Summer is going by too fast

I can describe the summer of 2014 in two words: hot and fast. We've had temperatures as high as 90 degrees and it's been really humid for most of the summer. This in turn has been leading to a lot of thunderstorms, which I have talked about in a couple of my other posts. Also, it seems like every years the summer just flies by, and that is especially true this year. For the first time probably in my life, I'm not going anywhere on vacation, because my family and I have other things going on. But I don't really care about that. What I'm not looking forward to is when autumn comes and it starts getting colder, and then when it becomes winter and starts snowing. I prefer a hot and stormy summer like we're having right now to a cold and snowy winter like we had a few months ago (it was actually already spring by the time our last snow of the season came). But in less than two months, summer will be gone, and I have no choice but to accept that.

Addicted to soda?

It appears that I like soda too much. During much of this summer, I have drank at least one soda almost every day, even though it's better to drink water on hot days. Also, I've spent a lot of money on it. My favorite sodas are Coca-Cola and Pepsi which have caffeine, which is unhealthy in itself. This is taken further by the fact that I also drink coffee on some days, so having that double dose of caffeine in one day could come back to haunt me. But if I stop drinking all of this soda, I would be spending a lot less money and it would be healthier to mostly drink water. That probably won't happen, though, with my soda drinking patterns lately.

Forecast called for sun, we got clouds instead

For about the past week, the weather forecast for my area today called for mostly sunny conditions with highs in the mid-to-upper 70s. The temperatures were predicted correctly but the conditions were not. While there was about half-sun and half-clouds during most of the morning, it became almost completely cloudy around 11:30 and stayed that way until about 6:00. It kept looking like there was a thunderstorm coming but there was no rain within 500 miles. Even into the afternoon the forecast kept saying "lots of sunshine" for the rest of the day. Also, tonight it's supposed to get down to the upper 50s. It's late July, not October!

The clouds we were not supposed to have today, and that the weather forecasts never acknowledged

Hot summer

This summer has been really hot here with temperatures up to the 90s. The humidity has also been really high so at times it can be really uncomfortable. Luckily I have a fan in my room to help keep cool. I was just outside doing yardwork and I had to go back inside to cool off because it was so hot. Still, I prefer this over a really cold winter.

My 100th post

I have now hit 100 posts on this blog. I made this blog just about a year ago because I was getting bored with my original blog on Tumblr. And now I have another blog here on Blogger about NASCAR because I've made a lot of posts about it on this blog. I'm looking forward to another year and another 100 posts.

Six years on YouTube

This month marks the sixth anniversary of my YouTube channel. I discovered YouTube in early 2006, but I did not create my account until July 1, 2008. I uploaded my first video on July 24, 2008. So that is why I am making this post in between those two dates. I was largely ignored for a few years, but for the past couple of years (since early 2012 or so) I've been noticed by quite a few people who share the same interests as I do. I have also gotten into a habit of uploading hundreds of videos per year, and now I can't even keep track of my video quantity anymore. The bottom line is that I take YouTube more seriously now than I did in about the 2008-2011 period. I still enjoy it despite all of this Google+ stuff and all of the tweaks they've made to the channels and the video uploader and comments system and all of those things. In fact, I think I could use YouTube forever.

So many storms

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been hit by a lot of thunderstorms. This week we've had three stormy days in a row. On Sunday, a storm at about 10 pm caught me by surprise with its thunder and lightning, and also knocked out our power for about an hour. At least it wasn't for 14 hours like last week.

Between 5:30 and 6:30 yesterday evening, there was a pair of tornado warnings in the Baltimore, Maryland area, to the south and west of me. The first one, just north of Baltimore, started as a severe thunderstorm warning, and then a tornado warning was issued in its place because the radar picked up rotation. Then that storm cell merged with another one as it moved to the east of Baltimore, toward Delaware. The tornado warnings also caught me off guard because we were only under a severe thunderstorm watch.

Today, there was barely any sun all day. There was some rain moving very slowly toward us. A flash flood watch was soon issued, and then a severe thunderstorm watch. Then a cluster of storms formed between Washington and Baltimore, and prompted a brief tornado warning near Annapolis. After that, there were a couple of severe thunderstorm warnings but then everything moved out to the Eastern Shore and Delaware. And now it's lightly raining again.

