I've had a lot to be happy about lately...

First, the MLB Spring Training season has officially begun. I can't believe that the Cubs will be playing games by this time next week. Even though, I will not be able to watch them, I still can't wait!

Secondly, I released my National WeatherCam Network to the world, by advertising on StormTrack last week and it's really taking off. I've had all kinds of people checking it out. Just looking at the stat-counter for the web-site, it's had over 750 visitors in just the last 8 days. That's nearly a hundred hits to the page per day! Impressive... and incredible!

I just need to invest in some time to work on the thing. I've got a lot to do on it, still. I need to give some love to those people down south and start filling up those states in the south with some webcams. I know, I'm letting them down. ;) I've got this entire weekend off, so I'm going to set aside a bunch of time Saturday and Sunday to work on it.

And finally, I received some very good news at work this afternoon. I can't exactly get into much detail at this time, so I'll just say, I got the news I was hoping for!

I'm sure most of my friends and family will learn about it soon enough. ;)

So, having said that, I'm gonna go eat some ice cream and watch a movie. Both of which, will put me in an even better mood.

To 2009... You've really started out with some extreme ups and downs...

Driving back from Minneapolis (or Maplewood, to be precise) last week gave me a golden opportunity to shoot for a record in my car. I filled up the tank before leaving Maplewood and I very nearly made it entirely to Grand Forks without filling up again.

It was actually quite frustrating because Shaw and Lawson were riding me on not filling up and trying to make it on one tank. Lawson even went so far to pull out the manual to see how large my gas tank really was. I never really knew, but figured it was a 11 or 12 gallon tank. I've never put more than maybe 10.5 gallons in at one time. It is, officially a 13.25 gallon tank.

The record?

I have never put more than 275 miles on one tank and once that odometer turned over to 280, I really wanted to try for 300. I made it to Thompson and the needle was just emerging from under that last notch on the gas gauge and I had never driven with the gas light on for that long! I had to take the exit and fill up.

Which really made me upset. I filled up 11.938 gallons (which is a record in it's own right), which meant I had almost 2 gallons left in that tank! I definitely could have made it to Grand Forks on that...

Damnit! :)

Officially, I still set a milestone... 299 miles on one tank!

Dear Mr. "I-stole-your-debit-card-number-and-tried-to-charge-over-$800-to-it," you are a dipshit!

How the hell someone got a hold of my debit card number is beyond me, but it happened. A couple of days ago, my bank calls me to ask if I had authorized a charge of $860 to Photo Vista (a photo service, of some kind) in Paris, France... I've never heard of such a place and likewise, had the card canceled right away.

So, while it actually does me a bit of good, it has been a little inconvenient. I do need to save money for my vacation in a few weeks! But, I now have to wait for a new card... and a new account number. Of which, I'll have to change with every bill I pay online. Which happens to be all of them.

If I ever was able to meet this person, I'd personally take my shredded card and feed it to him by shoving each little sliver down his throat.

On a brighter note, things are looking up - as your's truly may just have a little something cooking on the relationship front. I met a woman about a week ago over the Internet and since, we've been enjoying E-mails and have, twice now, talked on the phone. The first call, last evening, went nearly two hours and tonight's conversation went almost an hour and a half. We seem to find things to talk about and it seems that we both have become rather comfortable with each other rather quickly. So, hopefully, that means something... We've planned a dinner-date for tomorrow evening, so we'll see how it goes.

I'll certainly keep you all up-to-date... On the debit card and dating situation!

So I'm reading through various articles this afternoon and come across one explaining the government will be shooting us citizens our Stimulus Checks even earlier.

I wonder why?

Maybe because they want us to get out and burn through our checks on gas, since it's at a record high across many parts of the country!

I'll tell ya, a good portion of mine will be to that. If gas doesn't get any cheaper I'll be spending over $200 for the first time ever on a vacation. Round-trip, that is. For as high as gas has been the last 2-3 years, I have yet to spend over that amount traveling between North Dakota and Indiana. It may sound ridiculous, but I kid you not.

I'll be traveling to Oklahoma at the end of May for a chase trip and if gas doesn't drop below $3.50 a gallon, I'll easily spend that much on driving to and from Norman.

