On joining the Weather Underground (www.Wunderground.com)

Monday, June 15, 2020

I have joined the Weather Underground. Not the militant radical one found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground, but this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground_(weather_service), an internet-based weather service that uses weather information from volunteer weather station operators. Although both originated at the University of Michigan, that is where the similarity starts and ends.

Since I was a kid, I have always wanted a high-quality home weather station that didn’t cost a fortune. The professional/serious hobbyist models start at $1000. The one I have now is nowhere near that expensive, but if I added up the money for all the cheaper ones I have bought over the years, it would no doubt equal one expensive one. Or more.

I have been interested in weather since I was a kid. And in response to that interest, Santa brought me my first weather station when I was young enough that I still hoped Santa was real. I can blame “Santa” for my obsession.

It was one of the better things “he” ever brought me. It wasn’t just a weather station, it was a science kit/leaning tool. I had to assemble each sensor and wire them into the console. Even getting that far, it wasn’t easy to view anything it was telling me. I had to count flashes of a red light to calculate wind speed and use a wet-bulb/dry-bulb calculation to find humidity. It was inaccurate as far as any real current conditions went. But I had fun building it and learned a lot. This wasn’t the sort of “toy” Santa ever brought to my brother or sister. Maybe he had seen I had some sort of talent I had not realized at the time.

As I continue to explore old hobbies that interested me long ago, I again find that the pace of technological change and the relative decrease in the cost of weather stations over the years are phenomenal. The current weather station I chose is exponentially better than the initial gift from Santa or any of the other brands I have had limited success with setting up over the years. It is an Ambient Weather WS-2902B Osprey. The main sensor array is solar-powered during the day and uses a slow-discharge capacitor at night. For days with too much cloud cover, it has a battery backup.

It has about every weather sensor you could want. Assembly was minimal. It has an indoor display console and can connect to the internet. Of course, that was my main goal. I have it open on my computer as I write. Being a total weather geek, I was excited to see my station listed for the first time on the map of other stations in town. By connecting my personal weather station to http://www.wunderground.com, I have joined more than 250,000 other weather hobbyists who are supplying local weather conditions across the country. I have a phone app that lets me check the weather in my backyard wherever I go. And the Weather Underground people use my data and that of others to help produce more accurate forecasts.

This was a bit of trouble (it’s me, and this is how things go). I started with the station mounted on a stand on my deck. That seemed to reflect too much heat from the house, so I moved it 100 feet out into the yard, where it is surrounded by tall grass and short shrubs. It should be a perfect spot. But it is still a bit on the hot side. Now I see that for $100 more, I could have had one with a fan to draw air into the temperature and humidity chamber for use in hotter, less windy climates. Now they tell me.

Maybe next time. Or maybe next time I will spring for the $1,000 level.

Update- Prior to this being published, I had noticed a “Gold Star” emblem had been added to my station readout. Wondering about this, as I tend to do about everything, I found that this is a notice from Wunderground that my station has passed their quality control and is now one of 20,000 stations used to generate Forecasts on Demand.

From their information-

1. There are 200,000+ observations per minute ingested

2. QC every 10 minutes to remove bad data

3. Current conditions available on mobile, web & API

4. 20,000 Gold Star stations’ data used to generate Forecast on Demand-

Cats will be cats- Now

Returning home from my workday, I readied myself to work through my list of things to do before it was time to start dinner. I glanced outside and saw something in the backyard I could not quite identify. Maybe one of the cats had gotten into something. It always was easiest to blame the cats. They were home all day. We were not.

I changed into “non-work” clothes and ventured into the backyard to see if the mess was related to a harmless prank of theirs or, instead, something that would require me to sign the cats up for protection from still-unknown but potentially angry neighbors.

The stuff I was seeing looked like feathers.

And it looked like the feathers of a bird that did not live in this area unless it was a pet of a neighbor, and more than likely, the pet of a wealthy neighbor.

As I bent down to the first pile of feathers, I started the process of categorizing what I found into any known bird. Make that any known exotic bird. They were blue for the most part, but not the feathers of a scrub jay or any other more common bird.

I thought we were in trouble. The cats would be lucky if they could show their faces in the area again. Maybe we could pretend we did not know them.

“Oh, those collars must be from the previous owner. That isn’t our phone number on the tags.” Or, “Cats? We do not have any cats. They seem like ones we have seen around, but we can’t have cats. We’re both allergic.”

