Jared's One Blog

G’day! I got back from Colorado back on Saturday (a post and plenty of pictures from that trip coming soon!), so now I can start turning my attention toward my trip to Australia in less than two weeks! I was so crazy-busy in the lead-up to my trip to Colorado, trying to get research done for that trip, that I haven’t really had any time to put into getting ready for Australia.
While I’m still busy now, I’m actually much more relaxed, which is good, and it’s allowed me to get a number of things done. Applying for an electronic visa? Check. Confirming I have no-fee ATM withdrawals worldwide (and thus won’t bother with travelers checks)? Check. Editing a support letter that’s going out to my church this weekend? Check. Meeting with Ash & Tracy to go over some plans and advise them weather-wise on what to bring? Check. Contacting some people I know at Monash to arrange for some grad student ministry events/meetings? Check. Arranged for places for me to stay while I’m in Melbourne (with my friends Rob & Simone, Joel & Rosey, and James & Ali)? Check (kinda — I still need to arrange what nights I’m staying with who). But things are falling into place.
Also, submitting abstracts for my three research seminars that I’m giving? Check. Took care of that one this afternoon. For the main work/education-related purpose to my trip, I’m giving three seminars (the same one at all three places, entitled “Down-Selecting for Numerical Weather Prediction Ensemble Configurations.” I’m giving them mainly because I’m interested in the possibility of pursuing a post-doc position in Australia, if one were to become available. So here’s when I’m giving seminars in the Melbourne area:
Fri 6 Aug at noon: Monash University
Wed 11 Aug at 1pm: University of Melbourne
Thu 12 Aug at 10am: Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre
I’m really excited about these, and they’ll be brand-new experiences for me. I’ve never given a seminar at someplace other than Penn State before (and I’ll be giving this same seminar at the Water Tunnel Building on Fri 30 Jul at 9am), and there will be a fair amount of new experiences for me. It was really easy to arrange them too; I just emailed someone at each place, introduced myself, said I was coming to Melbourne, and asked if I could visit their institution, and offered to give a seminar. They’re more than happy to arrange for seminars from foreign scientists who visit Australia. 🙂 I’ve been having fun putting the talk together this week, and I think it’s going to turn out really well! There’s still some additional work I’d like to include, of course, so hopefully I can get that wrapped up before I leave.
Monday 2 August, when Ash, Tracy & I depart for Australia, will be here before we know it! Two weeks from now I’ll be happily jet-lagged, walking around Melbourne, and seeing old friends again!!

I hope you all had a great 4th of July weekend! I had a pretty good one, at least on the 4th itself. And I didn’t even go into the office on the 4th, either! Of course, that might’ve had something to do with having a good day.
At church I played keyboard, while Mike led. Three of the high schoolers also joined us on the worship team, on electric guitar, bass and drums, and Mike chose several high-energy songs and strung them all together (“Salvation Is Here,” “Sing, Sing, Sing,” “I Am Free,” and “Fields of Grace” in the main set, with a slower song after the sermon, “A New Hallelujah”). I think he’s been itching to do a set like that for a long time. Rehearsal on Saturday night was a bit chaotic, but it all came together just fine on Sunday morning. I’m not sure if the keyboard was audible on the high-energy songs, but it was still nice to play.
Mid-afternoon I went over to Hollemans for a PSCG cookout. I brought some Louie’s Wisconsin brats (with cheddar cheese and cranberries in them, mmmmm!), and some lemon pudding with blueberries. That’s really perfect on a hot summer day like the 4th was.
It was also the farewell event for two families from our group, Chad & Rachel Schrock (and Toby), and Byran & Amy Smucker (and Xavier). Chad has a faculty position (English/literature) lined up at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and Bryan has a faculty position (statistics) lined up at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and they’re both moving in the next couple weeks. They’ll definitely be missed, they’ve been a big part of our group for years now. We’ve also had some others move on this summer, including Jenn, who took a job teaching biology at Young Harris College in Georgia (her farewell dinner was last week at Herwig’s Austrian Bistro, and I took photos but accidentally deleted them before going to Hollemans on the 4th – ARGH). It’s a blessing being at a university where you get to meet so many good people, but it’s also sad to say goodbye so often.