If you're curious, you can see the new (estimated) dates for arrival here:

Tax Rebates To Arrive Earlier Than Expected...

I'm hoping the money spent will be worth it... Intercepting a monster Supercell and mile-wide wedge sure would! ;)

Also, if anyone ever takes anything away from reading my blog - here's a nugget for you...

Be sure to drop by your local Arby's, if you're out for lunch today...

As part of a national promotion, they are apparently, offering a free order of fries or a milk shake (of any size for both, I've read) to everyone that visits between 10:00am and 1:00pm local time. Be sure to mention the promotion and which you'd prefer! I don't go to Arby's much, myself. But, hey it's free food...

Didn't Taco Bell do something like this last summer? I think I remember them offering up a free taco, burrito, or something.

Way back in October I just so happened to get stuck working the overnight shift when we had to "fall back" to standard time... So, tonight, I guess I'm getting reimbursed for having worked that extra hour.

I get to work a seven hour shift tonight, while getting paid for eight! I can't complain about that, now, can I?

So, don't forget to change your clocks tonight. Spring forward an hour at 2:00am CST (3:00am EST, 1:00am MST, etc...) tonight.

Also, I wanted to pass along some news...

I don't particularly check my Hotmail account too often and when logging into it yesterday for the first time in a few weeks, I found nearly 20 messages from members at Webshots congratulating me on my "POTD." That's short for "photo of the day," for those of you not familiar with abbreviations...

I opened an account at Webshots in early January and decidedly uploaded a handful of my photos to the account. It's amazing that I've had the account open for only a month and a half and at that, only have maybe 10-15 pictures uploaded and I've made it as a featured photographer already. It is somewhat of an honor and I feel humbled that out of the literally thousands of photos hosted at Webshots that they picked mine to feature on their front page for their "Outdoors" photos.

If you're reading this today or you're within a few days, it may still be listed. If you visit the Outdoors home-page, it will listed in the thumbnails to the right (today it is listed as the third photo, but it may move downward over the course of the week).

If you don't get to see it, I've saved a screen capture to the right... Of course, it's the lightning photo.

I apologize if it seems a bit selfish. But, hey, it's not wrong to take a little pride in one's work is it?

If you want to take a look at the photo albums I've created and or bookmark my profile at Webshots, feel free to visit...

I'll try to upload more photos to share in the future...

Ah, the sound of money, eh?

Much to the surprise of many at work, we received a bonus this year. And while thinking and thinking of what to do with mine, I had two major issues to concern myself with. First, whether or not I should cash it and go wild or deposit it into the checking account. Then secondly, if I should splurge and spend it on a new toy or do the responsible thing and pay off some debts.

After mulling over this for almost two weeks, I finally made a decision today.

It is a "bonus" right? It is money I normally wouldn't have, right? It is money I didn't expect...

So, I decided to splurge. Probably to no surprise of my family. To put it lightly, I've had a reputation to be somewhat irresponsible with my bank account in the past. Over the past couple of years I've done much better. Living on my own, having a career, and now having many creditors - I've pretty much been forced into it. It's for the better, though. And over the next year, I'm certainly going to have much more of an opportunity to start saving money. It was such a great feeling to hear "this account is closed" over the phone today, when calling First Third Bank to see if my last car payment went through. No more car payments... You have no idea how great of a feeling it is for me to say those four words.

Anyhow, so you're probably asking what I splurged on. To skip over the specifics, I may as well just show you...

This would be the 17-70mm F2.8-4.5 DC MACRO lens from Sigma. I found a fairly good deal on the lens and really couldn't pass it up.

I had thought long and hard about some things I really could use to spend the bonus check on and came up with either a lens for my Canon 350D or an external hard-drive for my laptop. Both are items I've been wanting and needing for quite some time. After some contemplation, I decided I would probably enjoy the lens far more than the hard-drive. I ordered the lens just about an hour ago and have a lens hood coming from Sigma, itself, as well.