I was getting my story together. It would be easy enough to convince the cats to go along with whatever I came up with. They never said much anyway, but I was not sure if they would keep quiet if confronted by an angry neighbor. Maybe we would still be able to plead their case that they hadn’t meant to kill a bird of any kind. They were not like other cats. “They just have a thing for feathers,” we would claim.

I am sure the cats would not have known that the more colorful the feathers, the more exotic the bird was. And the larger they were, the more expensive it would be for us to replace them. Or that all of the above would determine just how soon they would be able to venture outside again, if ever.

I started to add up the possibilities as I went from one pile of feathers to the next.

This bird, whatever it may have been, must have put up quite a struggle. The feathers were everywhere. I could only hope that, however bad it looked to me as a human cat owner, they had not “played with it” as cats will do, too long before they finished it off. It was obvious by the fourth pile of feathers that nothing would have survived this. 

Maybe we could give the cats to friends on the other side of town until the trouble blew over.

Then I saw the final pile of feathers and the remains of their source. It was lodged under a branch of a shrub in the side yard. I could not quite make out yet what it was. I bent down and, on my knees, reached into and under the shrub. I got my hand on what seemed to be the last remaining attached feathers, and slowly pulled it out.

As I pulled it out for a better look, I saw what the cats had attacked and systematically torn the majority of feathers from as they played.

The exotic bird turned out to be a discarded feather duster.

To Old Friends and New Friends- Now

This is about friends.

As I have gotten older, and maybe because of some things that happen from time to time in my life, I get into moods where I ponder the imponderables I might be better off forgetting. No, maybe that last bit is not true. I would never want to forget anything, especially anything related to friends. For certain other parts of my life, I might make an exception and forget everything I thought I knew.

Last year, around this time, I saw a greeting card in a shop downtown. The inscription on this card dealt with friends.

“Good friends help you to find important things when you have lost them… your smile, your hope, and your courage.”    Doe Zantamata

I thought about that for a while because at a low point in my life, someone I did not yet know as a friend had smiled at me. And when this person smiled at me, it made me remember that I was still here, now.

Those things the quote mentions can be lost without realizing it. At the time I mentioned, I had not really realized that I had lost anything yet. And as I became friends with this person, I saw a way to find the items on this list, in time.

And that leads to something that this card leaves out. (Hey, it is just a card with limited space. I have a blog with space to fill.)

A good friend not only helps you to find these things you might have lost, your smile, your hope your courage– but they can also make you remember who you really are. 

And maybe more importantly, who you could be. It is easy to forget that, too.

And this could all start with one simple smile from someone you do not yet know. That smile from my new friend gave me a lot to live up to. It made me want to be that person they saw. 

And it also made me believe that I could become that person. 

A brief interlude on the bay at sunset- Then

It was a rare date night with my new girlfriend, Sarah, not for lack of trying, but more for lack of money.

Our Trip to Ghirardelli Square was via the Golden Gate Transit Ferry. It was more romantic than it sounds, especially for a couple of high school kids on a limited budget.

It was nearing sunset, and the weather was perfect out on the bay. Perfect for a new couple out in the city. It was perfect for a picture of one of the more beautiful sunsets I had ever seen against an iconic landmark.

Back then, we had cameras that only used film. You either took one shot and hoped for the best, or you took six and hoped that at least one of them would be usable. Generally, when I used my own film instead of the school’s, I took only a single shot. Because of the fleeting nature of this sunset and quickly changing colors, I took six and only got one that I liked. It was my film, but this was worth the splurge.

The sun was framed by the far-off fog and was in a perfect position at the base of the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. The light was a deep red-orange.

Of course, that night I did not know if any of the pictures I had taken would be usable. And I was really more interested in my date. But that is a story for another time.

When I got the color transparencies back, I could tell I had one good shot. I also knew it would be better with something added to the foreground.

These were the days of film, and Photoshop was still a long way off. Affordable personal computers were actually still a long way off. If I wanted something else in this shot, I would have to take another picture and sandwich it into this sunset picture.

So that was how, a few weeks later, and back in San Rafael, I captured a picture of a seagull in front of my high school, which I later would add to the sunset.

I overexposed the seagulls I photographed so the lighting would somewhat match and the gulls would be surrounded by a washed-out background.

When I chose the candidate to merge, I sliced the two cardboard holders apart and positioned the actual transparencies together. Then I re-mounted them into a new holder.

The result was a seagull flying out into the sunset with the bridge framing it and the sun dipping below the horizon.

