Thursday, October 29, 2009

I'm Walking on Sunshine?

This is about the most dramatic weather bulletin I've ever seen...concerning rain. I saw a stat that said the longest we've gone this year without rain is 8 days. Wow! Well here is the imminent doom set before us for the next 48 hours. I've bolded my personal favorites that seem particularly ominous and dramatic. You've been warned.

..MAJOR HEAVY RAINFALL EVENT EXPECTED TODAY AND FRIDAY OVER MUCH OF ARKANSAS... ...PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD BE COMPLETED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE... MOISTURE HAS BEGIN INCREASING FROM THE SOUTH THIS MORNING...AS A POTENT STORM SYSTEM HEADS TOWARD THE MID SOUTH FROM THE WEST. WIDESPREAD SHOWERS AND ISOLATED THUNDERSTORMS WILL CONTINUE TO DEVELOP...AND SPREAD NORTHWARD INTO ARKANSAS THIS MORNING.

SEVERAL UPPER LEVEL SYSTEMS WILL MOVE THROUGH THE REGION OUT AHEAD OF AN APPROACHING SLOW-MOVING FRONTAL BOUNDARY. THE SYSTEMS WILL INTERACT WITH THE SLOW FRONT...AND THIS WILL ALLOW FOR SEVERAL WAVES OF MODERATE TO HEAVY RAINFALL TO OCCUR ACROSS A LARGE PART OF ARKANSAS TODAY THROUGH FRIDAY NIGHT. FOR THIS REASON...A FLASH FLOOD WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR A LARGE PART OF ARKANSAS THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH SATURDAY MORNING. AS MUCH AS 5 TO 7 INCHES OF RAIN IS EXPECTED IN PORTIONS OF CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN ARKANSAS TODAY THROUGH LATE FRIDAY NIGHT. THE HEAVIEST RAIN WILL OCCUR IN AREAS MAINLY ALONG A LINE FROM SALEM...TO LITTLE ROCK...TO CAMDEN. IN AREAS EAST AND WEST OF THIS LINE...AMOUNTS OF 3 TO 5 INCHES WILL BE COMMON...WITH ISOLATED TOTALS APPROACHING 6 INCHES.

NEAR-RECORD RAIN HAS FALLEN DURING THE MONTH OF OCTOBER IN A LARGE PART OF ARKANSAS. THERE HAS BEEN VERY LITTLE TIME FOR ANY SIGNIFICANT DRYING...WITH THE GROUND SO SATURATED. MANY STREAMS... CREEKS...AND RIVERS ARE ABOVE NORMAL LEVELS FOR LATE OCTOBER...WITH SEVERAL POINTS ALONG THE WHITE...CACHE AND OUACHITA RIVERS ABOVE FLOOD STAGE. THERE WILL SIMPLY BE NOWHERE FOR THE WATER TO GO. WITH ALL THE EXPECTED RAINFALL...AGRICULTURAL IMPACTS WILL BE LIKELY. MANY LOW-LYING ROADS WILL BE FLOODED...AND LOW WATER CROSSINGS WILL BE IMPASSABLE. STREAMS THAT HAVE A TENDENCY TO RISE RAPIDLY DURING PERIODS OF HEAVY RAINFALL WILL TEND TO FLOOD THE QUICKEST.

ANYONE CAMPING ALONG THE BANKS OF A STREAM OR RIVER... PARTICULARLY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN ARKANSAS SHOULD MAKE PLANS TO LEAVE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE OR AT LEAST MOVE TO HIGHER GROUND. COMMUTERS DURING THE EVENING DRIVE ON TODAY AND THE MORNING DRIVE FRIDAY SHOULD BE ESPECIALLY CAUTIOUS. IF YOU DRIVE ACROSS AREAS NEAR BODIES OF WATER SUSCEPTIBLE TO FLOODING...MAKE PLANS FOR AN ALTERNATE ROUTE. PLEASE STAY INFORMED BY MONITORING THE LATEST FORECASTS AND INFORMATION FROM YOUR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE. BE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION IF A WARNING IS ISSUED...YOUR LIFE MAY DEPEND ON IT.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

A Dramatic Week

Friday-Sunday: Looking back, at least the week started out on a high note. My best friends and I went on our 2nd annual camping/float trip in Gilbert, AR.


