Finnish TV seen in Southern Estonia with an indoor antenna

On Sunday and Monday, a strong tropospheric ducting hit our area... flooding the airwaves with foreign television stations. In Finland, and in Estonia, reports are coming out about problems with signals because of co-channel interference. I had also issues, but because I live northwest of the transmitter serving my area, and as such I was able to place antennas in a way that the local signal would win the battle.

It all began on Sunday morning when the sky dawned and I noticed the weather was clear. EMHI had been forecasting a high pressure area to set in and colder weather to arrive. As I remember many good DXes from the winter high pressure areas, I decided to attempt to pick up neighboring digital transmitters. Koeru from 93 km away, yes! Eventually got Tallinn too. But as the day progressed, I lost their signal again, but not to the bad propagation. Rather I lost it to the good propagation as Finnish signals on the same frequencies(E57 for Koeru, E45 for Tallinn) kicked in. In the noon hours, I was able to lock to Lahti's E51 as well. Then, E46 and E32 came in from Espoo. I was able to save those channels as well to my set top box and managed to get a stuttering picture of YLE's channels and some private channels. Eventually they faded out. However, as the afternoon progressed, I kept scanning the channels and seeing most of the UHF band being overcrowded by digital signals. Then, I saw Lahti. By this time, local television signals from E47 in Valgjärve were dark - only way to get them was to put antenna to another place. By quarter to two PM, I saw E51 from Lahti with signal strength 88% and quality of 90%... Would you believe that I received this with an indoor antenna? Espoo was also coming in. By 2 PM, E51 had weakened and I was scanning channels again. Now I ended up on E53 from Espoo. Signal strength 62%, quality 15%. Sound stuttered. It was about 15 minutes before 3 PM, when I got signal from Tammela. This was E50, and channels list pointed to "kanavanippu C", which is transmitted from Tammela in this frequency. At 3 PM, I noticed strong signal coming on E33. I initially thought it was Multiplex 1 from Kohtla-Nõmme. Think again... If I ran channel search, I initially thought that the receiver had locked to E32. But it was E33. I was receiving Kanavanippu A from Lahti despite Estonian digital transmitter on the same frequency. Still with an indoor antenna, signal strength was 86%, quality 84%.

E33 at 3:10 PM.

By 4 PM, all Finnish multiplexes went dark while still indicating a presence of digital signal. Occasionally some signals from various places jumped in for short time. The hotspot for the evening was Tammela...

On the next morning
Hmm... it appears that it is over... or is it? I scan the band... and I find a strong signal originating on E38. Channels list on that frequency and other freqs with similar strength and their channel lists indicate Mikkeli. Wow. That is the furthest digital signal from Finland I have ever received. My previous record was from E51 in Lahti. By using a directional logarythmic antenna(which could block co-channel interference a bit), I was able to pick up E43 from Mikkeli too... and saw even the "lost sheep" MTV3 and Nelonen. Occasionally the Mikkeli signal, especially the multiplex was very strong... Finnish DX came to an end after 9 AM in the morning.
However, before it happened, I was able to save this signal strength report to the posterity:

The opening continued to gradually weaken throughout the day, with only Koeru's transmitter remaining above normal signal level. In fact, it is above normal even now as I type. Signal strength 64%, quality 58%. Usually all I'd get would be 50%/0-5% with even no teletext!

On analog
I was also able to DX some analog signals. I was able to pick up one station in St. Petersburg, Russia. I do not know its exact name right now, but the logo in their ident read 5 PETERBURG.

Wow! This is definitely one memorable DX experience that will not be forgotten for a long time.

How far(approximate values)?
Laguja-Koeru - 95 km
Laguja-Tallinn - 170 km
Laguja-Espoo - 250 km
Laguja-Lahti - 320 km
Laguja-Mikkeli - 385 km
Laguja-Tammela - 340 km

I apologise for any typographical errors in this posting. I do not have the time right now to do a full spell check.

"We interrupt this program..."

War of the Worlds, the infamous radio play based on the book by H. G. Wells, turned 70. When it initially aired, people in the U.S had the daylights scared out from themselves. Obviously there was also outrage over this radio play, as has been for other such "newscasts." Remember Without Warning on TV in 1994? Yes, people got scared and outraged. Bye Bye Belgium in 2006? Yep. You know the answer. Same reaction. Sometimes I tend to think that even now 70 years later, people blindly trust whatever they hear on the television, radio etc and are simply unable to make a distinction between fact and fiction. Honestly, I personally find faux newscasts to be quite entertaining. So what would I do if I happened to tune into a faux newscast and I am unaware that it is fake. I have three simple rules for that.
1. Switch to another channel, preferrably a news one - if there are really Martian cylinders falling from the sky, then it is obvious that all news channels from CNN to Al Jazeera would have their staff up and in arms, covering the story. If noone else is talking about that, and other channels do not mention it even in their teletexts(especially if they are in the "affected" area)... something is fishy.
2. Run a Google News search on the event "covered." The news must have started somewhere from a smaller source, and once again, read rule no. 1 - you ought to find other news sources confirming it if it really was real. Although caveat: If you find another news service reporting the event, look who they claim as a source. Maybe they have believed the faux newscast.
3. If you have been unable to verify that the event is really happening in real life, then sit back in your couch, and enjoy the entertainment and imagine as if you were in an action movie.

