Inside the new Boulder Apple store!

I was one of the first 1000 to get a free shirt! Check out store info here: http://www.apple.com/retail/twentyninthstreet/week/20061015.html

Categories: General

The line wrapped around the building...

Standing in line at the Boulder Apple store grand opening. I was #14. Check out store info here: http://www.apple.com/retail/twentyninthstreet/week/20061015.html

Categories: General

Boulder Apple store grand opening (line)

Standing in line at the Boulder Apple store grand opening. I was #14. The first guy in line had been there since 5am!Check out store info here: http://www.apple.com/retail/twentyninthstreet/week/20061015.html

Categories: General

Flatirons Solutions: Our Founders!

Pictured from left to right: Greg Beserra, Mary Pritchard, Eric Severson, John Pritchard.

Categories: General

Flatirons Solutions: Open House

Categories: General

Flatirons Solutions hosted an open-house to the Boulder community, friends, clients, and the Boulder Chamber of Commerce.

You're going to have to get up pretty early...

If you want to hear me play French Horn! I'm playing for the Easter Sunrise service for Rock Creeek Church this Sunday.Selections will be traditional hymns:
"Christ the Lord is Risen Today", "Christ Arose (Up from the Grave He Arose)", and "A Mighty Fortress".

If you are in the Boulder area and are looking for a place to attend Easter services, you are invited to attend!
Directions are located here. We will be holding Good Friday service at 7pm, Easter Sunrise at 6am w/breakfast, and our regular service at 10am at Monarch High School. Hope to see you there!

Categories: God, Jesus, Christianity, church

Scotty here, one to beam out...

Folks,

it is with fond memories of every one I have worked with during my 9+ years of service at Sun, that I announce my departure.

I have been given an exciting opportunity as an XML and content management Solutions Architect at Flatirons Solutions (http://www.flatironssolutions.com) in Boulder.

While at Sun, I have worked for SunSoft (Solaris Tech Pubs), Sun Educational Services, Global eServices Engineering, Global Knowledge Engineering, and CNS Knowledge, Data and Operations.

I've helped create online documentation for Solstice Backup, Solstice Job Scheduler and the Solaris Administration Guides, created education.central, worked on the next generation of SunSolve, the Astoria, Voyager and KASP content management systems, and the Service Parts Repository (SPRuce) and the Sun System Handbook, and was consistently one of the top 15 most popular blogs on blogs.sun.com.

God willing, our paths will again cross some day. It has been an honor and priviledge to work with all of you incredibly talented folks. Sorry if I missed anybody. Please forward to anyone you think might be interested in hearing the news.

My last day at Sun will be February 17th, but you can continue to follow my adventures at: http://shudson310.blogspot.com

Please stay in touch!

Best regards,

Scott Hudson

See also: General

My first chase vehicle

Here are a few pics of my first storm chase vehicle, and several important lessons learned:

I bought the '87 Chrysler Lebaron from my granddad when I graduated from CSU. I used it for a few storm chases in El Paso County before Sun moved me to Broomfield. It got me within 3 miles of a tornado at Ramah, which is the closest I've been to a tornado so far.

The important lessons learned came on a storm chase a year or two after my move to the Denver area.

1. Get familiar with the local roads, and have a really good state atlas
2. Stop chasing when the Sun sets, no matter how close you THINK you are
3. Take a chase partner, so one person can look at the skies while the driver looks at the road
4. If you don't watch the road, you may run into flash flood waters. Going faster won't keep your car from flooding any less
5. Your wife won't appreciate you calling at 10:30pm saying you need a ride, because you are stuck 90 miles from home
6. Storm chasers always help other storm chasers! But don't push your luck...

So those are my lessons learned, and here's the story:

There was a pretty good storm forming over Brighton after dinner, so I got clearance from my wife, and was off! I followed the storm right up Hwy 76 to about Hudson. It was a pretty major road, so I was pretty comfortable, but then I heard on the weather radio that it was getting severe near Pleasant Valley. I just happened to see the sign, and took the turn.

It was getting dark, but I was so close, I could taste it. It was kind of cool to watch the lightning and look for tornadoes between the lightning strikes. Unfortunately, the fields had taken all the water they could hold, and started spilling over the roadway, and I didn't notice until I plowed through it, just before entering the town of Pleasant Valley.

The Lebaron plowed through OK, since it was only about 5 inches of water, and I made it into town. I passed a Fire Engine that was directing traffic because of a power outage, and then my car promptly died at the side of the road.