Because this could very well be my last 4th Fest in State College, I definitely wanted to watch them from the VIP area again, even though it’s $25/ticket to get in. But it’s worth it, in my opinion, as there are a lot of low fireworks (about a third of the show) and a couple set pieces that can only be seen from the VIP area. This year Tracy & David Z decided to join me as VIPs. It’s a pretty scenic backdrop where they shot them off–during the day anyway. Over 5,000 people watch the fireworks in the VIP section every year, but that’s just a fraction of the 200,000 or so people who come to State College for them. That’s right, more people descend on State College for the 4th Fest fireworks than come for a Penn State football game. It’s the single-largest attraction year-round in central Pennsylvania.

Here are the stats for this year’s fireworks show that I heard one of the organizers mention:

• 15,700 shells fired in total (10,500 shells last year)
• 45 minutes in duration
• Average of 6 shells per second prior to the Grand Finale
• Average of 128 shells per second during the Grand Finale
• Grand Finale duration of 90 seconds

Here are some photos and videos I took:

I thought this year’s show was higher on artistry than in years past. There were more cool shapes from the fireworks, including cubes, numbers (even two-digit numbers), hearts, discs, circumscribed stars, and sheaves of wheat (or eagles… it was hard to tell, hehe). However, the music by and large was a bit slow. They should’ve picked more upbeat songs like in years past. Even so, it was still a spectacular show, as always. FireworksGuide.com still ranks the Central PA 4th Fest as the #3 Independence Day display in the nation (behind only New York City and Boston), and back in 2000 Travel Channel ranked it as the #4 show in the entire world. It’s good, and I’m spoiled by it! As long as I’ve lived here, I’ve planned my summers around being here in town for the fireworks. When I do move away from State College, I’m really going to miss seeing this show, so I may as well live it up while I can! One never knows what next year holds.

Happy Independence Day, everyone! While I’m sure most of you will be spending the weekend enjoying yourselves at a lake, or at least someplace not thinking about work, I’ll be needing to spend a fair amount of time in the office this weekend. Feel pity for me. 🙂 I’ll also need to put in a full day of work on Monday, which is technically a holiday. (A sign in my apartment complex said, “The rental office will be closed on July 5th in observance of July 4th.” Just an odd way of putting it!) And in case you’re wondering why I’m blogging while writing about how much I still have to work, well, it’s because the Germany v Argentina World Cup quarterfinal is on ABC right now. I figure I may as well be productive while watching the soccer, haha. If it were on ESPN, then it would be shown live online on ESPN3.com, and I’d have it on while working at the office.
I’ve been putting in a lot of long days at work the last few weeks (big chunks of that has been debugging code with Walter). 10-12 hour days have not been uncommon. I’m trying to get tons of research done before the George Mason University Conference on Atmospheric Transport & Dispersion Modeling in just a week and a half. I usually go to the GMU conference every year, and I’m lead author on a presentation again this year. But instead of going to GMU, Tyler will be giving my talk there and I’ll be going to Colorado and NCAR (Nat’l Center for Atmospheric Research) for a week. Boulder >> Fairfax. No question about that statement! I just bought my plane tickets on Monday, and yesterday secured a room in a house near NCAR for the week.
I’ll be going to Boulder to work with some people for a few days who are developers of DART, the Data Assimilation Research Testbed, which is a tool that I’m using in my research. For that visit I need to put together a presentation about how I’m using DART, what I’d like to accomplish with it, and difficulties that I’m having with it. Then they’ll work with me, and give me suggestions of what to try or do differently and all that. It should be a valuable experience. But I’ve set aside DART for the last couple months, after all the trouble I had with getting it to work properly, so now I have to quick set up an experiment or two with it and analyze the results before I fly out on Friday afternoon. That’s why I need to spend some time in the office this weekend. Hopefully it won’t take me too long to get stuff set up, so that I can just let the jobs run on the cluster while I’m enjoying the fireworks tomorrow night. So much to do, but I think I might just barely get everything done that I need to…
The other bonus of going out to Boulder for a week is that Alex is out there this summer! I’ll be renting out a bedroom in a house, which, as it turns out, is only a block away from the house where Alex is renting a room. I’ll get there Friday night, and then on Saturday we’ll be doing a lot of hiking somewhere in the mountains and then camping for the night. I’m really looking forward to that. I’ve been to Boulder a couple times, but I’ve never been west of Boulder before, and therefore I’ve never been in the Rockies before! Hooray mountains! Only a few more days of hard work before I’ll get that scenic and fun weekend break as a reward!
And as an appetizer for tomorrow night’s fireworks at the Central PA 4th Fest (they’ll shoot off more than 15,700 shells!!), here’s a video I took of the last few minutes of last year’s show:

I’ll be posting photos and videos of the fireworks when I get a chance. Hopefully it won’t be too long a delay. Happy Independence Day, everyone!

As busy-busy-busy as I’ve been lately with research and making a huge push to get everything done that I need to in advance of the GMU conference & my trip to NCAR in mid-July, and my trip to Australia in August, I have taken some time out of my schedule to watch some of the World Cup. For the USA’s games I’ve deliberately avoided doing work, but during most of the other games I’ve either also been working or doing other things while watching on the TV or having it on in the background at work on ESPN3.
For the USA-England game, I watched the game by myself at my apartment. I stuck around because I’d sent an email to the meteo grad social list inviting people over to watch it, only to find out that some other people had also planned (but not announced) World Cup parties. Anyway, I figured I should stick around in case anyone showed up. And then England scored that goal in the 5th minute, and I decided I didn’t want to miss any of the game by driving or walking somewhere else. When the English goalkeeper let Dempsey’s shot dribble in, I jumped up and screamed “YEAAAAAHHHH!!” even though I was alone in my apartment. 🙂
For the USA-Slovenia game a bunch of us meteo grads took the Friday morning off and watched the game at 797 Lounge (former Sports Cafe) on their outdoor patio, where they’d set up a couple nice big-screen HDTVs. We pretty much had the run of the place, but gradually a small crowd of passersby built up on the sidewalk watching too, as the USA dug themselves out from a 2-0 halftime deficit. It was pure elation from all of us when Michael Bradley scored the equalizer, and then pure irritation and bewilderment four minutes later when what should’ve been the winning goal by Michael Edu was disallowed on a phantom foul call by the referee from Mali.

On Wednesday morning we went back to 797 to watch the heart-stopping USA-Algeria match. We were on the edge of our seats the whole time, and once again frustrated and irritated that another good USA goal was disallowed on a bad call by the referee. They were on the attack the whole game and getting so many great chances and near misses, it just felt like we’d score one. But then time was getting short, and we were all wondering if it’d be heartbreak city with a goalless draw and elimination from the tournament. Then came Landon Donovan’s rebound goal in the 91st minute! Elation and joy! Kinda like this:

