vastateofmind

3 hours ago, CAPE said:

I asked Copilot "how are you more helpful than using Google".

It basically told me it was a shill for Microsoft and it used Bing lol.

Oh, I'm quite sure. So, I have been tasked to "teach" a course in MS Copilot to not only my team of co-workers (around 10 folks), but potentially for larger groups across our organization in my "day job." I have about as much trust in Microsoft as I do Google...which is to say, meh.   

Beyond that...while generative AI has great potential as a "starter" tool when it comes to writing, I've already developed a disdain for it because in the undergrad courses that I teach as part of my "side/evening gig," easily ONE QUARTER (or more) of the students I've taught in several class offerings over the past 1.5 years have blatantly used generative AI to cheat their asses off in submitted papers and required discussions.

There are generative AI "writing checkers" online now, but FFS...you can just tell, because there are always a couple students who normally write complete and total shite (in terms of grammar AND content), who suddenly turn in the most gorgeous, GENERATED prose ever. It's just so completely and egregiously obvious.

So. Dune Chapter Two. Who's seen it? I've clearly missed my opportunity to see it on the big screen. But I loved Denis Villanueve's interpretation of the "first half" from a couple years ago and purchased the digital version immediately back then.

Full disclosure -- I'm...mostly...still a fan of the creepy 1984 version of Dune directed by David Lynch, but Villaneuve has clearly nailed the more modern/artistic vision of what I think Frank Herbert would want. 

I'm thinking I just need to go ahead and purchase Chapter Two as well. But if there are impressions out there...please share.

7 hours ago, Kmlwx said:

CIPS and GFS are pretty quiet for the next couple weeks it looks like...so unless something sneaks up on us we may be back in snooze mode. The cooler weather coming back probably will squash instability and preclude any spring severe while it's around. I'm hoping for a last hard freeze to cut down on some of the bugs already out ugh. 

We'll have to see what late April and early May hold for thunder chances

But...yesterday was kind of a last-minute surprise! I started catching up on this thread yesterday morning, and the LWX (and SPC) discos started being more spicy as the morning progressed, and...wow. My little corner of SE FfxCo didn't see much action (again, glad to miss out on the hail), but so many of you around us did. It was an impressive uptick in severe activity in a small amount of time.   

It's kind of why I increasingly like tracking severe in spring/summer, vs. the original reason why I came to this sub over a decade ago (tracking snow).

25 minutes ago, yoda said:

Welp, looks like I got a rock today

I hear you, brother...OTOH, since my wife was out and about driving during that timeframe when there was quarter and ping-pong-ball sized hail...and since we just had a new roof put on our abode about three years ago because of previous hail damage...I'm kinda alright with missing out on the hail action today...   

Gonna go out on a limb here, based on both radar and this pic, that we probably dodged the hail bullet. For now.

Seems the past 4-5years, a ninja cold snap would ruin the emerging flower buds on our pink dogwood resulting in no, or just a few blossoms. This year our luck changed. I'm thinking there was likely at least one cold morning in late March while we were traveling, as the bottom 1/8th of the dogwood hasn't flowered much but the rest of the crown looks pretty good right now.

2 hours ago, CAPE said:

Begins in April now. Wasps already building nests. Been catching carpenter bees in the traps for a week now. That used to be an early May thing.

Bees are particuarly persistent/prevalent for past two weeks....have never seen so many around all of our frontside holly bushes.

1 hour ago, snowfan said:

This is the same penndot that has ongoing construction on pretty much all major routes into state college each fall during PSU football season despite knowing that game day Saturdays result in the town being inundated with traffic and becomes the 3rd largest city in the state behind Philly and Pittsburgh. Penndot does what they want to.

I worked on a PennDOT road crew every summer from the last two years of HS right on through all four years of college. The biggest running joke I repeatedly heard back then -- Q: What's yellow and sleeps six?  A: A PennDOT crew cab!  (Rimshot)   

1 hour ago, BlizzardNole said:

2045 center path goes right over Disney World -- that place is gonna lost its mind over that

I wanted to see this one but it didn't happen so it's 2045 or bust!  (I'll be 78)

Same age for me. Perhaps I'll work a codicil into our will, that our sons must wheel us into WDW to see the (hopefully?) final eclipse of our lifetime. They'll just love that...   