Sarah was extremely competitive, and this picture irked her a bit.

The composite slide was displayed at the Marin County Fair a year or so later. And a fair attendee saw it, looked me up, contacted me, and paid me $100 for a copy.

This experience made me want to become a photographer. It was the quickest hundred bucks I ever earned.

Memories of Young Love: The Day a girl I called told me her House House was on Fire

I was busy with newspaper and yearbook obligations as a junior in high school, and I was hoping for something to happen in the romance department.

I had been doing a few columns with my long-time friend Paul for our school newspaper. He tended to be more of a serious reporter type than I was. I wanted to add satire to serious news stories. I wrote things that I liked and hoped others might too. He was into hard-hitting exposes. After a few times writing together, we decided we would be better off working alone.

One spin-off of us hanging out together as writers was meeting Carol and Barbara. Carol seemed more interested in him, and Barbara, maybe a bit in me. We were all too shy to actually do this right. I eventually lost track of how this turned out for him and Carol, but there was a time after weeks of meeting and talking, that I decided to call Barbara on the phone one night. As I would later find, it is all about timing.  

Calling a girl was a big deal for me at that point. Even though we had spoken enough for me to know she liked me at least a little, calling her up made it more official, somehow, for me anyway. And then, unlike now, there was usually only one phone in a house. Well, maybe two phones, but no matter how many extensions you had, you still only had one line.

So, of course, when I finally got up my nerve to call, she did not answer. One of her parents did. Barbara was called on the phone. She seemed OK with me calling, and we had a moment or two of awkward small talk. Then I heard some commotion in the background.

She tried to quiet it down so she could talk to me, but it seemed something was going on that she wasn’t aware of. She went away for a moment, then came back, saying she had to run. “The house is on fire!”  

I thought, “Sure, it is.”  But, it did seem more creative than “I have to go wash my hair.” I really thought it might be an excuse to not talk to me. But after she hung up, I heard the fire trucks leaving with sirens and horns blaring from the station a few blocks away. If she was faking it, she certainly knew how to sell the lie.

I found out the next day that they had had a small kitchen fire. She thanked me for calling, but also said her father was not OK with me calling her again. Evidently, once things had calmed back down to normal, they had discussed who I was, and maybe a yearbook picture was shown, and he did not approve of my hair. Things with her cooled off right then. Not that they were all that hot, to begin with.

Later in the year, I started hanging out a bit with two young ladies, both named Cindy. I have no memory of how this started, and in the end, nothing came of it. But, there had been enough flirting for me to know one or the other or both might be interested in me. Thinking of the possibilities for my senior year helped pass the time during the summer. Or, maybe it made the summer drag on more than usual.

Then, early in my senior year, I met Sarah, and I never saw either Cindy again. Of course, even my relationship with Sarah didn’t last. But if we hadn’t met, that seagull flying into the sunset photo wouldn’t exist.

Developing an interest in photography- Then

I needed something to set myself apart in high school. I had already mentioned that I had long hair, and eventually, I grew a beard to go along with the look. But that only went so far. I was interested in photography, and I knew the yearbook people were seeking photographers. I was in.

Photography soon developed (no pun intended) as a way for me to meet women, or to have something to say to others I knew, but had not spoken to yet. What better way to meet someone than to sneak up on them with a camera, quickly get a shot off, and then explain that the picture might end up in the yearbook? Plus, that camera, a fixture around my neck for three years of high school, was my ticket to being accepted by almost every group on campus. No matter how out there a group was, everyone was interested in getting their picture in the yearbook.

One example of how this helped me meet women was that it finally gave me the nerve to approach Meredith. She was a totally gorgeous blonde.  She had been in student government in junior high and on the high school tennis team. There were a couple of problems. She was someone I thought was totally out of my league, and I thought she already had a boyfriend. Of course she did. All gorgeous women were already taken. I have learned since then that this is not always true. But I assumed it to be true then.

Anyway, one afternoon, I noticed her standing talking to someone I knew would not let on that I was coming up behind her. I positioned myself, framed the shot, focused on the back of her head, and then made some sort of noise so she would turn around. As she turned, I waited a brief second for the surprise to register on her face and then clicked. It was a perfect candid shot, something I excelled at, and something that had not been done much in the previous yearbooks I had seen. Most shots were posed, or, if candid, you could tell the person realized what was happening when the shot was taken. This one was just that moment of recognition, captured as the sun highlighted her hair. If I had had a flash, it would have been better technically, but we did not have a budget to be absolutely perfect. I made sure the printing was as flawless as possible, and my editor loved the shot. It got in easily.