This was a Very Good Thing, because if I had picked up the pace and kept going, I would have wound up in another flooded roadway, this time under 2 feet of water!

At this point, I called my wife with a Ham Radio/Phone patch, and told her I was stranded. She said, "Well, you better find a way to get here then, because the kids are in bed and I can't come get you."

Thankfully I found another storm chaser, who had stopped because of the flooded roadway, and found out he lived in Boulder. He was willing to drop me home, since it was on his way, and chat about chasing all the way home! He had a snorkle on his Toyota, and the first flash flood I had driven through had now turned into 3 feet of water. He plowed through to my amazement, and we headed home.

His vehicle had been struck by lightning a few weeks earlier, and he caught it on tape! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the link to the video...

The next day, my wife took me out to pick up my car. It was the quietest 90 minutes of my life...

Following that adventure, I agreed to take a chase partner, never chase at night, and get a vehicle that could handle it.

Stay tuned for my next post about my new chase vehicle!

See also: Weather

Who is Scotty?

To describe the image: I love Lego, Boba Fett, was married in a kilt, and have always wanted to be an astronaut. They didn't have an image of a tornado on reasonablyclever.com, or I'd have added that too. Sure, it's weird, but I'm reasonably complex. :-)

I've lived in Colorado all my life. Some on a ranch in southeastern Colorado, some in Fort Collins (while at CSU), but most of it in Colorado Springs, and now Boulder/Denver.

In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my wife and 3 kids, church, and storm chasing!

I've worked at Sun for almost 9 years now, in a variety of roles.

If you want the specifics in my Curriculum Vitae, check out my profile on LinkedIn.

Basically, I started out as a technical writer and document conversion specialist for SunSoft at the Rocky Mountain Technology Center in Colorado Springs, CO using a SUN4/50 SparcStation IPX. I worked on various products including Solstice Backup, Solstice Job Scheduler, Solstice AdminSuite, and the Solaris 2.4 and 2.5 Administration Guides.

After the Broomfield, CO campus was built, the folks at RMTC were relocated and the site shut down. Some moved to the Bay area, some to Burlington, MA, and some lucky folks rigged it so they could stay in the Springs.

I got a job as the webmaster for Sun Educational Services, which relocated to the new Broomfield, CO campus. I worked in that group for 3 years, with only 1 manager (my most stable position at Sun). My desktop was an Ultra 2, and was one of the easiest boxes to swap out hardware for. Our webserver was hosted on an E450, also a beautiful machine.

Looking for new opportunities, I moved over to SunSolve.Sun.COM to work on the next-generation features of the site. We tried to move the site to be XML-based, until the net bubble burst.I got upgraded to an Ultra 60 for my desktop, which I used until June 2004.

I've worked on various XML-based projects since, in a variety of sub-organizations in Sun Services, including content management, metadata management, and knowledge management. I'm also proud to work on the OASIS DocBook Technical Committee, along with Steve Cogorno and the great Norm Walsh (both from Sun). I also greatly respect the other members of the DocBook TC, who are very active in the DocBook and technical writing community.

My favorite project to date at Sun, has been working on the Sun System Handbook. It's got the best information on supporting Sun hardware, and a great team of folks to work on it.

Now I'm on a SunRay with remote access to a dedicated blade on a SunFire B1600 in a lab. This setup is working pretty well, so far.

I'm not sure what the future holds, but I hope it continues to be bright here at Sun!

See also: General

A member of the CAST

I have been a member of CAST for a while, no not a Persona Dramatis on Broadway (though I had a cousin in the original Chorus Line...) or working for the Walt Disney company.

CAST is the Colorado All-season Spotter Team. I've been to several training sessions, and ventured out on several storm chases as part of this team.

I have been a member of SKYWARN since I originally started at Sun back in 1995. SKYWARN performs a similar public service, as far as watching the skies and reporting severe weather back to the National Weather Service offices.

CAST, however, also takes into account our severe winter weather here in Colorado.

My soul reason for getting my HAM license (KC0BAX) was to have a means of reporting severe weather as part of SKYWARN and CAST.

Now that I've lived outside of Boulder for the last 5 years, I have noticed that the Pikes Peak SKYWARN group seemed to be more active than the Denver group. It is really a shame, since there are so many weather experts in the Denver/Boulder area.

Recently on a storm chase out to Sterling, CO, I met storm chaser Tony Laubach (KCØONL). Even though we both struck out on that chase, it was nice to meet another chaser and swap information!

Categories: Weather