30 minutes ago, Kmlwx said:

From Colesville, MD. 

ETA: This was achieved using an 8" dobsonian telescope (not motorized) w/42mm eyepiece and an S24 Ultra manually held up to the eyepiece in 200 megapixel mode. 9.25" solar filter used on the tube itself. Crude astrophotography is definitely possible using less than stellar setups. Just have to have the patience. Non-motorized/computer controller telescopes like this are sub-$600 and some are much lower even. Downside is the 30-50 pounds of weight they can carry with them. 

These are great shots. Any experts here that can comment on that "spot" just to lower left of the center of the sun? What exactly is that?

Unrelated -- it's interesting how "big" the sun actually is when you view it through eclipse glasses, unimpeded by the nearly blinding nature of it when attempting to glance at it via the naked eye.

1 hour ago, George BM said:

Temp dropped from 74F to 69F at IAD.

Definitely noticed the temp drop here! I didn't notice by how much, but there was a definite difference between 3:20 and an hour ago.

Here is my 80% totality pic from NoVA, taken through a solar filter, and a pic of the friggin' cloud bank that moved in about 5 minutes after I snapped that pic at 3:20. Because, of course, that's my eclipse luck...a last minute, rogue popup thunderstorm ruined the 2017 eclipse at my location as well.

Probably goes without saying...but for those of you equipped with appropriate filters on your DSLR/phone cameras, I hope you're willing to share your pics here over the next 24-48 hours. I will be doing my best here in the southern part of the DMV to capture our 70-80% eclipse by way of my trusty eclipse-filtered phonecam, but it sounds like a lot of you are traveling to locales in the path of totality, and I'm thinking/hoping you will get great pics.   

2 hours ago, Scarlet Pimpernel said:

@mappy...TULIPS coming soon!!  Hope to get some nice photos and will post some here for you (and everyone) when I can!  I've actually seen quite a few tulips coming out in the past couple of weeks.

Caught a pic of this happy bunch on a street corner in Lexington, VA yesterday morning....

5 minutes ago, nj2va said:

We’re in southern NH en route to our rental in northern NH. Lots of volume heading north on the roads already. 

We noticed a lot more southbound traffic on I-81 in the valley yesterday, returning from our 2.5 week road trip out/back to TX. We planned our trip without any pre-knowledge of the eclipse and I'm glad it worked out this way. I'm afraid that traffic into and out of the path of totality will continue to mount and reach occasionally nightmarish proportions (depending on location) tomorrow throughout the day.

22 minutes ago, Scarlet Pimpernel said:

You know, this is probably the best attitude to be honest.  Go where you can get to and deal with what ends up happening, no point in stressing out over it.  I've never been in a position to have a bunch of possible locations and change that on a dime, myself.  And, my trip to the Cleveland to see family there for the eclipse ended up being canceled anyhow.  Partly due to logistical issues with the drive, plus the not-great-look that I saw showing up in the middle of last week.  So I decided to just be OK staying here in the DC area with a partial coverage (~87%) and hopefully can get some nice shots of that at least.  I hope you have a good time in Ohio, regardless of how things are!  I'm biased having grown up there, but I like the place, it's my home!  I'll get in a visit up that way another time this year, maybe can catch a Guardians' game while I'm at it.

This is where I'm at right now, attitude-wise. I planned "to the hilt" in 2017, for a mere PARTIAL eclipse, to set up my tripod and cameras in the backyard to do time lapse pics of that event...only to have a thunderhead form LITERALLY 5 minutes ahead of the partial eclipse, and obscure most of the "festivities" that day. I'll probably be way too old to care, let alone know, that the next major eclipse is happening (in the 2070's, right?)...so I've got my solar filter for my phone for whatever happens Monday, and I'm happy to take pics of that. 

On 3/25/2024 at 12:08 PM, Scarlet Pimpernel said:

Yup, mine is today, though I'll stick to red velvet cake myself!  Oh, and @vastateofmind, happy birthday to you as a fellow March 25th-er!!! 

