The snow geese are honking here in State College! The first winter storm of the season is bound to arrive in a matter of hours, and the NWS has a winter weather advisory out for central PA. Unfortunately it’s gonna be a bit of a mess, because it won’t be an all-snow event. The models have been fairly consistent for the last few days, and it looks like it’ll start out as snow here in State College tonight, with possibly 1-3″ accumulating before it switches to sleet and freezing rain by mid-morning Sunday. The potpourri of wintry precip should continue until it switches to plain rain Sunday evening, before changing back to lake effect snow showers behind the cold front Sunday night. It’s definitely not gonna be fun to drive around here on Sunday, especially if we get significant ice accumulations, and Monday morning could be interesting too. It wouldn’t be so bad if State College borough actually tried to plow the streets *before* the storm ended.
I sold my first-ever item on eBay earlier this week! I put the original 1 GB (2×512 MB) of RAM from my new laptop up for sale (I upgraded to 2 GB of RAM). I had a $10 minimum bid on it, and entering the last day of the auction nobody had bid on it, which had me worried a little bit. But on the last day there were five bids and it sold for $26.01! Not bad at all, if you ask me. 🙂 Getting paid to get rid of stuff that would otherwise just be sitting on my desk is a nice deal, that’s for sure. Now I’ve just gotta get my act together so I can get my old laptop listed on eBay. Hopefully I’ll get that done today while watching football.
Speaking of football, I had a couple tears in my eye before the Army-Navy game today, when the Navy Glee Club sang the Star-Spangled Banner (one of the best renditions I’ve heard). It always touches me to see the cadets and midshipmen marching onto the field before the game, all the pageantry, and the passion of the players and the fans (and the spirit ads that both Navy and Army run during the game sure are fun to watch, too). On the football field they’re the most bitter of rivals, but once the game is over they’ll be serving our country together. None of these young men are playing with the aim of getting to the NFL; they only play for the love of the game and for the love of our country. In my mind, Army-Navy is the biggest rivalry in all of college football. Michigan-Ohio State? Auburn-Alabama? Texas-Oklahoma? As good as they are, they all take a back seat to Army-Navy.
This week I finally got around to joining the Penn State Prediction Markets. The Smeal College of Business and the Department of Meteorology here at Penn State set up a joint research project, to look into how stock markets can be used to predict the weather. Upon joining the markets, users are given E$100 (100 “experimental dollars,” equivalent to US$10) of stocks in various temperature bins. Then it’s up to the user to buy, sell or trade stocks in the bins of their choice, at whatever price they decide is a “good deal.” Here’s an example. If you purchase one share in the 40-41 degree bin for E$0.20, and the high turns out to be 40 or 41, then the person who sold you the share pays you E$1.00, meaning you made a profit of E$0.80. Likewise, if you sell one share in some temperature bin for E$0.35, and that temperature ends up verifying, then you must pay out E$1.00 to the person who bought the stock from you, meaning you lost a net of E$0.65. You can also “short sell,” or sell stocks you don’t actually have. For instance, yesterday I started with 0 shares in the 34 or colder bin, so I sold 25 shares in that bin for E$0.14 each, gaining me E$3.50, because I don’t think there’s any way that the high will be that cold on Tuesday in Wenatchee, WA (that’s where we’re forecasting for this week, because the WxChallenge forecasting contest that I’m participating in is also forecasting for Wenatchee currently). So as long as the high on Tuesday in Wenatchee is warmer than 34 degrees, I’ll get to keep my E$3.50. If for some reason the high is only 34 or colder though, I’ll have to pay out E$25.00, netting me a loss of E$22.50. It’ll probably take me awhile to get the hang of it all, but it seems pretty interesting. And it’ll give me a bit of an insight into how financial markets work, albeit in a simplified manner. I can decide to cash out at any time I want, at a rate of US$1 per E$10, with the caveat that I’m not allowed to participate in any future Penn State Prediction Markets once I cash out, so this’ll eventually turn into a bit of money for me too!
I got some rather exciting news earlier this week. My friend Rob from Australia sent me a message on Tuesday morning that the Biblical storytelling/theatre group that he’s a part of, The Backyard Bard, is hoping to do a US tour next year! In the past they’ve done shows on the stories of Esther, Daniel, the Judges and more, and this year they performed “Elijah,” a dramatic storytelling of 1 Kings 17 – 2 Kings 2 by Rob and his friend Simon. Here are a couple of trailers for “Elijah” from YouTube:
Their Australian tour of “Elijah” just wrapped up recently, and went very well by all accounts, performing at schools, universities and churches. They’re looking for as many hosts as possible here in the US for their “Elijah” tour, so that travel costs for Simon, Rob & Rob’s wife Simone (their tech person) can be split amongst all the hosts (churches/campus groups, etc). I’m *really* hoping that we can sponsor them for at least one show here in State College, so I’ve sent emails out to Pastor Tober at my church and the other officers at PSCG, in addition to many other friends, family members, and leaders of other Christian Grads groups around the country, hoping that that’ll lead to a few more hosts for The Backyard Bard. We’ll see what comes of all of that, but it’d be totally awesome to see Rob & Simone here in the States! I’m stoked to be able to do whatever I can to help them come here!