Latest news concerning Steven D: Winter storm causes extreme excitement, a strange thing or 2 about school, and out with the sister… temporarily anyway

Hey guys,
Steve here.

As I’m sure you know by reading my blog post about a week and a half ago, the winter storm that was expected to hit our area turned out to be a complete rip-off. The most recent one, which is supposed to begin shortly, has actually turned out to be worse than I last said in my Tuesday entry. Now, my weather radio (see the weather radio forecasts page for Update 2 which will be posted around 10:00 this evening), has told people “do not travel unless it is an emergency.” Not only that, but 1/2 inches of sleet, and 1/2 inches of ice accumulation are expected over night. Also, if it doesn’t sound obvious to you by now, there is also a winter storm warning in affect. Although the warning only extends through 6:00 tomorrow evening, temperatures will remain below freezing through mid day Sunday, and another round of wintery precipitation is expected Saturday through Sunday morning.
Besides weather, my sister has gone to Austin for the weekend. She is going down for an O&M (orientation & mobility) thing with our O&M teacher (I’ve been wrapped up in my life to know anything more about the trip). All this means for me, however, is that Libby will be gone for 3 days; piece and quiet at last :))).

In the title of this post, I recall saying something about a “strange thing or 2 about school.” What I meant by this was my progress report. As of right now, my grade in math exceeds that of orchestra. The math grade, 100, strangely tops the orchestra grade of 89. Although both grades are good, I still can’t believe that I’m making a better grade in one of the hardest core subjects than I am in some easy (just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean it’s not fun) alective class like orchestra.
While I’m still on the subject of school, I am proud to say that I’ve started my National History Day Project. I’m doing it over the underground railroad (the theme is rights and responsibilities). I will definately finish it by the due date (December 13, I think), and after that is out of the way I will do Stranded.

In the podcasting part of my life, I only have one more make-up episode to complete–Episode 15. Of course, I have episode 17 to do on Saturday, but that is a scheduled episode, and not one I have to make up. Also, as episode 14 was recorded, expect me to use my sony ICD-PX720 recorder to record most of the podcast, except of course the game of the day section.
By the way, while still on the topic of the podcast, I have all but one of the remaining episodes of 2013 completely planned out. Do not, however, think I’m going to spoil anything.

On another note, I recorded and submitted that review for main menu (the radio show that reviews products for blind people). And although this review was submitted Wednesday night, I still have yet to receive confirmation that the review is going to be included in this week’s edition of main menu.

Finally, I am still editing the website. The navigation menu is all kinds of messed up; links to certain pages such as blog test 2012 appearing twice in the menu. Fortunately for you however, I am working diligently to fix this issue. I hope you enjoy the new page names and site revisions! For more information about what I’m doing, see the site news page (I don’t know the exact url, so you’ll have to use my navigation menu (that page is in there).

Thank you for reading this post, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

P.s. I got my 100th follower! Thank you so much Nate $mith for being follower 100, and all you other wonder people for being follower 1 through 99!

a wonderful Fall festival

Hey guys,
Steve here.
It’s the 700th post! I can’t believe that!!!

