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Just an FYI, I’ll be locking myself in at home for the next week to work on another new project that was just put in my lap. I have 10 days to pull off a video editing job that should take a month or more.
So, I’m going to be forwarding everything off to Dan and Bill to take care of for BNVN stuff and let my agents at Conus deal with the stock stuff so I can focus on this project. When it is done, oh man, this is going to kick ass!!!

I have been looking over the net tonight at a lot of different video and still images of the recent ice storms in the Midwest, south and out in the Pacific NW. There is some cool stuff but I have to laugh at people that say they chased the ice storm when all they did was go out after the storm and document the aftermath.

Checking out aftermath is not a chase people. If you were there when the tree fell from the ice or the car crashed from the ice while the ice was forming, and you forecasted the storm a day before and drove to where the storm was going to hit, okay, then you chased.

What is a chase? You leave before the storm or during the storm to go more then few miles from home to watch active weather as it is happening or if you have a deck and a view like mine, you can forecast the chase to stay home and watch lightning. 
The only exception is, if your home area is getting hit then you did not chase because you were already there so “you documented” the weather and did a home chase.
Once again, YOU CHASE WEATHER, you don’t chase aftermath. Aftermath is no different then rubber necking while passing a car crash in rush hour traffic. It already happened and your just checking out the wreck.

In other news, the latest video project is now completed. This is going to change a lot of how everything is done in the digital age.

Just working with all the computers encoding video tonight on the latest project and the office is hot.
Between the 2 desktops with the 600w power supplies and the laptop with a total of 20 internal and external hard drives spinning, my office is heating up even with the window open. The outside air temp is 0.2F and the inside temp WITH the window open 79.4F.But everything is coming along right on time with the project.

Just a little funny with all the computers and fans making my office sound like a jet engine.

I just updated my photo page with a bunch of new images. I still have to work on the description.
Here is one of the images from the New Years Eve winter storm.

And this one from an aurora a couple months ago.

Ok today I was out by the river in St. Paul doing some photography along the bluffs. It was pretty cool and below are some images.

While editing the images I started to do some research about the bluffs and one thing led to another and I found this site http://www.actionsquad.org and  Holy Crap, this is cool.

Granted they are breaking every law in the book but its an fresh idea, not something like storm chasing that is copied and copied and rehashed but something that is new to me and the site, I read a lot of their “Chase Reports” (sorry had to say it.) and it was interesting.

I think they could get or have got in a shitload of trouble but the history side of it was just cool.

Oh yeah, here are the images of the Bluffs. 

Ok, one of my new years resolutions is to stop looking like Frank Blacks evil twin, or good twin. Someone told me yesterday that I looked like Frank Black from the band the Pixies. www.myspace.com/pixies to go and see for yourself. Wow, yeah well…

Yesterday was messed up. I was out shooting the snow storm when I came upon one of the fatal car crashes on 212 just east of Chaska. I did not shoot any video of the crash itself but I did shoot a lot of the traffic jam as as result of the crash. I got some great footage of people slipping and sliding that I’m going to post this week to the site. I focused mainly on stock video since I knew that with Denver getting hit hard again, TWC was not buying anything with the flood of footage out there from around the country from the TV Stations.
When I was leaving the Flying Cloud area after filming the traffic jam from 212 being closed, the drive into downtown was insane and I almost was hit head on. A driver who was fleeing the scene of a accident was driving down the wrong side of the road on 212 in front of the Eden Prairie shopping center and missed me by inches after I swerved to get out of the way. My first thought was not oh shit here comes a car but it was Oh Shit, my laptop is hooked up on the Jotto Desk and I got airbags and if this idiot hits me, my laptop is gone.
Oh what are my other resolutions? I plan on getting the weatherpaparazzi.com site done in the next few weeks. Almost all of the photos are now edited and on line. I just have to review some stuff that is going to be photomerged together for stiched photos. There are some other photos I need to work on as well but nothing that important. Right now, I just have to work on the site layout.
The other one is to slow down and take more time off from chasing and settle down. Maybe get back into the dating scene and have some fun.
The last is to finish college. I want to get the 2 year degree out of the way this year. I know I’m going to have to work on the math stuff but I think I can go back and knock it all out this fall and get the 2 year out of the way then go for my 4 year degree in mass communications. Yes, I settled on a degree, mass communications.
Why not get the degree for the crap I’m already doing.
Here is the video from yesterday.

The new DVD project is in full swing now.

Total time of the rough “Rough” master combined edit file is now 15 hours, 28 Minutes, 43 Seconds and 19 Frames.  That is the rough edit that I now need to break down to 2 hours total time.

dd

I was taking it easy, kicking back at home, watching the last of the season 5 dvds of the show 24 and got bored out of my skull. I turned on the scanner and found out that there was a major crash down the street from me.
When there is no weather to chase, you can always chase the police cleaning up stuff.

The national weather service has just issued the following
.SPOTTER INFORMATION STATEMENT…

SPOTTER ACTIVATION WILL NOT BE NEEDED. ANY SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS OR REPORTS OF SLEET WOULD BE APPRECIATED TONIGHT IN AREAS ALONG AND NORTH OF HIGHWAY 10 IN WESTERN AND CENTRAL WISCONSIN.

RAINFALL OBSERVERS ARE ASKED TO PROVIDE REPORTS THIS WEEKEND WITH THE EXPECTED RAIN. RAIN GAUGES MAY NEED TO BE DEPLOYED OUTSIDE AGAIN IF PREVIOUSLY BROUGHT IN FOR THE SEASON.

Nothing is going to happen, it is normal boring winter weather but I will bet you that all of the local media will have TEAM, FULL, EXPANDED, AREA WIDE, ANAL coverage of the traffic delays due to wet roads.

Here is a hint about the traffic delays. THEY BUILT A LITE RAIL TRAIN WITH MONEY THAT SHOULD HAVE GONE TO ROADS AND NOW THERE IS TWICE AS MANY PEOPLE LIVING IN THE METRO ON THE SAME ROADS AS 20 YEARS AGO!!!
Why I love working from home, my traffic jam, there is a stalled turkey sandwich in the kitchen, and a overturned dish in the sink… Watch out for the office, there is a backlog of work on the desk and 3 computers lined up waiting in the traffic jam.

Just channel surfing the evening news and oh my god, you would think a hurricane hit the Twin Cities Metro area. We had some rain and at best an inch of snow. The cities are not calling for a snow emergency, the airport is wide open, the roads are not that bad, the traffic messed up because we have a shit load of people here that did not grow up here and don’t know how to drive in snow, so what is the problem?

The problem is that there has not been any extreme weather in the last two months here and now everyone is freaking out because the snow plow drivers are sucking up any and all overtime money they can get. The weather geeks at all the stations are freaking because they have something to talk about.The snow fall is not a MAJOR STORM. I REPEAT, NOT A STORM, Denver had a storm.This is like calling the rain shower a hurricane!