Learning to drive upside down…

As we’re sitting here in between the second set of tornado warnings in a week and watching the rain come down, I thought it might be a good time to post a few of the pictures from last week’s storms. Unlike today, with the sky a relatively uniform dark gray, the storms last week produced some spectacular (and very ominous looking) cloud formations. People talk about a green sky during tornado outbreaks. There was a very definite green tinge to some of the clouds. It made us nervous, but it was quite beautiful. It never really rained much, but the clouds were swirling all different directions as they passed overhead.

These were all taken with my phone camera. They are in chronological order and were taken over a roughly 20 minute period.

The lightning is picking back up again so I’m going to shut the computer off now.

Today is “1234567890 Day.” The day when the clocks on all computers running Unix, or Unix-like operating systems like Mac OS X or Linux will simultaneously display these 10 digits in sequence. For us, the moment came at 5:31:30 CST. Being a geek, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to do something geeky. So of course, I got busy and wrote a shell script! I created a PHP script (run from the command line in OS X’s Terminal) that would do some cool things when the big moment occurred. First, it updated a couple of Twitter accounts. First, my main ZippySeven account (which also updates my Facebook status.) I also have a second Twitter account I use for security system alerts, so I used that to message my mobile phone at the precise moment the clock ticked over to the magic number. Finally, I ran another script that began playing an iTunes playlist, starting with Pink Floyd’s Time and then onto Rush’s Time Stand Still and a few others. Since the alarm sounds in Time don’t start until 20 seconds in, I was careful to begin the song at 1234567870 so they’d be right on the money. All for one brief second of nerdvana. Sweet!

What’s next? More celebrating of course! Actually we’re going to a Valentine’s day party, but two excuses to have a party in one day is good enough for me.

Happy 1234567890 Day everybody. :-)