From the IBS network file: birds do it, bees do it, even manatees do it.
Just don't get in the way; you might get trampled.

From the government file: the White house focuses on Corporate Responsibility.
The SEC now has a running tally of which corps are playing ball with the feds.

Like all the other nerds, I've been playing way too much Warcraft III recently.

So we dropped off Arah's Exploder at the dealer.
This is the same damned car that has participated in x number of recalls.

However, in her defense, she actually uses her sport utility vehicle for sports and utility, as opposed to some people I know, who drive their SUV from their home in the suburbs to their office in the suburbs, never being within two dozen miles of "off road" use.

My Saab would have been next to useless for our trip to the Badlands last year.
I almost didn't make it through the construction that was going on today.
Is it just me, or are all the roads in Apple Valley perennially decorated with orange barrels?

On days like these, I just want to run away to some Caribbean island.

IcelandAir has announced the lineup for the headliners at this year's Airwaves festival.
Do I go for the fourth consecutive year, or should I do something else with my rockin' October?
Decisions, decisions...

Can't get enough Icelandic music?
Check out this fun little poem (mp3, 1.4 MB) by children's author Andri Snær Magnason with music by current media darlings Múm.

Back home, C4k reports that Grain Belt Premium will still be around, for better or worse.

Arah sent me a funny cartoon today.

And the internet radar image tuning continues...
But I discovered an excellent new palindrome while I was doing research:

"Radar, Dr. Awkward, radar!"

We spent almost the entire day fixing web-based radar displays on about a dozen web sites. Blah!

I love listening to Radio K in the morning.

I missed this earlier, but /. pointed to an O'Reilly article by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl, author of Mastering Regular Expressions, 2nd Ed.
My co-workers continue to steal the first edition from me, so I might as well buy the new one...

Causing some chaos is the new Mean Heat Index, which is a forecast and not a current condition.
It actually makes more sense as a metric to plan your activities. We should probably integrate this in our array of products this summer. But why is the text being published as two products, east and west?

Salon has an interesting article about market-saturation of online games.

Finally, Google's new sets engine is way über.
It correctly matched all the ingredients for Mountain Dew from the three I gave to it.

I'm kinda' scatter-brained today.

I was able to reactivate my sister's DSL yesterday, so welcome back to the Internet, Jenny.

The Cool Room at Rutgers shows the basics of coastal upwelling.
If the beach looks cold and icky in the summer, this is probably why.

A fun bicycle ride tonight.
In the twenty miles between Cannon Falls to Welch and back, all the little animals were out and about, feeding and preying.
I dodged chattering squirrels, grunting woodchucks, and a silent coyote. All these critters crossed the paved trail right in front of me.
The coy-dog even had a rabbit in his mouth.
You can see a lot of wildlife on a bicycle.

Yesterday afternoon the meteorological computer models were agreeing that the temperature in the Twin Cities was going to be in the high sixties.
As we were sitting in the middle of the 90's at the time, we were like, "Yeah right..." and waited to see what happened.

After x amount of pouring rain, the models win again! Blah. Now I have to ride my bicycle in the rain.

"She ain't heavy; she's my wife."
One of our Orlando bureaus carried this story about a bizarre husband-wife race in Sonkajarvi, Finland.
Make sure to check out the video highlights.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Halong is brewing in the Pacific.
The Operational Significant Event Imagery site has photos that track the storm.

And the amazing Nora Paul is at it again, this time "Sensing The News" is the most recent new media workshop, or "convening" as coined by the INMS site.
I was fortunate enough to participate in the initial "Playing the News" workshop.
There are good solutions out there, if you get the right people together.

I've returned from a wonderful vacation on the Oregon coast.
More on that later...

But now it's time to fix the dozens of automated subsystems that failed over the long weekend.
Radars are down, forecasts aren't updating, sky cams are down, temperature sensors are offline, animal cams are down, the list goes on and on.

Back to Oregon:
That girl from the Pacific Northwest and I had a wonderful vacation.
Betty put us up at the Silver Surf and we had a nice view of the beach.

While I was on the beach I read Isaac's Storm which chronicles the hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas in 1900.
(Please ignore the hurricane spinning the wrong way on this site's tracker.)
This is a fascinating account of the personalities, politics and science of the time. A big "thank you" to Jay for loaning me this book.

We visited the Oregon Coast Aquarium, now without a certain killer whale. The aquarium's director had just resigned, so who knows what's in store for that venue.

More intriguing for me was the Hatfield Marine Science Center.
They have this huge freaking octopus that meets you at the door.
Yes, sometimes it gets out of its tank and walks (crawls? tentaculates?) around the lobby.

Mike, trainer for the Yakima Bears, got us tickets to the away game against the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes.
It was a good game, with the Bears winning 5 to 3 in the 9th.
Minor league baseball, like the Northwest League is a lot of fun!

I'll be on holiday in Yachats over the next week. Bye.

While I'm away, check out these awesome primate cams:

• Orangutans at the Kansas City Zoo
• Snow Monkeys at the Minnesota Zoo
• Gibbons at the Minnesota Zoo