Today has been a good day. It has been busy, but none the less I have to say it was quite awesome. And as I sit here, propping my feet up on a chair and leaning back comfortably, I once again get to amerce myself into one of my favorite hobbies, blogging.
The day started out with goal ball. Me, being an extreme procrastinator, decided that I was just gonna sleep 45 minutes passed the time I was supposed to get up. So, basically, I didn’t even get to shower; and nor did I get to check my email as I do every morning if I can. It was a “throw on what you can, and shove whatever you can down your throat to keep from being hungry” type of morning.
Despite the rushed start, goal ball practice ended up going very well. I spent the first 30 minutes chunking ball after ball at the walls of the gym, and running after it. For some reason, probably do to the fact that only one other person showed up, the practice in itself wasn’t hard. It was quite repetitive actually; composed of my coaches (one of them being my dad of course) Chucking the ball at me and the other player and us blocking and throwing it back. So even though the activities that went on during practice weren’t in the least bit strenuous, I still ended up tired do to the fact that it was non-stop action for two hours streight.
After practice ended, I got to come home and chill for a few hours. I have a remote control robot, which is very old but high tech and fun to mess with none the less, but unfortunately the buttons on the remote aren’t in braille and nor is there a braille user manual. So, I had to write myself a kind of reference type of thing. I used a motified drawing board that actually turns drawings into raised line drawings so that blind people can feel them just as sited folks see them. Well anyway, I spent two hours outlining my robot’s remote and then typing the button lables into the remote picture, so that I would have them in braille and know exactly what they were called and where they were located on the remote.
Well besides that, after I was finished my dad and sister came home from the advansed goal ball practice, along with a couple of my sister’s friends (it being her birthday weekend and all), and we all went to the fall festival I mentioned on Thursday’s post.
There were several fun games. When we first walked in, there was a really amusing game, that also tasted good. In this game, you and your competitor get a doughnut on a string, and your goal is to see who can eat theirs first without using their hands. Mind you, the doughnut will swing around on the string, so it made it harder to get. I swear to you, that thing was flying around, bouncing off the back of my head and whacking me up side the face. Fortunately, though my sister won the game, I still got to enjoy that delicious doughnut.
After that, there were more games. One of which I had to play as David by throwing a Velcro ball and trying to stick it to the Velcro head of Goliath (I guess to simulate killing him)… and I didn’t get it but came close.
There is really only one other game I want to tell you about, the tick tack toe game I played with some one.
Origionally, nor me or my competitor won the first game, but the second game was different. I started by putting my O in the gop left, and she put her X in the bottom left. I then put my O in the middle of the grid, getting hopeful that I’d win. She really had the chance to stop me their, but of course wasn’t thinking, and decided to put her X in the bottom middle. So, I put mine in the bottom left and won. Now how crazy is that?
After all the games were finished, we had a dinner of corn dogs and stew. We then had a hey ride, and then had to go home before it started raining on us.
Well, unfortunately I’m afraid that I have to end this post because I’be told you all about the festival and frankly I’m starting to get tired :). So,

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Latest Severe Storm Steve news

Hey you guys,
Steve here.

Reporting live from the Steven D Studios…

oh yeah whatever.

You’re probably wondering what was up with that intro. Well, I’d better tell you, huh?
Most of this news is about computers, and some of it is actually about storms.

First thing’s first, my new school computer
I got a new school computer yesterday! It’s very light, speedy, and purfect for what I need it for anyway. I am real glad I got that; it really beats my old, slow, warn out school computer that has seen better days. Anyway, the brand of computer I have isn’t dell or Apple, but it comes close. I believe it’s a Lenovo or something.
Now, moving on, I have some rather depressing news about my personal computer I use at home.
It looks like I’ve caught a virus on that computer, and now am using it in safe mode. This isn’t all depressing however, since I know just what to do (for now anyway). After I finish this blog post, I’m going to restore the computer to August 8, which will most likely fix the problem. If it doesn’t, just be preying for me :).
Lastly, I will be shortly making 2 more storm recordings available to you. I have one from June 9th, and another from July 16th. I know that’s way outdated right now and really isn’t anything new, but it’s dead in the middle of summer and I’m afraid there hasn’t been any powerful storms to record. Well, you can check them out on the natural events page

And finally, I should probably give a quick little summary of my first week of school.
I’m glad it’s over.
Okay, let’s try that again. That wasn’t much of a summary…
Well, It’s gone pretty well. I’m saying that now because that was the easiest week of the whole year (besides the last one), so I bet it will get quite a bit hard. If you’re wondering, my outlook on math is grim. I’m already getting confused, so I’ll have to talk to the teacher about it on Tuesday. Hmm, seems like a few tutoring sessions are in my near future.
Other than that, I don’t have much to say about my first week, since you already know my schedule.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

updates and anoying school projects

Hey you guys,
Steve is back.

This week hasn’t been very active. I’ve been learning a programming language, bgt (a coding language where blind people like me can code our own games), and have officially programmed my first ever bgt script.
I will talk about that in another blog post, as my file den account is still under maintenence. In fact, regarding that issue, I have recently been informed that due to there hard drive restoration scheduled for the middle of next month, some of us are affected. I can tell you, that as soon as my account is back, I am archiving every single file on that account, so when the new platform is built I can get them all back up on the sight. This will be a lot of work for me, since I have links to about 60 files spread out all over this 23 page, 680 blog post website. And, I will have to update all of them! Exhausting…
right?
I thought so.

