Apparently this is the fastest to 999,999 on NES Tetris. My eyes were burning just watching this.

Someone ran the numbers, and it would cost 852 quadrillion US dollars to build the Empires Death Star. More numbers from the smarty dudes.

Actually the reason I am writing about this story is that I needed an excuse to post this song (below) by Hanzel und Gretyl. I like to have a tie-in whenever possible.

"It is time to meet your maker, My Magic Unicorn", exclaimed the Kaiser Horse with an exaggerated German accent, "but before I extinguish your life force with magnificent villianary, I have one last query to ask you... Why the long face?"

My Magic Unicorn began to laugh with so much joy at this funny question, that she emitted great glee waves from her horn. The glee waves swept away all hate and anger from the Kaiser Horse.

"I can not carry out this extermination, for I have not an evil pore within my being. I shall set you free My Magic Unicorn, so you may spread your happiness throughout the land", said the Kaiser Horse, with a much tempered German accent.

The Kaiser Horse and My Magic Unicorn both skip off into a rainbow sunset, where My Magic Unicorn gores Kaiser Horse in the left lung, leaving him to die.

Another computer, another node added to my Basement Super Computer Cluster. I am up to 3 computers in my weather model cluster. Added another 6 core Phenom II to the mess. This computer seems to be unstable, so I should be careful not to overhype this. Your cluster is only as good as your weakest computer. It has been up for 24 hours straight now, so hopes are higher.

What these 6 additional cores have afforded me is to convert my nearly continental US covering model run from 25 km to 20 km grid spacing. I then expanded my 4 km grid spaced "meso" run from covering  just southern Minnesota, to nearly the 5 state area.

Took the opportunity to update the web page. The old page is still up and running, so feel free to use it. Some of you like legacy HTML with 15 year old javascript ... I fully understand.

The new pages use OpenLayers and some HTML5/CSS3/Javascript to work their magic. Still not that pretty, but I am an engineer not a designer, so stop complaining.  The course grained run that covers the CONUS can be found here. The finer resolution meso run can be found here. I tried to make these pages work with mobile devices. I succeeded somewhat. They work OK with tablets, not so good with the smaller screens. OpenLayers added pinch and touch natively to their libraries, so that is kind of slick.

The other thing I tinkered with is the Turbulence maps. Some comrades over at Chicago are doing a study and they shipped over some preliminary results. They are comparing speed shear with pilot reported clear air turbulence. The results were quite promising, so I am going to see if I can use it operationally. The Turb 500 mb through the Turb 200 mb charts on the CONUS model run now show speed shear between 50 mb layers. These maps still highlight in thick red contours where the WRF thinks mod-sev Turb will be... so we have that for comparison. As  far as the shading... blue = 25-35 kts shear (lgt-mod turb) | yellow = 35-50 kts shear (mod turb) | red = >50 kt shear (sev turb). It will be interesting to see how this verifies.

I paid a visit to my 3rd Dermatologist concerning the eczema on my hands and feet. Nothing new. No miracle cure. Same advice that the previous two gave me. He did give me a fresh list of cremes and ointments to plaster on my dry and cracked skin.

The first lotion I am going to try is Cerave. On the list that the doctor gave me, this is the one he starred and underlined... well OK then. The main takeaway I got from this doctor was that whatever cream, lotion, ointment, suave I choose - it should not only moisturize, but set up some sort of barrier to prevent your natural moisture from escaping. This is what Careve does, in theory. So a mini-tub of Careve is on the way to my place from the great Amazon warehouse in the sky, and should be at my house by mid-week.

According to Amazon reviews, it is that miracle cure... an example:

Cerave is probably the single most effective treatment I have found for reducing inflammation and strengthening the skin barrier. (And compared to other treatments I have had, what a bargain! ) I am not aware of any side effects. Skin improvement began the first week I used it. My skin is softer and more supple, ichthyosis and scaling are way down, redness has abated considerably (though not entirely) , and the horrible itching is a minor distraction now. I have had fewer outbreaks of staph infections, and - most remarkable - I look healthier and am comfortable most of the time. In addition I am more focused mentally, more rested, and less prone to depression . 

These results are amazing given my history. I do need to use CeraVe at least twice daily to maintain its benefits, which seem to include immune system strengthening. And there is one frustrating area not responding very well to this treatment - my face ( not the area I would choose if I had to have one problem area). Overall though, with the itching way down, I am more relaxed and happier than I have been in years. I hope others with my condition will find this cream as as helpful.

So there you go... Careve will not only disappear-ify my skin sloughing, but will rid me of those nagging deep black depressions. A miracle indeed.

I have a sound bar that I hide under the living sofa. Perfect for concealing for showing the house. One problem, it is near my feet. Recently I managed to kick one of the speakers. So I hear a rip whenever I play something with a heavy bass. I will open it up and see if I can fix it, but I think I will use this as an excuse to get a new speaker system. Something that sounds better than these, but still easily concealable. No ideas right now, just thinking out loud.

Listening to Led Zeppelin's, "In through the out  door". First time listening all the way through this in a couple decades... at least. I affectionately call this their, "Disco Album".

When I added some add-ons to the zoyx.com blog, I made a somewhat snarky comment about OneAll. I won't repeat it here, read the entry. The guy who runs this fine service must of had his google alerts working, because he left a comment for me on Tumblr.

No, we are not idiots cloning Hitlers - just geeks trying to build something useful ;) Thank you for using our plugin! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Claude, founder of oneall. Back to cloning ... uhm programming now ;)

It's all in good fun, and I am glad he took my post like that. He scored positive points with me. If he had been a member of the literal internet, might not have been as fun of a comment.