The lens comes very highly recommended and I was sure to check on many, many reviews on the performance and versatility of the lens. One of my favorite photography review sites, FredMiranda.com, indicated great reviews and many described it as performing just as good, if not better, than some of the higher-end Canon lenses. It also sounds like everyone who has purchased it, has made it an all-purpose, walk-around lens. And that's something I desperately need. The kit lens (an 18-55mm) performs alright for my purposes, but I know a better lens would make a world of difference in my outdoor/nature photos. Premium glass results in better IQ (image quality) and deeper color contrast and better builds often result in faster lenses. Sigma has a strong reputation for both. On top of that, I've wanted a lens with wider and longer focal lengths since I bought the camera nearly two years ago. A 17-70mm range would be excellent!

So, again, yes I've spent the bonus check! Although, I'm sure you all would be even happier to know I will still have money left over. No, the check wasn't THAT much! :) I was just lucky enough to find great deals.

Thanks, Al Gore, for inventing the Internet. Hah!

Hey folks,

If you're returning, you have obviously noticed some changes here to the blog. I applied a new template to the blog this afternoon. With the new layout, I've been able to apply some new features to the blog. First, you can now search through the archives with the search tool in the upper-right. Second, I have new functionality on linking my other blogs here, in addition, to pages from my web-site.

Peruse through the blog and let me know what you think.

Now, Mr. Matthew, get back to work! ;)

All the while milestones are being sought over in Major League Baseball, I achieved my own yesterday. The "silver bullet's" odometer ticked over the 60K mark yesterday afternoon. So, I have officially hit the 60,000 mile mark on my car in the 5 years I've had her. Not bad, after all the traveling I've done over the years that I've managed to only average 12,000 miles a year on her.

She needs some body work, as you may know, if you've been reading over the past couple of days. The total estimate on the body work on the front-end and the muffler replacement came to roughly $1,000, as I expected. I am feeling much better now about the situation and have come to terms that from now on, I'm going to simply avoid road construction at all costs at night while I am driving. History shows that I have not dealt with it well at all. This is the second time I've driven my car off "something" because of the neglect of signage around construction zones at night. I'll stick to familiar routes, where I feel safe. ;)

Ta-ta, for now!

Yes, folks, if you haven't noticed, I've resurrected the WeatherBlog. With an added twist. It is now hosted at my domain, rather than here at Blogger. I thought about doing the same to the personal blog here, but to take the conservative approach, I'm going to save the web-space and bandwidth and leave this here. If you had the old WeatherBlog linked somewhere/anywhere, you will need to change the URL, as that has been changed, obviously:

http://gw.mhartman-wx.com/

Hopefully all is well...

More later!

Yes, I'm saying goodbye to the weatherBlog. Over the past several months I haven't had much to add over on the WeatherBlog and after going through the visitor stats over on StatCounter, I realized that over the past month I've only had a total of 9 hits on the blog. And out of those 9 hits, none of them were from an end-user. They were all from Inktomi, spidering the blog and indexing it.

So, even though I do use it much more frequently during the spring and summer when there is severe weather to monitor and write about, I find it useless to put an effort into keeping it around if no one whatsoever is reading it.

If not for StatCounter, I wouldn't even know that people are reading this blog. No one ever leaves comments - so I really have no idea. I'm not complaining, though, don't get me wrong. I definitely do not need the validation that comes along with a shit-load of comments. I know there are people out there that read this thing.

Yes, I can see you! IP-Address and all - where you're coming from to read this thing and everything... Heheh...

So, anyhow, again the weatherBlog is gone and since it is, you may see an increase in weather-related posts in here. And hey, that will probably make me a little more active in here. We'll see...

Take care everyone and maybe I'll write a little more in here this week.
More then...

I guess while I have the opportunity and am thinking about it, I may as well let all of you in on a new "development" in my life. I have a rather solid history of really blowing these sorts of announcements so I have been trying to keep things a bit quiet to let things transpire and develop further, but since most of my family and closest friends know already... I have met someone up here, finally, that I can honestly see a future with.

