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Name: Random
Country: United States
Interests: Weather (particularly snow), computers, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings,...
Expertise: MM5
Occupation: Student
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
1/15/2006
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| Now that the defense is over, TrapDoorSpider and I took a vacation up to the Adirondacks last week. We stayed in Old Forge and in the Lake George area but drove all over the park. Unfortunately the Whiteface Mountain Toll Road was closed for the season, but we couldn't see the peak from the ground due to low clouds so it probably wouldn't been much of a view anyway.
On the way to the Adirondacks we went through the Tug Hill Plateau area. Some of you may not be aware that this is arguably the non-mountaintop region that gets the most snow east of the Mississippi (due to lake effect from Lake Ontario, which doesn't freeze as often as Lake Erie, and topography). NWS Buffalo shows at least parts of the Tug Hill as averaging ~300 inches per year! Being that we would be so close to this area I couldn't resist driving through to see what is was like. The area seems pretty rural with a lot of rougher roads, although there were some more major roads in very good shape.
We happened by the Lewis County Highway Department:
There was an appropriately named restaurant (I believe northwest of Redfield):
The Adirondacks was enjoyable, and I got the impression the area was much less busy than it would have been in the summer, which was nice.
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| For those who haven't heard, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation on Friday. Now I just need to revise the dissertation in light of the comments of my committee members. The hard part is done now, and I'm able to relax a bit. It has been something I've been working toward for so long that it almost seems like it can't be real, yet thankfully it is. The night before my defense, TrapDoorSpider mentioned that some people might stop by. I thought that was a little odd, but did not suspect in the least who it actually was. My parents shocked me by showing up at our apartment. And then a bit later my sister showed up. Having them here was a very good surprise! TrapDoorSpider did a good job keeping it a surprise.
Anyway, things are a lot more relaxed for me now. Now we can focus on getting ready for the baby!
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| I'm hoping that the caterpillars are just about done consuming the leaves in our yard. They have been ubiquitous and it'd be nice not to have them all over everything outside. As I write this, I can see them crawling on the tree trunk just outside the window.
Someone asked if DSL meant I'd be blogging more often. Hopefully, more frequently than before but probably not near as frequent as many others are in blogging.
If you're looking for a fun weather book, check out "Extreme Weather" by Christopher C. Burt (the 2004 edition is the one I'm familiar with, there apparently is a 2007 edition also but that version may make claims about the effects of global warming on extreme weather events). I've always been interested in weather and especially in extreme weather, so I've tried to find what I could about extreme weather. This book, however, has information I haven't seen before. There are shaded U.S. maps of many things including some you don't usually see maps of such as "Record Depth of Snow" or "Absolute Minimum Temperature on Record". It even has a full page photo from the Blizzard of '77 so it can't be too bad :) It doesn't seem to get too technical, so it should be accessible to the non-specialist. I'm not even halfway through but so far it's quite good. Did you know that in the coldest permanently inhabited region of the world, Siberia's northeastern interior, Verkhoyansk's average high in January is -54 F, and that in the same region Oymyakon has not risen above 0 F between December 1 and March 1 since records began? Now that's cold!
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| On Monday, Verizon pushed back the service-ready date for the DSL to June 15. However, on Tuesday I got an email saying that our DSL was now ready! We've been out-of-town this week but last night I was able to set it up. It is very nice to have a much faster connection than dialup at home. I guess our dialup modem isn't taking it well, since the last time I connected using dialup it only connected at 28.8 kbps.
We had a nice thunderstorm last night. Power was only briefly interrupted. Our new place definitely is more exposed to the wind than our old apartment and we have a much better view for watching storms! With the carport, our car should do well in large-hail events (although such events are obviously very rare here).
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| As mentioned by TrapDoorSpider, we've moved across town. Well, I thought having a higher-speed Internet connection than PSU's dialup would be nice so a couple weeks ago I called and asked Verizon about it. They said that they couldn't tell if it was available for our new location. I called back a couple days later and this time they said that no it wasn't available. Bummer. A couple days later when I called to get our phone service switched they asked if I was interested in DSL. I told them that I was told that it wasn't available. She said that there was no way to tell whether it was available and so she would put an order in that would force them to check further.
Early this week I got an email informing me that after further checking, DSL was not available. However, by this time I had spoken with NickTheGodfather, whose neighborhood we have moved into, and he had told me that they could get DSL at their place but that Verizon had some difficulty determining its availability. The email informing me that DSL was not available included a link to check if DSL were to become available in the future. Suspicious, I followed the link and found that it said that DSL was available now. So, I called the installation support phone number and was told that the order had been canceled because it was not available. I asked for the specific reason it was not available but she just seemed to be giving reasons that a connection might not be available. She eventually sent me to Sales, saying that they could check further. Sales said that yes the order had been canceled but that her computer said that DSL was available and so she resubmitted the order.
I believe it was that evening that Verizon called and said that sorry, DSL was not available. Since I had not received an email the next morning with this information, I was suspicious and called Verizon. The automated operator indicated that the order was still being processed, which was then confirmed by installation support. Installation support forwarded me to billing who again confirmed that the order was still processing. (Ironically enough, the phone connection with Verizon's billing dept. was extremely poor and kept cutting in and out.)
Now, in the past couple days we've received two boxes from Verizon. I would have thought maybe they sent modems out for both the canceled order and the new order, but one box lists its weight as 2 lbs and one as 4 lbs. Today we received an envelope from Verizon with a prepaid sticker to enable us to return a 3 lb box.
So the questions are, will we be able to get DSL, and how long will it take before Verizon figures this out?
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