Jared W. Smith

In case you haven’t heard, all indications are that Tom Brady is done for the year. Last year, the Patriots talked about playing through the adversity of Spygate, etc — but they had all their players remain reasonably intact. The rush of air you feel? The rest of the AFC East breathing a sigh of relief. While the Belichick-era Patriots are resilient, losing their superstar quarterback may be too much. The Patriots are definitely more mortal now, and the division is completely up for grabs now.

Meanwhile, I watched my Chargers and the Panthers tangle to the last second, when a Jake Delhomme miracle throw was caught by Dante Rosario for a game-winning touchdown with no time left. Incredible! I hate seeing the Chargers lose, but losing to the Panthers is the only team I can accept them losing to. The Panthers haven’t looked this good in years. Having Steve Smith out may not necessarily be a bad thing for Delhomme; he spread the ball out to everybody. Delhomme always seems to lean on Smith when he’s in the game. The playcalling was very well-balanced (though going for it on fourth-and-1 on their second drive of the game was foolish), and the defense was as strong as ever.

This game is a gut-check for the Chargers, who need to strongly rethink their policy of leaving players out completely in preseason. Everybody was shaking off rust, and the regular season just isn’t the time for that. One silver lining: Philip Rivers looks as sharp as ever. His mobility was all there — it’s uncanny considering that less than seven months ago he had his ACL reconstructed. The Chargers will bounce back and will be fine; they needed this game to get a few things in check.

Looks to be a fun and wild year ahead; I’m really glad football’s back, especially after such a dismal baseball season.

Computer models and forecast tracks aside, so far, Hanna’s been quite a beneficial rainmaker for Charleston, and not much else. I’ve seen some fairly heavy showers come through at times, but the winds have definitely been nothing like what was expected. The winds were actually stronger earlier today; in the last few hours, while the rain has definitely gotten harder and more steady, the wind has just not been where it’s been expected. This could change as the center passes closer at 8:00 (the buoy reports do indicate stronger winds — but nowhere near 70 MPH, either), but by every measure, we should have been in tropical storm force winds by now. This simply has not happened. We’ve gotten much-needed rain — we’re down 8″ here in Charleston — and none of the problems that usually come with it (save for downtown flooding, but that’s not avoidable).

I do suspect things will kick up a bit as the center approaches — judging from the buoy reports I’ve been looking at, we could see 25-35 MPH sustained winds at times — but I think predictions of hurricane conditions in Charleston are far overblown at this point. Everything I’ve seen just does not sustain that.

My faithful Charleston weather watchers and I will continue to keep an eye out in the Charleston Weather broadcast, but it looks like we need to pay much closer attention to Ike and let this glorified late summer nor’easter do its thing.

Fay, Fay, Fay. During these storm cycles I write so much about a storm that I honestly get sick and tired of the name and hope to never hear it again for another six years. (Typically, that’s the case.) While we’re writing the last chapter on Fay here in Charleston, it’ll be around our friends on the Gulf Coast for quite a while it looks like, as it treks toward a record fourth Florida landfall enroute to stalling out and continuing to dump tons and tons of rain on an area that’s had enough.

Yesterday brought the Lowcountry a tornado watch. While most of the tornadic activity was concentrated in Georgia, where there was a steady stream of warnings, there was a short-lived rotation in Hampton and Jasper counties prompting a warning. There weren’t any reports of such weather in Charleston, though.

Rain’s the story here, as it is in most other places (but certainly not to the degree that it is in Florida, where they’re getting it in feet). NWS record-keeping indicates a new record for rainfall downtown yesterday, with 2.16″ of rain. The College of Charleston weather station indicates 2.03″ of rain, most of which came down in a squall between 11am and noon.

We’re still contending with some scattered showers from Fay, but since it’s actually starting to move away a little bit, this should actually come to an end by tonight. In fact, I’ve seen some sun for the first time in a few days…it’s a nice change.