Walking around downtown State College after the game was a blast. People were walking around in all sorts of red, white and blue garb, there were a couple people blaring on their vuvuzelas, cars were honking their horns in celebration, people were chanting “USA! USA!” and high-fiving each other. It was quite a fun scene! Hopefully that can be replicated on Saturday afternoon following our Round of 16 elimination match with Ghana!
But seriously, win or lose, can we please not have a referee make an atrocious call against us that takes away a goal? It sure seems like a trend, with it happening in two straight games. Is a fairly called game too much to ask for? The FIFA referees have overall been pretty bad this year, I think. Failing to notice an infraction is one thing (especially when there are only three officials on such a huge field with 22 players out there), but making the completely wrong call is another thing entirely. They’ve also been rewarding play-acting way too much, such as giving Brazil’s Kaka a red card after an Ivory Coast player walked into him and then disgracefully writhed on the ground for several minutes clutching his head in mock pain. Kaka maybe sort of stuck his elbow out behind him, and whatever contact there was was in the guy’s chest, not anywhere close to his head. Italy was also awarded a penalty kick against New Zealand by being overly dramatic. Soccer has a terribly engrained culture of complaining, and it really detracts from the game when players are pathetically writhing around on the ground in “pain” when they were barely touched or not touched at all, just to try to get a call in their favor from the referee. That’ll only stop when FIFA officials stop granting fouls and cards for plays they didn’t see.
Some thoughts on a few other teams:
France: Good riddance. What an on-field and off-field catastrophe. A bunch of complainers too, as they blamed their 0-0 draw vs Uruguay on the crowd and vuvuzelas. Umm, everyone else has to play with them too. Clearly France’s problem was more than just vuvuzelas.
Italy: Good riddance. I’m glad I don’t have to endure watching any more of the Azzurri. With their continued earned reputation for embarrassing and pathetic diving and acting, they’re an embarrassment to sport.
New Zealand: First-ever World Cup points, and undefeated in group play. Unfortunately they were also winless, but they can go home with their heads held high for achieving so much when the world thought they’d get trounced in every game. And they finished ahead of Italy in the group [snicker]. Following their thrilling game vs Italy, an ESPN announcer put it best when he said the headlines should read, “New Zealand defeats Italy 1-1!” Well done, All Whites!
Australia: A good side that was done in by two catastrophic red cards in the first two games. Tim Cahill’s red card vs Germany was extremely harsh from the referee (announcers thought it should’ve only been a yellow at most), and led to the Germans scoring another 2 goals. Then Harry Kewell’s red card vs Ghana was a bit harsh as well, I thought, since the handball was completely unintentional. A yellow card and a penalty kick, sure, but a red? A bit harsh. With the pressure they managed to apply with a man disadvantage, I have no doubt they would’ve beaten Ghana with a full 11 men. And then it would be USA-Australia on Saturday instead of USA-Ghana. Oh well.
Brazil: Wow. They look very good. The beautiful game indeed.
All other South American teams (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay): Also looking quite good. Impressive showings for our neighbors to the south, as none of them have lost a match yet!
North Korea: That 7-0 disaster vs Portugal was aired live in North Korea. Kim Jong Il must be kicking himself. Now maybe the North Korean people will know that, despite their dear leader’s best propaganda efforts, their nation is not invincible in everything it does. Maybe a soccer match can help tumble a cruel, insane dictator?
I’m really looking forward to Saturday afternoon, and hopefully additional games beyond that (vs winner of Uruguay-South Korea for a berth in the semifinals if we beat Ghana)! I’m definitely planning to watch it downtown somewhere again with a group of people. Let’s keep it going, USA! Just please don’t let in another early goal, mmkay?

And now for the conclusion of my three-part blog post about my recent trip back to Wisconsin and Minnesota. I had been toying with the idea of trying to do the entire 17-hour drive back to State College in one day on Sat 5 June, because various friends who live along the way weren’t around, and I didn’t want to spend money on a motel if I didn’t have to. But with the game of Settlers: Cities and Knights going to almost 1am on Friday night at Nathan & Laura’s, I gave up on that, because if I were to go for it, I’d have to leave at 6am in order to finish the drive by midnight. Doing such a drive on 4-5 hours of sleep was simply not an option.
So as a result I set my alarm for sometime after 7am, met up with my younger brother Jake for breakfast around 9am, and didn’t leave Rice Lake until 10am. I was still really tired on the drive, and made it to Osseo before I absolutely had to pull off and get caffeine in my system. I pulled off for lunch at a place called the Mousehouse Cheesehaus in Windsor, just northwest of Madison. It was a nice little place, and plenty kitschy. A perfect farewell to Wisconsin for this visit, or so I thought. 🙂

