If you ski in the Midwest, you’d surely know the term “death cookie.” A death cookie is a fun little part of skiing that can be pretty painful.
A death cookie is simply a chunk of hard snow made, usually, my snow-making equipment. They can usually be seen early-season, but after a few weeks of natural snow on top of the man-made stuff, death cookies can become incognito.
An undercover death cookie caught me the other day. I was skiing along at Spirit Mountain, enjoying 6″ of fresh snow on the side of a run. I know that there are death cookies just beneath the surface, so I took it easy and played it closer to the run; this way any death cookies could of been chewed up by a groomer. Well, one wasn’t, and I toed into it, clicked out, and it tossed me on the ground Take a look at the picture below and you’ll see what I mean.
If you ski a little off the groomed path, be aware of their existence until later in the season when they are completely covered. Start seeing death cookies.
(click to make big)
You will be assimilated.
Sincerely,
Research in Motion*
* makers of the Blackberry
As a skier, I’m always waiting for fresh snow. When there’s snow in the forecast, I’m always happier in spirit. When it’s snowing, I’m pretty much on cloud nine. And one thing that I’ve always wanted is to track a snowstorm, say “screw everything else,” and go ski some fresh snow. Of course, there’s tons of limiting factors to making storm tracking happen: work and living in the Midwest. Due to whatever factors (El Nino, Global Warming, just being terribly unlucky), the Midwest doesn’t get nuked with snow like it used to back in the 1990s. And when it does, I’m never around the area (last year when we got about 30″ cumulative in about three days, I was out of town for work). So I sit and pretend that
one day it’s really going to happen.
Since my job is very sedentary and I spend most of my days at work sitting in front of a computer, I’ve managed to get a good grasp on storm tracking with the computer. Although certainely the easiest and most viable tool to anyone to track a snowstorm, it’s really my only tool. The other tool is your phone and/or Blackberry. So I’ve compiled a small list of valuable tools located on your computer and/or Blackberry, I call “My guide to tracking a storm, Midwest style:”
- The Front Line: The local news is the first line of alert to snowstorms. You might not always be at a computer, and if you are (like me, yaay!), you might not always have your web browser pointed at Weather.com or NOAA. The best way to get near-real-time alert of an oncoming storm is to sign up for email alerts from your local news stations. You can do so by going to your local news paper’s website. I’m signed up to both our local papers, The Duluth News Tribune and The Superior Telegram. Most news paper companies and news channels offer alert services in your area, just dig around a bit
- News & weather alerts, the Blackberry EMAIL way: if you have a Blackberry, you should send these emails to your email address you have configured on you Blackberry. And when you sign up for the news alerts, select “Text Format” if it’s available…even if you can receive HTML-formatted emails on your Blackberry, text emails always come through nicer and easier to read, so you get the skinny faster. Lastly, if you have Gmail (or another IMAP-enabled email address) configured, you’ll get the alerts instantly, otherwise you’ll have to wait 15 minutes for it to get pushed to your device.
- Weather alerts, the ultra-easy Blackberry way: Obviously Blackberries kick ass. So what you can do to get notified the second weather alerts get issued, is to install WeatherBug Direct for Blackberry. This application installs on your home screen, and displays the temperature for any area you want to configure it for. If you select your home town–or, more precisely, the area the ski resort is in–you can also pick from a variety of personal weather stations. Pick the weather station closest to the ski resort you want to watch for weather alerts. I have Lutsen picked, currently.
When weather alerts of any sort get issued, WeatherBug direct receive the info and displays a little flashing red icon on your home screen. Click the icon and it displays the weather alert. You can configure it for all types of weather alerts (thunderstorm warnings, flood warnings, snow warnings, etc), but for the sake of snow storm tracking, configure it for “snow warning.” You can also configure WeatherBug Direct to vibrate your Blackberry, make some noises, or a combination of both to alert you when weather alerts occur.
- Getting the details: When you find out there’s weather coming, you’ll need to start digging. Depending on where you live in the Midwest, snowstorms can be highly volitile. Where I live, Lake Superior either improves or completely messes up snow storms (usually the latter). So it’s imperative for me to get on weather sites and see where the storm is going:
- NOAA.gov: This is where all weather info comes from. When you see weather on other sites, it’s coming from here. So go to the source. The NOAA’s web site is a little clunky, so you’ll have be careful what you’re searching for. Here’s an example of a weather report from Lutsen, MN: http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Lutsen&state=MN&site=DLH&textField1=47.6369&textField2=-90.7108&e=0
You can sometimes get even more detailed information about the particular area you want to monitor for snow by looking in the “Detailed Point Forecast” box on this page. On this map, you can use your mouse and click an area. If there’s a more accurate weather station in the area (or nearby) the page will be changed to reflect this new weather station’s data. Be sure to book mark this site once you highlight an area on this map, as the URL will change from whatever you may have searched for above.
