Here in Texas and in a lot of other places these days we all get severe weather. The job of the weather person is to try to scare the bejesus out of me in their reporting. Every storm is now “potentially dangerous” and is going to rip the roof of my house off or cause dangerous flooding. It’s like I have never lived through a storm and have no idea where I am living, like low lying ground.
I noticed when I was 10 years old all the old farm houses (Ohio) are built on high ground. Farm animal poop and rain water run downhill away from the house. Trees were planted around the house for shade and windbreak. Smart folks them farmers…
When urban sprawl took over their land, the developers built “neighbourhoods” in the farmer’s bottom-land near the creeks and had cutesy street names like “Spring Creek” and “Waterview” Well, guess what… there was a reason the farmer didn’t build next to his stream.
I digress. Now every rain storm seems to be a cause for alarm. In fact weather has always been a human concern. The farmers I knew always had a storm cellar in their housing plans. They knew they couldn’t stop or change the weather but they could prepare for it.
So the weather person was created to give us fair warning. Unfortunately because of fear and possible litigation (yes, it’s always someone else’s fault) of not reporting a severe storm and issuing a “WARNING!” every storm is considered potentially dangerous and threatening. In TEXAS every storm has a warning.
That leaves me no choice but to judge for myself. Yes, I am intelligent enough and experienced enough to do that. I have been trained in weather as a certified pilot and also as an amateur radio storm spotter. (SKYWARN). The TV and news media weather people do provide me a considerable service. I really have no argument about their value. Except perhaps for the total idiot reporters who think they impress me by standing out in hurricanes to be beat up by wind gusts. Tsk. Get a life.
What I like the most with today’s technology is the active radar weather maps. I can look at the weather front movement and see exactly where I am located and judge what part of the storm will be involving my location.
“Weather Bug” app on my iPhone is the perfect tool for me to achieve the information I need. I use it for every storm that passes through my location. Highly recommended by me.
Not so with their PC (computer) version. I loaded the Weather Bug app on my business laptop. It wanted to take total control of my visual experience. It placed the current temperature in my bottom bar. In other words it wants to run full time in the background. Yet another load for the processor and network connection. The worst thing was the the display when I really wanted to see what the weather was doing. It is about 92.1% advertising. I had to look hard and make many clicks to find weather information. The radar maps are totally hidden. When the weather radar is found and activated, it is the poorest quality and poorest excuse of a display I have ever seen. Totally unacceptable.
In about 20 minutes of disgust, I decided to dump (uninstall) the program. At the end of the uninstall it offered to provide a free version of the program without the advertising. I hadn’t noticed a paid no ad version was available. I would assume the purpose of the free version would have made that more apparent. Probably so buried in the commercials I couldn’t see it.
Well, the radar map in the free version was so low resolution I would never purchase the program OR take up the free offer. Duh? My bet is there is some user tracking they want to keep on my PC. A new meaning for Weather “bug”?
Am I weather bugged? Yes, I am. PC version NOT RECOMMENDED. Love the iPhone app.