Going up? Or going down?

Now, at the time, when people are keeping their eyes on every stock index from Nikkei to Dow Jones, I thought I'd write about a way of keeping track on my emotions... Tension lack index. I got inspiration for this initially in 2004 when hearing about stock prices rising/falling/being steady from the news. I started daily calculations of it on 30 October 2005 at 15:15 with initial value of 100 points. I am raising it a certain level of percents(4-20, depending on the strength of emotions) when I have a positive emotion, and lower when I have a negative emotion. Using a preprogrammed calculator, doing this is easy. Daily at or near 19:00 UTC, I write this value down. As a result I have an insight how well or not well I have been doing. Now, today, I added a feature this blog which enables to show the latest write-down with the recorded change during the previous day.

Ike

My condolences go out to all people who suffered under hurricane Ike, or under the remnants of it.

Following scripts portray the imaginary(and fictional!) media I have written about before during these days. This pretty much should sum up what thoughts I had about this storm in my head. This time I have written into some new characters, LWTV, a weather related English language channel, and LWS, a local (but also fictional weather service). If you want to read more about ex-Ike's effects on Iceland, I'd suggest to read Iceland Review.
LRET 1: 15:30 on 18.09.2008
Ident: SPECIAL REPORT: Ex-Ike
Anchor: Good afternoon, although the main news just concluded, this is once again a special report of LRET 1 News on the remnants of Ike. We would like to remind that continuous coverage on ex-Ike can be seen on LRET 5. Just less than a half an hour ago, Iceland Review released another report on the remnants of Ike. There have been reports of flooding and damage to the roads. It has been told that this was probably the worst storm in years. We shall now switch over to our sister station LWTV, which has been on the air monitoring Ike since last Friday. Let's listen in now..."
LWTV Meteorologist 4: "Honestly, these reports are even worse than I expected. I expected a strong storm with gusts at low hurricane force, but..."
LWTV Meteorologist 3: "Meanwhile, let's say hello to viewers of LRET 1, who will be following us for next few minutes. We here at the LWTV studios in LWS have been on the air continuously, with the exception of weather updates and hourly newscasts, since Friday noon. Now, let's bring out some important reports. Recently a report emerged from Iceland that airstrip in Gjögur had reported wind speed of 47 meters per second last night, per Iceland Review. We were unable to determine whether this was a sustained reading or a gust. For our international viewers's here's a little conversion. 47 meters per second is 169 kilometers per hour, 91 knots or 105 miles per hour. This is the last we have heard from out there."
LWTV Meteorologist 5(leaves roundtable and walks to a video screen): "All right, I'd like to put this reading into perspective. Can we get Saffir Simpson scale to the video screen?"
Hurricane scale appears on the video screen
LWTV Meteorologist 5: "OK. I would first like to put a little caveat on this - Saffir Simpson hurricane scale is used for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean. Ike is no longer a tropical cyclone... and there is chance that it might not even be an ex-Ike anymore by standard means, but possibly the moisture from ex-Ike as a part of another cyclone."
LWTV Meteorologist 4: "Don't forget ex-Lowell that joined ex-Ike!"
LWTV Meteorologist 5: "And moisture from ex-Lowell. Of course, merger with another system will certainly remove identity from the weather maps, but the bad weather itself... Depends. Sometimes the weather conditions doesn't make it through the merger either, but sometimes they might provide extra fuel to the resultant system. Anyway, we have a report from Iceland about winds reaching 47 meters per second. I assume that this was a gust. Now, if this was a tropical cyclone and 47 meters per second was a 1 minute average speed, this would mean a strong Category 2 hurricane. If I remember such wind speed is kind of close to the intensity Ike had at making landfall in Texas. Does anyone have the Texas landfall intensity?"
LWTV Meteorologist 2: "Hang on, I'll check... 49! 49 meters per second, but that was sustained. Gusts were obviously higher."
LWTV Meteorologist 3: "By the way, has Europe even had storm with winds even gusting more than that?"
LWTV Meteorologist 5: "In fact we have. A storm which Germans called Anatol in 1999 had gusts to 48 meters per second. (fact sheet about European storms appears on video screen) Now, of course, in the mountains, much higher above the ground, it can be much windier, but during Kyrill in 2007, winds reached 62 meters per second! I however think this was measured at a pretty high elevation. Also the gusts in The Great Storm of 1987 in the UK were slightly stronger than our today's reason of attention."
LRET 1 Anchor: "Ok, we are breaking away now from LWTV to pass over to our weather studio for the latest comment."
Weather announcer at LRET 1: "Yes, and indeed, we are having a some sort of an identity crisis. Apparently Ex-Ike with the moisture from Ex-Lowell may have lost its identity early this week. Regardless of it, the... even if merged... remnants have probably acted like a high octane fuel, and intensified an extratropical low pressure area to the intensity that is probably even comparable to beasts like Anatol and Erwin. Latter one is also known as Gudrun and that name is also probably familiar for residents in Pärnu and other coastal areas... and also people at far inland. However, folks in that city, don't grab that sand bag! This system is already weakening and in addition, a high pressure area in our neck of the woods, which we here have been aptly calling "The Ex-Hurricane Levee" after it blocked ex-Hanna, will block off ex-Ike either..."