For example, the first URL above for Lutsen, MN changes when I click directly on “Moose Mountain” on the map (Moose Mountain is the biggest mountain at Lutsen). The URL is now: http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=47.660762874112834&lon=-90.736083984375&site=dlh&smap=1&marine=1&unit=0&lg=en. Unfortuantely, the weather station doesn’t change (it’s the bay of Grand Marais’ weather station) in this example.
Here’s the URL for Mount Bohemia, but the weather data is from Copper Harbor, MI (11 miles north): http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=47.38440370312246&lon=-88.01971435546875&site=mqt&smap=1&marine=1&unit=0&lg=en
- Wunderground.com: Probably the best weather website out there. It combines NOAA data, it’s own weather station data, and personal users’ weather stations to provide the most current weather data. It’s also the least intrusive with ads and pop-ups (Weather.com is horrid for this). You can completely customize Wunderground as well by signing up for an account and saving the locations you want to track as favorites.
A search for Lutsen, MN (using our above example again) brings up this report: http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=lutsen,%20mn&wuSelect=WEATHER. Wunderground uses a technology called “RapidFire” to refresh the data on this page without refreshing the *entire* page, so you’ll always have the most current data. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see “Weather stations.” This lists weather stations in and around the area you’re looking for. Depending on what kind of weather station, you can get everything…current temperature, wind speed, and even snowfall totals. You can find a weather station closest to where you want to track weather (in this case, Schroeder is the closest to Lutsen), and click it. It will display the same data as the search above, only for this weather station. You can also find XML feeds as well to drop in your XML reader (such as Google Reader) to have the most recent data delivered to your desktop or Blackberry.
- Get the no-lie skinny: When you’re certain theres going to be some weather coming, its time to get all Sherlock Homes and find out if it’s the storm you’re looking for (that means pow-pow). To do this, pay attention to the storm’s progress with these websites/techniques:
- NOAA.gov radar: You should probably know how to read a radar. So pull up the weather radar for the area you want to watch and pay attention. The best ones to get are the animated ones. You can get them from the links on the NOAA.gov or Wunderground’s detailed forecast for the areas you search for in step #2 above. I prefer Wunderground’s because it’s a little bit easier to read. Look for increases in wind speed, precepitation, and if you’re lucky, accumulation.
- Get local: Find weather stations in your area of interest (use Wunderground.com above), or Google your area of interest for personal blogs or webcams. Surpisingly, there aren’t much weather stations around Lutsen. Nor are there any personal blogs, forums, or web cams. So we’ll switch from the Lutsen, MN example we’ve been using, to tracking snow in Michigan’s Upper Pennisula (the “UP”), which is where Mount Bohemia is located at.
- NOAA & Wunderground’s website has many hidden gems for finding out local details, such as this user-posted observations for Lutsen, MN. Also, you can find web cams on Wunderground that may be nearby your location you want to montior. And just as a final example, here’s some web cams from NOAA for the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. Obviously, this isn’t in the Midwest and won’t help anyone tracking storms around the area, but it’s just an example of how much data is hidden around NOAA’s website.
NOAA also had a rudimentary snowfall montioring tool, located here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/snow/recent.html. You can drill down for certain areas as well, such as Minnesota or Michigan.
- JohnDee.com & his North Camera network. John Dee is a local radio announcer and weather man. He does his own little weather-cast on his website, as well as setting up the “North Camera Network” (”NCN”). Here you can find tons of web cams for the area you want to monitor. For Bohemia, I pay particular close attention to Mohawk’s webcam, and Lac La Belle’s webcam. Lac La Belle’s web cam actually looks *right at* the front side of Mount Bohemia, which is rad. The place that hosts the Lac La Belle web cam has awesome food, and cheap beer, FYI. It’s also a very cool little lodge. Check it out, and then tell them “thanks” for hosting the camera if you use it.
- Use Google, because there’s tons of stuff yet to be discovered, such as this little graphic that shows snowfall totals for the Midwest, or this user-input report on NOAA. Just dig around until you find what resource best works for you, provides you the best data, and then bookmark it so you don’t lose it.