Her name is Lu (yes, she is Chinese), she's 23 years old and is pursuing her Master's degree in chemical engineering at UND. We met about a week and a half ago and already we've been spending quite a bit of time together. We've been out on several "dates" and we even took a trip up to Winnipeg this past Sunday. It turned out to be a fun trip, as it wasn't just both of our's first time to Canada, but we also were able to spend all day together. Soon, I'm hoping to have some photos up in my photo gallery from our trip, so stay tuned for some new pictures there.

She's very nice, sweet, and in general, we seem to get along great. She is chinese, yes, but the language barrier isn't really an issue, at all. Most of the time I can understand what she's conveying - and likewise, she seems to understand english pretty well - so I don't find that I need to explain things to her very often, either.

The chemistry feels right and that's something that has severely lacked from other relationships I've pursued since I've lived here in Grand Forks. Don't get me wrong, I realize it's only been a week and a half... I don't want to get my hopes up too high on things truly working out between us, but the relationship we've built already has felt a lot different than those I've had over the past couple of years. It's very strange, as well, that over the past few days that there have been times where I have actually missed having her around. I haven't felt that way in so long that I'm not sure how to handle it. Should I just sit down and find something else to occupy my mind? Do I call her? It's probably been 6 years now, since I last felt this way about anyone.

Hopefully things work out... I'll keep you all informed on how everything goes!

Anyhow, I should get back to work. Hope all is well with everyone.
Take care!

Oh, what a couple of days of beautiful weather and days off work can do for the body and spirit. I had yesterday and today off of work and with the weather cooperating, I've been spending a lot of time outdoors. Yesterday, I finally moved past my insecurities and tried out the pool here. If you can believe it, I've lived in this apartment complex for a year and a half and haven't once used either pool here. (Yeah, they have two!) The water wasn't half-bad and I enjoyed it so much that I took a dip again today. We had a little rain early this morning so I thought that the water may be a little cooler, but it really wasn't. It was perfect!

I layed out and got a little sun, as well. I need some color desperately. I'm full-blooded caucasion, what can I say. It felt nice, though... To be laying out there and feeling the sunshine on my back and shoulders and, of course, my bare tummy. ;) Yeah, ladies I'm not one to go hitting up tanning salons...

On top of all that, I've been taking walks. They have a bike/fitness path that stretches through much of the city and it's relatively close to my apt complex here. If you take a look at the map here the 1KM marker just northwest of Columbia Mall is about where I started. I actually live on 34th street (about where the "34" is labeled on the map) so, really, that's where I started. I took this entire path northward to Demers Ave. then back south to 11th Ave. where I walked back west to 34th street and walked back south. In all, just by going the map here, I probably walked 4 or 4.5 miles. I tried running small portions of it, but for as out of shape as I am, I couldn't run for very long. I probably only ran about 10% of it. ;)

I had my ceiling fan installed today, as well. That was exciting! With my lease renewal coming up in August I was offered an upgrade for my apartment. Most of options were little things, like new blinds or a carpet cleaning or something stupid like that... but a ceiling fan was one of the options and I thought that would be really neat. Maintenance showed up today and installed it in my kitchen. It looks pretty nice and I already have it running. I'm sure it's going to help quite a bit for when I have my AC running in here. I'm hoping it will help circulate the air around the apartment and help to cool the entire place down, rather than just my bedrooom. ;)

Anyhow, I'm extremely hungry, so I'm gonna go find something to eat. I just figured I would update this thing, since I haven't in quite a while. Working 7 days straight of those E8's (8:00pm to 4:00am) just doesn't make you wanna jump on the computer much. I have a fairly easy week this week, so I'm gonna try to take it easy... I'm gonna try to work 7:00am to 3:00pm for my office shifts Wednesday through Friday. That way I can open up my afternoon's and evenings for hopefully, more dips in the pool and more walks. We'll see how long of a kick I go on for these walks/short runs and swimming. Hopefully, I can get a sort of routine going here. ;)

I do need the exercise! Especially, when I'm eating all this junk food. Ahh, junk food - I'm gonna go find some.

Take care, everyone. Hope all is well!
More later...