LWTV 20:53 on 19.09.2008
LWTV Meteorologist 12: "And this was the summary of this hurricane and its afterlife. All right, we all have now gathered here to finally end this, for us, record-breaking broadcast. We have been on the air, practically continuously in Estonian on ILTV and English on LWTV, for 7 days, 8 hours and 50 minutes, minus the newscasts and weather updates in every 10 minutes. We have been also simulcasted on Ilm FM in Estonian and on Weather AM in English, and we have been passing notes to each other all the time through the departments at the LWS."
LWTV Meteorologist 9: "Indeed, we decided to stay on the air continuously even after Ike became a tropical depression after it became evident that Europe might need to track this system, and after we almost lost the track of the storm. For about 24 hour time period, locating ex-Ike... or what was left of ex-Ike was like finding a needle from a haystack."
LWTV Meteorologist 7: "I have a strong feeling that we won't get to see Ike in the year 2014."
LWTV Meteorologist 8: "Speaking of the name, did anyone else find the word "ike" from Estonian Language Institute's Estonian Language dictionary - a legal basis of our language?"
LWTV Meteorologist 6: "Sure. But I was on the air here when Ike made landfall and thus the staff trusted me to say following: we here at LWTV would like to send our thoughts and sympathy to everyone who suffered under Ike."
LWTV Meteorologist 4: "And with that, we here at LWTV are now signing off and returning to our regular schedule. Listeners at Weather AM, will have one hour of "Calm Evening" and we will have "Weather Evening" as usual. We thank anyone for watching and may we all have a fair weather for some time. Have a nice evening"
Credits roll as the ominous theme music plays, camera zooms out and mets shake hands, lasting until 20:58, followed by weather update aired in weather alert mode.

Autumn is coming

BREAKING NEWS: First signs of autumn have appeared on Estonian nature. In addition, weather has been quite cloudy and even a tad rainy this month. Well, entire summer has been rather ... un-summery. I have seen better summers. However, this is Estonia and I should be grateful for any good weather we have.

At least the jinx of eclipses being clouded out got broken. With difficulties I saw the solar eclipse on 1st of August, and the eclipse on 16-17 August was rather well seen too despite the fog.

Some other news - I have graduated high school. Even now, post-graduation, I occasionally see dreams of high school classes, but ... Since 19 June 2008, I am a free man. However, I will keep doing revision in some high school subjects as I am thinking of taking some extra exams so I could go to the university to study Geography and with that also Meteorology.

I am a tad mad at the International Olympic Committee right now... Their restrictions on broadcasting even made The Berlin Wall pale. In fact, their shameful restrictions on Internet streaming probably left some countries without live Olympics footage - in some countries, Olympics were not carried live, at least the opening-closing ceremonies and people were also unable to watch it from any foreign link thanks to The Great Firewall of IOC. Thanks, IOC, for ruining the show for some.

Birthday reminder: Only 12 days until my 19th birthday.

Weather camera from my neck of the woods

Trying to reincarnate the weather feed from my home:

Video chat rooms at Ustream

LRET 5: Waiting for snow

All right. You might have heard about the imaginary TV channels I have imagined... And the callsign system where L stands for Laguja and the rest of three letters are the call letters... But leaving that aside, a "transcript" from my fantasies...