By the time I was leaving about 2pm, it had just started to rain pretty hard, with a storm moving in. I drove through the line of storms and got ahead of them as I skirted the north side of Madison. Then as I was driving along I-94 toward Milwaukee, just past the split where I-39 and I-90 head south toward Rockford, I looked out my window at the storm clouds to my north, and saw a little bit of cloud hanging down from the line. I kept checking it out over the next half minute, and it kept becoming better and better defined: it was a funnel cloud! I grabbed my camera, pointed it out my driver’s side window without looking, and managed to catch this in the field of view:

I wanted to get some better photos, and after 2 or 3 miles there was finally an exit, just northeast of Madison, between Sun Prairie and Cottage Grove. I drove north about three quarters of a mile along County Road N to an area surrounded by fields, parked on the side of the road and snapped these photos of the first funnel cloud, which was roping out and dying by that point:

After a few minutes, several more cars had pulled over in the vicinity with people watching the funnel. Then I looked a bit to the east of that funnel cloud, basically straight north of my location, and noticed the clouds rotating. So I started taking video, and took a couple photos during it:

When I stopped the video I ran back to my car and drove forward about a tenth of a mile so that the grove of trees wouldn’t block my view, but by that point the second funnel cloud was dying:

When I called a couple friends to ask them what the radar was showing, they were very surprised to hear that I saw two funnel clouds, because the line was dying and the radar showed no rotation. But I clearly saw two rotating funnel clouds. I’d never seen a funnel cloud before (I still haven’t seen a tornado), so this was pretty cool for me! I hung around for a bit longer, but nothing more developed. In any case, after I got back on the road, and started thinking of the timing of everything that happened that led to me being in the right place at the right time to notice the funnel cloud — I just smiled to myself and said, “Thanks God, that was pretty cool.”
Believe it or not, that wasn’t my only run-in with funnel clouds and tornadoes on the day. I stopped for the night in Toledo, Ohio (technically in Maumee), and went to a cheap motel for which I had a coupon. First, it was a bit of an ordeal at the motel. There was one person in front of me, but the clerk was taking forever because the guy didn’t have an address either on his Netherlands driver’s license or his passport (apparently an address is needed in order to secure a room there). Eventually that got sorted out, and then I got my room key. By this point it had started pouring rain. The motel was a confusing complex of buildings, so I eventually drove around and found the right one. My key card didn’t work though. I tried it every which way, but no dice. So I put my stuff back in my car (still pouring), and drove back to the office, waiting for the guy in front of me to get done. The clerk re-keyed the card, and I went back. Still didn’t work. It was still pouring. I drove back to the office again, and this time he put me in a different room, the last room available at the cheap rate (it was also a smoking room, but all I wanted was a bed, I didn’t care). This time the key worked, thankfully, so I got my stuff from my car and put it in the room. By now it was just after 11pm, and I hadn’t had supper yet, so I decided I’d drive down to Wendy’s to get some fast food. It was still pouring. I stepped outside my room, but in addition to all the rain and thunder, I heard a new sound: a tornado siren. So I went back in the room and flipped on The Weather Channel, and sure enough, there was a tornado warning for Lucas County, Ohio, with a tornado reported to be on the ground near Toledo. When the radar loop came on, it looked like the most dangerous part of the storm was just east of Maumee, so I decided I’d head out to Wendy’s. It finally stopped raining while I was in the drive-thru, at least until the second line came through around 2am, with a lightning strike that I think hit the motel’s sign next to the freeway. It was that close. I had turned on the A/C when I went to bed in the hopes that I wouldn’t be awakened by the approaching line, but with how close that lightning strike was, no amount of white noise would’ve helped drown it out! Oh, and the motel also got a thumbs down from me for the wireless internet not working at all while I was there, and for them running out of breakfast half an hour early. But hey, it was cheap, and I was well-rested to finish the drive back to State College on Sun 6 June.
Overall I drove around 2900 miles on the trip, and didn’t spend more than two nights in any one place the entire trip, not even at home. A fun and eventful but somewhat exhausting trip!