Weight Of The World

Forty-eight people and counting, that is how many have been found dead due to severe weather and tornadoes in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee as of the time of this post. Katrina killed about 1,800 people. As a meteorologist, the hardest part of the job is watching the weather, knowing that there is nothing you can do to stop the weather events that are taking place, and then hearing the death reports roll in. Sure, there are forecasts and warnings out to mitigate loss of life and property, but when severe weather rolls through a populated late at night, you know there will be death. Sometimes I just wish I could figure out a way to help stop the needless deaths by the weather. It is my life’s goal, and the ultimate goal in meteorology, to have 0 weather related deaths every day, now if I could only figure out how to do that.

Sorry for the dose of depression
– Sooner Dead

Hold On

Hello from New Orleans, or as the locals say “N’awlins.” The food down here is, in a word, amazing – assuming you like seafood. I haven’t stepped outside the seafood / Cajun / creole genre since I never get to eat this food at home. If it wasn’t for the fact I don’t much care for anything else in the city, I would live here just for the food.

Of course N’awlins isn’t all fun and clogging one’s arteries! I am very very busy while I am down here. I am always very busy. Why is that, you may ask? It’s actually very simple. Meteorology graduates out-pace demand for meteorologist on the order of 4 to 1. Well, jeez, that kind of sucks, that means for every job for a meteorologist, there are 4 meteorologists to fill it. That means to be competitive, I have to be one of the top 25% of meteorologists, in my national graduating class of ~600, that means I have to be one of the top 150 students. But wait, there’s more! Private companies (the ones I am interested in) only employ 30% of the total jobs. So, 30% of 150 is 45. So now, statistically, there is only 45 jobs available per year for me. Let’s have some fun and say about 50% of those jobs are purely forecasting, which is not what I do, 50% of 45 is 23 (rounding up). 23 jobs left. I think I would take those odds, be one of the 23 best meteorologists in a group of 92. Here is the big rub: I have to stay in Oklahoma, eliminating 90% of my potential job base, 10% of 23 is 2.3, and since there is no such thing as a 0.3 job, we are down to *TWO* jobs. Now I have to be one of the best *TWO* meteorologists in a group of 92, that is much harder, and the reason as to why I have to work so hard. But all this work will be paid off in the end you may say, right? WRONG. A BS in Meteorology pays, on average, slightly *LESS* than a secondary school teacher, and is one of the only sciences where the pay difference from a BS to MS isn’t enough to justify the extra time spent. It’s fun finding out how choices made so long ago can so greatly impact the rest of your life – and for the negative. The previous post said it best: “House of Cards.”

Sorry I went all emo, but these blog things are sometimes the best way to complain out loud and pretend someone actually cares, when, from what I have seen, not even the people closest to you do. I will try not to take it as personally that perfect strangers don’t care than I do when people close to me don’t care.

My survival, still so uncertain.
–Sooner Dead

House Of Cards

A house of cards, for those that don’t know, is an expression that describes something that is built around something that could come crashing down at the slightest breeze. I felt this was an appropriate title for the post because I feel like a lot of things I have going on right now are a house of cards. Valarie is in a garage at an apartment complex I do not reside in and only got in by calling enough people. Now I have been hearing that the apartment complex is struggling and I just got a call a day or so ago from someone representing them and looking over their records. I felt the easiest way to keep Valarie in a garage was to kind of stay below the radar and just make my monthly rental payments, but now I am not so sure how long they will be looking over the fact I do not live there. If they were to end my month-to-month lease with them, I would have no place to keep Valarie, so I am on edge and trying to figure out a way to be able to get the car drivable asap, all the while I am trying to prepare for the AMS Conference and the career fair so I get a great job when I graduate. I really want to work on the car, but time is hard to come by and I just don’t know if I have the aptitude to teach myself automotive restoration – I wish I could find a friend or someone to help.

Am I racing an invisible clock?
–Sooner Dead

Michigan Adventure

I have been on a well deserved ‘vacation’ and visiting my family back home. As always, Shelley came with me and – as always – the snow melted just before we came up. Featuring I have been wanting to show Shelley a true ‘Michigan winter’ for some time, this was very disappointing. Luckily for both of us, however, unlike the previous years, this year had snow in our future. And not just a little snow – a lot – of snow. A front came through and dropped about 4-6″ on top of the ~2″ base of snow we already had. This isn’t anything to write home about, at least until the lake effect snow machine started up in high gear. Once the lake effect snow machine got going it started snowing heavy and it didn’t stop for anything. When it was all said and done we were sitting around 2.5 feet of snow.

We now had plenty of snow to go snowmobiling and plenty of ice to go ice fishing – and did we ever take advantage of this opportunity. In fact, Shelley found her new favorite hobby: snowmobiling. We really had a blast, but like all good things, it had to come to an end and now I am back home and it is time to start working again.

There is so much to do between now and the next month it is almost sad, but there is great opportunity to be had as well. I also really want to change Shelley’s favorite hobby from snowmobiling to drag racing, as she has never drag raced before. I want to get the car running soon, I need to get the car running soon – but this is all reliant on that little thing I previously mentioned called ‘will power’.