Of course, when the yearbooks were published, I sought her out to have her sign it. By then, while we were not close friends, at least I knew she was aware of me, and we talked a few times here and there. I may even have asked her to sign the book if the picture had not made the cut. Of course, she signed around the picture. And every year after that, I also asked her to sign. Sometimes she would sign a picture of herself that someone else had taken. If there were no picture, she might sign a picture of me. Later, I would look back at what she wrote and wonder about that boyfriend I thought she had back then. Maybe it would not have worked for us, but there was an interest then that I did not see until much later. It makes for a nice memory now, but I still wonder how many opportunities I let go by because I wasn’t confident enough to act.

Nobody ever said this would be easy. . . Now

(About the picture- Even if it is an accurate representation of how my mind still feels cluttered at times, even writing on a laptop, I would never have so much distracting me from my coffee.)

There are times when writing is easy. An idea just pops into my head. I start writing, and before I know it, I have something finished that can be published in this little blog. Maybe someone, maybe even you, will eventually read it and smile.

Other times, writing is real work. It reminds me of every time I sat down to attempt a writing assignment for my high school or college classes, or a small piece for my high school newspaper. An hour later, I would still have a blank sheet in front of me, and many crumpled-up failures in the wastebasket. One difference now is that I do not have to waste any paper with what turns out to be one more unsuccessful attempt.

Currently, my life seems to be in a high state of confusion and flux. Being in such a constant state of change can be beneficial in writing.

Or not.

Good writing is a fragile balance; a process of managing turmoil with tranquility. (Where did that come from?)

I seem to be in a flow of weirdness that will not allow good writing at this point. If you know me, you will know and understand why this could be. Eventually, the weirdness will sort itself out a bit, and maybe some of it will make it into a piece here in some way or another, once I work my way through it.

Sometimes there is just too much grist for the mill.

More bumps in the night- Now and Then

The night creeps in, again.

Why is that anyway? During the day, I am fine. Life is as it is, and I go with the flow. Then the sun goes down.

And I start to doubt everything again.

Have I done all I should do? If not, will I get a do-over? Will I then know what I should have done or how to do whatever it is I am still fretting over? Who will tell me? Will anyone care one way or another? Will anything I do even make any difference, anyway?

Life gets funny at times. Is anyone laughing?

All of this self-doubt will disappear at sunrise.

I hope.

If you have not already guessed, I have self-esteem issues. It seems pointless. It seems to be a lifetime affliction. I have been better recently, but that is during the day. The night focuses on doubt. It focuses on those other bumps in the night, the ones I am only aware of in this quiet time. 

Like many others I know, I had excellent teachers early on in learning to doubt myself, in the person of my parents.

My father was the one who first raised doubts about my looks. He told me I was funny-looking, like Alfred E. Newman funny-looking. Later, he would amend that to say that I looked like Ernie on the old Sixties sitcom My Three Sons. Of course, I wanted to look like one of the more normal sons. You know, the handsome ones.

I was confused. I did not think Ernie looked like Alfred E. Newman at all, so how could I look like either of them? Even though I knew the logic was flawed, I bought the premise.

My mother was not as obvious in setting me up for self-doubt, but she had her own impact on me, nonetheless.

She made me wonder why I ever pursued education beyond high school. Throughout my early school days, my teachers had told me that college should be my educational goal. So, my goal had always been to go to college like my brother and sister had before me. My mom thought that it was all a waste of time and money. Go to a trade school, she would tell me. Avoid the disappointment of failing.

Why?

You could fail. You are not like them.

Oh, so that means I am not smart enough to go to college?

You get the drift. I wonder if she told my sister and brother the same thing.

Avoiding failure by aiming too low was a central part of her message. I do not blame her for imparting her fears to me. She had to get it somewhere. Her parents, no doubt, influenced her as much as she did me.

At some point in the early college days, I was doing fine. Then my wife at the time had an affair and dumped me like so much trash. Like a hot potato. She could not get away from me fast enough. And who was it that got her going in ways that I could not? (I have to be vague. This is a family blog.)

The guy that I lost my marriage over was someone who literally reminded me of a way too tall and skinny version of Ernie, from My Three Sons. Throw in the weirdness of Alfred E. Newman, and you have him.

The irony was not lost on me, either.

The one thing, or maybe the two things, that I learned from this earlier time in my life is that none of those imposed limits on me were valid. Not then, and certainly not now.