- Use the state DNR. The stewards of the state forest also provide some basic weather data. Check out your DNR’s website, for instance, here’s the DNR’s weather report for Ely, MN, north of Lutsen, MN.
- Forums is the other resource I use. There’s no real tips here to using the forums, but to look around. A lot of times, you’ll see threads about the conditions for a specific locale, or if you want to risk it, ask in a new thread. I rely on TGR’s forums. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself so I don’t send too many people there and get in trouble ;)
- The resort’s website. It’s only as good as the resort itself. Lutsen and Spirit Mountain are horrible for updating their web site with new condition reports, but check anyway. Also remember, that if they *do* update their website, it’s the RESORT that’s reporting it. Which means “6 inches” on their website could really be 3 inches blown around and piled up in spots that total just close to 6″. Take it with a grain of salt. Obviously, if they say “12 inches” on their website, who gives a crap if they are bloating the numbers a bit, because 12″ might only be 10″, but 10″ is still worth calling in sick for at this point in my life.
Mount Bohemia’s snow report (direct)
Lutsen’s snow report (direct)
Spirit Mountain’s snow report (direct)
Another thing to do is install the application called “WebMon” and put these links in there. Webmon checks the links you put in for changes in the content (you can specify how often to check), and then displays an alert on your desktop when the sites change.
- Use OnTheSnow.com’s snow reports. These snow reports are updated by the resort staff, and it will show the time they last updated their snow report (here’s Minnesota’s snow report, for example.) Again, this is only reliable as the resort is, but I’ve found where the resorts will update OnTheSnow and NOT update their own website.
- Call the resort. As a last-ditch effort to get local, call the resort. They’ll probably be pissed if you call right away in morning, but screw ‘em…that’s their job. Get a hold of the ticketing office and ask whoever for a “no lie” report on how much snow. Lutsen’s ticket attendants are usually pretty honest.
- Keep on top of it: There’s no real tool to do this, except stay on top of the developing situation. Refresh web sites, forums, and web cams. Pull up the web cam on your Blackberry if you’re on the go. Watch the radar, too, as it’s a good indicator on if it’s going off. When I know there’s a storm raring for Lutsen, I check the weather one more time before bed, then set my alarm 1.5 hours earlier than I normally would (seriously). When my alarm goes off, I check all the websites at that time. If Lutsen got pounded, I proceed to step #5, below, and then jump in my car for the 1.5 hour drive. If they didn’t, it’s no big deal…I just go to bed until my original alarm goes off.
- Develop your excuse for work or your loved ones: If I wake up in step #4 above and find out that there’s freshies, I need to come up with an excuse while I warm the car, flag down buddies to ride with, and then get ready (screw showering!). My favorites include:
- Faking sick, such as eating some bad chinese the night before. Sorry, China, it’s a powder day. I don’t recommend using this one very often because you’ll get into the “crying wolf” thing and no one will believe you. Plus, I do feel guilty when I call in sick.
- Fake a forgotten appointment. This one I would do more often because I use regular leave and not my sick leave. Then I don’t feel so guilty because I’m not “cheating.”
- Just tell the truth. My bosses and co-workers know that I’m a skier, so I use this one the most. It’s a morale thing, they realize. Half the time, if it snows a lot around work and not at the resort and I come in, they ask me why I came in when there’s “all this snow out.” When you tell the truth, you cantake your own leave, and no one is cheating, just kind of ducking out and letting people down, maybe. But it *is* a Midwest powder day.
I’m always looking for a way to expand my knowledge
OK, maybe it won’t save your life, but it will save you some space. I rarely post HOWTOs since most of them I get from teh Googles. But, this one I figured out for myself. These are the exact steps I use any time a new OS comes out for my Blackberry, or I just want to start over from scratch because I played around with my Pearl too much.
Prerequisites:
- UPDATED: Make sure you have the latest version of Desktop Manager (I have 4.7). You can get the latest one here, from your computer: https://www.blackberry.com/Downloads/browseSoftware.do, and select Desktop Manager from the list. You can also go to your cell provider’s site and download the latest version (for instance, Verizon’s is at: http://vzw.smithmicro.com/blackberry). You need at least version 4.3. You’ll probably have to provide some demographic information about yourself before you can download it.
- UPDATED: Get OS version 4.5. Since OSes are carrier-dependent, you’ll need to get on your computer and go to your cell provider’s site and browse for your Blackberry downloads (Verizon, my provider, is located here: http://vzw.smithmicro.com/blackberry) . Get the 4.5 OS download and save it to your computer.
