RiverViewer

Here's a link to the video they played before the press conference...brings a tear to the eye, it does...hearing that "this one belongs to the Reds" gets me every time... http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060120/SPT04/301200020

So, the wait is over...I finally bought a bike! Saved up some money, then went to Reser Bicycle and put down a deposit on an Iron Horse Adventure: http://www.ironhorsebikes.com/bikes/index.asp?ID=35 ...large enough for me, adjustable seat, shocks, 3x8 gears, adjustable handlebars, etc. It costs $280...it was supposed to be in last week sometime, but they'd ordered a ton of bikes for their stock, so they had mine ship with those at the cheaper and slower shipping rate. Then it didn't show up on the truck on Monday...by Tuesday they found out that the warehouse never shipped the bike, and it would be next week before it came in. So, rather than making me wait, they offered to give me the next model up for the same price - the Adventure LX: http://www.ironhorsebikes.com/bikes/index.asp?ID=34 It's got better wheels, better shifters, better shocks, more shocks, better crank, better gears, better pretty much everything - it retails for $500! I guess good things come to those who wait... So I tricked it out with a rear light (brake-light style, with an "on" setting and a "flashing" setting), a front light, an odometer, and a cute little bell! It's illegal to ride a bike on the streets in Ohio without a bell or a horn, and I wanted to be street legal! Then a helmet and some chain lube...brought it home on Wednesday, then Thursday was beautiful weather... ...and I got stuck at work late...damnit... Anyway, thanks to all for their suggestions - Ink, Mr. Charlie, Rob, Monte, and anyone else I'm forgetting...now I just need to ride the damn thing! Probably not tonight - don't want to have my first bike ride in years be after dark, because I'm pretty clumsy as it is...but I should be able to avoid rain tomorrow and try it out.

I waited the appointed 45 seconds, and a box popped up with the following options: While meeting women and employing the #1 selling Male Adult Toy in the world does sound intriguing, I doubt either have much to do with a photo show from Poland...nothing in any of the text refers to a download - which I'd probably be pretty hesitant about doing anyway, given the ads they run...

Ding ding...give the man a prize...

Hmmm...that link isn't taking me anywhere but to a page of ads and directions for uploading files...

How about this street performer in a life-filled city? Shot from October 2004: Dude was hilarious...had a boom box playing all the disco classics, and he'd hit all the Travolta moves...he drew a big crowd...

MorningTheft - I grew up in Hinckley too...graduated from Highland in 1990...we know each other, perhaps? Could be scary, because I was a snobby dork...

I drove past the Academy of World Languages yesterday, and they ain't kidding - demo is under way! Thanks for the round-up...those aerial shots are just wonderful...I assume they hired a Cessna and a photographer or something - man, I'd love to pull that gig!

Nick's run for city council twice, lost soundly both times, though he was a major shoe-leather campaigner. Was one of the founders of Cincinnati Tomorrow or something, who had all these group walks downtown after the riots...he's a major Florida disciple, creative-class guy, bought a bar in one of the tougher parts of town and gets lots of new bands in, and he's been blogging for a few years now (at various URL's - they keep changing - he blogged on his campaign site for the last year). He's maybe 27 or 28 now...

You mean the sweater and the matching shoes and hat, or the stack o' gear behind you?

ORTFAN, you frickin' rock...all these threads are just phenomenal...

Ran a couple queries...I looked at instances where the three days of predictions showed a 3 foot jump in at least one of the days...in reverse chronological order: Date / Day 3 prediction / Actual / Overage 01/03/2006 / 38.2 / 34.8 / 3.4 12/02/2005 / 32.5 / 31.2 / 1.3 12/01/2005 / 36.9 / 33.6 / 3.3 11/30/2005 / 35.8 / 35.1 / 0.7 08/29/2005 / 34.3 / 27.9 / 6.4 04/24/2005 / 35.1 / 34.1 / 1 04/23/2005 / 35.9 / 34.1 / 1.8 04/22/2005 / 37.9 / 32.4 / 5.5 03/30/2005 / 47.3 / 45.9 / 1.4 03/29/2005 / 47.3 / 46.1 / 1.2 03/09/2005 / 39.7 / 38.7 / 1 03/08/2005 / 42.2 / 39.5 / 2.7 03/07/2005 / 39.2 / 37.3 / 1.9 01/12/2005 / 48.3 / 53.5 / (-5.2) 01/07/2005 / 56.0 / 54.6 / 1.4 01/06/2005 / 50.7 / 52.3 / (-1.6) 01/05/2005 / 47.8 / 51.5 / (-3.7) 01/04/2005 / 41.3 / 48.6 / (-7.3) 01/03/2005 / 38.2 / 40.5 / (-2.3) 01/02/2005 / 35.4 / 37.4 / (-2) 12/22/2004 / 34.8 / 31.0 / 3.8 12/11/2004 / 41.9 / 39.7 / 2.2 12/09/2004 / 39.7 / 38.5 / 1.2 12/02/2004 / 42.1 / 39.8 / 2.3 09/19/2004 / 51.9 / 50.8 / 1.1 09/18/2004 / 51.9 / 50.8 / 1.1 09/17/2004 / 52.0 / 48.3 / 3.7 09/10/2004 / 44.8 / 43.3 / 1.5 09/09/2004 / 40.9 / 43.6 / (-2.7) 09/08/2004 / 40.9 / 41.8 / (-0.9) From this, it seems like the only time they underestimated was during the January 2005 flood - however, their 3 day estimates are a lot more accurate during these jumpin' times than I'd have guessed...excluding the flood, there have been 23 days that qualified for my pool (at least one of the three days had a 3 foot jump predicted) - of those, they were within two feet 13 times, and within three feet 4 times...then four times were within 4 feet, and the other two were off by 5.5 and 6.4. It's still interesting to me, though, that of the (non-flood) predictions, the error is almost always on estimating too high - they only underestimated twice.

