Paul Monaco .com

On Wednesday February 20th, 2008 we had a full lunar eclipse.  Believe it or not this is the firsrt time I actually remembered to look for it and saw it live.  The above sequence begins at about 8:30 pm (EST) and concludes at about 10:00 pm (EST) when the technical limitations of my camera were beginning to show. 

Very cool experience, very fortunate to have a clear night and was fun to post it’s progress on my Utterz channel.

Some of you may remember that last year I was all into SwiftWXweather software.  As it turned out the tropical hurricane season was pretty much a bust and at least temporarily other activities took the place of my arm-chair weather forcasting.

But now that winter is upon us I’m back in the saddle!  My $14.50/month subscription has been reactivated and I’m running SwiftFX again!  This year it’s even more exciting than ever because I’ve added a mobile broadband card with integrated GPS to my rig and SwiftWX supports real time position tracking while I’m on the move.   Yea that features is a bit more useful for the tornado chasers out there but you have to admit it’s a significant cool factor!

So expect my weather blogging to increase again as well as a possible ad hoc podcast from the road.  I’ve been peeking at TalkShoeand my brain has been working overtime with the possibility of a live, on the road podcast.  (hint hint - you might want to create a listener account for yourself!)

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Well it starts, forcast is calling for upwards of 12 inches falling at a rate of 2 to 3 inches per hour.  Snow began falling in New Haven country 2-hours earlier then predicted.  Stay tuned.. I may get ambitious and fire up the webcam for the ride home.. might even attempt a streaming broadcast. 

If you don’t already have a TalkShoe account you might want to sign up for a free account if your interested in that.  Though I haven’t tested it using the laptop’s sounds system so you  may get dead air and I may be talking to myself.

It’s not yet Thanksgiving and we already had plowable snow!!!  This is great!!!  The changes in seasons is one of the reasons I would have a hard time ever leaving this region.  As it changes it reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of encouragement.

“No matter what the circumstances, you should never concede defeat. Never conclude that you’ve reached a dead end, that everything is finished. You possess a glorious future. And precisely because of that, you must persevere and study. Life is eternal. We need to focus on the two existences of the present and the future and not get caught up in the past. We must always have the spirit to begin anew ‘from this moment,’ to initiate a new struggle each day.” - Diasaku Ikeda

After not taking my daily walk for a while I finally set to one of our local greenways and my has the weather changed since I was last out!   The car was so nice and cozy, how could it be so cold outside?  I had remembered that I had put a coat in my car for emergancies so I figured I could just throw that on…  well.. let’s just say it appears that one of my cats got it and it’s going into the dumpter now.  So.. long story short I did have an extra sweatshirt with me, doubled it up and managed to get a little over a mile in anyhow.  Determination!!!

So.. apparently it’s getting a little cooler.. I think I see a trend here.. someone tell Mr. Gore please!  Anyways…  I took my walk today somewhere much warmer, my local Target.  I was talking to my virtual wife in thesimsonline.com about how I needed a new jacket and breifly described what I was looking for.  Wouldn’t you know in seconds she shot back a link to a jacket I loved!!!  (She’s a smart girl, my Paulina is.)  It’s a Mossimo Military Jacket in Black.  The fit was just right and no gaudy designer labels and lots of pockets for all my gadgets!  Of course since I was going to call this little adventure my power walk (yea I know, that’s a stretch) I had to go up and down every isle of the store (and I think security was following me), but while I was doing my laps I came across another item I’ve been wanting for a long time.. a walking stick!!

Click here for my full size image posing with my new toys.