Steps:
- Check your OS version. To do this, on your Pearl go to “Options->About.” Jot down your OS version & platform version to ensure you make the upgrade stick. You’ll probably want to start from at least OS 4.3.x.x, I don’t know how it will work with anything prior to 4.3.
- Check how much free space you have. This step is just to show you how much space you’ll gain. In the end, I saved 7MB. That’s pretty ridiculous. To get your memory usage, again on your Pearl go to “Options” but this time go to “Status”. A few lines done you’ll see File Free and File Total. “File Total” is how much room is on your Pearl, while “File Free” is obviously how much space you have free. It’s a long number, but write down all the digits anyway.
- UPDATED: Upgrade Desktop Manager to 4.7 (if required). If you don’t have Desktop Manager version 4.5, run the setup program for the Desktop Manager software you downloaded in the prerequisite #1 above. Just follow the on-screen prompts.
- Run a backup of your Pearl. This step is crucial. To do this, plug in your Blackberry to your computer via the USB (don’t do it over Bluetooth). Run Desktop Manager and click the Backup and Restore button. Click the Backup button, and it will ask you where to save the backup file. Put it in a place you’ll remember in case bad stuff happens (rarely does this occur, but you never know). Disconnect the Pearl when the backup is done.
- Install the 4.5 upgrade on your PC. After updating to Desktop Manager 4.7, install the 4.5 update you got from your cell provider in the Prerequisites above.
- NEW STEP: Perform a full wipe of your Pearl. I perform a full wipe of my Blackberry after doing a full backup. This is just because I’m anal and like a fresh start (who doesn’t?) To perform a wipe of your Blackberry, go to Options -> Security Options -> General Settings. Hit the Blackberry key, and select Wipe handheld from the menu. You will be prompted to continue, make sure you check the box Include third party applications so it gets rid of *everything.* You can reinstall these applications later, using my list of favorite applications if you want, located here: http://drunkencomputing.com/?p=310. You will have to type in the word blackberry to continue with the wipe, just to make sure you wanna continue.
- UPDATED: Fire up the 4.5 upgrade. Get ready to live! Open up Desktop Manager on your PC and connect your Blackberry via USB. Desktop Manager should then prompt you to perform an update of your Blackberry. If the Desktop Manager doesn’t automatically prompt you to perform an upgrade (it should), just click Application Loader. From the submenu, hit the Start button under Update Applications. The upgrade will begin.
- Get yourself a cold one. At this point, it’s between you and God as to what happens. I’ve never had a Blackberry upgrade crap out on me (and I’ve done upgrades more times than any normal Blackberry user has, thanks career!), but there is a first time for everything. While you’re enjoying your beer, don’t freak if you see the device reboot and appear to startup or hang for a few minutes. Also, don’t freak if you see the Desktop Manager just sitting there waiting to say “Connecting to Device” and it appears that it never will. You need to give it—no shit—like 30 minutes for the whole shebang to be over.
- Check your OS. You probably should have finished not one, but maybe even two beers by the time the whole OS upgrade is done. Once it’s all back and the Blackberry is just sitting there, repeat step #1 above to check your OS version. It should now read “4.5.x.xxx” with a new platform number. Compare this to the version number you wrote down in step #1. If it’s different, you’re awesome.
- NEW STEP: Push your service books and update your phone. This step is carrier-dependant, but for Verzion wireless this involves a couple easy procedures. For VERIZON, first, dial *22899 from your Blackberry. Your device should prompt you to turn on the radio, so do so. You’ll hear some music and an automated voice saying that your phone is being programmed. This updates your roaming capabilities and adds any new features to your phone that might have changed from when you activated it (for instance, at the time of this post, Verizon has unlocked the GPS in the Pearls and Curves! Doing a *228 downloads all the new information such as this). This step also updates your roaming capabilities.After the phone prompts you that “your phone has been successfully programmed” and a message appears saying Your phone has been successfully activated, go back to your PC and navigate to http://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=vzw (again, for Verizon customers). Login with the account information you created when you initially setup your Blackbery. Click on the Service Books link on the left side menu, then click the Send Service Books button. This resends all your configured services for your Blackberry, such as email accounts and any push services, like weather or news (from Blackberry Web Signals).This whole process of step #10 may be unnecessary as you may notice emails showing up on your device before you get this far, but it’s always good to be thorough. :)
- Backup again (recommended, but not required). I recommend you maybe run another backup of your device at this point, in case the next step has some adverse effects you don’t enjoy. You can always restore the backup from step #4 above, too, but better safe than sorry.