I slam the gas down and hear just stuttering
–Sooner Dead

Atrophy

I was driving home yesterday, tired from yet another day going to school and working for over 12 hours again. It was around 11 o’clock at night and a fresh mist was falling on the ground, leaving a glisten on the roads indicative of traction begging to be broken. While Katrina may not be a muscle car, lots of low end torque and very little weight on the rear allows for some fun. It was at this moment I was about to put my right foot to the floor when my calf started to hurt. It was then I realized just how much I missed driving a muscle car around. Many fun times were had with Shelley and I in a muscle car, and I feel many more will be had. So now, as I work and go to school, it is as though every time I see or think about a muscle car it is just a dream I cannot reach.

Though with this school semester coming to a close, I hay have some good news soon.

I think I need to exercise my accelerator foot some more
– Sooner Dead

PS: I’m Still Alive

Typical… silence on the wire… I apologize… Like what happens every time in school, I overload myself with promises and guarantees that I just can’t backup if I give myself any time to just relax. This is the same problem that has reoccurred each semester. I think it is because by the time I enroll into classes and pick my work hours each semester, I forget what a nightmare the last semester was and in a moment of weakness or stupidity (or both) I try to do too much. Oh well, such is the life of me.

There are benefits to me probably cutting a couple years off my life from a bleeding ulcer or something – I have one really, really nice resume; and as such, I should get a really good stable job. So I guess losing those years aren’t so bad, they crappy ones in the later years anyway where I would probably spend all day drooling on myself anyway because the government would have already of permanently banned me from driving (and probably deservedly so if all goes as planned). Either way, this good stable job that exists in theory, will allow me both time and money to work on the car, save for a house, and buy things for Shelley (I trust she will read this, so I must put this in here). Give it time, the holidays are coming, and I will soon have a little bit to work on Valarie. Until then:

I’m doing science and I’m still alive
–Sooner Dead

The Pit And The Pendulum

For those that do not know, The Pit and the Pendulum is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe. The basic synopsis can be found here, though you really should read the story which can be found here. Anyway, the pendulum in this case is the semester for me; as the end draws nearer, I fear I may not survive intact. If I manage to survive this semester as I have the past ones, the pit awaits. The future is the pit for me, as it feels there is my old nemesis, a number of life-changing decisions with currently unknown directions, just now barely palpable on the horizon but is creeping closer as the walls around me close in.

I felt that I tottered upon the brink — I averted my eyes
–Sooner Dead

Willpower

I’m broke. Not the ‘I quit, I cannot do this anymore’ broke, the ‘I have no money’ broke. It is kind of the reason for me being so quiet; I have been locked down in tests from school and had no money to get anything done on the car. I paid off Katrina, and bought a new computer, so that quickly drained any funds I could have had. The good thing with paying off Katrina was that I am not losing a 1/3 of my monthly car payments to interest! I have saved myself about $800 by paying the car off early. Sure it was a risk running myself that low on cash, but I am very careful with finances and figured it would be alright, and it was.

Onto the actual title of the post. I am actually quite frustrated with myself, as for some reason I cannot find the willpower to do things I think I want to do. Somehow I get caught up in something else, lose track of time, and end up getting nothing I wanted to do done. An example would be watching TV or playing a computer game instead of working on the car, working out, working on code, or doing homework. I know some of these things aren’t fun, but some of them are things I really really want to get done, but I can’t get started and keep working on them consistently and I don’t know why. The problem is is if I am not consistently checking myself to make sure I am doing what I should or doing one of the harder things I enjoy, I slide right back into basically doing nothing productive and it is getting frustrating. I wish I had more to say but I don’t, I just need to just keep at the more difficult things I want to do and force myself to do the things I have to do.

Will you defeat them, your demons?
–Sooner Dead

Burnout

Burn-Out, noun: (1) Spinning the tires of a vehicle faster than it is moving, causing smoke to come off the tires. (2) fatigue, frustration, or apathy resulting from prolonged stress, overwork, or intense activity.

Since my last update, things have just got more and more stressful and the combination of work and school is quite a bit more than I expected. I think I am getting sick, but not the normal sick where you feel bad for a couple days, the exhaustive annoying sickness that is kind of in the background but lasts forever and it is merely making things worse. This exhaustive, stressful state seems to be my constant plight, so I am not surprised by this, but remaining steadfast with a shoulder lowered toward the coming impact remains more and more difficult.

Last of my whining for this post, I promise, as things aren’t all bad – in fact, some things are quite good. I am ordering the rest of my new gaming computer tomorrow, hopefully it will all come together well next week and will keep me up to date for the next couple years. I have spent less than $1000 building it, making it my cheapest build to date, but it is surprisingly powerful as I didn’t really skimp in any area. I can’t wait to have it together as Team Fortress 2 is being released Monday, BioShock is already out, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Portal are being released October 10th. I am very excited, though I am still greatly anticipating the release date of Spore, which looks to be one of those market changing games.

You gotta be bigger, be faster, be stronger, if you’re going to survive any longer
–Sooner Dead

Is It ‘GG’ For Me?

The site [previous site - no longer exists] is (obviously) taking longer than expected. I am learning CSS in order to really improve the site, and a basic design is done and just waiting proper coding. Sorry for the delays, but school and real life do mess things up now and then. So to whoever still checks this site now and again, I will continue to update it as soon as I have the time to overhaul the site. Nothing has been going on with the car. Support, space, time, and money are in short supply so right now I am at my wits end with this and wonder if it was at all worth it. We shall see later.

%*$^ it!
–Sooner Dead