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Wow, I've been waiting for this topic to show up for, what, six years now? :)

What you want is a Davis Instruments station. These stations hook up, via serial cable, to any PC. If you're running some form of *nix, I highly recommend the Device::WxM2 Perl module. I've written various collection daemons that use WxM2 to pull weather data from the station and store it in RRD format or in a PostgreSQL database. I even wrote an AGI script that allows people calling my Asterisk PBX to hear the latest weather data. I also wrote a handy widget for Konfabulator that lets you watch the weather on your Mac/PC desktop in real-time.

Shameless plug: if you decide that the Davis station is right for you, stop by my employer's website, where we have a variety of Davis Instruments choices.

One word of advice: we sell cheaper stations than the Davis models but if you are planning on putting this up on a roof and leaving it for 5+ years, you really want to go with a quality peice of equipment, not a Radio Shack toy that will disintegrate after a year in the sun.

Questions? Ask and I'll be glad to answer.

Chris

BTW, speaking as a dog trainer and having worked in kennels for many years the very BEST guard dog in the world is a Chesapeak Bay Retriever. They are gentle and loyal with the elderly and children but make the best, most intelligent guard dogs there is. A Chessie is NOT afraid to knock a perp over and stand on them snarling in there face and only bite if necessarly till help arrives without any training in protection work.
Also, they love to "be tough" without actually being mean.

Couldn't agree with you more (see my .sig). They can be crazy
and they can be high energy but they can also be chill and sweet.

The only problem with Chessies is that they are not suited to everybody. As I'm sure you know, they can also be food-protective and their wariness of strangers can lead to problems. A dog that attacks burglars is good but I've also had mine charge at neighbors who are walking down the sidewalk. You have to assert your dominance if you're going to own a chessie.

BTW, speaking as a dog trainer and having worked in kennels for many years the very BEST guard dog in the world is a Chesapeak Bay Retriever. They are gentle and loyal with the elderly and children but make the best, most intelligent guard dogs there is. A Chessie is NOT afraid to knock a perp over and stand on them snarling in there face and only bite if necessarly till help arrives without any training in protection work.
Also, they love to "be tough" without actually being mean.

Couldn't agree with you more (see my .sig). They can be crazy
and they can be high energy but they can also be chill and sweet.

The only problem with Chessies is that they are not suited to everybody. As I'm sure you know, they can also be food-protective and their wariness of strangers can lead to problems. A dog that attacks burglars is good but I've also had mine charge at neighbors who are walking down the sidewalk. You have to assert your dominance if you're going to own a chessie.

BTW, speaking as a dog trainer and having worked in kennels for many years the very BEST guard dog in the world is a Chesapeak Bay Retriever. They are gentle and loyal with the elderly and children but make the best, most intelligent guard dogs there is. A Chessie is NOT afraid to knock a perp over and stand on them snarling in there face and only bite if necessarly till help arrives without any training in protection work.
Also, they love to "be tough" without actually being mean.

Couldn't agree with you more (see my .sig). They can be crazy
and they can be high energy but they can also be chill and sweet.

The only problem with Chessies is that they are not suited to everybody. As I'm sure you know, they can also be food-protective and their wariness of strangers can lead to problems. A dog that attacks burglars is good but I've also had mine charge at neighbors who are walking down the sidewalk. You have to assert your dominance if you're going to own a chessie.

BTW, speaking as a dog trainer and having worked in kennels for many years the very BEST guard dog in the world is a Chesapeak Bay Retriever. They are gentle and loyal with the elderly and children but make the best, most intelligent guard dogs there is. A Chessie is NOT afraid to knock a perp over and stand on them snarling in there face and only bite if necessarly till help arrives without any training in protection work.
Also, they love to "be tough" without actually being mean.

Couldn't agree with you more (see my .sig). They can be crazy
and they can be high energy but they can also be chill and sweet.

The only problem with Chessies is that they are not suited to everybody. As I'm sure you know, they can also be food-protective and their wariness of strangers can lead to problems. A dog that attacks burglars is good but I've also had mine charge at neighbors who are walking down the sidewalk. You have to assert your dominance if you're going to own a chessie.

First, this is not your fault (unless you're on the XP development team), but the slide show that Windows builds SUCKS SHIT. Whose brilliant idea was it to make the "Next Image" link tiny, and bury it in a sidebar with an assload of other text, way up on the upper left? What's wrong with large, friendly navigation buttons just under the picture-- you know, where the eye will be naturally drawn to them? And what's with the useless info in the sidebar? Nobody's friends will EVER be looking at vacation pictures and go, "Gee, if only I know what focal length and exposure time was used when this photo was taken, I could enjoy it so much more. Oh, well."

Second, would it have killed you to caption these, so I know what I'm looking at when it's not obvious? Like, what was up with this shot, where it looks like road was once passable but the rock has bulged out to block it?

Third, the picture of the "Lamers" bus has soooooo been done. A a photo of you pissing on Ralph Lauren's fence would have been original and funny.

Finally, it's illegal to smuggle Tic Tacs into the state of Colorado!

First, this is not your fault (unless you're on the XP development team), but the slide show that Windows builds SUCKS SHIT. Whose brilliant idea was it to make the "Next Image" link tiny, and bury it in a sidebar with an assload of other text, way up on the upper left? What's wrong with large, friendly navigation buttons just under the picture-- you know, where the eye will be naturally drawn to them? And what's with the useless info in the sidebar? Nobody's friends will EVER be looking at vacation pictures and go, "Gee, if only I know what focal length and exposure time was used when this photo was taken, I could enjoy it so much more. Oh, well."