Anyway, back to my week, I got a pretty good storm recording Tuesday night. That will also be posted on the blog as soon as the file den is back up. And, as bike riding goes, I did a ride with my dad today. For some reason, it didn’t hurt, give or take a few hills. That’s beyond the overall point; I just didn’t feel nearly as much pain as I normally do.
Now, to point out the weird parts for you, The bike ride left me sick to my stomach, shaky, and I was raining sweat. Hmm… Don’t know what happened there.

Basically, there wasn’t much to my life. The only other thing that really happened, was going to spin class Monday night, and anice 3 day streek of rain.
There wasn’t anything summer like to my life besides that. On a not so cool note, I have a school project to do this summer.
On the bright side, I made it into pre-ap english, and that’s why I have that project. I have to read 2 books, one of which is pretty good (I don’t know about the other, because I never read it), and I also have to make a mask and do something else (I forgot because after all, it’s still summer vacation, and my mind just doesn’t feel like thinking school work until August 26).
Well, I will try to get that done by Wednesday, so I don’t have anything to worry about. It may not be as anoying as I said in the title of the post, but I still don’t want to do it.

Well, if anything else pops up, I will be sure to update you guys.

For now…
thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Blog Update and a couple excuses

Hey you guys,
Steve again.

I can’t believe it, the last week of school is here!

As I’m sure you probably know, This post was called updates and excuses. The reason it had excuses in the title, was because for one, I’m not even close to done with stranded, and 2 I didn’t post the podcast.

As far as my new game goes, I am still in the beginning. It has 42 sections so far, but I want it to be a big game. Since I’m not as extremely addicted to swamp, I’ve began working more on it. In fact, You can find a forum newsroom for my game on the audiogames.net forum; the link is below:
go to the stranded newsroom
As you know, my reason for still being at the beginning is still the same:
1. I’ve been addicted to my game.
2. sometimes I think it would be too much work to finish it (but I will finish it anyway).
Now, on to the podcast.

I haven’t quite yet released the podcast to my website. Here’s why:
1. I recorded it, but my computer came unplugged and deleted it.
2. When I went to recover it in audacity (the audio editor I use), It pulled up some weird message and didn’t work.
3. After that I was unmotivated.

Don’t worry, I will re record that and get it on the site
Now, I told you I would record a thunderstorm on saturday, but nature ripped me off and it never stormed!!!

On to the life part

This weekend was a good one. I did however spend pretty much all of saturday waiting for a storm that didn’t come until 10:15 at night, and wasn’t big enough to record. I did however get a 5 minute recording of thunder claps. Comment below the post if you want the recording.
Other than that, my sister’s friend came over saturday night, so I just hung out playing swamp from about 10:30 to 12:300 midnight, after which I went to bed.
Sunday was a computer filled day. I logged on to swamp around 10 or so, and didn’t leave the computer until 1 30. By the way, 30 minutes of that time were spent on stranded. In case you don’t know, I can get a lot done on my gamebooks in 30 minutes, so I bet it will be done on Wednesday or so and I can begin packaging and getting ready for the big release.
Besides the 3 or so hour of playing on the computer, I didn’t do much else. I just briefly hung out with my sister and her friend, and chilled out. The only productive things I did were working on Stranded, doing the dishes and puttin gup my clothes.

As far as today goes, I still look forward to the last day of school. In fact, as of today, there are 3 days until the big day! Today is the last full day of school we’ll be doing work. I’m sure we’ll do some sort of work wednesday and thursday, but those are half days. Tomorrow, is the tiger bash or whatever they call it where you have lots of fun all day.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
steve.

P.S. I WILL GET THE PODCAST POSTED AND STRANDED WILL BE FINISHED ON TIME! I promice.

some more blog news, a last bit of news on the tornadoes from may 15, and a thunderstorm

Hey you guys,
Steve again.

I have several things to tell you, as seen in the post title. First of all, tornado news.
I origionally thought there were 16 tornadoes in the may 15 tornado outbreak. Well, at first I thought 10, then 12, then 16, and now the media is officially saying 18. I wonder if that’s the last they’ll say about the tornados, but if it isn’t I will keep updating you.
Second, now that we are in the weather speret, I will give you a recording I made last night, May 29, 2013 at 6:57 PM as a thunderstorm that nearly completely darkend the skies and prodused massive claps of thunder, and at one point in the recording it almost sounds like tiny pieces of hail hitting the window I was near. Listen below or download:
download and listen on your computer

Lastly, some more game news.