I have learned from attending class reunions that there were many (a few at least; there it goes again) young ladies in my classes then who may have wanted to know me better. Again, I am being purposely vague. Maybe things would not have gone very far, but I never gave it a chance back then to see how far anything might have gone.

Then there is the matter of my self-esteem after my divorce. This divorce messed with my head for five years. I thought I was done. I lost the will to even try to find anyone new. Now, I look back at pictures of myself from that time and literally do not recognize the person in them as “me.”

There was a picture of me from about the time I was still married, and I thought I looked fairly good.

Then, just a few months after the divorce, there was that same guy in a tuxedo at my sister’s wedding. I had totally forgotten about this and didn’t even recognize that guy as me. Who was I then that I had no clue how I looked?

It was all needless, and I regret the time I lost not knowing who I was because of the filters others imposed on me. I regret not getting to know those around me then, who may have wanted to get to know me.

I regret that until more recently, I did not know myself.

She was playing real good, for free- Now

The harpist sits at her table outside. She is there playing and smiling at people as they come inside to get coffee. There is nothing set out yet for donations, although a basket sits on the table near her, covered with a colorful piece of fabric.

There are only a couple of people sitting there within listening distance. Most people walking by or coming into the coffee shop don’t acknowledge seeing or hearing her, even though she is hard to miss. Occasionally, she smiles or says hello to people she recognizes.

She stops playing and rifles through the covered basket. She removes a few dollar bills and sets them on top of the fabric cover. She sets the basket down on the sidewalk near her feet and resumes playing.

Even with that basket, which makes her intent more obvious, people still ignore her for the most part, though a couple return, having gotten some change from their purchase. They bend down to drop the money into her basket. She smiles, thanking them.

Inside, where I sit, the classical music on the coffee shop’s audio system never stops. I only hear of the harpist for a few seconds at a time when the door opens as people come or go.

On prior visits, I have smiled at her, and she has returned the smile. On those days, I felt I was already too late to stop long enough to listen. There are always so many things to get to, and this is usually my first stop.

Today, as I am leaving, I stop and sit at one of the tables outside. The song she plays and sings, “It ain’t me babe,” has always been a favorite. I had not heard her sing it before.

When she finishes, I walk over to give her a couple of dollars. She thanks me. I tell her I have seen her and briefly listened on other occasions, coming or going, but never stopped long enough to really listen. I thank her for the music she plays. I am surprised that my voice cracks a bit. I guess the song affected me more than I thought. Or there may be other reasons. Turning away, I tell myself I will have to stop and listen again soon.

As I walk away, she starts again, playing real good, for free.

What are those bumps in the night . . . – Now and then

Everything is magnified at night.

Noises that at any other time would go unnoticed turn into threats in the middle of the night.

What was that noise just now? It has to be nothing. I run through my internal data bank of known sounds, trying to categorize what we have in here that would make a noise like that. Or since I can’t recognize it, I hope it is outside. 

As I do this, the memory of the sound gets harder to recall accurately. Maybe I was half asleep when I heard it, and that is why I can’t categorize it. I convince myself that it was nothing. If it really is something, the security system will alert me. Of course, at times, the security system has gone off for no known reason. When this happens, it is almost always in the middle of the night. Of course.

A stray thought about past insecurity can remind you that that insecurity may not really be that much in the past. It is just harder to be sure at night.

Is she still OK? What if she isn’t breathing? Would I recognize that in time? Loved ones’ health issues are magnified at night.

Don’t even get me started on my own issues. I go back over everything I have done in the day, mistakes and regrets included. There are times that this can go on for hours, destroying the rest of my night.

If my day was good, I try to spend an equal amount of time on the good things as I do on the not-so-good times. When sleep just does not happen, I much prefer to dwell on the good things in my life. There are many things I am thankful for, and thinking about these is a much better way to go through the night.

When I was little, and it was time to sleep, my mom would sing to me. The official title of the song is: “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra (That’s an Irish Lullaby).”  After she sang it, I knew I would be OK through the night. Simpler worries, then compared to now.

Maybe later, or it could have been at the same time, my father would always chime in with, “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” I may have been too young to know what bedbugs were, but I am sure worry about bedbugs occupied at least a few sleepless nights.

I know things were not always OK back then. But others were in control, so it always seemed OK. Now I am the one in control, and I am at times overwhelmed. Why can’t I turn this stuff off so I can sleep? 

What is it about all of these bumps in the night?