Truman has decided the coffee table is a grand spot to take a nap when we’re watching television. He looks so peaceful and calm taking a nap in one of his favorite places.
J.P.
Dinner Out, Lights Out.
Jamie and Mike are out of town but the rest of us went out for ramen tonight. The restaurant is enjoyable and cozy. Lightning was flickering to the east and the sky was very, very black when we left the house, but we were headed toward the sun.
About 30 minutes into our experience a very impressive storm blew in. The power went out and remained out for the rest of meal.
The impressive storm had lots of rain and wind and lightning, and surprisingly, a bunch of hail. Lots of hail. Very loud and good sized hail.
We made our way back home where it looked like it hadn’t even rained. We drove through downed trees, rivers in streets, and made our way along back streets I hadn’t seen before due to a very large power pole down on Golf Links Rd., one of the main thoroughfares on this side of Tucson.
TEP (Tucson Electric Power) is going to be very busy tonight. At last glance over 20K locations were still without power.
The ramen was excellent, by the way. They asked if we could pay with cash, and as expected from a bunch of geeks in 2023, we didn’t have enough cash on us to pay the bill. They agreed to take Apple Pay on one of the server’s phones, and then they’d figure it out later. There was no way I was going to write down a credit card number on a slip of paper for later processing. No reason to think bad things would happen; I just am paranoid about security.
And again, the ramen was excellent.
Boom.
I had just fallen asleep when the house shook and every light in the house blinked on and off a few times before coming on for real.
Another storm blowing through, some impressive lightning, and home automation lights confused by multiple power flickers. I’ll get some sleep later tonight.
Rumbles.
A lot of thunder but not a lot of visible lightning for this storm. Here’s a two minute video I made just talking about the storm.
Here’s the screenshot I mention in the video.
Protection.
I have owned MacBooks of some vintage and designation for the past 20 years. My latest computer is a 2022 M2 MacBook Air, and I just love this computer. It’s fast, it’s light, and it does everything I want it to do. It’s become my daily driver and while I jump to my older ThinkPad T460s with Linux for dabbling from time to time, the main focus of my computing experience is my MacBook Air. I have the “Midnight” variant.
And fingerprints and smudges love the midnight finish.
My previous MacBook Pro had stickers proudly proclaiming my various interests. I have the same on the aforementioned Lenovo ThinkPad as well as the case of my iPad Pro. I’ve been toying with the idea of putting stickers on this MacBook Air, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not yet.
The lightness of this computer makes it a little more easier to drop, or I’m getting clumsy as I get older. So, for the first time in my computing life, I ordered a protective case for my laptop.
I found a case that fits the bill; I saw it used in an Army article on the U.S. Army’s Cyber Security website and discovered it was rather inexpensive on Amazon. The case is from SUPCASE and it snapped right into place with little muss nor fuss.
I really like the way it looks and I like the slight heft it has added to the MacBook Air experience. I didn’t realize the case would be so shiny; notice the wall receptacle in the shot below.
Overall I am quite pleased and I’ve had the case for just over an hour. I hope to never test the survival of a drop metrics, but knowing I have a case on my computer in case I do get a case of clumsiness is quite reassuring.
Unpredictable.
I didn’t have plans to grab storm shots tonight, as the forecast called for storms mainly west of Tucson. Since we’re in the southeast corner of the city, I figured we’d see some lightning off in the distance that I would find quite beautiful, but not really picture worthy.
Mother Nature likes to keep me on my toes. A small storm cell formed over the east side of the city, about 3-5 miles just to the east of our neighborhood. It didn’t throw out any precipitation, but boy did it give us some great lightning.
Here’s a snap I grabbed within 30 seconds of going out.
And here’s some video I grabbed about two minutes later.
More Lightning.
So tonight I used my newest video camera, a Garmin VIRB, to capture lightning over the city of Tucson. The camera did a better job than my older GoPros, but my iPhone 13 Pro still does a better job with the after sunset shots. I’m going to stick to the iPhone 13 Pro for the foreseeable future.
You should be able some of tonight’s shot on my pixelfed.social feed.
Camera.
Tonight I revived my old Go Pro Hero 3+ and 4. I wanted to see how they’d do during a storm passing through, so at the first indication of lightning tonight I set the Hero 4 up in the driveway on the tripod.
The shots were good, but not great. Here’s an example.
After playing around with the tripod and settings in Photomator, I decided to get my iPhone 13 Pro setup on the tripod and see how that did for the second round of storms that passed through.
I much prefer the shot from the iPhone 13 Pro and will probably stick with that in the future. When mounted on a tripod it does a brilliant job of accomplishing what I’m looking to accomplish.
And that’s beautiful shots of Mother Nature at her best.
Beauty.
I watched this storm gather itself up, inch its way across the mountains, and make its way into the Tucson area. I admired the beauty of this effort for nearly 45 minutes until the rain finally let loose and chased me inside.
Watching and experience a storm is a life affirming experience for me. It makes me feel so alive and at the same time so part of this planetary experience. Mother Nature is a thing of utter beauty, and I’ve felt this energy around thunderstorms since I was a small kid in the bedroom of my folks’ 10×50 trailer (with 8×40 addition) when my sister was young enough to still be in a crib.
Mother Nature is awesome. It’s a privilege to witness her beauty up close.