As Fay leaves Charleston, there’s two more items of interest in the Atlantic. Invest 94 has been on the radar for about a week as having potential for development, but it hasn’t gotten it together. A look at the models and its position shows that it’s going to maintain a fairly southerly track, so I don’t anticipate this one would be much of an issue for us here at home. Invest 95 may be something to watch as time goes on, at least track-wise: It’s at a latitude that seems to foreshadow some threat to the U.S. in the next couple of weeks, though there’s some significant divergence toward the end on where it’d end up. A strike against 95 is that its satellite presentation, or near-lack thereof. It’s got a little bit of convection, but the circulation is not well defined and it would have a long way to go before it became anything significant. It’s still worth peeking at every now and again, though, as conditions are generally favorable for slow growth…and it is still the peak of hurricane season, after all.

Wow, I haven’t blogged since Monday. Maddening, indeed. It’s just been a maddening week in general. Where do I begin?

• Monday was somewhat stressful. I got a haircut and throughout the day I was fairly nervous for…
• Tuesday. Tuesday, I slipped on a suit and interviewed for the second Webmaster vacancy at the College. I felt good about the interview afterwards, and I’m approaching the wait with cautious optimism.
• Wednesday brought along a lot of work to do and a lot of craziness. I got home promptly at 5:37, changed, and by 5:40 I was in the backyard working on tweaking my mechanics to get my velocity up a bit. (LOL.) About 75 pitches later, I go inside and text my friend Sarah, who is, naturally, going to a Riverdogs game and invites me along. Three innings later, I cram into an already overloaded two-door Civic and manage to make it to the ballgame sans breakdown or traffic citation. It was epic. We enter the game in the fourth with the Riverdogs holding a 2-0 lead and Sgt. Slaughter, the ’80s and early ’90s WWE and later G.I. Joe icon signing autographs. Naturally, I blew it bigtime and didn’t get an autograph from him. I do, however, manage to reach 60 on the radar gun. Not only that, the ‘Dogs pulled out a 5-2 win over the Rome Braves. Sweet. I then have some post-game beers at Sarah’s and call it a night around 1:30.
• Thursday was one giant ball of madness. The morning was somewhat reasonable, but the afternoon…yikes. My dad signed my car over to me, so I decided that yesterday would be the day I got the re-registration of the car in order. I go to the DMV on Lockwood with all the stuff I need…except a tax receipt, which meant a trip to The Four Corners of Law to pay the Charleston County Treasurer a visit. I got that straightened out (though they absolutely butchered my name on my tax bill — who the [EXPLETIVE] is Jerad?) and rolled back up to the DMV. I will say this much — I don’t know whether it’s because I went at 4:30 or what, but the DMV seems to have really improved over the years. Getting the registration was actually a pretty painless process and went well. They even had screwdrivers for me to pull my old tags off and put the new ones on. Very cool. However, it’s what happened between drives, with the assault of phone calls from work and from a very persistent telemarketer who was on the voice equivalent of getting on his knees in order to get a sale (he eventually hung up on me, lol) — that’s what made it really stressful. That, and the whole driving downtown in the rain with people who don’t know what they’re doing thing — that also bothers me a bit. But that’s all squared away now. I get home at 5:15 and promptly kick off my shoes and begin working in Photoshop…and that brings us to…

FRIDAY. Thank God. One more day of work and I’ll be free. Tonight I’m seeing an old friend from high school and the plan is to catch a movie and stuff, but I’m kind of hoping she might be persuaded by a ballgame, but we’ll see. Hehe. She’s moving soon, which completely blows, but oh well. Gotta make the best of the time she’s got here.

I’m listening to the symphonic version of Bleeding Me by Metallica now. I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff like that lately — Mark Mancina’s Twister score is fantastic, particularly the track entitled “Cow.” It’s intense, and I always love when a composer mixes in a symphonic arrangement with wailing guitars, and Mancina did that perfectly. I do wish, though, that the portion of the score that segued to “Humans Being” by Van Halen was on this album. That was probably my favorite part of the movie. Twister really is great — I mean, Van Halen and tornadoes, swirled together. Jared bliss, in a nutshell. I should pop in the Twister DVD and watch the end credits before I go to bed, with the clouds in motion and such.

There’s a lot going on. Summer thus far has been quite a wild ride. Don’t think I’d have it any other way.

I think the front came through Charleston at about 1:25 or so, as my weather station’s history indicates a precipitous decline in dewpoint at that time, followed shortly thereafter by a marked decline in temperature. The barometer is beginning to rebound nicely, and today should end up actually quite nice, if not unseasonably cool for this time of year.

