The Weather Forecasting Forum

I am currently in Florida visiting some family friends in Vero Beach (namely my son Gabriel is visiting his godmother). Fortunately I have my laptop with me and can do E-mail and support while I'm here. I have caught up on all E-mails that came in while I was travelling.

We took Amtrak from Houston to Orlando, partly because we already had a floating ticket in the system and partly because my wife hates flying. The train picked us up in Houston around 3 pm Tuesday and got us to Orlando at 5 am Thursday -- a 38 hour journey. Fortunately we had a sleeper car. The train got to Houston 4 hours late and by the time it got to Orlando it was 8 hours late... fortunately we were in no hurry. We heard from someone on the train that this route (LA-Orlando) has a 0% on-time rating.

The train's consist, from front to back, was an engine, a cargo car, three sleeper cars, a viewliner car (containing a snack bar on the downstairs level), and three coach cars. All of the cars were two-level; that is, there is an upstairs and a downstairs floor. This contrasts sharply from what I saw riding the BritRail trains in the UK back in 1994. The trains were also very quiet inside and had a good ride (probably because they were made by Bombardier, which makes bullet trains). I think BritRail only exceeds Amtrak in terms of reliable schedules and larger accommodations.

I had my GPS with me, and for the trip we averaged 36 mph when the train was moving. We were stopped a lot, for 5 to 30 minutes each hour or two, as we were on Union Pacific leased lines, and cargo trains often got priority at the sidings. Boring! I noticed that in night in Louisiana and at night in Florida, the train averaged 85 mph on straight stretches... it was going so fast that it was a little difficult to sleep. Maybe I'll post some pics of the train when I get back if anyone is interested.

Anyway...

Please continue to report any bugs with the new Digital Atmosphere Workstation. It is interesting that very few of these turned up last weekend when I was able to fix them, but I ran out of time with our trip date approaching. My plan is to fix all of the new bugs when I return and put out a V1.1a version.

Anyhow I have a batch of unlabelled, unboxed Digital Atmosphere Professional V1.1 discs with me. If anyone is awaiting a Professional CD and wants one of these now in lieu of a regular version, let me know via E-mail. Otherwise when I return home (around the 23rd) I will mail out final releases which will be built with this bug fix. You may choose which one you want.

Tim

Hi Tim,

Well, I'm guessing you're aware that DAWS v1.1 has gone into expired trial mode, thus it's impossible to give you some definitive feedback. But, having said that...one bug that I've noticed that wasn't brought up earlier is with contouring of advection fields. It appears that the CINT function has no effect and the only isopleth that shows up is the CINT=0 contour. Beyond that, I'm getting an "Access violation" error when trying to use the front drawing module. Not sure if this is tied to the "expired" problem or what, because it's not something that was occurring with the beta versions.

Let's see, what else...I wasn't able to get lat/lon labels to plot...those could come in handy with hurricane season upon us. And I know you're already aware of the watches/warnings module request.

That's about all for now, but we can't be of greater help until the "expired" issue is resolved. However, for now, beta version "q" is doing just fine.

Enjoy your vacation and have a safe trip back!

Bob

Have a good time in Florida, Tim and family. Who knows, after this little experience with trains your wife will appreciate the speed of flight a bit more:)

I wrote you an email regarding some things we talked about.

Anyway, I'll talk with you in the forum when you get back home.

Pat

Tim:

Love Vero Beach! Enjoy the family and some of the local restaurants! You are just down the road from me. Come on over for a night on us.

Two annoying items pertaining to scripts.

1. After fronts draw and before the legend appears a "range check error" comes up.

2, After running the scheduler for awhile (1-5 times) after all downloads finish and before plotting begins an "IO32 error" comes up.

Both of these, of course, halt any further automatic action.

AMTRAK is often a pain, but you do get to see the country, if you have the time. Speed isn't everything when vacationing.

Enjoy;

Roy

OK, we are heading home tomorrow morning (via Amtrak again).

I will look at the forum questions/comments more closely when I am back in the "programming chair" later this week. I hope that many of you can help one another while I finish out these last few days of vacation. But I will go through ALL the forum messages when I return. I have answered the E-mail questions that have come in, which I took as being the most urgent support requests.

As far as Digital Atmosphere goes, I will be releasing a minor patch V1.1a when I return, and it will allow a fresh 30-day evaluation.

Tim