This is just like the winter a few months ago, when it just kept snowing over here at least once a week, and we had multiple major snowfalls. And now it's summer and we're having multiple severe thunderstorms every week. But I prefer thunderstorms over snow, because I like summer better than winter, so I'm not complaining right now.

My power went out for 14 hours

Yesterday, a huge thunderstorm hit my house at about 7:30 pm. Before it started raining, it was thundering really loud and there was a huge gust of wind. It felt like the wind was going to blow my house apart. The weather warnings said it was an "unusually dangerous" storm so I think that thought was justified.

Then we had a round of rain and as the rain was letting up my power went out. I was totally expecting a power outage because there were already reports of power outages in other areas. Then there was a bit more thunder and lightning, and then it rained some more. Pretty soon there was a rainbow in the sky, and then the sky was all yellow and orange because the sun was setting. But when the sun went behind the trees, my house was dark, and we had to break out the flashlights.

We had no TV or internet due to the outage, so I couldn't look up a radar or weather warnings or damage reports or any of that severe weather stuff. I could have put batteries in my weather radio, but I didn't feel like it, so I didn't have that to listen to either. I had to turn off my laptop and my iPod Touch because they were running out of batteries.

So then I went to bed and when I woke up our power was still out. For the next three hours I just sat and waited for our power to come back on and I was so bored. Finally, we got out power back at about 9:20 almost 14 hours after it went out. It was the longest power outage in my life. I think before my longest was something like 10 hours.

It turned out a tree fell on a pole and wiped out the power grid my house is in. It was also out in all of the surrounding grids due to other fallen trees. We weren't alone, because most of the Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia metro areas as well as central New York were in the dark yesterday from those stronger-than-usual storms. I'm just glad my house didn't fall victim to the wind, and also that we have our internet back!

Independence Day

Today is Independence Day/the Fourth of July in the United States and the country is 238 years old. Some Fourth of July celebrations along the east coast have been dampened by Hurricane Arthur, which made landfall on the outer banks of North Carolina and is now centered off the coast of the Delmarva Peninsula. But for others, the festivities will go on with fireworks and cookouts and parades and all of those things. So I hope everything goes well today.

My iPod game obsessions

I've been spending a lot of time playing iOS games ever since I got my iPod Touch in October. Here is the order in which I have been addicted/obsessed with these games.

• Mid-October to early November and late January-early March: Fruit Ninja

• Mid-January to late February and within the past week: Bejeweled

• Late February to mid-March: PBA Pro Bowling Challenge

• Early March to early May and since early June: Real Racing 3

• Early May to mid-June: 2048

• Within the past week: White Tile (from the same company as 2048)

• Also within the past week: Solitaire

Notice that I took a break in December and most of January. That was because I was bored with the games I had at that time but I didn't think there was anything good on the App Store. However now I have found a lot of games I like in the months since then.

Sometimes when I like a game, I play it so much that I treat it like my life depends on it. This is evident in my various stats on the Game Center, Apple's official gaming network for mobile devices. I get points and badges and other rewards for reaching levels or getting some special achievements. This makes me want to be more competitive in the game, which is probably the main goal of the network. However, it also leads to me pushing back important work in favor of playing games on my iPod Touch.

So there you have it. I like mobile games because I think they have excellent graphics and gameplay features, and I could really play them forever.

Tropical Storm Arthur forms

Tropical Storm Arthur, the first named storm of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season, has formed in between Florida's east coast and the upper Bahamas. Arthur is currently moving northwest with maximum sustained winds of 50 miles per hour, and could be a hurricane by Thursday.

There is a possibility for Arthur to make landfall in the Carolinas, but another track has it shifting in a northeast direction roughly parallel to the east coast of the United States, and up to the Atlantic provinces of Canada. This is a common path for some Atlantic tropical cyclones.

The Atlantic hurricane season officially started a month ago, but there was almost no activity in June, unlike last year when Tropical Storm Andrea formed on June 5, followed by Tropical Storm Barry on June 19. The eastern Pacific basin has already seen five names cyclones this season.

Tropical Storm Arthur before and after being named.

Arthur's first advisory after being upgraded from a depression.