I hope everyone made it through whatever storms they got alright. It seems like it could have been a lot worse than it was, but nevertheless, the National Weather Service will be investigating two possible tornado touchdowns in the Lowcountry, including one that flipped a mobile home. Brian Goode also has word that it appears that 13,000 people are without power. Let’s hope those affected can recover quickly.

On a personal note, I was hoping Downtown was going to get some more rain. We sure could have used it, considering all the damn pollen out there.

It’s funny how these storms work out. By the time they’re ready to impact the peninsula, they fall apart. The two main lines of storms passed north and east of here. I didn’t see a thing. There are, however, storms firing behind the squall lines, so it’s not over yet. Right now, at least, all the severe stuff is moving into North Carolina. Seems like we may have dodged a bullet.

Weather Underground has the storm reports compiled from the overnight events into today, if you’re interested.

I’ve got YouTube busy processing a lot of videos that I made from earlier, so you’ll see a lot more of those soon. Here’s a small humor piece.

Photographs to come…

Christmas this year was nice — naturally, I stayed with the family in Goose Creek for the night as is tradition. I was pretty slack in not completing my wrapping until 1am, though, as I was frantically trying to post Christmas messages on as many MySpaces possible — a very Web 2.0 way of caroling (I inevitably missed some people, too…oops!) This year certainly marked the first time I ever awoke on Christmas morning to a tornado warning, though. It could have been a lot worse, though: my hearts go out to the families in Florida whose homes were seriously damaged by the tornadoes that touched down yesterday.

After that bit of excitement and bamboozlement got out of the way, the next struggle was getting my brother to wake up. That took a while, but he was eventually wooed at the idea of cinnamon rolls, etc. Then we opened our gifts — not around the tree, thanks to a new addition to the family (I’ll be getting to that in a few), but rather at the table. It was also the most organized unwrapping of gifts we had ever done, because as soon as something was unwrapped, the wrapping went in the trash — no conglomeration of dead wrapping paper trees or anything like that. This, too, was a consequence of the as-yet-unnamed New Addition to the Family.

So if last year was the Year of Whiz-Bang Gadgetry for Jared’s PC(s), this year was the Year of the Gift Card to Finally Buy New Clothes For The First Time in a Year and a Half. So yeah, I’ll be checking out the Tanger Outlet when things start to calm down a bit. Should be good — yes, it really has been that long. I just don’t wear things out like I used to. I got some other nice, random things that I’ve needed so that’ll be useful. I’m definitely a big fan of utility gifts. One thing I do need to do with some of my Christmas money is buy Anchorman, though. It is a travesty that’s not in my collection yet.

The rest of the day was playing Gears of War on my brother’s Xbox 360, watching Talladega Nights, and falling asleep as Philadelphia embarrassed the Cowboys. Then I went home and cranked Trammell Starks, as no one else was in the house. A good day, to be sure.

I mentioned this “new addition to the family” a couple times. Well, a couple weeks ago my dad — despite his temporary stay in my mother’s doghouse as a result — brought home Holly, a part Siberian husky/yellow lab mix. And, well, she’s adorable, if not quite a handful at the moment (7 weeks!). Yes, there are pictures (click the thumbnails for larger sizes):

So here we are, on the home stretch of 2006. This year went fast. I’ll be finishing up a semi-large Year in Review blog post here soon (it’s in my drafts). Now I need to find out what/if I’m doing anything for New Years’, as this whole sitting alone playing Counterstrike thing like I did last year, well, completely blew.

Another four-TD game for LaDainian Tomlinson to contribute to a 42-point second half brought the Chargers back from a 28-7 deficit to defeat the Bengals 49-41. Utterly amazing. This was the Chargers’ first win this season outside of California, and it was ridiculously wild. A shame I only got to read the recap; I would have loved to see this matchup. How stunned do the Bengals have to be right now?

It’s Carolina vs. Tampa on Monday Night Football — should be interesting. Not going to pick the game. Knowing my luck Carolina will, again, only play half a football game and Tampa will roar back under Gradkowski to win. That, or the Panthers rupture his spleen, too…