Hythia

You’d figure that after having spent twenty-five years of my life in Oregon I’d know the difference between:

Rain Mist
Misting
Light Sprinkles
Sprinkles
Light Rain
Light Showers
Heavy Sprinkles
Showers
Heavy Showers
Rain
Heavy Rain
Torrential Downpour

But really, where the frick is the dividing line between them?

Or the difference between:

Scattered Clouds
Slightly Cloudy
Cloudy
Mostly Cloudy
Overcast
Heavy Clouds

Is there actually set guidelines to differentiate between these things? Is it just dependent on the weather forecasters moods? Is meteorology actually a science at all? I have this long-standing suspicion that the only difference between a meteorologist and a fortune-teller is that meteorologists get green screens and radar domes to play with.

Blegh.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

It is frickin’ cold out. Not that I should be complaining, as this is the weather I grew up with ( yay, Oregon weather is sort of back to normal ) but damn… I think it rained more in the first 72 hours of this year then it did in the first 72 days of last year, also was unseasonably hot last year.

But damn… Cold. Hasn’t been above 50 in a while I think, but at least it doesn’t drop below 40 either. Just stays cold and rather damp.

Fully aware that some ( or maybe many ) of you who read this live in colder places then I am, and I am being a bit whiny about it. Also expect however that you live in homes that are better insulated and have better furnaces than my crappy oil one (which will cost me about the same as two and a half months rent to refill the oil tank on once it runs out this year ( freaking gas / oil prices… )).

Anyways, home from being out for the day and whining about the weather while I wait for the space heater in my bathroom to get that room to a temperature that allows feet to survive contact with the tile floor.

Also, waiting on my email to download. Someone sent me a file that is close to 8meg and my poor little weenie dial-up connection is choking on it. Which also reminds me that I have an apparently big patch to download for CoX still since it has been about.. uh.. twelve days since I’ve logged in from my home machine and actually played. Oi…

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

So I turned on and watched the local news for a few minutes while having lunch today. Two big things that stuck in my mind…

Bio-diesel fuel. A bunch of farms in eastern Oregon basically decided that food wasn’t enough of a cash crop, and swapped over to making diesel fuel from crops. Big thing right now actually. Growing demand for it in Portland from the rather large population of environmentalists we have ( it pollutes less when burnt, is renewable from crops, and is local instead of imported ) and a couple of the large in-state trucking companies have said they are converting their entire fleet of trucks over to using just bio-diesel fuel in the next year. Will be nice if it continues to catch on, a nice kick into the states economy.

An upcoming ‘annual’ holiday parade. Okay, I grew up in Portland. I’ve been back here for a couple of years now. I have never heard of this parade before. Can it really be an ‘annual’ event if it is the first time it is happening? Or are they referring to the holiday itself as being an ‘annual’ event and not the parade?

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

A few small thoughts, and some actual stuff posted up that isn’t videogame related…

Raining today, on Halloween. Seems like from my memories of growing up in Oregon that there are only a few times in the year in which you are guaranteed rain. During Halloween, the Rose Parade during the Rose Festival in June, and Thanksgiving. You didn’t necessarily get rain on all three of those each year, usually if it rained on the 4th of July you’d get decent weather on one of those other days as a trade-off. But I woke up this morning to the sound of the wind ripping through the trees in the neighborhood and the rain coming down in buckets.

Tomorrow starts NaNoWriMo. Wacky Lexicon’ish writing thing that I will be doing with some other cool people this year. Also got a head full of ideas that I hope to at least turn into something, maybe a handful of connected short-stories on my own. No clue. Will see how the writing goes when the sun comes up tomorrow.

I remember reading an article about this a long time ago, well before the December 2000 date on this page. I remember it mostly because the Oregonian’s headline about it read “Largest Living Being Found In Oregon” and several of my friends who saw that wrote me to ask if someone had managed to capture my father on film. An apt comparison, him and fungus, though they were more focusing on the fact that he was a rather large ( almost, but not quite, corpulent ) man.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)

Got up this morning and my blog doesn’t appear to be showing. Get a screen of pure white instead. Kind of disconcerting to see.

Raining out again today. Nice sound to wake up to. Reminds me that I am home in Oregon and not Somewhere Else. After a very dry first half of the year, the weather is starting to get closer to ‘Oregon Normal’ in that it is raining at night or in the morning for most of the last few days.

Leaves are turning golden outside my window. Nice mix of gold and green on the maple trees outside ( pretty sure they are maples, the leaves look Canadian at least ).

Not much to my day so far really, just checking a couple of message boards I post / moderate on, answering email and text messages, and now off to get breakfast I think. Typical slow start to the day.

(Originally posted at A Home Away from Hythia)