So the river forecast has been revised down: CCNO1:CINCINNATI 52: 34.1/: 0.5: 36.6 / 40.1 / 40.7 / 40.8 SUN AM KCN, do you have any insight into why this appears to happen every time they're looking at a big jump? They predicted 38.2 earlier this month, but it never got above 34.8...I'm sure it's difficult to predict, but if that were the only issue, I'd expect them to miss both high and low... I'll dig through my archived data and see how often their third-day-during-a-peak data is over and how often it's under, but just from memory, it seems like they're consistenly a few feet high...

If they use the special apostrophe's (ASCII characters 147 and 148) instead of standard apostrophe's (ASCII character 34), sometimes browsers won't handle it...you'll get that on phones and sometimes in plain-text emails as well...if they only cover the lower ASCII range, they don't know what to do with the upper range.

sorry...double-post...

^Definitely - I agree that infighting (including the current residents vs. potential new residents, and "community activists" vs. developers, etc.) can definitely hurt - I was just thinking the way they primarily hurt is by hindering work on the main problem. Like, say your ceiling is falling in...you would fix it if you had any nails, but you don't have any nails. Your problem isn't a lack of nails, it's that the damn ceiling's falling in. I guess I'm raising a pretty stupid point - we need to create a desirable housing stock in safe neighborhoods, which will let folks who would like to live there move in, and encourage others to follow...and anything that gets in the way of that goal is a problem. By the way, I very much admire folks like you who are passionately pursuing that goal - it's not something I have the skills or the fortitude to pursue myself...

That is very cool. Most of the remote weather station things I've seen have only been accurate to within 2 degrees - but this one seems to be a bit more precise! I've also looked at thissuppository-looking USB remote deal: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00074UZ4A/qid=1137678565/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-6406671-2076705?n=507846&s=hi&v=glance That one's cool, because you can put it anywhere, and it just sits there and logs temperature, taking readings every 10 seconds to 12 hours, and storing 60K data points. Then you plug it in to your machine and grab the data. That would be cool to put in the trunk one day, in the glove box the next day, under the visor the next day, and see how hot different parts of the car got, and when...or how cold the garage gets...compare hourly temperature readings with your nearest NWS station (since I'm about 200 feet above Lunken and three miles away, I'm sure there are some predictable variances)...

^Yeah, my original comment was in response the comment that in-fighting among folks in Over-the-Rhine was the biggest problem...I thought it might be the most noticeable problem, the one dealt with every day that had easily discernable results, but that the biggest problem was simply lack of demand - folks are scared (like me - I wouldn't live in most of OTR with my wife - I just wouldn't do it), or folks don't like the city, or prefer suburbs, etc. If there were tremendous demand, I figured in-fighting wouldn't make any difference to OTR (using Mt. Adams as an example - imagine a huge in-fighting incident in Mt. Adams folks, and then imagine if that would have an iota of impact on demand for homes and apartments there), and without demand, being in-fighting-free wouldn't do much to affect demand... Things kind of drifted away then, so I didn't pursue the question...

As always, thank you, thank you...

They did some renovations, but that's been closed for a couple years now, and the changes I saw were pretty much cosmetic - reupholstered some furniture, maybe a pain job, new carpet...a landlord would have turned that around in two weeks, not two years...

Unfortunately, that falls under my first caveat, "I have no skills, only interest." My philosophy degree probably wouldn't help me much...I'm a pretty good Foxpro programmer (which, by the way, reminds me of a great line from A Prairie Home Companion - the Lutheran minister was visiting a friend's cousin or something who was a priest at the Vatican, whose job was to translate the classics into Latin. He said that was like making beautiful bronze statues and dropping them into the ocean for the amazement of deep sea divers...) - but that probably doesn't count for much...I could do filing and answer the phones!

Oh, very nice. How high are you up in those shots?

Wow...very cool. I'd ask if they were hiring, but a) I have no skills, only interest, and b) I wouldn't want to move away from the river! I always saw that statement at the end of the forecasts: DURING PERIODS OF HIGH WATER OR FLOODING...CREST FORECASTS SHOULD BE OBTAINED FROM RIVER FLOOD WARNINGS (CLEFLWILN) OR RIVER FLOOD STATEMENTS (CLEFLSILN). - but I never knew where to find the CLEFLWILN - thanks for the link! Is that just updated more frequently than the ILNRVDILN is? Oh, and what on earth do those acronyms stand for?

Really? Wow, that rocks! Given your avatar, I assume you're not in the Wilmington office! So what does updating this product involve? Is it more of a data processing thing, or a meteorological thing, or something else? Are there any other products regarding river levels that I didn't link to above? Wow, I could ask you eight thousand questions...

My machine goes out daily to the 3-day text website and emails the page to me, and I log all the text in a table - well, I queried the table, and this is the first time they've included this CREST prediction data in the 19 months I've been collecting this data. Whenever there's a serious flood, they'll include commentary in the text (which they've done 58 days out of the last 540), and they discuss predicted crests in that text. But it's cool to have this one-line prediction thing included here...thank you, National Weather Service!