I noticed while I was driving home from work about an hour ago that the odometer in my car read 50,127 miles! Apparently, my car turned over the 50,000 mile mark two or three days ago and I never realized it. I can't believe I have 50,000 miles on this thing already. I suppose, however, since my baby is now coming up on her 4-yr anniversary, 50,000 miles isn't so bad. That works out be around 12,500 miles a year. Which is actually below the "average" number of miles per year a vehicle racks up. Of course, I suppose this average can be argued. Especially now that many people are cutting back on vehicular travel due to high gas prices. Over the past couple of years, I'm sure the average has dropped significantly from the typically accepted 14,000 - 15,000 Mi/yr.

Now, I just need new tires and an expensive electronic overhaul. The cruise control started malfunctioning a couple of weeks ago, but I've been unable to get it into the the dealership for an estimate. Maybe within the next couple of days...

More later -

I could probably list 3 or 4 of these everyday, but I came to two hard-deniable facts this afternoon:

1._ I get very paranoid about my car. Maybe even moreso now than I did when I bought the thing three years ago. I hear the littlest vibrations and I start worrying what's wrong with it. I noticed what appeared to be a defunct headlamp today, only to find out it was fine. I swear, the reflection from the car in front of me, it seriously looked like the passenger-side lamp was out. After a closer look, gladly, I was incorrect in my assumptions.

2._ I'm so very out of shape. After carrying my groceries up two flights of stairs and into my apartment, I very nearly collapsed. I swear, this summer, I'm going to start running. Corporate gyms make me sick and I refuse to pay for them. We have a few machines (a rowing machine, bike, and treadmill, among a couple others) in our work-out room here in the apartment building, but I never use the facility. If it isn't too late to make 2006 resolutions, I think losing several pounds and getting in shape will be a new one.

Hey everyone!!
So how are ya'll...?? Nothing much has been going on here, but a friend of mine reminded me late tonight that I hadn't posted on here in a while. Thanks Steph!! LOL

Anyhow, again, not much new with me... Work is still going very well. Forecasting is becoming easier and I'm getting those grids done a little quicker now, finally! Maybe one of these days, I'll get some screen-caps up here, if I can figure out how to do them on a UNIX machine... Otherwise, I do have some text forecasts I've done already that I can send out or post to the site, if anyone wants to see them.

I have posted pictures of my new apartment! You can visit http://www.mhartman-wx.com/gallery/misc/apt_pics/ for a "virtual tour" of the place. There isn't much to it, but I'd love to have ya! :) Some things have changed... I finally have a bed and I've dressed up the place a bit over the past week or so. My mother came out to visit last week and since we went shopping some during her visit, I found a store up here that has some pretty nice pictures and other wall-hangings... With the walls of this apartment lookin' pretty bare, I decided to get a few things. Maybe I'll take some new pictures one of these days and post them.

Anyhow, think I'll hop off here for now... I promise I'll try to keep ya'll more updated on things up here in Grand Forks in here. 'Til next time --

Hello everyone!

It's been quite a while since I last posted an entry in here, so to update those of you I haven't talked to or E-mailed in the last month or so - there has been some new developments in my life lately.

The biggest development - I am now working a new job and living in a whole other part of the country. In late August, I accepted a job offer from Meridian Environmental Technology, Inc., located in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Since then, I have, of course, moved to Grand Forks and am finally starting to settle in.

I found a decent one-bedroom apartment here in town and so far the job is going well. I haven't done a lot, but I've learned quite a bit and I'm enjoying it. I am working as an operational forecaster and forecast for mostly Departments of Transportation for several states around the Northern and Central Plains and in the midwest, as well. Ironically, we forecast for the Indiana DOT, so I've had the opportunity to actually perform some simulated forecasts for INDOT. The past two nights, I have actually been on "real" shifts, rather than on training shifts and have issued "real" operational forecasts. Most of them have been district forecasts for South Dakota. However, I've written a couple S. Dakota State Forecasts, as well as Grand Forks Area Forecasts.

It's neat to think that I'm finally using my degree for something - and that this is something I have worked so hard for. My life-long goals are finally starting to materialize and it's a wonderful feeling.

Anywho, this is getting a bit long. I'll cut it short here, for now.
Take care, everyone! I hope you all are doing well...