Ponderings and Musings

It is day zero of this year’s Storm Chasing Trip. I have targeted Central Kansas for Sunday’s activities (and a little bit of Saturday night’s).

I left after a good day at work; I’m in Los Lunas, New Mexico, just south of Albuquerque. The drive has been pleasant thus far. I thought I heard gun shots at this hotel but it was happening with a regular basis so I figured it was fireworks or something. No one else was getting hysterical so I didn’t either.

Roads in New Mexico are mostly very rough and in need of repair. However, the Highway 26 between Deming and Hutch, a shortcut between Interstates 10 and 25, isn’t too bad.

I’m sitting on the gazebo with my husband. He is watching what sounds like baseball on his iPhone while I sit at the table, overlooking the back yard, and writing this blog entry. I’m starting to get in the habit of writing blog entries at lunch time. This is something I used to do back in the day before folks tended to shy away from narratives containing more than 280 characters. It’s a good feeling to be able to sit down and write, even if the content is a bit thin.

We’ve been watching “Tracker” on Paramount Plus. A new series as of this year, “Tracker” is about a guy who roams the country looking for missing people. He lives on the monetary rewards of his efforts. Since the beginning of the series I’ve remarked to my husband that the storylines seem a bit “thin” but we still find the show enjoyable. Plus, Justin Hartley isn’t bad to look at.

He has a super-sleuth hacker type as part of his “team” and this hacker can do amazing things in incredibly little time. I always find these things in television shows amusing. Some of the feats seem just a few moments away from waving to KellyAnne Conway through her microwave.

I just needed a reason to put a photo of the handsome Justin Hartley on my blog. I wish I could find a photo of him shirtless while shaving or something, but he doesn’t seem like the type that shaves very often.

The winds are picking up here at home; it could be indicative of some dry thunderstorms passing through the area again tonight. The forecast has finally been adjusted to admit to this possibility. As mentioned in the previous entry, last night’s convective activity took us by surprise. It was a delightful surprise.

With my storm chasing trip looming on the horizon, it has been consuming much of my thoughts and has brought the pacing of the work week down to a very slow level. I’m being productive at work and I feel like I’m getting things aligned so the team continues to do their thing while I’m away, but I’m ready for the storm chasing trip to commence tomorrow afternoon. As we get closer to the weekend, the forecast is shaping up nicely and showing promise. I just watched a recap from Ryan Hall Y’all and it looks like the target area will have some zesty weather right through the end of the month.

I’m hoping it’ll be a hoot and a half.

OriginalMacGuy Jim Eager wrote an excellent blog entry about Introverts (hi!) and their need to carefully manage their energy. You can read the blog post here.

An introvert is a person who tends to lose energy from social interaction and external stimulation and regains energy through solitude and quiet environments. In contrast, an extrovert is a person who tends to gain energy from social interactions and external stimulation. 

According to Marty Olson Laney in The Introvert Advantage, “The primary difference between introverts and extroverts is how they recharge their batteries.” Extroverts energize by being around people. Introverts, on the other hand, need to be by themselves in a quiet location to recharge.

I am an introvert at heart. After a day of work or being in public all day long or something similar, I know I’m going to need some downtime before I do it again. Jim’s blog post rings exceptionally true for me on the subject.

I’m sitting at the table in (on?) our gazebo enjoying the desert breezes typical at this time of year in the afternoon. It’s actually more than a breeze, it’s windy, and I love the sound of the wind passing through our landscaping. Blissful.

It’s nice to be able to sit out here after a mentally exhausting day at work. Mental exhaustion does not mean it was a bad day; quite the contrary, I got a lot done at work today. I just had to think a lot and I am tired from too much thinking. I usually start feeling this way at this point in the work week.

I’m using my Linux laptop for this little endeavor, as I want to make sure it’s running well. I’m probably going to bring it along on the storm chasing trip at the end of next week. It has a good sized hard drive and at the very minimum, I’ll have another place to store video files if I run out of room on my primary hard drives. Hopefully there will be a good number of storms to grab on video and enjoy in general.

I’ve received several compliments on my last hiking video; most folks like the new format and the production in general. It’s the direction I want to go with my videos. I’m considering this past hiking video as “episode 1” of a second season of my shenanigans. I’m planning on hiking on Saturday, albeit rather early in the morning. This will probably be my last hike in Arizona for a few months as the summer heat settles into the Sonoran Desert. I haven’t picked a trail yet but I’m leaning toward the more familiar trails in the area, just going higher up the terrain than I have in the past.

