Storm Update

God, as always, has been extremely gracious, and the corpse of Hurricane Nicole has done no damage here. The putative center of the former storm is now as close to me as it will get. It’s breezy, and there is a little rain, but even the Weather Channel’s trained actors couldn’t make this look like a real tropical storm. At least not so far.

I am now seeing one outlet predicting stronger winds later today. That is new. I hope it’s just the usual over-reaction. If not, I’ll be moving to the Red Roof Inn.

My prediction, which is worth what I paid for my meteorology diploma: things will get better, not worse. As the storm moves to the west, winds will have to go over most of the lower half of the state to get here, and that should cut their speed. Also, the storm is getting weaker with time.

I guess this theory won’t work if the winds in the bottom half of Nicole are stronger than they are up north. This doesn’t appear to be true, though, because if it were, Sarasota and Orlando would be having high winds now, and they are not.

Winds can’t just materialize magically in the middle of dry land. The storm circulates. Before the winds get here, they have to be somewhere else.

The same site that says we’ll have 33 mph base winds 45 minutes from now says we’re at 15. So an 18 mph increase in 45 minutes? Doubt it.

A friend in the northern part of the county says she lost power, which is surprising, but the properties where she live are maintained pretty badly. Maybe that’s the explanation.

She also managed to get a broken window, which is a bigger surprise. It’s a good idea to protect windows during hurricanes, but even if you don’t, the odds of losing one are low. And this is no hurricane. It was barely a hurricane when it WAS a hurricane.

My power company, which is one of two in this county, reports 489 customers with no electricity, county-wide. Not bad. Duke Energy, the other company, reports around 6 times as many, which is much worse but still nothing compared to Irma.

Maybe Duke Energy doesn’t manage trees well. My company went on a trimming binge last year.

In other news, I am very happy with the batch of Texas trash I made. I’ll post the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp. A1 sauce
1 teaspoon chipotle powder
4 tablespoons Crystal sauce
10 cups cheddar Chex Mix
2 cups Spanish peanuts

You just mix it up, spread it in a pan, and bake it at 250° until it drys out. I stir it every 20 minutes for the first hour, and then I quit.

MSG might make it better. MSG is the reason it’s so hard to eat only one Dorito.

For some reason, idleness sets in during a storm, so you do trivial things to kill time. Yesterday I put a new diode in my Ronco Showtime rotisserie oven. I installed one a year or two ago, but I did a bad job, and it pooped out.

These ovens have 120V AC wires going straight to the heating element, and there is no way to adjust the heat. A clever guy realized he could reduce the heat by cutting off half the AC signal.

AC is positive half the time and negative the rest of the time. A diode will only permit current to flow one way. If you cut off either the positive or negative part of an AC signal, you reduce the power by half.

I stuffed a questionable diode in there, and it was great until it frizzled due to lack of heat sinking. This time, I used the same diode as the guy who came up with the concept. It’s enormous and should require no heat sinking.

I had to cut wires and put in spade connectors, a selector switch, and shrink tubing. I had to find a way to cram the giant diode into the oven. Now it’s done, so I should be able to slow-cook rotisserie meat.

These ovens are wonderful. It’s hard to believe a TV huckster could invent something that really benefits mankind, but Popeil did it. My only big complaint was the lack of adjustability. If you don’t like things browned well, or you want certain things to cook very slowly, you have to wrap them in foil or try other tricks. Now that my oven is modified (again), I can throw a glazed pork roast in it, slow-cook it for a couple of hours, and then turn the heat up to brown the glaze.

The newer ovens are made in China, and there are complaints. Mine is Korean, and there is really nothing wrong with it. I’ve been through every part of it, so I know how it’s built. It’s not the toughest oven ever made, but it’s not junk, either.

Starlink is working fine, except for one thing. We had a one-second power flicker, and the system had to reboot. Starlink can take a very long time to start working after an outage. I put a battery backup on it, so I should be okay now.

The verdict is in: I’ve decided I’m a big Starlink fan. There are little annoyances, but it works, and it’s a great deal better than my old system. Once it becomes more mainstream, there will be more help available for users, so maybe people like me will not have to crawl around in their attics and drill holes in their walls. Tradesmen will be ready to help.

I also like my VPN, but it isn’t perfect. I get a lot of security puzzles now, and sometimes a site will refuse to load because it’s convinced I’m a hacker.

Hmm. We just got a couple of pretty decent gusts. Hello? Am I still here?

Guess I’ll post this using my mobile hotspot. Come on, Starlink. Get it together for daddy.

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It’s 4 hours later. We are supposed to have winds of around 50 mph. It’s not happening. I’d call it 10 mph.

Never trust a weatherman.