Baron’s Blog

It’s been an honor covering the communities on the Big Island for West Hawaii Today and North Hawaii News but as of late Friday I am no longer working for these papers. I have friends who are still staff members at the papers and when you see them on assignment taking photos and doing their interviews I hope you provide them with the same aloha I received while on assignment.

I’m still on the Big Island and I’ll still be around shooting photos and more.

And a song I thought I’d play on my final day at work. Last Day at the Office by the Gentle Readers off their Hi Honey CD

*update* For those who would like to get together I’m going to have some food and brew with friends at the Kona Brew Pub on Friday, Nov. 14th at 7pm. Be there or be E=mc². And for my good friends who can’t be there, hoist a Kona Brew (or whatever your favorite thing is) and have one for me wherever you are.

According to the National Weather Service we’re supposed to get high winds toda with gusts up to over 60mph.

It already looks like we’ve got gusts over 40mph via this link to the Mauna Lani weather station.

And if you look at the Puako live video feed on this link it looks like it’s blowing and getting choppy out there. Not a good day to be on the ocean and time to tie down loose things.

For friends and family in Hawaii be prepared as Hurricane Flossie is on the way and she’s a big one, a category 4 hurricane with 135mph winds. Right now it’s scheduled to track south of the Big Island but from the path it will create some huge ocean surge for the islands, especially the Big Island.

Visit the NOAA tracking site to stay posted on this nasty storm. Travis, you may want to get that surfboard ready.

Okay, my Verizon Wireless contract is up in 10 days. The question is, do I dump VZW and jump onto the iPhone bandwagon or should I get the Palm Treo 755p when that comes out (could be the next few weeks or next few months when it’s released). The Treo has many more features and faster cellphone data speed but the iPhone has Apple’s beautiful interface. Steve Jobs is right, most of us hate our cellphones and most of us have one. There is no perfect cellphone but how close can the iPhone come? I think I’ll wait until next month, of course that’s when I’ll be visiting the Apple Store in New York and fully within the Reality Distortion Field. Is resistance futile? 

Crazy story about a wheelchair stuck in the grill of a semi going 50mph!

An 8.2 magnitude earthquake off Japan tonight. If a wave is generated it’s sked to hit Hawaii at 12:23 am Saturday (tonight), earlier for islands west of the Big Island. Stay tuned to radio, TV, web, etc.

Click here for info from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

The RSS feed from Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

If you have Google Earth and want the .kmz file to show you the epicenter it’s here: JapanQuake.kmz.zip You probably want to Option-Click of you’re on a Mac or right click save if you’re on Windows.

The tsunami watch was cancelled as of 9:33pm, though we could get tidal surges like we saw in November.