Tony's Blogbach, Between the Isobars

Remember this?  Nah, probably not… this was a feature in my older sites where I would change the icon site-wide to reflect my chase potential, which was often updated on a per-day basis… well, if you look over to the right side of the screen, you notice there’s a 10-Day chase outlook.  Inspired by the old one-icon look, I created a much more modern version that shows my next 10 days chasing potential.  I’ve been stewing over such an idea for a while, but didn’t want to simply write a code to switch an icon, and this was the version I came up with.  Right now, 10 days may be shrunk to a week, or even five days pending my thoughts as I use it, but it was coded to auto update each day, so it would slide up the outlooks to the current day and fill in the final day with a default, meaning I don’t have to update all ten days every single day, and when it’s quiet, I can just leave it alone.  So that’s a fun process.  We’ll see if it sticks, but right now, I am going to test drive it seeing as I have an active stretch coming this week.  More on that in another entry 🙂

YAY!  Success!  Not sure what the turn-around time would’ve been for a straight-up repair, but my work-around to just return the original purchase back to B&H paid off; certainly faster than the alternate, which would’ve seen me send the camera back on MONDAY, and likely still would be in transit back to Nikon, so the fact that I have the new body in hand today (Thursday), and it is NOT part of the recall, means that I absolutely made the right call.  I feel a bit bad, cause most photogs would agree, B&H is one of the best places to buy camera gear, and this certainly was NOT their fault, but in the end, it saved me weeks of NOT having this camera, which likely meant this initial stint that may begin as early as next week would’ve been done without my new upgrade.  But B&H was awesome, as always, and thus I can quickly put this behind me well ahead of where I would’ve been had I gone the Nikon recall route.  Just happy my idea worked, and I can quickly put that issue to bed!

Welp, the YouTube launch happens on Friday!  At 6:30pm, the first NEW video of the NEW rebrand premieres!  It’ll be the first time ever online I have detailed out my first chase and first tornado all the way back in 1997.  It was the chase/tornado that started this whole thing I’ve been doing for the last 30 seasons.  I poured a lot of time and ‘research’ into this; and by research, I mean digging through old tubs and boxes to find everything I still had in existence from that era.  That includes an old high school “time capsule” video I took, literally ONE WEEK before the tornado chase.  That’s so cool to me that video was shot when it was cause it just gives the video such an era.  The photos, including some from waaay back, plus some cover video I had to do, including radar and a very nifty TWC call-back to the late 90s.  I’m very proud of it, and it’s a perfect way to launch to the channel.  Meanwhile, I am going to go live on Facebook about 30 minutes prior to the launch to chat and generate a little buzz.  I am not expecting a big turn out, probably my mom and my aunt honestly haha I don’t have a huge captive audience, but you never know.  I don’t really care, I am just excited to have this going.  Even have a couple other VLOGs and chase stories in the can, ready for the every-other-Friday upload schedule.  The Fridays between are reserved for low-lift, more short-form type stuff; one of those things being called Storm Chase minis where I talk about an event that doesn’t deserve or need a full chase log, but may have happened on a chase that’s pretty cool.  Other ideas are behind-the-scenes type stuff, coverage of a certain event, maybe talking about non-storm-chase stuff like blizzards or hurricanes, etc.  Easy lifts, basically, that don’t require hours of investment to create.  I mean, hell, I got 30 seasons worth of stuff, plenty to keep the channel on at least a once a week schedule.

But that all said, if you have stumbled your way in here prior to Friday the 27th and you don’t have anything better to do Friday evening, drop in, say hi, and waste about 13 minutes of your life listening to me talk about my origin.  Yes, this is my origin story haha

If you’ve followed me for a long period of time, you know I compare chase season to football season; with March being the pre-season chsaes, April through June the regular season, the summer into early fall the post-season, and the winter the off-season.  If you believe the long-range models, the regular season may have a formidable kickoff.  Still 7-10 days out, but the general consensus among the longer-range models indicates a pattern change that’ll bump us from this stagnate, hot pattern we’re currently in.  There’s a small area outlooked for this coming Thursday, but right now that’s got all the makings of a crashing cold front event, so I am not particularly interested in that.  Figure I can squeeze in whatever down time I can here at home before we get rolling in April, as that period looks like it could be a decent stint.  The Nikon exchange I wrote about last week, my camera body arrived today for the exchange, so I am hopeful that gets processed and a new, NON-glitchy body gets sent out in the next day or so.  Obviously I would LOVE to have that in hand and set up ahead of whatever next week has in store.

Also worth a note that I have finished the edits of my first upload on my new rebranded YouTube Channel!  I am super excited to post this video this upcoming Friday; it covers the story about my first ever storm chase and tornado back in 1997!  As part of my 30th Season Celebration, I have had a variety of projects I have been working on in my off time, and the rebranded YouTube was one of those.  I recently cleaned up the channel, taking down a lot of the old stuff, and am prepping the site for a more structured channel.  This video will kick off that structure, and not a better way to do it than with the first chase and the story behind how it all came to be.  I am SUPER proud of what this looks like; and other than a few small polishes here and there, she’s ready to go.  I may do a Facebook live stream during the premiere, which will happen at 6:30pm MDT, so I may stream for an hour to celebrate it.  I don’t have a massive following and it’s on a Friday, so I won’t be expecting a huge turn out, but I am doing this more for me to scratch a bunch of itches I have developed over the last couple years regarding how to archive my career.  Season 30 seemed like a solid place to kick all that off.

That all said, I am going to get back to work… I took a ‘lunch break’, and wanted to put some words to paper while they were sloshing around in my melon.  Now that I’ve done that, I need to point my melon back to it!  Peace!

Not exactly the news I wanted to start my week with, but alas, so it goes.  Nikon sent out this advisory earlier this week, and wouldn’t you know it, my month-old Nikon Z6 III was part of the advisory.  When I called Nikon to inquiry about turn-around time, not only did they NOT have that info (depends on how many repairs they get), they were not even beginning the return process until this coming Monday, basically a whole week before I could send it back.  Fortunately, as fortunate can be in this situation, I was within my return window at B&H where I bought the camera, and they are taking my return and will send me a new one.  HOPEFULLY it isn’t also affected by the issue, in which case I will solve the problem much faster, almost before Nikon would even get my camera to begin with.  And if it turns out the body I get swapped is also part of the advisory, then I may have to deal with whatever turn around Nikon has.  But rest assured, I will not be quiet about it haha

But, at least it’s well timed?  I mean, this would suck going into May.  I mean, if I am still stuck with a swap, I suppose I could ride out the camera as long as possible, then send it in for its repair AFTER the season… I dunno, one step at a time.  Hopefully, if everything goes well, I should be able to get the replacement body in hand by end of next week, which should be BEFORE the next system starts to come into the picture.  Right now, the rest of March looks pretty quiet, and HOT… like seriously, 90 degrees in Denver on Saturday (March 21).  This is typically the SNOWIEST month in Denver, and it will be nowhere close to that.  In fact, I see virtually NO chance for lower-elevation snow anywhere in the long-range, let alone March.  And it certainly ain’t gonna do it while we’re sitting in the 80s and pushing 90, which despite the cool front coming in late weekend, may try for AGAIN middle of next week.  WTH…

That’s really about it… weird to say DOWNTIME at this point in March, but that busy stretch there for a couple weeks felt more like a mid-April stint than March.  But regardless, looks like wheels down through next week.