I have gotten caried away once again on Stranded part 2, and it is going to be longer then I expected. Thus, I will need 5 extra days to work on it due to school, chores, games, and all that stuff. I will try and take out a lot of the gaming time and focus more on the game; and I will make sure it is long and worth wile.

Hope you enjoyed this post!
thanks for reading,
type you later,
steve

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news

Hey you guys,
Steve again.

Cold temps, milestones, broken records… wait, woe!!!

Yep, that is exactly how I’ve felt since the last blog post which occurred just short of 36 hours ago. Every since then, wave after wave of jaw dropping news has slammed into me. I better post the latest developments to you.

First of all, I reached another milestone yesterday morning at 9:37 AM, when the 50th follower joined the blog. Thanks 50th follower, because you’ve helped me hit a very important milestone in this blog!
So, now that we have the blog milestone taken care of, I will now talk about the weather.

The weather has been taking mad dips, twists, jumps, and bumps for the last 2 months. It is like we are riding a never ending wild roller coaster, one that leaves you wondering, “What’s next?”
It almost seems one day you are breaking out the hot coco and turning on the heater, while on the next you almost want to take a swim! I still have a feeling that a tornado outbreak is immenent, and tonight only further proves my theory.
Late tonight, a strong coldfront will move into our area, bringing tempratures from the 70’s before midnight to upper 40’s and lower 50’s by sunrise. After the coldfront moves through, scattered light rain, strong winds, and cloudy skies will take over our Thursday; and tempuratures will struggle to make it to 50 all day long!

Not only that, but Thursday night is the more interesting part. Winds will die down, skies will clear, and temperatures will drop into the upper 30’s early Friday morning. This is going to be the coldest it has ever been this late in the spring!!! Yes, you read right, the coldest ever this late in the season!
After that, highs will hit 60 Friday afternoon, which is still 20 degrees short of the average for this time of year, which happens to be 80.

As far as my comments go, I almost wonder if we are going to swim this summer, or ice scate. When will this weather go away? And, why is winter so hesitant on leaving?

Well, as far as life goes, not much has happened. We are doing a research project in social studies, and I got Michael Dell, the creator of the Dell computer. Of course, that does make me pretty happy; it adds some enjoyment to the research project.

As far as blog news goes, you should probably check the latest site news and updates page, because there are new developments and anouncements you must read.
Otherwise, have a great evening, and enjoy the rest of your week!

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

updates

Hey you guys,
Steve again.

I hope you are ready to read for a long time. I have quite a bit to tell you on this post, since I haven’t posted since April 3rd.

So, I’ll start with weather.

In the passed few days, there has been storms. I didn’t get to record them however, since I was at school. There is a pretty significant chance that we’ll get pounded again this Thursday morning, so maybe I’ll be able to record it. Other than that, it’s supposed to get up to 90 degrees today. That is extremely hot for the month of april in my opinion; it was in the 30’s last Wednesday and will be 60 degrees by Thursday.
Now that I think about it, I’m starting to develope a hunch that a big tornado outbreak is coming soon. With all this wind, mad temperature swings, storms, and heat, it just seems likely that either a huge severe thunderstorm outbreak will occur, or perhaps a large tornado outbreak might occur in the next couple months. As you should know, tornadoes or tornadic thunderstorms form from cold dry air clashing with hot humid air. You could expect something like this especially if a cold front or dryline passes through during the afternoon/early evening hours, when daytime heating exists. That is why we need to watch out, and keep our fingers crossed should a tornado outbreak occur.

Now that I have the weather thing knocked out, I should probably tell you what’s been going on with me lately.

