I should probably get a life…

I sit here on New Years Eve. It’s 9:00pm. I went to dinner with my family and got back around 8:00. I have read everything I want to read online. I have no will to get up and do anything. I experience the sights and sounds of my younger cousin, brother and his friend play Guitar Hero on the Wii. I hear my parents and my cousin’s parents talking and laughing in the distance. This is pretty sad. I have no where to go and nothing to do. I want to be with a certain someone. I want things to be good. I want to be happy. But I sit here. I’ve done this before. All the time. I don’t have many friends (or at least ones who like to hang out with me) so I sit here. I used to have someone who I could spend time with, and who has friends (who I thought were my friends, too) that are spending the night together. But I sit here.

I can’t stand it. I can’t wait to be back at school. Back where I have my friends. Less than two weeks, and I can’t wait. I can’t wait to be back to classes. Back to spending weekends doing nothing… walking down to the river, going to concerts, watching movies. And with my new Nikon D40, it will be even sweeter. This semester is going to be awesome. I just wish I had someone special to share it with, just like I wish I had someone special to spend tonight with. Someone to kiss at the stroke of midnight, someone to share my stories of craziness in Gaige, and someone whom I can be there for.

I know things are never going to be the same, and that I should stop listening to my heart and just be happy with the way things are now. And I guess I have to be- I got myself here.

No snow tonight… Oh well.

Looks like tonight’s storm will be a bust for us in Southeastern PA. New Jersey also looks to be an all-rain event, too. Maybe some freezing rain northwest of Philly overnight, but nothing substantial. I was hoping for at least SOME snow, but oh well! I may post more details tonight.

Jack Johnson single

I’m really digging Jack Johnson’s new single, “If I Had Eyes.” It’s available on Ruckus and iTunes, or you can listen to it via YouTube here.  Lyrics below.

If I had eyes in the back of my head
I would have told you that
You looked good
As I walked away

And if you could’ve tried to trust the hand that failed [fed?]
You would’ve never been hungry
But you never really be

The more of this or less of this or is there any difference
or are we just holding onto the things we don’t have anymore

Sometimes time doesn’t heal
No not at all
Just stand still
While we fall
In or out of love again I doubt I’m gonna win you back
When you got eyes like that
It won’t let me in
Always looking out

Lot of people spend their time just floating
We were victims together but lonely
You got hungry eyes that just can’t look forward
Can’t give them enough but we just can’t start over
Building with bent nails we’re
falling but holding, I don’t wanna take up anymore of your time
Time time time

Sometimes time doesn’t heal
No not all
Just stand still
While we fall
In or out of love again I doubt I’m gonna win you back
When you got eyes like that
It won’t let me in
Always looking out
Always looking

I really like the song because (1) Jack Johnson is a great musician and (2) the song lyrics really speak to me… I mean, its like Jack has been following me around the past few days and wrote an awesome song about how I feel. Amazing.

Boring weather pattern… for me, anyway

As far as the next couple of days goes, nothing major weather-wise… thought today is Christmas Eve! And tomorrow is (obviously) Christmas! But other than that, nothing too big in the forecast. Look for some light rain Friday night and again sometime early Sunday. GFS is showing some major cold coming on in around Jan. 2nd, along with a nice looking storm. I was initially excited about this when I looked the other day and saw the NAO Forecast was going negative, but today the forecast is all over the graph. Oh well- that’s what I get for looking farther than four days out! I’m still going to pin the date (Jan. 2) as a day of interest, but nothing more.

