Astronomer

Are you kidding me?!? Seriously, bro? I'm...speechless.

From a meteorological perspective (a hobby/passion of mine), this is an unprecedented storm on so many levels. This one will be source material for 100's if not 1000's of papers and be taught in many courses for decades to come.I'm continuously poring over the raw model data from several models and diving deep into a couple of informative forums and my sense of awe keeps growing. HEre's a great article that puts the significance of this storm into perspective: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/28/hurricane-sandy-powerful-storm-perspective

Incredible storm surges expected over a huge area. This will be devastating. More evacuations have been announced over the past hour.

Wave heights of 22'-24' predicted on lakes Huron and Erie:

What scares me is that a lot of people will not take this one seriously. Think of this as a nor'easter with the engine of a category 3 hurricane. The models show that the wave and surge threat from this will have the equivalent effect of a category 4 hurricane on the coastline (or a rank of 5.2 on a scale that maxes out at 6). The low pressure at landfall will be 950 millibars (mb )or lower. I lived where the eye of Hurricane Juan slammed Nova Scotia a few years ago, and it's low pressure was 974mb. The lower the pressure, the higher the wind and heavier the rain. The storm surge from this will be huge, and occurring during monthly high-tide. Now for the wind. Unlike a hurricane, the wind-field from this will be enormous geographically, with sustained winds at or near hurricane or tropical storm force. As this is a slow mover, also unlike a hurricane, these winds and larger gusts will be sustained for over 24-36 hours. Trees still have leaves on them, and the ground will be saturated. Many trees will topple, and current models expect over 10 million people to be without power for several days. Anybody who lives in the warning areas and does not take this storm seriously is a moron.

I just noticed: North Carolina - Winter storm warning and Tropical storm warnings in the same state!

All current watches and warnings for the Eastern half of the USA. This is one for the record books: Tropical storm watches and blizzard warnings on the same map, and all from the same system.

As one Maritimer to another, you'll both be in my thoughts through this. Stay strong.

You BASTARD! You said you'd keep this shot private! LOL!

I may go by the handle "Astronomer", but another hobby that I'm passionate about is meteorology. I'm keeping a close eye on this hurricane as it looks like it will affect my part of the world (Ontario, Canada near the small city of London) on Halloween. If the models are correct - and it's a big guessing game this far out - some areas near me and to the north and east could see some snow as cold air is drawn down from the north and over the Great Lakes. Best guess now is that it's likely to come ashore somewhere in New England. Below is a map of the various ensemble runs, with the runs showing a turn to the west to make landfall.

I've been using the final release for a month now on my personal laptop. My employer has a MSDN membership so I was able top get it a while ago. The "Modern", or "Metro" tiled interface is not suitable for desktops or laptops. Enough has been said about that. The traditional Windows environment is excellent and is an improvement on the Windows 7 code. Microsoft did a great job of optimizing the heck out of it. I like the flat look and it seems faster. MS did some tricks to make boot-up time much faster. I use a free program called "Classic Shell" that boots the system into the Windows 7-like desktop and puts a start menu on the bottom left, so I now really like working in Windows 8. I can easily switch to a Metro screen if I want (I never do) or work with the applications that I'm used to on the desktop environment that I prefer. I haven't tried games on it yet, but I can't see any reason why they wouldn't run the same as or better than in Windows 7. I may load up COD-WAW on it sometime to try it out. Sorry for being brief here - I'm just heading off to work. I can try and answer any other questions when I get back later.

Naaahhhh! As the killer asteroid gets closer, we'll be out looking at it with our telescopes saying things like "Cooooolll!" "Wow!" "Awesome!"

Yup, that's me! In the original photo, the >XI< logo was more obvious, but the software on the website reduces the photo's resolution.

Shhhh...the buildings are in public lands, authorized by the proper authorities. No beer here! Really. The pastries and cakes, however, were infused with only the finest vintages of maple syrup. Rush, the Tragically Hip, Neil Young, and Gordon Lightfoot + many other worthy Canadian musicians were blasting at a respectful volume through the speakers. We apologized profusely to the raccoons and skunks for possibly disturbing their nocturnal feeding and whatnot.

Thanks for posting! Great voice you got there. Nice arrangement on the song.

Hmmm...I searched for that, and I even started with just "X" and nothing came up. I wonder if there may be a setting that's turned on at the server-side that only lets it be seen in the USA. I'm in Canada.

Hi all, I have a couple of tablets (Google Nexus 7 and an iPad 3 that I won recently) and when I surf to the forums with a web browser, I get a pop-up that says that the forums are Tapatalk enabled. I use Tapatalk and love it, but I don't see the >XI< forums in the list when I search for it. Am I missing something obvious (I am an Idiot, afterall...)? Cheers, - Astronomer

Good stuff Cavey!

You're BLIND Chile! There are 5 ugly mugs in that shot! I just happen to be the best loooking of the bunch

One of these guys is me (hint: look for the >XI< logo). My astronomy club, part of a larger national organization, just had our official opening of the first of 2 planned observatory buildings. The roof of the white building rolls off on rails. The green building has a small propane furnace and is our "warm-up room", a place to regain some heat in the middle of a Winter observing session.

The drive is dying, and will go at any time. Try Clonezilla http://clonezilla.org/. It works like Norton Ghost, and it's a very trusted app, and even better, it's free. Good Luck!

Man, the bitter polarization you guys got going on down there...civil war can't be too far off...

Congrats! Once you get the 580 in there, that will be one killer gaming rig. I like your choice of components as well; I too have an ASUS mobo, 16Gb Corsair RAM, Cooler master case etc.

My first job, at age 13, (very small town) was making change at a video arcade. That would have been at about 1980. I had the keys so I could open up the cabinets and play for free after hours. My first PC-based FPS was Wolfenstein, though I recall an obscure game a couple of years prior that had a quasi first-person 3d perspective, but very poorly implemented. It looked cool, but the 3d was limited to running through a corridor in a forest towards a location. You were hooped if you forgot the direction that you were going.

I just tried to get in and it timed out. Helloooo typo when I entered the address. I deserve a medal for that...!