Bonnie Charley and Frances have all been the warm-up acts. It’s time for the headliner. Hurricane Ivan is now a devastating category five hurricane, and overnight weather service models are beginning to predict a northerly turn – straight over the Florida penninsula. Maximum sustained winds are over 160 MPH. Incredible.

There’s still time before it hits land, and plenty of room for it to pick its landfall. Keep an “eye” on this one.

Just when you thought it was safe to be a state near the water, Hurricane Ivan approaches. Word on the street is that Ivan will make Hurricane Frances look like a cakewalk. Someplace on the north side of the Gulf is going to get clobbered, and clobbered bad.

Right now it ain’t looking good for the area between Panama City and Tallahassee.

I’m back from Doc’s talk at UNC. Nice to finally meet him face to face, if only for mere seconds. Popular guy, you know.

Walking across the UNC campus in the rain, I wished I’d remembered to borrow a William and Mary shirt from my buddy Wade.

More writeup after dinner and playtime with the Buggle.

I saw a license plate yesterday which reminded me of the cool Flaming Lips song Yoshimi. In honor of this quirky song, I was going to post the lyrics on my page today, but my stupid friend Larry read my mind and beat me to the punch.

My tinfoil hat needs thicker aluminum foil.

I’m thinking about going back to school. No, I’m not going back to N.C. State this time. This time, I’m enrolling at the University of Nigeria.

Today is Hallie’s first day of preschool. I’m so proud of her. I know she’ll do well, because she’s so incredibly curious and smart. Yet, it’s never easy letting go of your kids.

She’s heading into class as I write this. And so our little girl will never be the same.

We were discussing how the National Hurricane Center comes up with names for storms. Nobody here knows how names are retired. There isn’t any threshold which earns a Camille or Hugo-size storm retirement. This led to the idea of allowing companies to sponsor storms. Rather than having to come up with scores of names each season, the weather service could sell the naming rights.

Imagine! “Hurricane Home Depot is heading your way. Get all your weather supplies now for a great low price!” Or how about “The State Farm Insurance Storm will strike land tomorrow, spawning Lowes Home Improvement tornadoes and damaging Johnson Roofing winds.”

It could happen.
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Here’s a cool idea. The creators of AmIHotOrNot are giving away $100,000 and you can win it just by being registered to vote. To register, go to the Vote Or Not website.

I’ve sucessfully put myself out of a job. The PERL project I’ve been working on is nearing a successful completion. The customer’s happy with the code and my work.

I got to work with again a great bunch of people, I learned a lot about building websites, and I had a front-row seat for two of the biggest hurricanes of the year. I really can’t complain.

If you know of anyone looking for some contract sysadmin stuff, give me a holla. Until then, I’m going to consider underwriting some local public radio stations and sprucing up my website.