As mentioned, I leave on my storm chasing/hiking trip next Friday after work. I’m really looking forward to that adventure and have been counting down the days for a long while. The weather looks mostly promising, so that’s good. At the very least it looks much more promising than what I encountered last year when a high pressure dome settled over the area and I encountered just a few severe weather events. I won’t know the direction of travel until next Wednesday when the Storm Prediction Center starts shading the appropriate areas of the country in varying hues of green.

I have used the same “starter word” in Wordle since I started playing the game too long ago. My husband and I try to solve the Wordle puzzle every morning during our daily routine and we text the results to each other. It’s a fun little diversion.

There’s little chance this word will come up again but I’m going to continue to use it as my starter word because routine = structure to me, structure = stability for me, and most importantly, old habits die hard.

I have made a change with another game in my daily life and that’s deleting Solitaire from my iPad. For a couple of years I have played Solitaire on a daily basis, trying to solve four goals every day. That is, unless the one of the goals is “Complete a multiplayer game”, because I’ve never understood why Solitaire would be played in a multiplayer scenario but that’s something else to ponder at a later date.

While I was enjoying strategizing over my daily Solitaire sessions, it was becoming slightly obsessive for me. If I didn’t complete the goals of the day it would bother me and in this day and age I don’t need that added stress to my life. Also, I was noticing patterns in card distribution. Computers have no ability to be actually random, and that plays out when you’re playing games involving card decks and the like. They’re a bit more random than they were back in the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 days, but I could still see patterns in card distribution and that was a little bit frustrating to me as well, so I stepped away from Solitaire.

One other thing I’ve always been curious about is, what data are these companies deriving from my game play of Solitaire or Wordle? I mean, they must know a little bit about how my brain works as I work my way through these puzzles, but I don’t see anything that would think they could compel me to buying a certain brand of shaving cream or something.

Yesterday’s hike along Sycamore Reservoir Trail near Mt. Lemmon in Coronado National Forest was a lot of fun. It’s getting to that time of year where it’s going to just be too hot for hiking, but I think I can squeeze in one more hike before the storm chasing trip.

Here’s some photos from yesterday’s hike. Full resolution downloads are also available on Flickr. Full video is available in the previous post and/or on my YouTube channel.

Here’s a video recap of my recent hike along the Sycamore Reservoir Trail in Coronado National Forest east of Tucson, Arizona.

Film date:
2024-05-04

Equipment Used:
GoPro Hero 9
GoPro MAX
iPhone 13 Pro
Apple Mac mini M2 Pro
Final Cut Pro

We experienced our first Arizona in 2021. Mother Nature was impressive that year with all sorts of storms hurdled in our direction during Monsoon Season. During the first or second storm the tree in the decorative circle in the middle of our driveway came down.

We replaced the tree the following winter with something a little more appropriate to the desert climate. Here’s a photo of the tree in early 2023.

Apparently our new tree is quite happy because it has been growing and blossoming like crazy. It’s adding a good deal of color to the front of the house.

Every morning I look out my office window and see this tree thrive puts me in a sunny mood. It’s a good way to start the day.

It’s hard to believe this album is nearly 30 years old. Released in 1997, “ESCM” by BT is one of the most inspirational feats of music I have ever enjoyed. ESCM stands for Electric Sky Church Music.

The album was first sent to me when I was working in radio. The CD was included in a pack from the record company. They weren’t really pushing it hard, as I don’t think they knew what they wanted to do with the album. Was BT a pop artist? Trance? A new genre not yet explored? I don’t think Warner Brothers knew what they had in BT and his next album moved to one of the EMI labels. When I asked the record rep about “Remember”, one of the singles released from “ESCM”, they told me it wasn’t a priority.

BT (Brian Transeau) is a musical genius of the times. His combination of this genius with technology has produced impressive results for three decades. He’s been doing amazing things with music and computers when Apple and Microsoft were still figuring out where they were going.

If I’m remembering correctly, the CD single for “Remember” had a Quicktime file on it featuring the official music video.

I needed some inspiration today. I’m listening to “ESCM” as I write this blog entry and get through the workday. This quote from BT’s webpage has given me the kick I need.

I am a man who believes that sound can change lives, perform miracles, and bend the human condition towards good,. This belief has kept me getting out of bed every day for the last 20+ years.

– B.T.

Here’s the track listing of the U.S. edition of the album (from Wikipedia).

Best enjoyed on a solid pair of noise canceling headphones.

For those not interested in watching ads before my videos hosted on YouTube, I am now sharing my videos via Vimeo as well. Here’s last night’s video hosted from Vimeo; please let me know if you have any issues viewing it.