The first week of April wasn’t very exciting. Besides severe weather day, nothing much really happened. The second week of april was more exciting though.
On monday of that week, I did my normal routine, along with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Friday was the day that I missed school, so my o&m which means orientation and mobility teacher took me, my sister, and our friend out on a fieldtrip to the Galloria (I don’t know how to spell it, but whatever). There, I got a couple massages from Brookstone, explored some store that I don’t know how to spell the name of, ate at Rasing Canes, got lots of candy at Candyland, and in total spending about $13.35. After that trip, I had to return to school, but only for about an hour.
After the school day ended, I went streight home, and got ready for Transition Weekend, a fun weekend for the blind and visually impaired.
Me and my sister were both going to this weekend long camp, while my mom and dad were just taking us there. So, we left about 4:30, and arrived at the bus which would take us to the camp around 5 or so.

The camp was in Cedar Hill, which was a 45 minute bus ride.
As we drove there I wondered how the weekend would go. I wondered what activities there would be, what time we would go to bed and get up, what food we’d eat, when we would leave, and if it would be fun.

As it turns out, I didn’t have any reason to worry. The weekend was a blast! After getting there, we unpacked, settled in, and ate pizza for dinner. The slices were litterally about a foot long, and the base was about 7 inches wide. I ended up having two slices (sorry if I am making you hungry), and those filled me up pretty good. After dinner, we got to know each other, and had an opening thing where we did activites and stuff.
After that, we cooked these brownies. They were oranges that we scooped the pulp out of and replaced it with brownie mix. I didn’t eat one, because they were all eaten when I was in the shower.
I did get a regular brownie however, which turned out to be pretty good.

We went to bed at 11:00 that night, and got up at 6:30 the next morning. After getting ready for the day on saturday, then eating a good breakfast, we did more activites (but these were outside). They were just more activites to get to know and bond with each other. After that, we did some low rope activites, which was working on team work. Then, we had lunch. After lunch was the fun stuff. We had about an hour of down time, before it was time for rock climbing and zipline. I only got 4 feet up the rockwall, but did the zipline completely. My least favorite part of the zipline was standing on that 50 foot platform. If you don’t know this, I am extremely afraid of heights.

It wasn’t that bad when I actually zipped down the line. In fact, it was real fun. The only bad thing about it was that I couldn’t go again.

After that zipline experience, we ate dinner, had more down time, then went to the camp fire. There, we just sang, talked about the day, and socialised. After that comes the funny part.
So, when we got back to the cabbin, the counsiler took us boys into our bunk wing.
This guy was a real jokester, and actually made us think we were getting in trouble. It actually turns out, he just wanted to tell us how good we did, and I was deep relieved.

After that, there was a store thing that people could use face money to buy awesome stuff. I got a deck of playing cards, and a pack of gram crackers. After that however, I headed out to the porch, where a silly string war was taking place.
“Can I try?” I asked one of the boys.
He handed me the bottle, which was broken. So, I had to ask the counsiler who talked to us earlier to fix it for me. He fixed it, but instead of returning it to me sprayed me. He got me in the mouth, the nose, and the chest. He also got my head when I ducked down.

After that fun experience, I went and took a shower, and fell asleep after a long but fun day.

Yesterday was the day it all ended. After eating breakfast, there was a closing saramony. That consisted of crying, talking, laughing. After that, it was time to go home. I went home with my dad, but he took me and libby to nanna’s. There we ate lunch, played cards, and returned to our home. There, I got on my home computer (I fixed it and got it to work). After that, I had my dinner, and things returned to normal.
Now, I’m at school, and nothing much is happening. It is Monday, so tonight me and mom will be going to spin class once more. I can’t wait!

Well, I guess that concludes today’s post. I will post again soon!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
steve.

easter storm

Hey guys,
Steve here.
A large line of thunderstorms moved across the dallas fort worth metroplex yesterday morning. It contained very heavy rain and strong winds that I guess were an upwards of 50 miles per hour. I cot this whole storm on recording. Listen below.
listen now, or use the audio player if you can detect it:

This can also be found on the natural events weather page along with several other eppic storm sounds.

Very heavy rain event coming up in north texas

Hello guys,

I am here to tell you about something intresting that is developing. I have heard from the sorces I listen to:

  • fox4
  • krld A.M
  • NOAA weather radio

Those tell me that North, and all the rest of texas will be hit by a large rain event from early Tuesday morning through late Wednesday night or very early Thursday morning. This will likely bring between 1 and 4 inches of rain to our area, as bands of heavy rains move across. This prolonged rain event could cause some flooding. On the bright side, it will bring us relief from the droubt conditions we’ve been having