Happy New Year to all LXers
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| beirwin Dec 31, 2010 10:06 PM EDT |
WIshing you all a happy and healthy 2011. Looking forward to tons of great stories from Scott, our Benevolent Editor-in-Chief, and all the rest of the LXer team. :-) |
| Ridcully Dec 31, 2010 11:38 PM EDT |
Very pleased to reciprocate. :-) |
| tracyanne Dec 31, 2010 11:48 PM EDT |
I said it once and I'll say it again. Happy new Year! |
| Scott_Ruecker Jan 01, 2011 12:28 AM EDT |
What!? Its Friday already? Where am I? What year is it? ;-) |
| dinotrac Jan 01, 2011 12:34 AM EDT |
Don't worry, Scott -- We'll let you know as soon as it turns 2000 and is safe to come out of your cave. Just remember us all if you turn out to be the only survivor of all of those terrible "millennium bug" disasters that are about to befall you. Who knows -- you may even run into descendants of Japanese soldiers hunkered down on assorted islands to protect the homeland. They might insist that you surrender to them... |
| Bob_Robertson Jan 01, 2011 3:33 AM EDT |
Just got finished with my last (and only this year) session of free play on Vendetta Online for "former subscribers" they do each year from Christmas to New Years. Right about 2am, as I expected. Hope all of you had a wonderful new years celebration, make sure to cycle those calendars, and close the fiscal 2010 books. |
| jacog Jan 01, 2011 3:41 AM EDT |
Shouldn't that be "Happy GNU year?" :D |
| jimbauwens Jan 01, 2011 7:23 AM EDT |
Bang Bang Bang! Bong Bang Bing Bing! |
| jdixon Jan 01, 2011 9:25 AM EDT |
I hope everyone at LXer has a safe and prosperous year ahead. |
| Scott_Ruecker Jan 01, 2011 1:54 PM EDT |
I barely made it to Midnight my time..drove from San Diego to Phoenix earlier in the day. Am I getting old? Don't answer that! ;-) |
| skelband Jan 01, 2011 3:00 PM EDT |
Happy New to you all! |
| Ridcully Jan 01, 2011 5:09 PM EDT |
Actually Scott, from where I am on this dusty (ummm......soggy where I am) old globe, it's Sunday 2 Jan here but Saturday 1 Jan where you are.......Could you be "yesterday's man" ??????? lol......... :-) Naaaaah......stick around, we're having too much fun. |
| tracyanne Jan 01, 2011 6:41 PM EDT |
How was the flooding where you are Rid. |
| Ridcully Jan 01, 2011 7:59 PM EDT |
In the immediate locality, nowhere near as bad as it could have been. The sub-soil is like a sponge though ~ there is so much water in it now that it liquifies under any pressure (like a car tyre) and turns into a sludge; if you deviate off the driveway, you'll bog. We used to get cut off by the local creek near the showground, but not this time....so far. Our shire council maintained dirt road looks like the Grand Canyon complete with ravines and boulders and the council has actually put in a damaged road sign - lots of help to a motorist who damages his car because some of the damage cannot be seen until you are right on top of it. I have been forced to do road repairs so I can get in and out of our property. We need about two weeks of sun, but at the moment I can't see the weather doing that. Our house is immune to flooding. Towards Kingaroy, Barkers Creek came very close to cutting the D'Aguilar Highway and there were certainly huge floods over its flats. Our biggest problems have been flooding of local creeks off the main roads but we have not had the dreadful flooding that others have had both further north and inland. Luckily, Blackbutt is right at the edge of the Blackbutt Range itself and the relatively hilly countryside ensures that run-off takes place quite quickly. And you ? I don't know the topography of where you live so I couldn't even guess how you have fared but I hope you haven't suffered water damage ? |
| henke54 Jan 01, 2011 8:33 PM EDT |
Happy New Year ;-) http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/christmas.htm |
| tracyanne Jan 01, 2011 10:20 PM EDT |
@Ridcully, we're South of Childers, west of Hervey Bay and north of Maryborough, on the Burrum River, as I mentioned in another thread where the Bridge is at Burrum Town the river hit a 6 to 7 meter Flood peak (the bridge is abot 4 meters). It didn't affect us as we're on high ground, Our dam is full and overflowing (we're on a 1 acre property with a Damn at the bottom, we're at the top of the hill). The ground is pretty sodden, enough for some of the fence posts to pull out of the ground. But I did manage to get the ride on out and mow around the house and the road frontage, yesterday. We're getting more rain today, mostly short heavy cloud bursts wit thunder and lightning, but most of the lightning seems to be over the bay or out over Fraser Island. During the peak of the storm people were evacuated from Pacific Haven, they're on the convergence of the Burrum and Chervil rivers, and pretty low lying as well. A friend of ours has about half a meter of water over her property, says she has fish swimming i her front yard. |
