directly over the sensor. Elsewhere, the ceiling was lower, so the pilot, instead of finding that 400 foot ceiling, found water.

A human observer would have noted in the observations that the ceiling was lower to the west (or east, or north or whatever.) So if my sources are correct, human staff might have prevented a tragedy.

Back in 1999, I warned everyone who would listen that it was only a matter of time before this happened. It makes me sick that I was right. :evil:

UPDATE: I have confirmed that at 7:55 A.M., the ASOS DID report a ceiling of 400 ft. and 5 miles of visibility. The crash happened at 8:20 A.M. I also want to make clear that while the weather report may have been a contributing factor to the crash, there are likely other factors…pilot error, mechanical failure, etc.