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We stayed on that white "beach" area just off the road leading to the river. The mild summer and high rain falls had the river up and we were worried the sandbar wouldn't be there, but it was. We went on the longest float this year. It was supposed to take 6-8 hours. The river was so swift, we got done in 4 hours. That was with a few stops to chill, eat, etc. Oh yes, did I mention we came uncomfortably close to stepping on a snake? We saw a cave in the rocks and wanted to climb up to it. Not 10 steps on the shore and Michael goes running the opposite direction, me right behind him. The other guys said they heard it hiss. I didn't, but had I, I might of passed out on the spot. Luckily, I only saw about 1 inch of it and ran. I'm getting nauseous thinking about it, so moving on...

We ended up getting back in time for the other guys to listen to the Razorback game on the radio. It was a beautiful weekend. Couldn't ask for anything better. Well, the country restaurant we got the fabled rooster bullet was closed...that was very disappointing. But overall we had a great time and it was nice to get away. Here's some more photos, taken by my friend Daniel.

Monday: We join a story already in progress. You see, a while back, someone backed into my truck at the school's parking lot. And they didn't leave a note. I finally decided I should get it repaired. The driver side bumper was bent and pushed in the side panel and popped out the light. I was told it would be a two day repair. Monday represented day 7. Apparently the original $800 estimate was off as there was more damage underneath than originally seen. The problem was the supplemental paperwork didn't get transferred and for three days my truck just sat there not getting worked on. In the meantime, I got a car from Enterprise that was chained smoked in, despite their no smoking policy. I got a 2nd car, but my insurance made me give it back since I went out of town for the weekend. The third car I got was nice though. On day 12--that being Friday, Oct. 2--I finally got my truck back.

Tuesday: I recently upgraded to the new operating system on my Mac, Snow Leopard. I also purchased my own license of Final Cut Studio and installed it. After doing these things, and cleaning up some system files, I noticed I was 20 GB of hard drive space down, which was completely unreasonable. I'd been having enough quirks with Snow Leopard that I decided to reinstall it cleanly--meaning a full wipe and start over. So I ran Time Machine to back up my files and took my system to work on Tuesday to let the installers run while I worked. I wiped the HD, installed Snow Leopard, and went to grab my files from the back up. Except the back up folder was not whole. For whatever reason, about 2-3 folders deep into the file tree, Time Machine stopped saving. So, for example, the folder tree for music is: Music > iTunes > [artist folder] > [album name] > [songs]. The back up stopped at the artist folder. No music. Same for documents and photos. Anything saved in a folder was gone. Mildly panicking!

I was on the phone with Apple immediately. He had nothing. He helped me restore my iTunes purchases from my phone, but all music from CDs (when I still used to buy them) could not be transferred. I got on forums and discovered I could retrieve my music and photos (many sentimental ones, particularly of my cats and family) from my AppleTV. Except it is not a simple transfer; you have to break into it--voiding the warranty--and connect the hard drive to the Mac as an external USB device. So I took it up to church and Leslie helped me do just that. I retrieved it all back. In the end I lost documents in folders and some old photos, but they were things I hadn't opened or looked at in years, so I wasn't too upset.

Thursday: Once again, in what seems to occur every semester, I had to face two students cheating on an exam by taking it together. I've become very hardened to this sort of thing. Two years ago, I was so nervous about having to deal with it, my voice would be shaking, my hands trembling, my mouth dry... In fact, funny story...the first time I had to do it, the students came back in tears, apologizing profusely because they could hear the anger in my voice. The thing is, it wasn't anger...it was nervousness! Ha! Well, whatever...it worked. One student fessed up after I presented the evidence. The other was completely flippant and left never really thinking she did anything wrong and saying "it just sucks because everyone does it, but I'm the one that got caught." Greaaaaaat. After fuming for a while and stalking around the building for more potential problems, I just came to the realization that I have as much security in place as I can reasonably put, and if students want to cheat, they are going to. The fact is, it WILL catch up to them one day.

Friday: This is the day I got my truck back. While I was going to pick it up, a friend texted me to apologize for something that happened a couple days ago. A 2-day-later, text apology didn't really sit well with me, so I wrongly sent a terse reply back. That just set things off and we ended up going back and forth and some underlying issues came out. I hate it when this kind of things happen. I wish I was a better person when it comes to dealing with tough things like this. /sigh Oh well, we'll survive.

That catches you up. Today's agenda: Notre Dame football at 2:30 and the Dallas Stars season opener at 7 pm! YESSSSSSS! Hm, may try to sneak some Geocaching in too; too nice of a day to let it waste.