Applepie

How do you spell RECORD!!!

While it is not official yet, we have broken the rain record for the wettest rain month in Seattle. How do I know? Check out this radar image from the National Weather Service - 11/30/2006 9:57PM

Cool!

Cris Pierry

Breaking the record

"By Sunday evening, more than half an inch of rain had fallen at Sea-Tac, making November's total 15.20 inches, less than a quarter inch away from the 15.33 record set in downtown Seattle in 1933"

Unfortunately, the weather forecast is for mostly dry weather until Thursday.

To compound to the difficulties of breaking the record, check out this juicy tidbit from Answers.com

"Rain gauges only indicate rainfall in a localized area. An extreme example of this is the annual rainfall in Seattle: the official weather station for the city is at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the driest part of the city, and the gauge itself was placed, by chance, at the driest part of the airport. Actual annual rainfall for the city is around 254 mm (10 in) greater than the official records indicate."

Cris Pierry

The rainy city?

Seattle ranks 44th among US cities for rainfall with an average yearly rainfall of 36.2 inches (92 cm).

This compares to:

145 inches (368 cm) in the Hoh Rain Forest (part of Olympic National Park in Washington State),
129 inches (327cm) in Hilo,
65 inches (165 cm) in Mobile,
60 inches (152 cm) in New Orleans,
58 inches (147 cm) in Miami,
49 inches (124 cm) in Atlanta,
45 inches (114 cm) in Houston,
44 inches (112 cm) in Boston,
40.3 inches (102 cm) in New York City,
39 inches (99 cm) in Washington, D.C.,
34.5 inches (88 cm) in Chicago,
19.5 inches (50 cm) in San Francisco,
15 inches (38 cm) in Sequim (on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State,
12 inches (30 cm) in Los Angeles and
4 inches (10 cm) in Las Vegas.

Beautiful Wet Seattle

"When in Rome, do like the Romans". My kids were all born and raised in the beautiful Pacific Northwet. What is a WA native to do if not to cheer and celebrate rain? You see, everyone in our house is currently cheering for more rainfall. Why? It seems so natural, it is so we can break the record for the wettest month on record.

We have a pretty good chance. We already smashed the record of 12.92" set in Jan 53 since the National Weather Service began measuring Seattle rainfall at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in 1945.

We currently sit at 13.11" of rain and we still have 9 days to go before November is done.

The target right now is 15.33" set way back in 1933 (measured at the Federal Building downtown).

Go Hawks Rain!

Technorati Tags: Rain, Seattle

Corporate Life

"A view from inside"

Canon EOS 5D, EF 24-105 F/4L, ISO 200, Aperture Priority, 4 sec at f/22, Tripod

Technorati Tags: Canon, Photography

OS X 10.4.8 Wi-Fi bug "proven"

I just proved to myself that it is indeed Apple's OS X 10.4.8 that is causing a critical Wi-Fi bug on my Intel based iMac. (see iMac wireless Network troubles) Today I got fed-up with this issue and restored my iMac back to the original factory software - my iMac is from March 06, and Apple's OS X back then was version 10.4.4. With the original version of OS X installed, my Wi-Fi network works flawlessly, it hasn't dropped a Wi-Fi connection even once, not even when the microwave is in use.

It is so nice to have a working computer once again.

The problem is that I now have a working computer but also have a computer that has known security vulnerabilities that have long since been fixed.

I won't upgrade my computer to 10.4.8 until Apple acknowledges this issue and provides a fix.

I will contact Apple and try to get this issue addressed.

Cris Pierry

Technorati Tags: 80211, Apple, Bug, iMac, OS X, Software, wi-fi, wireless

Anakin Skywalker

Photo taken during Halloween 2006. I was carrying around my big EF 28-300 f3.5-5.6L lens that I had used at my son's soccer game earlier in the day, I had just taken a bunch of natural light indoor photos and had my ISO set to 3200.

I set out to capture the motion of the light-saber, so I set the camera to shutter priority at 0.5 sec. Unfortunately, I forgot to reset the ISO back to a lower range - I should have used an ISO between 100 to 400 ISO as the only light I was interested in capturing came from the very bright light-saber. Nonetheless I quite liked the results on the image below.

EOS-1Ds Mark II, EF 28-300 F3.5-5.6L, hand-held
Shutter priority at 0.5 sec, Aperture 5.6, ISO 3200

Technorati Tags: Canon, EOS-1Ds Mark II, Photography, Star Wars

iMac Wireless Network Troubles

I haven't been home much since my last blog entry; as a result, I haven't had to use my home iMac (Intel Core Duo). This week, however, I was unexpectedly at home and had the unfortunate opportunity to use my home iMac.

Ever since upgrading to Mac OS X 10.4.8 I have had nothing but trouble with my Intel iMac and our home Wi-Fi network. The iMac will drop the wireless connection unexpectedly and it will refuse to reconnect until it is rebooted.

This is unbearable, I have tried everything I can think of and nothing solves the problem - I tried no Wi-FI security, WEP, WAP, WAP 2. Nothing seems to make a difference.

Of course Apple's support policy requires me to pay $50 for talking with customer support, or to carry my computer to the local Apple store (for the 3rd time now). I would not mind paying the $50 phone support charge if Apple would refund it once they found out that the problem is no a user issue and instead either a Mac OS X problem or a hardware problem.

The irony here is that I have re-formated my iMac clean 3 times now as a result of yet another hard-drive failure (covered once again under warranty). I have reproed this Wi-Fi problem using just the standard OS X bundled software.

No other computer in my house has this problem (the MacBook (Intel), the Mac Mini (Intel), my wife's Windows laptop, a G5 iMac) they all work flawlessly with the same Wi-Fi network.

I guess to prove or disprove my suspicions, I will re-format my iMac yet again and install the original 10.4.7 OS and refuse software upgrades. This way I will know once and for all if this is a hardware problem or an OS X 10.4.8 problem.

Heck, computers are so so so far from ever being a standard appliance that can be used by everyday folks. These things are supposed to make our lives easier, but yet, they seem to require an inordinate amount of maintenance well beyond what most folks are prepared to do.

Of to backup and reformat I go...

Cris Pierry

Technorati Tags: 80211, Apple, iMac, wi-fi, wireless