Daily Archives: May 13, 2009

Website Wednesday – NOAA’s National Weather Service

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Ever look for an alternative to the Weather Channel’s website to get your weather?  Check out NOAA’s National Weather Service at www.weather.gov.  This site provides a lot more detailed information than seems to be available at the Weather Channel’s website.  It’s a little harder to navigate, but once you get used to the site you are bound to find something useful.  To get started, if you are looking for local weather, enter your city and state or ZIP Code in the box on the upper left.

I’ll point out a few features that I like to use and let you explore to find what else is useful to you.

1)  Detailed Point Forecast – allows you to select your exact location on the map to get the most specific forecast for your area – much finer level of selection than just a city or ZIP code.

2) Hourly Weather Graph – this is a link in the lower right corner of the local forecast area in the “Additional Forecasts and Information” area.  This provides a nice line graph of a variety of weather forecast data that makes it easy to see for the next several days what the weather is going to do.  Items like temperature, sky cover, precipitation potential, etc. are listed.  You can customize this graph to show only those items you are interested in.  I find it really useful when I want to ride my bike to work – so I can quickly check the forecast through the day to find what the weather is going to be like.

3) National Digital Forecast Database – click on the map in the lower left corner.  This brings up a map of your local region with a variety of different forecast data options.  Use the options at the top to select the time range you want to explore and then just hover your mouse pointer over the weather data you are interested in and the map updates to reflect that data.  This allows you to quickly scan a visual image of the forecast for the region over a period of time and for different forecast types without waiting for a new webpage to load.

So when you are ready to explore weather in a different format – check out weather.gov!

Gas Station Saga

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Who knew that taking a quick trip to a gas station could be so exciting?

I had a meeting at WKAR today at noon, and it got done a bit earlier than I expected so I decided to take the time to run to Speedway to get gas, buy some food for lunch, and buy a lottery ticket – great use of a few spare minutes.  I get to Speedway and I pull into the driveway and I see a pump that’s open (which is good since this tends to be a busy gas station), I wait for a car driving across where I need to go to get to the pump and after they cleared I pulled up to the pump.  As I get out of my car I hear the guy who just drove past where I was going say to me “I was going to back in to that pump.”  I apologized and said I thought he was driving through and then proceeded to start getting my gas.  A little later he had opened his door or window and said “you should wait to see what people are going to do.”  I just ignored it because I’m not going to stop in the entrance to a gas station and wait for all cars to be done moving to see where they are going before continuing.

So I finish filling my tank and I hurry into the store, since now someone else is waiting behind me to use the pump I used – waiting patiently as far as I could tell.  I quickly get the items I want so I can get back to my car to free up the pump.  I take my items and go to the checkout and tell them I had gas on pump 4.  I slide my Speedy Rewards card and my payment card and take my receipts while he gets my lottery ticket and rings that up and I pay for that as well.  I gather my items, go back to my car, get in, and leave so I can free up the pump.  I always write down my gas purchases, but decided to wait until I got back to work so I wasn’t blocking the pump.

So I get back to work and go to write down my gas purchase and I look at the receipt to get the amount and gallons bought, and it wasn’t on there.  The clerk either didn’t hear that I said I had gas or didn’t get it entered.  So (being raised the way I was) I decide to call the station wanting to make sure I don’t get turned into the police or something.  I call excepting them to thank me for my honesty and tell me not to worry or take a credit card number over the phone.  Nope – they ask if I can come back to pay for it – I tell them I could after work.  Not sure what they would have done if I said I couldn’t make it back.

So, after work I drive back there (out of my way mind you) and go in to pay for it.  They take out their “Drive Off” book to see how much it was and I pay for it.  I get back to my car and realize that because of how they rang it up – it didn’t credit me my Speedy Rewards points – so now I have to try to get those points!

Once again – being honest and trying to do the right thing turns out to be a lot more hassel than it was worth.  They didn’t have my license plate or even a very accurate description of my car, I probably could have just ignored the whole thing and had a free tank of gas.