Don't start panicking. Despite what some local news organizations are reporting (they've since changed their headline) Bill is still over 3,000 kilometres away and is not yet a real or significant threat to the Maritime Provinces.

Forecasting is 80% science, 15% art, and 5% luck. When the National Hurricane Center releases a forecast path it is more of a guideline than a rule. To create the "official" path they run a series of models against the current data and evaluate the outcomes. Often the majority of models will be grouped together in a cluster and there will be a few wildcards. If this is the case they throw out the wildcards and use the cluster as a consensus and then average them to create the "official path". Often one model will perform more accurately than others for a given circumstance and they'll start to favour that model during their evaluation.

Here is a look at the latest model predictions courtesy of StormPulse.com (great site).

As you can see there are two distinct groupings of models. A group swinging around Bermuda and making a sharp curve to the right and another more gradual swoop bringing the hurricane close to the Maritimes. The forecasters, as noted in the "discussion" are just making educated guesses on it's track past 72 hours from now.

THERE IS A LARGE MODEL SPREAD IN BOTH DIRECTION AND SPEED AFTER 72 HR...WITH THE NOGAPS ON ONE SIDE BRINGING BILL NEAR NEW ENGLAND AND THE CORRECTED CONSENSUS MODELS ON THE OTHER SIDE CALLING FOR A SHARP TURN OUT TO SEA. OVERALL...THE ENVELOPE OF MODEL GUIDANCE HAS SHIFTED A LITTLE TO THE WEST...SO THE NEW OFFICIAL FORECAST WILL DO LIKEWISE. THE NEW FORECAST TRACK IS NEAR THE MODEL CONSENSUS AND THE MIDDLE OF THE GUIDANCE ENVELOPE. -- FORECASTER BEVEN

So what does this mean for those of us who live in the Maritimes? Not much yet. We've been in this position many times before. Sometimes we get hit, most times we don't. If we do get hit it's often petered out by the time it reaches us this far north.

So don't panic but please stay tuned.

It's still a long way off but initial reports have Hurricane Bill aiming in the general direction of the Canadian Maritime provinces. Stay tuned. I'll keep you in the loop.

On August 11, 1999 a bunch of piss-and-vinegar filled nineteen and twenty year olds incorporated a company. We called it silverorange.

Yesterday both the Prince Edward Island CBC and the Charlottetown Guardian reported on a near-drowning incident of an older man. In both of their reports they said that a few teens who aided in the rescue were:

The teen youth were suffering from nervous exhaustion. - The Guardian

The three teenagers who tried to help the man in the water were also taken to hospital. They were being observed for signs of nervous exhaustion. - CBC PEI

I had never heard of "nervous exhaustion" so I looked it up. It's medically called neurasthenia. A few interesting points about it:

• Coined in 1869 by George Miller Beard
• Beard believed the condition was brought on by "excessive masturbation"
• No longer an acceptable diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association
• It was nick named "Americanitis"
• It is a chronic stress thought to be brought on by the stress of urban life and: "Typically, it was associated with upper class individuals in sedentary employment."

I think what the Guardian and CBC were probably trying to say was that the teens were being monitored for Acute Stress Reaction. It was probably the excessive masturbation that threw off the teen's diagnosis...

Here at silverorange we have two naming schemes for our servers/public computers. Our servers follow a citrus theme (Ruby, Pomelo, Rind, Mandarin, Blood, etc). Any MacOS computers owned by the company follow a similar apple based scheme (Cortland, Gala).

Most of us at silverorange have followed suit and have taken on a naming scheme for our personal computers. The schemes are as varied as the people:

• Nathan - Rocky and Bullwinkle characters.
• Steven - Guitar equipment brands (i.e. Fender, Marshall, Gibson).
• Isaac - Greek Gods (OS X), Roman Gods (Windows). Attempts to match computer use to god's purview, and uses matching gods on dual boot systems.
• Dan (me) - Significant mountains (i.e. Everest)
• Mike - Space missions (any nationality).
• Nick - Mushroom related. (i.e. portabella)
• CharlesP - Comic book characters that take into consideration processing power and capacity. ( i.e. Superman is a much faster computer than Spider-Man).
• CharlesW - Names non-work servers after planets from Dune.
• Keith - A focus on popular TV, movie, or video game characters. (i.e. venkman, strangelove, staypuft, sydney, elvira, vohaul, venus [from WKRP], zissou)
• Stephen - Weird Al Yankovic related names.

Feel free to add yours to the list.