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.

2014 is half over

Today marks the end of the first half of the year 2014. The past six months of my life have seen these things:

• a lot of snow where I live in the winter (way more than the average)
• my obsession with various iPod Touch games like Bejeweled, Real Racing 3 and Fruit Ninja 
• an increase in my work hours (eight-hour shifts!) 
• my 19th birthday 
• the end of my freshman period of college 
• joining a photography club (I'm not really good at photo editing lol) 
• a lot of action in the NASCAR world, along with the creation of my NASCAR-specific blog
• rekindling my interest in computers, specifically Microsoft Windows ones. 

With everything that's happened, I can only guess what's in store for me in the second half of the year. Also I have a lot more to post about but I made a rule to do one post per blog, per day so I'll just do them as the week goes on. So tomorrow, whatever I blog about will be my first for the month of July. Goodbye for now.

About YouTube's new Creator Studio

Surprise, surprise - YouTube introduced a new feature earlier this week. This one is a feature called the Creator Studio, which places things like channel analytics, the video manager, channel settings and your latest video uploads into a single screen. YouTube also removed the username display on the sticky navigation bar at the top, and users no longer have access to their channel by clicking on their channel icon at the top of the screen; they now have to go to the Creator Studio. But users can now click on their icon to go to their Google+ page or YouTube channel and change their icon.

In addition, the settings menu, which once had a link to the video manager, was moved to the new dropdown box from which the Creator Studio can be accessed, as are the complete list of the user's channels, if they have more than one as a result of the Google+ integration with YouTube back in November.

I could go on about YouTube introducing another new feature, and shaking up the layout of their website, which they seem to like doing on about a monthly basis now. But right now I have a NASCAR race to watch on TV and I'm not going to miss it. So bye for now!

Thank you, Portugal

The United States men's national soccer/football team lost to Germany 1-0 on Thursday in Brazil in their final Group G match before the Round of 16 segment. However, Portugal defeated Ghana in a game that went on at almost the exact same time, allowing the United States to advance after all and play Belgium in the Round of 16 on Tuesday.

The United States get out of Group G with a win, a tie and a loss, in that order. The Belgians are coming off a sweep of group H with wins against Algeria, Russia and Korea. This makes for yet another crucial matchup in the tournament.

Summer started today

Spring has now given way to summer. The summer solstice occurred at 6:51 AM U.S. Eastern time, or 10:51 Universal Time. People have been saying "it's summer now" since around Memorial Day weekend, but for for nearly a month afterward it was still astronomically spring. Meteorological summer, which is based on weather patterns rather than the alignment of the Earth and the sun, began back on June 1.

I don't think I'm doing anything of note this summer. I finished my spring semester of college in the middle of May, just before my 19th birthday, and since then the only productive things I've done are going to work at a grocery store (same one I started at in September) and some errands. Also it's been really hot lately and my mom is saving energy by keeping the air conditioning off almost all of the time. That's why she got me a fan for my room and the fan works great. We've also had some rain in the last couple of days as well which has made it less humid.

So it looks like it's going to be like that until Labor Day or somewhere around there. I think I can survive the summer even though it won't be that exciting for me.

United States defeats Ghana in World Cup opener

The United States men's national soccer/football team defeated the Ghana national team 2-1 in their first match in Group G of the FIFA World Cup on Monday in Natal, Brazil. The United States have suffered multiple defeats to Ghana in recent years, so this makes it an exciting win.

The first goal was scored by the U.S. just 30 seconds into the match by Clint Dempsey. Ghana did not answer until the 81st minute with a goal by André Ayew. The U.S. scored again with John Brooks four minutes later, and went on to take the win.

Ghana's next match is with Germany on Saturday, while the United States will play Portugal on Sunday.

My chocolate pudding adventures

Back in April, I suddenly had a desire for chocolate pudding. So I looked up recipes online and found one that involved adding egg yolks. I didn't have any cornstarch (an important ingredient) so I decided to substitute it with flour.

Well, the pudding came out really thick and grainy, so I thought it was just because I used flour instead of cornstarch. I didn't really want to eat it the way it came out but I did anyway because I didn't want to waste it.

Then on Monday, I decided to try the same recipe again because I had cornstarch this time. When I put it the cornstarch I noticed that it was pretty different from flour so I figured the pudding would come out right this time. After I had mixed everything including the egg and boiled it, I put it in a bowl but just like the first time, it had that grainy texture. So that meant it didn't depend on whether I used flour or cornstarch - it would still come out the same way.

Then when I was eating the pudding, I thought maybe I had just boiled it too long both times. But then I realized that maybe it was the egg that made the pudding like that, because it reminded me of the texture of eggs after they're cooked.

So I decided to try the recipe a third time today. This time when the first ingredients were boiling and I was mixing the other ingredients, I didn't put any eggs in. Then I mixed those ingredients with the others to boil together, and when they were done I put them in the bowl to put in the refrigerator. The pudding finally came out right this time, with that custard-like, slightly less solid texture. I put the bowl in the fridge, and then later I ate the pudding and was finally satisfied.

So I guess I learned from this that eggs don't go well in custard-type puddings. Or maybe it's just how my taste buds are. Whatever it is, I'm never using another pudding recipe that calls for eggs!