FA07: Semester 1: Final Grades

Well, my final grades are in today and I am pretty pleased with the results. I didn’t do too hot in Calc 1, but I know I can do a lot better next semester, especially with a resource I found that will help me immensely (more on that later). Here’s what it looks like

Class Number – Class name – Grade – Credits
Art 100 – Art in Culture – B – 3.0
Chem 111 – Intro to Chem – B – 4.0
Engl 110 – English Comp – A – 3.0
Math 161 – Calc 1 – C- – 4.0
Music 128/129 – Marching Band – A – 4.0

Semester GPA: 3.05 | Final GPA: 3.05 (obviously)

Calc stunk for a few reasons. First of all, while the professor wasn’t terrible, she wasn’t the best teacher I’ve ever had- but that wasn’t really my problem. My problem was that when I didn’t understand something, I just didn’t do the homework, or did a few homework problems and then thought I understood something when I didn’t completely know it all. For Calc 2 I will definitely be studying hard and am going to shoot for a B+ or above. I know I can do it, because for the final I studied like crazy and actually learned a lot, with help from the book online. I found the book (an older version, though) by searching on Google. Sure, it may be a bit out-dated, meaning some of the chapters are not in the correct order, but its all there for the most part. In addition, the practice problems were really well done and everything was organized nice. The site is only works in Internet Explorer and can be found at http://www.mhhe.com/math/calc/smithminton2e/cd/.

More weather updates soon.

Weekend Storm Verification

Forecast period: Saturday Dec. 15 (afternoon) through Monday Dec. 17 (afternoon)
Location: Delaware Valley
Verification Station: KPHL

Saturday Afternoon

Prediction: Clouds start to move in and temperatures drop. Hi: 38 POP: 10% PTYPE: Rain

Actual: Mostly Cloudy all day, Overcast by 5:00pm; Hi: 37; No Precip until night

Saturday Evening/Overnight

Prediction: Temperatures fluctuate, dropping for a time then rising. Under overcast skies, light flurries may fall (though not likely) before giving way to sleet and freezing rain overnight. Lo: 30 POP: 80% PTYPE: Freezing Rain

Actual: Overcast all night, Light Freezing rain to plain light rain (total: 0.86 inches from midnight through 6:00am); temp dropped to 32 before going back up to 40 by 6:00am; Lo: 32

Sunday

Prediction: Temps will rise during the day, with a good amount of rain falling. This will be steady most of the time during the day. Hi: 42 POP: 100% PTYPE: Rain

Actual: Rain tapered off by early afternoon, with no more measurable precip after 3 pm (totaling a mere 0.15 inches); Hi: 44

Sunday Night/Overnight

Prediction: Cold air will rush in as the new low, which develops over D.C. around Sunday morning, pushes northward. This cold air will push all the way out to the coast by Sunday evening, turning any more falling precip to snow. This also has the potential to freeze over any rain, leading to black ice on the roads overnight and into Monday. Lo: 24, maybe even lower POP: 60% PTYPE: Sleet to Snow

Actual: Cold air did rush with a LOT of wind (top gust at KPHL was 52 MPH, between 6 and 7 pm), however, there was NO precip whatsoever. Lo: 32 (Wind Chill low was 18)

Monday Morning

Prediction: Precip is done with and skies clear up, leading to cooler temps. Travel conditions potentially hazardous in the morning, especially before sun rise and throughout the morning on back roads. Hi: 34 POP: 10% PTYPE: Snow

Actual: No Precip; Skies had few or scattered clouds all day, with winds around 20 MPH all day; Hi: 37

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Remarks: I was off on the precip timing, with most of it occurring in the early morning hours of Sunday, before dawn. I was also wrong in the fact that we had NO precip Sunday evening, when I gave a POP of 60%. As far as temperatures go, I was within 2-3 degrees each period with the exception of (again) Sunday night. Hmm… maybe it’s a wanting-to-get-off Monday effect on me, despite me being out of school for break and without a job yet… haha. Overall, I would give myself a grade of C for the forecast. I was CLOSE on temps (forecast was made Thursday night, FYI), and had all the right PTYPE’s, but my timing was off with when the majority of the precip would come. Also, I never mentioned wind in any forecast, which was a fault of mine. Oh well- Live and Learn!Temp. accuracy (+ means I was over, – means under): +1, -2, -2, -2, -8, -3

From this, I can learn that my forecasts were, for the majority, always too low.

