Weather Man

During my senior year in high school, our school was chosen to house a GOES-TAP computer terminal. There were eight others just like it, sitting in other high schools around the country. GOES-TAP was a weather service. With the system, you could basically be your own forecaster. Since I was keenly interested in becoming a weatherman early on in life, it seemed like a natural fit. I already had Mike Lozano's autograph, but had not yet helped him establish an Internet presence (which would happen years later). Other kids would gather around the sportscasters, but as you very well know, I wasn't born with that gene.
Anyway, this ol' computer was fantastic – but nobody knew how to use it. The manuals and documentation were incomplete, and the software was seemingly difficult to use and understand. We students had no idea why it was sitting in our physics classroom, nor did we know we were part of a select group of schools in the GOES-TAP program. One day, it was announced that the science department was looking for individuals to demonstrate how to use this system. When my turn came, I knocked their socks off. They said there was some sort of mystery prize involved.
I won an all-expenses paid trip to New Orleans for a week (January 1991) to help demonstrate this system at the American Meteorological Society's annual convention.
Alas, being a forecaster was not in my future. However, with a Davis Vantage Pro2 Wireless Weather Station, I'm one green screen away from broadcasting my predictions to the world. I was given a unit to test, and tested it I have. The package comes with proprietary software, but the UI is rather inelegant, and it requires a USB connection (which makes no sense, as the transmitter sends the signal wirelessly to the unit – why can't this particular unit send the signal to a computer wirelessly, too?). Regardless, it's great to have a very accurate readout of measurements sitting on my desk. More impressive is its tracking features. Since turning it on a few weeks ago, I've measured 3.34″ of rainfall on my deck. Ooooooooooh… couple that with WeatherBug Plus on my desktop, and I'm always going to know more than the weatherfolks on TV.
Tomorrow's weather will be… mostly impressive.

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