Author: Doug

The Miami Heat is in town and rumor has it they are looking to take Kevin Garnett back to Miami from the Minnesota Timberwolves.

What did I say? Say it is not so… Yes, A good day scuba diving the shit out of a half ass day of storm chasing.
The storm threat was crap today and even worse, it went over to Wisconsin and Wisconsin sucks for storm chasing so, I went diving.

Dove Lac “of vis” Lavon (Lac Lavon Mine Pit) in Burnsville today and it was not that bad, 8-10 feet and the weeds were not in yet at the shore. The water level is down by at least 3 feet but the stocked fish made it worth it.

I had Sunny’s, Crappies, Northerns, Trout and Small Mouth Bass all swimming around me and checking out what was up. I was like having a huge fish take all to myself to play with the fish. For a local dive spot 10 minutes from home, it’s pretty sweet considering it takes me longer to get all my gear ready then it does to drive there. If I get this new gig out east, I’m going to be missing the diving and dive buddies a lot. But I also in talks again with some gigs in Florida and may end up moving there too. I do have the underwater video gig nailed down at the end of June with Brian. Were going to document the Ultimate Getaway and at first it was going to be a big were we were doing a short 3 day gig but now it has turned into a seven day underwater video shoot that now has the Florida Fish and Wildlife doing a survey of the reefs and we will be surveying them and the boat for a documentary about scuba diving.

Today I have been wrapping up the final clean up of the stock video archive and finishing up the catalog work. I found a video on the last hard drive of stuff that I totally forgot about (yes I have that much video…)

This was from Lac Lavon last year when I brought some freezer burned shrimp with me when I went scuba diving. The fish went insane and there were thousands of them around me. There were some people fishing from shore and they were kind of pissed thinking I ruined the fishing and scared the fish off… Yeah right!!!

The severe storms that hit the metro were not really in the forecast yesterday. I just got done pulling an all nighter and a last minute interview with the company out east that wanted to ask me some additional questions and I was just getting ready to relax and get a few hours of sleep before the insanity of the mod risk down south kicked in. And then it happened. The cells I was watching and thinking, eh, I don’t want to deal with traffic, about a half hour later, they went tornadic warned right on top of my target.

I was not too bummed out about it because of several reason. The main one to start was that it was that the visibility was nil. From home I could barely see four miles. The other was that this was in a major grid lock area and unless you were there, your not going to get there to begin with. The third, this stuff was so unorganized and we were not even in the SPC Slight Risk area. These were normal summer time severe thunderstorms with large hail and damaging winds.

What was funny was knowing that almost all of the chasers were converging on the stuff in TX and OK for the Mod Risk and even that was lame.
Total miles chased today was about 80 if you include the trip over to 494 and over to highway 52 then back down south where I intercepted the tornadic warned cell in Goodhue County. There was a lot of gust front junk and they were insane HP setups but on average, it was a better chase then most since I was back home within a couple hours.
Going back to bed now. I’ll post some pics later when I’m awake.

Ok, as promised, here is the image from Goodhue County, MN yesterday. I was right under the meso marker when I took this. For a chase that was not expected, it was kind of fun but for what they were reporting as a tornado, um, yeah…

Ok, it is 10:00 A.M. and I am going to get some sleep since this is like 10:00 P.M. for me. The video from last night is on the network and I’m about ready to pass out after getting a bunch of work done here during the overnight and a storm chase.
It’s time to crash and get some sleep but here is the screen cap from The Weather Channel this morning.

Okay, that was close enough for me before I start to get a little worried.

Here is a video cap of the chase today around Highway 14 and 35. The lightning was pretty insane but when you see the flash and hear the boom less then a second apart, we have issues.

Since my last post, in under 30 minutes, I was able to tear down my laptop to a total tear down, repair the power plug that has been giving me issues and put it back together. Dell has some issue with the power ports that come loose from the motherboard and you have to pull the mother board and heat up the solder the joint back together and put the whole thing back together again.

Ok I cheated a little, I heated up the soldering iron before I started just to save some time but hey from start to finish, less then thirty minutes to put this thing back together and type this blog.

Yes, it was really annoying me how the power would flicker so I just tore it apart and rebuilt it.

Now as I was getting ready to get back to the books, looks like I need to go and work on my deck. A line of storms is starting to try and pull itself together off to the west.

Well it is no secret that I have to be doing something since there is no weather to chase and everything is caught up on the home front for back projects. So I have been teaching myself SQL.
Wow, this is pretty intense stuff.
On the job front, I heard back from the local gig and they want to hire me but don’t have a budget to hire me. But I also heard back from the company out east and what they have planned sounds exciting and is my line of work. So right now I’m just waiting to hear back from them about flying out there next week to meet with them face to face.
Damn good thing I did not renew my lease yet.
On the forecast side of things, it looks like the July weather is already in place. I fell sorry (eh, no I don’t) for all chasers that took off to chase the month of May. There is nothing to chase unless your way the hell up in Northern MN or Montana. THE ROD is in full force so bummer folks, better luck next year.
Oh wait, that just means that were going to have 500 chasers per square mile in July and August in MN when the weather kicks up. Well, maybe if I’m lucky I’ll be working in the Northeast or in Florida by that time.
And speaking of Florida, that was another fun project today for a company down in Florida. I pretty much had to take up an on the fly producer gig for someone to review footage for a project that they needed to see footage ASAP. Well, its for several minutes of video so if it all goes as planned, I can get that wrapped up by the end of the day today.Oh well, back to the books.

Just wrapping up coding for the night… Data bases are so much fun… But, sitting at home and catching up on work and getting stuff done while I wait to find out when I have to go out of town for some interviews is better then being on a Ridge Of Death or a ROD bust. I have to admit the other day was pretty crazy for my crew in the Denver area but then again they are chasing an hour from home and there not spending $3.25 a gallon for gas with 1000 miles to chase.

I did hear back from one place today, it sounds like they want to bring me in but “Budget Issues” is what I was told is the problem right now. But knowing the company, they do run a tight ship and I talked with a buddy in at the network in Atlanta about it and they said that it sounded like the case. If I get it, I get to stay, if not, well, I have yet to renew the lease so I will be going on month to month after next month so I can up and move cross country at a moments notice.

And speaking of cross country, the other option is still on the table since there is the budge issue, I still talking with the other company on the east coast about the other gig and when to fly out to meet with them. I should know more about that later today or tomorrow. But for now, it’s still PHP training time to work on the new setup.
I wish I could show everyone the new setup and the demo pages we put together but no way, not yet, when they are live on the net and fully operational, then I’ll brag but until then, trust me, this stuff is pretty kick ass for the code that we have wrote so far.