I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
I’ve been tracking Mary’s progress home on www.flightaware.com Very cool. If you know the flight number and airline, it gives you an almost real time track of where they are. In fact, if you know a pilot that is coming to see you and files a flight plan, you can track them as well. Mary’s plane just landed in Detroit. I will be leaving soon so pick her up in Traverse City. The only set back will be I have to leave before she does. However, once I get to TVC, I can check on her progress with my PDA and the TVC airport WiFi. (I’m such a geek!)
Recently, we upgraded a few things, or maybe we should say added to our gadgets.
One was an inexpensive mp3 player for Mary. She used to use an old CD player that I had, until it finally died. She has been going on radio for probably 6 months. She recently asked about a new CD player and I said mp3. After I told her at that there are inexpensive mp3 players (we got one for $40) and she can update it pretty easily she was sold. The high point with it so far was when the four of us (Kaleb, Karlie, Mary, and I) were coming back from the Cherry Festival on Monday night, singing at the top of our lungs to Delirious.
The Second was partly for Mary’s new job, but this is something I’ve wanted get for a while; a new router. We picked up a Belkin wireless G at Wal-mart for $40 bucks as well. I finally got the wireless to work with my PDA. We thought Mary’s Laptop that Wells Fargo gave here was wireless, but it isn’t, no problem. There are 4 wired ports on the router, so we both can be on the computers at the same time. I’ve asked her to check to see if we can buy a PC card for the laptop to make it wireless so we don’t have string the ethernet cable.
In a related thing, I’ve been getting into Google’s products as of late. I’ve been using their RSS reader for a while now, and their personalized home page. Now they have added the RSS reader and personalized page to the mobile/wireless. Yahoo, has also updated their mobile page for their mail and news access, so I can do a fair amount of things online with my PDA.
Things are going along, well. Most of this conference has been pretty good, however, there have been a few talks that have been less than interesting to me. As someone who works operationally in meteorology sometimes the research people don’t always communicate the ideas in a clear fashion. While I understand, them sometimes I fail to see how this will apply in an operational setting (i.e. forecasting).
Currently, I am sitting in on a talk about the climotology of the Haines index. This one is very good, and has lots of applications. I need to get this data to our forecasters.
This is the first time, since I have been married, that Mary and I are actually in seperate cities. I’m in Lansing attending a fire weather conference for work. This gets us warmed up for next week when Mary goes to Milwaukee for training for her new job coming up.
Otherwise, not much else is going on. I’m in the hotel room, digging the wifi and typing with my Bluetooth keyboard on my Dell PDA. I’m such a geek!
I was having trouble sleeping tonight, when this illustration burst forth in my brain.
As followers of Christ we are asked to walk a narrow way. In this case the black line. This black line represents, doing the things we should do. Characterized by the statement Love God and Love people. The fushia (?) line represents some Christians who pick out the faults of others and tell them how they are displeasing to God, and are going to hell. The maroon line represents tolerating sin. Where we love people so much that we become enablers allowing sinful practices and bailing out the person to the point that they don’t get any correction and discipline to help them out of the addiction or such.
The red dotted that swiggles back and forth along the Black line of the narrow way, is about as close as we come as most Christians. Trying to help, correct, or discpline a friend or youth group member, out of love without being judgemental. Sometimes we tolerate sin to a point, but let them know that it isn’t right. Sometimes feeling judgemental about something and acting that way. The trick is to stay as close to the black line or walk the black line as best as possible.
I think what brought this on was the outing that we had today with the youth pastor and other volunteers. While planning, we had discussions about how to relate to some of the kids who are in the midst of major problems without being judgemental and yet helping them with their particular sin. Loving them but gently guiding them toward Truth.
That’s everybody’s struggle.
As I said the other day, we have a pretty good announcement. The announcement is that Mary will soon have a new job. I didn’t want to spill the beans until she gave her notice today(well, yesterday). So, in the near future, Mary will be working for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. The pay is comparable in the beginning and she can grow it to more on commission. However, it is the flexibility of the hours and the fact that she will be able to work from home sometimes. This will work out well once we move to the Boyne area.
As I talked about in a previous post, we were at The Big Ticket Festival. It was a pretty good festival for a first time try here in Gaylord. I saw some new bands that I want to hear more of and saw some old ones that I love. Anyway, I see that my wife has now posted the pictures of the festival on our Flickr page. There are about 95 pictures. A lot are of our son-in-law Ben and the Andy Stephanic Band (Ben’s brother), as well as the Newsboys (Mary’s favorite band). My favorite band (Currently TFK) wasn’t there, but there were others that were good. Enjoy!!!
Cuba’s President Fidel Castro shows a print of a satellite image of Tropical Depression One over the Gulf of Mexico during a meeting of the Cuban National Assembly in Havana, June 10, 2006. (Claudia Daut – CUBA/Reuters)
I just love how Fidel Castro will rail against the U.S., but where does he turn for his weather information? Look closely at the Rueters Photo and tell me that you don’t see something familar in the logos on the upper left and upper right corners of the map he is holding. I found it quite funny and ironic.
Hat tip to Yahoo! News.
I wanted to get a quick post out to the family telling of our exploits over the last couple of weeks. We started off with Memorial Day Weekend. Mary and I went camping with Ben & Trisha, Mary’s mom, and Tishia, a family friend. Other than a brief battle with ticks trying to invade the camper, we had a pretty good time. Here are some pictures. If you notice that Trisha is pregnant, then you are right. Trisha is just a little past 5 1/2 months and the expectant couple found out the baby will be a boy! (Dad and I joke about the fact that I went from 0 to 100 mph with my family life). So soon, I will be grandpa Jeff, or some sort of thing.
Kaleb has been running track and ended up at regionals as a freshman. He is pretty quick.
Karlie just had her 8th grade graduation as well. Next year High School!
Brandon has been with us this weekend as well as Kaleb and Karlie as we all went to the Big Ticket Festival here in Gaylord. That’s been fun as we have enjoyed some good music and a lot of dust! We’ll have pictures of that on Flickr soon. That’s about it for now.
We do have a fairly good announcement coming up on Monday. However, we can’t say anything yet. (No, it’s not the house).
Dad has been writing about the weather out on the west coast as of late. I thought that I would give my two cents as to what is happening here in the great lakes at the same time. The big thing is teleconnections. This happens all the time in meteorology. As something happens in one part of the world something else happens in another. In this case, there is an area of low pressure in the jet stream over the Pac NW and there is now high pressure in the jet stream over the Great Lakes. To see this I have provided this morning’s 250mb upper air chart from the RAP UCAR site.
Note how the jet stream (the multicolored band) dips south of Oregon and then goes north in the Plains and is way north of the Great Lakes. While Mom and Dad, Amy and Brendon, are cool and damp, we here in the great north woods have bee sweltering today in 90+F heat. The jet stream is a divider of cold air and warm air. If you are south of the polar jet you are warm and if you are north of the jet then you are cold. So there you have it, as the low moves into the Pacific Northwest, we get high pressure in the Great Lakes. That’s a simple teleconnection. There are more out there.
Posted by Jeff, really.
