Tonight's Forecast....Dark

If spoken with the correct inflection, those 3 words send time spinning backwards, and bring an immediate smile to my face. They are the words of Al Sleet (aka George Carlin), The Hippie Dippie Weather Man. Sadly, Al is no longer a weather man. He retired from the field after he gave the ultimate forecast. “The weather will continue to change for a long, long time.” I searched high (no pun intended, well, ok, maybe a little pun intended) and low but could not find a clip of Al that I could embed here, so I will have to settle for a link to a YouTube video. It is not Al in his prime, but a revisit by his creator, a comedic genius, elevated to god status, by those of us belonging to a certain generation. The trigger for this most enjoyable trip (another pun??) down memory lane, is my after-Christmas present. My companion offered to let me choose my own gift, and I promptly accepted. “He who hesitates, is lost” applies here, I have learned over the years. My weakness, or preference, depending on how you look at it, is electronics. I admit it, I am a technology junkie. I had thought, for some time, that a PWS—that’s personal weather station for the tech challenged—would be a cool thing to own. I must admit I had done a bit of research on them through the Weather Underground site. I checked out the hardware and software, but it seemed they had to be ordered online, and possessing no credit card is a definite minus when it comes to that. So I placed it in the “one of these days” category, and decided to get a larger monitor. I am currently running 2 flat screen displays, but I figured I could put one of them up as a spare, and totally fill my available desk space with a new 22” wide screen and one of the current flat panels beside it. A new monitor that size would’ve been a good thing, just not real exciting. I mean, a monitor is a monitor is a monitor, right? I had settled on a model, but decided to walk around the rest of the store just for the hell of it. Really, I just love the fragrance of new circuit boards and plastic wiring, so I was topping off the experience. I was heading for the back of the store, to work my way to the front, when I caught something out of the corner of my eye, that made me stop mid-stride, and do an about-face. Yep, weather stations. At first glance, they all seemed to be the small, for your information only type; but then, on the bottom shelf, slid to the back was a large box. My companion retrieved it, and I tipped it toward me, and lo and behold, it was the model I had decided to shoot for in my internet research for “one of these days.” Cue “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” This one does not only do temperature, but has a wind gauge and rain gauge. Now, at a glance, I can see temperature and wind chill or heat index, relative humidity, wind speed and direction and high gust, barometric pressure, rainfall, and by pressing a button, see the indoor conditions as well. But the kicker for me was that this one comes with software and a usb cable to enable me to share with the world just how friggin cold and miserable it is here on Sand Ridge at any given moment this winter. Kudos to Weather Underground for letting me share this for free. They also archive the data from your pws, just in case you got nothing better to do while cruising the web. When I got it set up and began sending data, they even created a page for my station. I shall try to place a sticker for my station in the sidebar for the curious, or just plain bored. But I fear this new hobby will have a domino effect. WUnderground also encourages you to hook up a weather cam to add to your site. Recommendations for an inexpensive, wireless web cam, anybody?