monkeylizard

Hurricane Ivan did a crazy (but bigger) loop too. It made landfall on the US three times.

Like Radar mailing home a Jeep, piece by piece.

I'm reminded of the shipping containers filled with AKs and M-16s in the movie "Lord of War". There's definitely some crazy stuff out there. Makes you wonder how all the countries with the truly nasty stuff manage to keep it contained.

I like that one with Cooter. Here's one of me with Enos from about 5 years ago. We're holding pictures of ourselves from about 25 years earlier. I'm a lot bigger now, but he looks the same!

Hurricane force winds extend out 40 miles from the eye. Counting the 20 mile wide eye, that's 100 miles across in Hurricane 1 or greater winds. Tropical storm winds extend out 120 miles, so 260'ish miles across. It's a beast.

It's kind of like "Grip Zone". You didn't know you needed it before you had it.

And look to the left....a depression building in the western Gulf that could develop over the next couple of days.

Harvey's big trouble was the rain. It stalled out right along the coast and kept dumping. If it had been a faster moving storm, it wouldn't have been so bad. Wind was really a non-factor for most folks with Harvey. At its peak power it struck a sparsely populated area. By the time it reached more people, it had weakened a lot. Little comfort to the folks around Rockport that took the brunt of Harvey's winds, but all in all the wind was not the problem for most areas. Irma is a different animal altogether and is going to be a serious wind event. If it grows the way some are predicting, it will beat Andrew by 50mph. That one left little standing in Homestead, FL.

Some crazy stuff happens with the government, especially when moving lots of equipment around. I had a friend who worked in the alarm shop on base when we were stationed in Germany. A few years before I met him, he had ripped out equipment from a nearby cruise missile installation being shut down in an arms reduction treaty. One of the salvaged items was a retina scanner. At the time, this was the kind of equipment that cost a crap ton of money, even by government standards. Knowing that, they tried to run it down by serial number to find it a home but the paperwork had gotten screwed up along the way so it wasn't officially even at the cruise missile site. That meant that as far as the bureaucracy was concerned, my friend didn't have it either....never mind that it was sitting on a shelf in the shop. They didn't have any need for it, but couldn't send it back to anyone so it just sat there. Then that base closed and there's no telling where it ended up. He always told me someone in the shop could walk out the door with it and sell it, but it never happened because they all knew that the kind of person who would need a military grade retina scanner would probably just kill you and take it than pay you for it.

Yep, the original one (or at least the first one I saw) was this one for a POS Camry. It's still the best one because he went all out with the visuals, not just the text. https://www.someecards.com/news/automotive/the-most-creative-used-car-ad-ever-on-craigslist/

I saw someone over Bellevue this evening, around the Natchez Trace entrance. Probably the same person.

It is capitalism. So was the gouging after Katrina. In a free market economy, the owner or producer of a good or service is free to set the price however they see fit in order to maximize profit. In a competitive market, that profit motive often times reduces the price due to competition. This makes companies operate more efficiently to lower costs and maximize profits. This drives an economy to run as efficiently as possible, something other economic systems can't do. The problem in this case is that's it's pure free market capitalism without a competitive market place. Capitalism makes no distinction between goods or services that are needed vs. those that are merely wanted. Normally it's not a problem because the free market will draw competition to an overpriced area, product, or service. But in short-term cases like disasters, that doesn't happen quickly enough. This is why no country has a pure, unabashed, unregulated free market economy and why certain goods and services are regulated more than others. Even Hong Kong, one of the closest to pure free market capitalism in the world, has recently added a minimum wage law.

If you edit the first post in the thread, you should be able to edit the title. At least that's how it works on the Trading Post so I assume it works that way everywhere else on the boards. I'm with you about sweating a little last night. I wasn't overly concerned about it since we weren't getting as much as we did in 2010, but the estimates kept getting revised upwards all night long and I'll admit to thinking that maybe I should start moving some stuff off the garage floor. One news channel this morning (2 or 4) said we got 12.5" in Bellevue, but the other one said it was 8" in Bellevue. Someone has a faulty rain gauge. Stay dry, my friends!

That's probably not the first time that "Wally World" "$5" and "hummers" have been used in the same sentence.

I had one get in my garage once too. Their instinct is to fly higher to get away from danger, which is the opposite of how to get out of a garage. I held a broom up close to it and it landed on the edge of it. I just slowly lowered the broom and carried it outside. I wish I had more of them. I'll see one every couple of years. Would adding feeders draw them in, or do you need to have them already then put out feeders?

Could you put an orange ping pong ball in there? It would float and you'd be able to easily see it from a distance w/o the need for food coloring. I've heard the coloring isn't good for them.

@Dolomite_supafly is right. Got gun stickers? An MDA groupie gets out her keys. Got a Trump sticker? Someone wants you to feel the Bern. Shoot, we're so divided today that one of those "I <<heart>> Publix" stickers might bring out a rabid Kroger fan.

I've ordered from SGAmmo, Freedom Munitions, and Sportsmans Guide several times each and I think once from Palmetto State Armory and have never needed to sign. I just get a dirty look from my wife when I get home after she moved the heavy package inside the house. Come to think of it....signing might be better.

I'm just here for the funny pics threads.

Nashville does the same thing at certain events like the Octoberfest. Gunbuster signs on the wooden street barricades. Memphis has been doing it for years on Beale Street, but that's even more of a racket because on certain nights you have to pay to enter the public street. That payment is then turned into a voucher good at the bars on Beale. So the city basically uses tax-payer funded personnel and equipment to collect a pre-paid bar tab. Nice arrangement for the bars, not so much for the taxpayers.

I don't see why you'd need to sign for an ammo delivery. I've never had to sign for any ammo shipments.

@Wingshooter Check out https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/list.html?starty=2020 That shows every upcoming eclipse and its path. The April 2023 one might make a good excuse to finally go to Australia! It's only about a minute duration at the centerline though.

I'm already making plans for 2024, and hoping I'm still alive for 2045. Once they're back in stock and at normal prices, I think I'll pick up some Celestron EclipSmart binoculars. Even without an eclipse, they'd be good for looking for sun spots and maybe catching a glimpse at a big solar flare around the edge.

If you're not keeping yours as a souvenir or to reuse for the 2024 eclipse, Astronomers Without Borders will be collecting them to redistribute to people in Africa and South America for their upcoming eclipses. As long as they aren't scratched or damaged they can be reused. Keep a watch on this page for more details as they become available. https://astronomerswithoutborders.org/ FYI - The warning on some glasses about discarding them after 3 years is out of date if yours are ISO 12312-2 compliant. That 3-year thing was part of the old ISO standard which was replaced in 2015. Some manufacturers still printed it on their glasses, but that's a bit like asking your barber if you need a haircut. Don't believe me? NASA said it, not me. https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/safety Read the "Note:" paragraph just below the map of the USA.