- Get MaxMem, from BerryCoder. On your phone, go to: http://berrycoder.com and hit the link for MaxMem. Follow the onscreen prompts.
- UPDATED: Free up some memory with MaxMem. Once you’ve installed MaxMem on your Pearl, launch the application. You’ll see a bunch of options to remove stuff. You can remove as many of these as you want. A detailed explanation of each:
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- Remove VAD: VAD is “Voice-Activated Dialing” and is only useful if you use a hands-free device and dial with it (such as a Bluetooth headset). You can remove VAD and still use a Bluetooth headset, but you’ll only be able to answer the phone. Select Remove VAD if you don’t use any hands-free (like me, it’s for sailors), or if you are a man and can hit a number from the address book on your Pearl with your eyes closed, and have it route up to your hands-free device.
- Remove PTT: This gets rid of the “Push To Talk” function of phones. If you don’t know what it is, hit the button. If you don’t use it, again, hit the button. NOTE: This won’t remove anything on a Verizon phone.
- Remove T-Mo Fives: This removes the Top Five screens on your T-Mobile phone. If you don’t want it, delete it. NOTE: This won’t remove anything on a Verizon phone.
- Remove MDS: Hit this button no matter what, unless you use your Pearl on a corporate email system (such as at work). If you’re using a Pearl for corporate messaging, you’re an idiot too, FYI. Get the Curve and save yourself some finger cramping.
- Remove Media: Hit this button to get rid of default pictures and videos your Pearl, unless you use one of the hideous pictures that came with the phone as your background.
- Remove Default Themes: If you still use the default Pearl theme, you can hit this button with no worries. However, if you’ve installed your own theme (you go, girl!), you might not want to remove this stuff. You can hit the button and remove only selected themes, but you have to pay attention to what pops on screen. For instance, if you hit the Remove Themes button, it will ask you to delete a “…Zen…” theme. Deleting this will make any “Zen”-like themes you may have installed not work. You can say “No” to delete the “…Zen…” theme when prompted, and your Zen-based themes will work. The same goes for the “…Today…” theme as well. Don’t delete it if you have any “Today”-based themes.
- Remove TID: DON’T hit this one. You’ll essentially neuter your Blackberry’s awesome TrueType capabilities.
- Remove Foreign Resources: Go ahead and hit this one if you use English.
- Remove RIM Internal Tools: This one is up to you. See MaxMem notes below before proceeding with this one, however.
- NEW: MaxMem notes: Be careful what you remove from your Blackberry with MaxMem. Start out light, removing stuff you know you can lose (like VAD, themes you don’t use, and the default media). Removing too much stuff has caused problem for me on my device, such as mobile websites not being able to recognize my device as an 8130. My recommendation is to only use MaxMem to remove stuff you *know* you don’t need. Removing too much stuff makes it a pain to put them back on, as you have to reload the OS from the desktop again to restore these internal applications.
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Reboot and reap the rewards. Close MaxMem when you’re all done removing the stuff from above. When MaxMem is closed, yoink the battery out of the back of your Pearl, let it sit for a few seconds, then plug it back in. Let the device power up, then follow the step #2, above. You should see that the “File Free” number has gone up again. I was at 14,909,360 after the 4.5 upgrade. After running MaxMem and rebooting, I went to 20,098,312…or a little more than 20MB. That’s an overall saving of 7MB, which is a big deal.
- NEW OPTIONAL: Remove MaxMem: Hey, you’re trying to free up space right? So why not delete the application you used to free up space? :) This is found in Options -> Advanced Options -> Applications. Highlight the MaxMem application, hit the Blackberry button, and select Delete.
You’re good to go. You should also be seeing some additional speed increases as well with your Blackberry. You’re welcome for that, too. Now enjoy!
One more note, if you plug in your Blackberry to your desktop and run Desktop Manager again, it may say that it wants to update your phone again. This is because it will see the stuff you deleted with MaxMem is gone, and it will attempt to reload it. Just cancel the update if it appears in Desktop Manager. Likewise, you can just do this “update” with Desktop Manager if you end up uninstalling anything from your device you didn’t want to.
Just like this picture proves, I can’t live without Google. Please note, GrandCentral is a voicemail system owned by Gooogle too :)
Click for big.