| montezuma Jan 01, 2011 10:30 PM EDT |
Those floods must be the worst in many decades. There is a strong La Nina operating at present in the Pacific but this sounds like a real outlier even in those conditions. I hope everything works out in the end but it sounds pretty grim. I read that the area flooded was bigger than NSW which is amazing. |
| Ridcully Jan 01, 2011 10:54 PM EDT |
@montezuma.......indeed they are.....If I have the dates correct, I think these are the worst since about 1973 however the weather forecasts suggest that the La Nina conditions will become neutral about the end of March....and cyclones (our version of the American hurricane) are predicted for the Queensland coastline during the next three months and they dump huge amounts of rain. For those that want to keep up with the news, here's the latest bulletin from the Australian Broadcasting Commission, the govt funded tv network - it's usually pretty good, and no adverts: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/02/3104947.htm Rockhampton is north of where Tracyanne lives by approx. 200km and about 350-400 north of me. Huge amounts of water will now be moving down the inland water ways and while it is going to do enormous good to those rivers (they've been in drought and overexploited), there are going to be increased flood problems along those waterways in inland NSW I should think. |
| montezuma Jan 02, 2011 11:07 AM EDT |
Yeah most prediction models are showing a breakdown of the La Nina by mid year. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/ENSO-summary.shtml That was my old job in Oz before moving to the US. |
| dinotrac Jan 02, 2011 3:11 PM EDT |
Hmmmm. You guys give me pause. I keep thinking that I would like to move the family to Oz, but...maybe not. |
| Ridcully Jan 02, 2011 4:14 PM EDT |
I wouldn't let this very unusual season bother you dinotrac; Australia has climates to suit all tastes. Right now in high summer, Tasmania has had a cold snap with a sprinkling of snow on Mt Wellington just beside the state capital of Hobart and Perth (the state capital over in Western Australia) is having heat waves of up to 40 degrees with bush fire threats as a bonus. Flood, fire and snow.......take your pick. But honestly, this is unusual and normally, here in south east Queensland, the climate is delightful: coolish to cold winters with frost, and warm summers with only the central three months of December, January and February sometimes hot and humid. But spectacular thunderstorms help to cool things down a little. Love it. |
| gus3 Jan 02, 2011 4:45 PM EDT |
Heat waves up to 40 degrees... change that to Fahrenheit, and you have the heat wave that was here yesterday. |
| Ridcully Jan 02, 2011 5:27 PM EDT |
Where be you gus3 ? |
| gus3 Jan 02, 2011 6:06 PM EDT |
That's classified information, given on a "need to know" basis. Suffice to say, it's supposed to be winter here. |
| Ridcully Jan 02, 2011 6:21 PM EDT |
@gus3 Okay, I'll throw a dart at the northern hemisphere.......if you are around 40 degrees in winter, your summers must be a real blast. The only places similar I can think of here in Australia are out in the back of beyond like Birdsville which is on the edge of what we call the Simpson Desert.....but which in fact is populated with arid tolerant plants and animals. No, with a temp like that, I was just wondering if you were somewhere here as well. |
| jimbauwens Jan 02, 2011 7:09 PM EDT |
@Gus3, I say Ohio |
| Ridcully Jan 03, 2011 5:24 PM EDT |
For anyone interested, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (our ABC radio/tv network) has this map on its website showing the huge area of SE and Central Queensland affected by the floods http://www.abc.net.au/news/infographics/qld-floods/default.h... The scale isn't shown but you can get an idea of the size from the fact that a direct line from Brisbane to Rockhampton is about 520km, and Brisbane going almost directly west to St George is about 400km. These inland areas are often very wide plains which undulate at most and so flooding spreads very widely and is very slow to return to normal river levels. You can easily find my location of Blackbutt. |
| montezuma Jan 04, 2011 8:17 PM EDT |
Wow that should nicely flush out the Darling River. I bet that will be welcome. |
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