Cooperative Ventures, Deux!

Impressed with seeing what we were doing for Bradford County Emergency Management's Facebook page, Gulf County EM contacted us and asked if we could do something similar for their own Facebook page (see).

We are now sending various severe weather AND hurricane-related bulletins to the Gulf County EM Facebook page.

Glad to be able to help! :O)

Dust Settled...

Looks like everything is again working. Web pages show normally. Text and graphics products are again flowing to the web sites. Graphics are again displaying on the web pages. Everything looks good. If anyone notes anything amiss with either the AC-SKYWARN or AC-EMWIN web pages, please let us know. Todd

Pardon Our "Dust"...

Our service provider is changing the server software to a newer version and as a result users of the AC-SKYWARN and AC-EMWIN pages may see some funky things for a little while. Please bear with us. May take a little while to work out some kinks which may pop up.

Cooperative Ventures!

We're now providing severe weather bulletins to Bradford County area users.

In the spirit of public service, we're expanding our services to now provide severe weather bulletins to email and cellphone for Bradford County area users. Sponsored by Alachua County SKYWARN, the Alachua County EMWIN Project, and the Bradford County Office of Emergency Management.

What makes our service different is the customizeability that most other services don't offer, such as the ability to either BLOCK/TRASH bulletins during certain time periods, like say, overnight; or to HOLD bulletins after hours and still send them in the morning anyway if users wish, maybe because they still want to know what happened overnight.

We've already been providing these bulletins to BCEM's Facebook and Twitter pages, too, for quite a while, now.

New AC-EMWIN Server!

We now have a brand new web server!

The Alachua County EMWIN server was switched out with a newer, much faster one this afternoon and y'all didn't even know it! :) Not a beat was missed in the switchover and everything went perfectly and smoothly. In fact, I'm kinda nervous because I'm waiting for Murphy's Law to kick in at any moment. It was as simple as installing all the Windows Updates and then transferring the weather software over to the new machine. Hmm.

The old server was a chugging 1.6 GHz, 32-bit, 256 MB RAM, 20 GB HDD clunker that was completely adequate 8 years ago; but the EMWIN software was getting more complicated as it became continually upgraded over the years and we were starting to experience some occasional drags and lockups. So we went to TigerDirect and for $239 got a refurbished 3.4 GHz, dual core, 64-bit, 2 GB RAM, 400 GB HDD, 8 USB port monster-engined speedster. :) No more dragging or lockups, and everything works SO much faster.

The server serves both Alachua County SKYWARN and Alachua County EMWIN, and sends weather bulletins to email, pager, cellphone, and to listgroups at UF and on Yahoo, as well as to Twitter accounts, and to Facebook accounts - for FREE as a public service.

The old server will remain in inventory as a backup/standby server.

(Yer welcome!)

UPS Replaced

Had to replace the AC-EMWIN system UPS. Past couple days it started acting squirrley. Would have some sort of hiccup which caused it to beep endlessly in one long, unending tone. When I'd go into the room to check, I'd find the red light flashing, and the desktop would be blank - no EMWIN software running.

I'd reset the battery. Red light would keep flashing. I'd turn the battery off and then back on. Wouldn't do anything. Unplugged it for a while. Didn't help, either. Left it alone and restarted the EMWIN software and let it be, to see what would happen.

In subsequent days, same thing would happen. Sometimes, after a while, the battery light would go green again, BUT, I'd find all the EMWIN software unloaded again, and a naked desktop (i.e., just the normal icons and folders, with no programs running), as if the system had been rebooted. Odd.

So, the battery was apparently having some kind of hiccup wherein it would shut down all the software that was running, shut down the computer, and then restart the computer. But in the occasions where it would reboot the computer, there would be no warning. No beep, nothing. AND, mysteriously, you'd find the battery light lit green.

This was not acceptable and obviously the battery was in a non-relilable state so I went out and purchased a new one.

The system is again operating normally.

New AC-EMWIN Facebook/Twitter Feeds

Spent the past week learning new ways to distribute the bulletins to Facebook and Twitter. Experimented and fiddled and finally got things working.

AC-EMWIN is now distributing some limited bulletins to our AC-SKYWARN and AC-EMWIN Facebook and Twitter pages.

We are ALSO distributing bulletins to the Facebook page of our friends at the Bradford County Office of Emergency Management so that their page can benefit from timely weather bulletins, too. Michael Heeder also advises us that he is receiving lots of compliments on the new weather bulletins being fed to the Bradford EM page, and on their timeliness.