JeffJournal

Tracy and I just returned from a week-long vacation in the Bahamas (at the Atlantis resort); it was very relaxing. Atlantis has an amazingly massive oceanic habitat for thousands of fish, sharks, rays, and other kinds of sea creatures. It’s all maintained so that you can walk by, through, and under the water and see all the animals. Not only a massive feat of engineering (the entire system of habitats cycles water through to the ocean 5 times a day), it’s also really friggen’ cool.

Despite the fact that the hotel had several WiFi hotspots (including all the pools), I resisted the urge to check my e-mail for the entire week. ☺

There was lots of sun, food, beach, sun, pool, reggae music, and… did I mention sun? I think I read 4.5 books by the side of the pools. Awesome; I love reading.

Tracy and I were very glad to go and essentially be “totally away” for just about an entire week. It’s basically the calm before the storm when the twins will be born in a few months. ☺

We came home from all the sun to massive storms in Kentucky. Yesterday evening, there were enromous storms with lots of tornado activity. Most of the bad stuff went just north and just south of us (by only a few miles), but Tracy and I were down in the basement for portions of the evening — glued to streaming video on my laptop (!) from the local weather station, watching doppler radar maps and watching reports and the impending weather as it marched across Indiana and Kentucky.

I learned some new words and phrases: “tornadic activity” and “cyclonic activity.”

It’s amazing, actually — this technology simply wasn’t around a few years ago. And because of this kind of technology (for example, the weather stations are able to identify and graphically depict “cyclonic activity” just about exactly when it happens in a fully rotatable 3D depiction, as well as use those models for accurate predictions on direction, distance, and time to when a specific area will be hit), very few lives were lost. There was lots and lots of damage, but people were able to be warned to either leave or seek shelter. And, everyone knew exactly when the bad weather was over

That’s a good use of technology.

Open MPI is humming along. Lots of good stuff happening that I can’t quite mention here yet (gotta get the papers published, first!). Our next meeting is in a week.