That’s all for now!

Evening update

Well, I didn’t get much overall. However, it is windy out now- very windy. Some small branches are down, but not much. Winds gusting to near 40 MPH in the Philly area.

The rest of the night will likely be cold and clear- just some clouds passing over along with lots of wind.

I’ll be posting my verification tomorrow morning, along with a short wrap-up of the storm and damage/storm totals.

Cold so close!

The rain/snow line is so close I can feel it! I can see on the radar right now that we’re about to get a good amount of precip soon… though it’s gonna be rain for me in Horsham. Looking at Observations, I can see that a few counties west of me the temperature is closer to freezing, but for me, currently, its only about 37. (As I wrote this it appears the station nearest me, KNXX, an air base that only reports during certain hours, stopped reporting.) There is a chance of flurries when the cold finally does down down to me, though not much accumulation is possible. Oh well- there is still a chance of icing tonight I suppose, which may make traveling on back roads dangerous.

Next post will probably be this evening.

Tornadoes, Ice, Olga… oh my!

Wow, so this storm is getting to be a pretty neat event. Moisture is being drawn up all the way from the gulf, west of Florida! (Edit: On second thought that sounds pretty redundant since the gulf IS west of Florida) The remnants of Olga apparently exploded west of Florida. Severe weather today in the South cause three Tornadoes: one in extreme northwestern Florida and two in central Georgia. Here’s the current IR satellite from this post: (NOTE: THIS IMAGE IS NOT LIVE- CLICK ON IT TO SEE THE LIVE IMAGE)

As far as the models go, I don’t believe either of them much right now. The GFS says in a few hours what was Olga will not exist much, which may or may not be true… but I think Olga may have an impact on this thing after all. The NAM has the SE PA region getting heavy rains tomorrow morning, which I believe (despite my wishes for snow… alas, I can’t have it all).

Going to bed now… didn’t get to do updates today because I was busy all day, but I’ll try to sneak in one in the morning tomorrow and another in the evening, then on Monday with a verification. I wonder how I’ll do!?

If you are looking for updates in the meantime, check out what Henry Margusity has to say.

Oh, and if you read that previous post and wondering what I decided: My Mom does not want me sleeping out to get a Wii just to sell it (and make some major moola) so alas, I decided not to go… but I did check at midnight and there were eight people lined up at my local Best Buy, and while I KNOW they will have 21, a lady said she heard 60, so it may not be that big of a deal anyway. Oh well… I guess I’ll just have to find a job or something like that.

A different kind of part-time job over winter break

So I need to make some sort of money over break. I have about a month. My summer part-time gig said they have no work available for me, which stinks. I might get a job working with my Dad’s employer, but I’d rather do something else to be honest. Then, I had a stroke of genius… or greed, depending on how you look at it.

The Wii is as hard to find this year as it was last. Last year was fun- I got one. My Dad and I slept out at target, where we were about 5th in line (we got in line as the store was closing), out of which turned out to be well over 100 people. When morning came, they handed out tickets which, when the store opened, would be good for the purchase of one (1) Wii. I didn’t need two, and since my Dad had a ticket already, we had an extra. A guy comes up to me as we are walking back to the warm car and offers me $300 cold hard cash for it. (It might have been more- can’t remember exactly.)

Here’s the thing: this weekend, all the major retailers will have the Wii in stock come Sunday morning. Christmas is just over a week away. Do I do it again? I figured out I could bring my little brother and maybe some of his friends, pay them $50 each or something, and keep the rest of the change? I know that by being first in line, then selling it to people who “only” got up and got in line at 4am might be a bit immoral, but I mean, it’d be like sitting in line for someone… and hey, I could do that to. Just find someone in line, say I’ll sit all night (in the rain, for that matter) and get them a ticket to buy a Wii might not be a bad deal, and wouldn’t be as bad. Hmm…