Thank you SO very much, and I'm sorry for the belated acknowledgement. My wife and I were doing a X-country road trip from mid-March out to El Paso and back to see our sons, and just arrived back to NoVA today. It's so nice to be remembered on one's birthday...especially at my old age.   

21 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

 

Well, with the DMV being in the 80% totality zone for the April 8 event, and based on this map....I went ahead and ordered the damn eclipse glasses and "cell phone camera filter" today, before the markups kicked in within next 1-2 weeks.

A thunderstorm blew up literally a couple minutes prior to the start of the 2017 eclipse, blowing to bits all of my preparations that year. I'm hoping our luck is a bit better this year...especially because I'll likely be drooling into my food and wearing Depends when the 2044 eclipse rolls around.   

DAMN. We are taking a road trip to El Paso to see our sons starting middle of next week and returning on 4/6...we'll miss the path of totality by FOUR days. Tempted to talk my wife into lingering on the trip back home for this...but I'm already taking 2.5 weeks of leave...plus, the traffic's gonna suck in and out.   

4 hours ago, DanTheMan said:

Finally got my snow fix this year, visited Langjökull glacier in Iceland over the weekend! 

Absolutely, stunningly gorgeous photo. Also, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that my only knowledge of the Langjökull glacier is limited to what I've seen in the greatest animated movie ever made...

22 minutes ago, Deck Pic said:

I wasn't here for March 93 but it was great in northeast Atlanta.  Rain/Sleet/Freezing rain changed to heavy snow overnight.  I got around 8-10" with drifting.  Which was enough to shut things down for a few days.  Though it didn't prevent us from getting to the bar a few blocks away, which was a priority as a 20 year old.  

It appears/sounds that you had a great time in the ATL 'burbs, for the '93 Superstorm, I was in Alexandria City, in my loveable 1BR apt (Foxchase, for any of you who know the area), continuing to put together (and paint) my U.S.S. Enterprise 1701-D model from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

It's simultaneously predictable and/or (I suppose) sad that I would be constructing/painting a Star Trek plastic starship model during the 24-48 hour period of the 1993 Superstorm. But I still have that starship model, and it STILL stands as a memorial to that incredible, once-in-a-lifetime storm...even if it wasn't that memorable in NoVA.   

23 hours ago, WxUSAF said:

Aside from the fact that its lobbying is helping to keep people have to keep filing complex tax returns, TurboTax’s software is just shit.

So, TurboTax has been imminently helpful in importing our composite investment accounts from Raymond James for the past decade. But this year, in addition to the past several years, I completely fault Raymond James for posting their "final" composite investment account statements later and later, every year. We really want to have our fed/state taxes wrapped up by end of Feb every year...but RJ makes that damn near impossible, and maybe that means we need to find a new financial advisor after two decades.   

1 hour ago, nw baltimore wx said:

I’m going to have to cut the backyard in a week.

LOL. My wife relented yesterday and mowed our front lawn...it might be our earliest ever mowing. It was definitely in need of a haircut, though, and would've been an absolute mess if we let it go 'til next weekend....with a number of days in the 70s forecasted between now and then.   

6 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Forsythia bushes are starting to bloom. Tulips are coming up. Daffodils are blooming.

Love to see it. DID see it on our midday doggo walk today. Some of the daffodils around these parts have actually peaked and are on their downhill slide. #BRINGIT

2 hours ago, CAPE said:

That low is inland actually. Pretty low chance for frozen with that track in the lowlands. Not in late March. Head to Canaan.

14 minutes ago, Terpeast said:

It’s very likely too late for a lowland snow, but I’m interested in the AIFS test case, too. 

Yea, verily, let it be so. I think @nj2va might be one of the few to agree.

41 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

And kill any early bugs that have come out. I like a late freeze for that reason. 

I'm thinking that @CAPE would agree with you, based on what he's facing on his "back 40" in the coming weeks...   

5 hours ago, MN Transplant said:

Dud of a weekend coming up.  Dreary on Saturday and then breezy/chilly on Sunday.

PERFECT days for working one's way through a four-pack of DFH 120 Minute IPA. Or, arguably, a 4-pack for EACH weekend day...God help me.