Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

March 31, 2009: Closing on apartments! Is It April? Already?

Oh my goodness. IT IS APRIL????? Are you serious. Time is zippppping by. That is NOT a good thing, by the way. At least not in my mind! When years start to seem like months – not good!

We closed on the Murray apartments today. Seems like that just came and went. Someone slow the train down – please. 🙂 Perhaps the busier you become the faster time goes by? When I was a kid – a month seemed like a year. Now a year seems like a month. How does that happen???

RAINED most of today. I never did hear any thunder, though. Nice rain – at that. Not good for the house project, though. Slowing everything down. More rain is coming on Thursday Night and then again on Sunday. Watching the severe weather potential for Sunday. Not sold on severe weather for Thursday, though. Could be some heavy rain and strong winds – both events. Spring is here. 🙂

Jason Darnall and I have been trying to figure out how to track ourselves on the www.spotternetwork.com web-site and GR radar. This is a radar software program that a lot of OEM offices use. It is awesome. Anyway, I finally got mine to track me today on the radar software, Google Earth, and GPSGate.com. So, as we went down the road you could see me moving on the radar software. I will post some image examples below. A lot of chasers and spotters are using the software. Jason also was able to get his to work this evening. I could see him moving around Marshall County. Now, you are probably thinking – why would you want that information! Well, it is good for the National Weather Service because they can see where you are in relation to a storm. They can hover their mouse over the car icon and it shows your phone number and information. This is VERY nice for storm spotting and fast information. You can even stream video of the storm to the National Weather Service or anyone else for that matter. See images below!

On Google Earth you can add a placefile – http://www.spotternetwork.org/feeds/earth.kml and see all the spotters on the map.

For example – here is my radar program at home (you can see me there – the little car icon with my name above it)

See me there above the word "Ashcreek"

Then if you hover your mouse over my car icon it brings this information up on the screen!

Here is an example of streaming data – live web-cam video – you can then see if a tornado is actually causing damage – wall clouds – hail – high winds or whatever else is going on –

Another example