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About Me: My grandparents were born in the Indian Territory / Oklahoma. My parents were born in Oklahoma, as was I, my wife, my children and my grandchildren. I was an irresponsbile teenager (it was the 60's, what can I say?) but managed to mature a little. I attend the University of Oklahoma and got a BA in History and went to work for a Fortune 500 company where I was unhappy. Eventually, I went back to OU for my MBA and PhD in MIS (ABD). I became a contract programmer because I programmed much better than I published. I also became a VAR for a firm selling accounting software written in a computer language called dBase that was designed for the Intel 8088 processor. I stayed firmly seated at the grindstone and in the first years of the new millenium I decided I needed a change. I figured that if I was ever going to to do all those things I said that I wanted to do, I'd better get going. In 2005 I sold my house and business and went to truck driving school. I now drive a Big Rig - mine - and I try not to work more than 6 months a year. I make an effort to spend at least 3 months a year outside of the U.S. I'm married. My wife and I have 6 kids and 9 grandchildren. Maybe that's why I like to travel so much.

Postscript: In December, 2010 I hung up my Driver's cap for good. The road had taken its' toll. I was no longer willing to drive 180 days a year, regardless of the money and the ability to work when I wanted. I had seen America. I was tired of being gone from home for 9 months a year. I needed a rest. In 2011 I sold my truck and trailer and was unemployed for the year. However, I wasn't inactive. I traveled overseas to Asia and South America for several months. In the fall I enrolled in an online course to to become certified in Oracle, the world's preeminent database. I want to go back to work sometime in the near future as a software developer or administrator. Even though I programmed for 20+ years, my skills are dated. Fortunately, I have a little flexibility as to my future.

RollingOkie OKC, Jan 1, 2012

Weather Data Web Sites

I like to travel. I don't like to travel in the coldest of cold and hottest of hot periods. So, I consult weather related sites on the web to help me with my decision making as to when to go somewhere. Here are the web sites I like the best. If you find more that may be good ones to include, send me an email to steve@rollingokie.com and I'll take a look at it. New web sites are popping up all the time. So, what do I look for in a site? I want to know certain averages by month. I want to know the monthly averages for average temperature, average high temperature, average low temperature and average precipitation. It's also nice to know other monthly data such as highest recorded temperature and lowest recorded temperature to know what the extremes might be. I also like to look for the number of years on record. Not every location in the world has records for weather data averages and not every web site has data for a large number of locations. The best web sites have data for hundreds of cities. Other considerations are hours of sunlight and weather temperature averages by month for those people who like water activities.


Celsius to Fahrenheit Thermometer

weatherbase

Weather base is a very good website to find basic information about a location. According to their web site, they have information on over 17,571 cities worldwide. That's a lot of locations. Plus, it's easy to use. If you're looking for quick, basic data on temperature and precipitation data for a large number of locations, this web site is a resource you should visit.


Climate & Temperature

This site is a little funky to use and I don't feel that it has as many locations as weatherbase. However, it has a lot of cities listed, several thousand for sure. Plus it has excellent graphs and more information than weatherbase. This web site contains basic information plus humidity, sun hours per day, wind speed and frost days. If I wasn't looking for some strange, out-of-the-way place or data on 10 different locations in Sierra Leone, this would be my first stop.


Weather Underground

This site is not as easy to use as the two previous sites, but might be worth a visit. You can do a custom date range and get some interesting data. You can also spend a lot of time here and not be sure you're getting what you want in terms of information. This isn't a site for someone seeking quick and easy answers.


World Weather and Climate Information

This web site uses lots of graphs as opposed to tables. Easy to use. Nice maps. Nice graphical displays. Limited number of cities. Limited information.


Climate Zone

This web site uses a graphical interface that is a nice touch to to find lcoations. It uses tables. It's quite easy to use. Nice maps. Nice graphical displays. Limited number of cities. Limited information.


Sea Temperature

I still haven't found a web site that gives average sea temperatures by month, but I'm still looking. While I'm not much of a beach personI know that there are a lot of people who are. I just figured it would be great to know the water temperature for the location where you're going. This web site gives current and recent temperatures for places all over the world.


Climate: Wikipedia

There's more to weather than simply looking at high and low temperatures along with hours of sunshine and rainfall. If you look at what goes into the climate of an area, you get a feel for what it is that helps to create that climate. Wikipedia is a good place to start the process of climate conceptualization.