Second, would it have killed you to caption these, so I know what I'm looking at when it's not obvious? Like, what was up with this shot, where it looks like road was once passable but the rock has bulged out to block it?

Third, the picture of the "Lamers" bus has soooooo been done. A a photo of you pissing on Ralph Lauren's fence would have been original and funny.

Finally, it's illegal to smuggle Tic Tacs into the state of Colorado!

In addition, Durango is one of these "new Aspens", where college students hang out, there are a lot of older locals (ranchers, Navajo, people who showed up before the '70's, mainly), and so forth, but there are a LOT of VERY rich people around (WalMart heir rich; 4th richest in the US rich), who can afford these kind of eccentric houses (and seem to get off on living in this gorgeous place, and ruin the whole atmosphere at the same time because then no one else can afford to live there ).


Yeah, you aren't kidding. There are definitely some people around there who might want this. My girlfriend and I just got back from a trip to the area. Here are some pictures of one such ranch. I'll leave it to the readers to figure out whose ranch this is, but here's a hint: look at the sign--he makes clothing. This guy owns an insanely large peice of some of the prettiest land in the Unitied States. He has a very expensive-looking fence around the property and, believe me, it goes on for miles. I heard a funny story about his fence...if you know about ranch fencing, you know that you build a wooden fence with the railings on the inside edge of the fence posts. This way, your cattle don't push the railings out. Well, supposedly, Mr. RL didn't like the way this looked so he had his people reverse the railings--at enormous expense--to make it look pretty.

On a side note, there is a National Forest Access road through his property. We drove down it and I had to pee. To my girlfriend's horror, I got out and peed on his fence. Yes, now I can say that I have pissed on Mr. RL's fence. :)

In addition, Durango is one of these "new Aspens", where college students hang out, there are a lot of older locals (ranchers, Navajo, people who showed up before the '70's, mainly), and so forth, but there are a LOT of VERY rich people around (WalMart heir rich; 4th richest in the US rich), who can afford these kind of eccentric houses (and seem to get off on living in this gorgeous place, and ruin the whole atmosphere at the same time because then no one else can afford to live there ).


Yeah, you aren't kidding. There are definitely some people around there who might want this. My girlfriend and I just got back from a trip to the area. Here are some pictures of one such ranch. I'll leave it to the readers to figure out whose ranch this is, but here's a hint: look at the sign--he makes clothing. This guy owns an insanely large peice of some of the prettiest land in the Unitied States. He has a very expensive-looking fence around the property and, believe me, it goes on for miles. I heard a funny story about his fence...if you know about ranch fencing, you know that you build a wooden fence with the railings on the inside edge of the fence posts. This way, your cattle don't push the railings out. Well, supposedly, Mr. RL didn't like the way this looked so he had his people reverse the railings--at enormous expense--to make it look pretty.

On a side note, there is a National Forest Access road through his property. We drove down it and I had to pee. To my girlfriend's horror, I got out and peed on his fence. Yes, now I can say that I have pissed on Mr. RL's fence. :)

I did a similar setup recently for my father's bicycle stores and here is a photo gallery of the results. I have an aversion to Linksys (their tech support is horrible) and so I became a D-Link convert a few months back. We bought eight DWL-2000AP access points/bridges (you can select the mode via the web interface) and eight of their DWL-P100 Power-over-Ethernet kits. We linked our warehouses to our stores via 24dBi grids (from hyperlinktech.com) and, like you, placed our APs on the mast underneath the antennae. For our enclosures, I chose some inexpensive but very well-made Davis Instruments enclosures. They are NEMA-4 rated and are sealed against the elements. We're a dealer for Davis so we got them really cheap. Being in South Texas, I was concerned about heat in the boxes so I built custom heat shields, which fit around the NEMA enclosures. I built these from R-Matte (which looks like foam plywood) and foil tape. I also used the foil tape to turn cheap-o indoor grade CAT5e into psuedo-outdoor grade cable.

Chris

I did a similar setup recently for my father's bicycle stores and here is a photo gallery of the results. I have an aversion to Linksys (their tech support is horrible) and so I became a D-Link convert a few months back. We bought eight DWL-2000AP access points/bridges (you can select the mode via the web interface) and eight of their DWL-P100 Power-over-Ethernet kits. We linked our warehouses to our stores via 24dBi grids (from hyperlinktech.com) and, like you, placed our APs on the mast underneath the antennae. For our enclosures, I chose some inexpensive but very well-made Davis Instruments enclosures. They are NEMA-4 rated and are sealed against the elements. We're a dealer for Davis so we got them really cheap. Being in South Texas, I was concerned about heat in the boxes so I built custom heat shields, which fit around the NEMA enclosures. I built these from R-Matte (which looks like foam plywood) and foil tape. I also used the foil tape to turn cheap-o indoor grade CAT5e into psuedo-outdoor grade cable.

Chris

Haha, I found an old-ass screenshot of my FVWM2 setup. Please ignore the stupid comments in the irc window. I was young and ignorant.

I'm still waiting for a window manager (besides FVWM and OLVWM) to include a FVWM-style virtual desktop switcher (or "Pager"). I have my desktop set up with a 3x3 virtual desktop switcher. I can use Ctrl+an_arrow_key to switch between desktops (two-dimensionally; I can go up, down, left, or right) without using the mouse. If I put xterms in the same spot in each desktop, I can switch between them very quickly, using only the keyboard. It sure would be nice to see this elsewhere.

Chris

I was out off-roading with some friends in my jeep this weekend in the George Washington National Forest. We were driving along a high ridge in what appeared to be total wilderness when, all of the sudden, we came upon a bunch of RVs, campers, and pickups and some crazy looking antennas. These guys had a regular tent city set up on top of this mountain! It looked like a lot of fun.


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