SUNDAY 23 DECEMBER 2007
LRET 5
10:02 ESTONIAN STANDARD TIME
Reporter: "... will be brown, maybe even green. Josh Nirmi, LRET 5, Laguja."
News anchor: "All right, we have now a breaking news story to follow. We have just been notified that it is snowing outside.
IDENT: BREAKING NEWS
News anchor: "We are now looking at a live shot from Laguja and yes, it is snowing. Some areas outside are turning white - this is snow. We will now continue from our weather edition, go ahead Brian."
Brian, weatherman: "All right, good early morning to everybody in the US, and good forenoon to viewers in Estonia. It is quite unorthodox for us here in Estonia, where snow is common at winters, to do a breaking news on even a small snowflake, but we are becoming desperate here. Looking now outside at the live shot, it is indeed snowing. Snow is gathering in some places. You can see how it is turning whiter. However, this is not much giving hope for Christmas, as it may melt at every time. Now let's take a look at the current weather conditions. Temperature is hovering at 32 degrees Fahrenheit - still very hot. The precipitation may turn into sleet or rain at any time. We don't want to be Grinches, but I am afraid that I can't deny it: we here in Estonia must face Christmas without snow for a second year in a row."
--
10:13 Simulcast from LWTV
Reporter 3: "Well, we are facing a sad truth here. The snow has turned wet again, and it was just a teaser for us. I am signing off, no more snow here"
News anchor at LWTV: "So so much for the snowfall. It has either stopped or turned into sleet or rain. Let's have look at the Christmas forecast now."
Weather announcer at LWTV: "All right, the weather is still expected to be a Grinch. For the Christmas Day, we are expecting windy, cloudy and hot day, with temperatures over 0 degrees Celsius. Winds may gust up to 8 meters per second in our area here, but gusts may be higher in the coastal areas. Sorry, White Christmas will be just a dream this year, just like a year ago. Taking now a look at the longer range forecasts and we will see that as the new week progresses, weather finally starts to get colder, with temperatures going to negative sides of Celsius scale. It might turn below freezing point already at Boxing Day, but still, we are not expecting any precipitation. Back to you"
News anchor at LWTV: "So much for this newscast right now, now back to programming"
IDENT: "This is LWTV, The Weather Day"
---

Note: I am desperate for snow! Looks like there will be a Christmas without snow for 2nd year in a row

Update to my political views on American scale

You are a Social Liberal (60% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (20% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat (20e/60s) Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Did I forget something?

Oh yes, to write here. It has been ages since I wrote here. Well, to round up things, I just say that I hopefully managed to graduate 11th grade and I hope I also continue studies at 12th. However, nothing is sure. In less than 2 and a half months, I will be officially a grown-up, on 6 September, I will turn 18, and per Estonian laws, that makes me a grown-up. However, I am feared of this though - I've got to start paying taxes, army probably tries to drag me into it(mandatory army service in Estonia :( ) despite my Aspergers Syndrome and the other fun stuff...

Honestly, I am afraid of growning up... Especially that I might not have all the mental abilities needed for a grown up. Well, let's live one day at a time... However, I am looking toward this autumn with worry... I hope this wouldn't be so scary though...

On Linux for some time

Well, yesterday at about 8:45 PM, computer went wacko. Mozilla Firefox didn't open anymore after clicking on its icon and after managing to reset its settings using MF Safe mode, the browser opened, but then it hard disk went active and this ended up in complete freeze of the computer. Well, I don't know what's up. I did virus check and spyware check(there were some registry entries found though...). Well, I think that mother has to call one of our relative who knows the computers better than I and who restored lost files after a virus deleted them in 2004.

Until things get fixed, I am running computer from Knoppix Live CD. Besides that it is Linux, not Windows, it runs from CD and therefore uses hard disk only for its swapfile... Well, please pray that things get fixed and everything would be OK.

Knoppix is kind of interesting, it has its own Winamp-like media player, it has 2 web browsers and many other useful tools... If I only could get MIDI and Windows Media to work...

Whoa

I almost fell out of my chair when I found out(thanks to Google) this morning that as of year 2000, 25 thousand Estonians were living in USA and Florida was ranked 5th in the states what have Estonians... Well, I think I will become more active in tropics section of Estonian weather forum this summer. Yesterday I heard about deadly tornadoes in Central Florida. I hope that there weren't any Estonians affected...

Whoa...

Silent evening...

It is currently a dark, cloudy and depressing evening here in Laguja village. Unusual warmness has hit us. I am already worried that my uncle's son is going to show his wife blank grounds, not snow when they come to Estonia from Brazil for the Christmas. Well, I haven't seen him for ages. Thank God for Skype! When I have visited my uncle's home, we have stayed in touch with him over Skype.

But things are not so happy always. I just heard few weeks ago that a friend of mine, who was impressed in my weather enthusiasm, passed away in September :( :( I was mentally knocked out for a day.

Things are gonna get very ugly tomorrow. I need to study and I need to study a lot. It could be possible that I will have FIVE tests(3 scheduled and 2 work up tests(since I go to school 2-3 times a week, I have missed some tests)) on Friday at school. I have done some revision already today, on Wednesday evening... Friday will have 8 lessons... Day begins at 8:15 AM, ends 3:35 PM... I guess I am not gonna see daylight in my home again... And this means taking off from my home at 7:20 AM... and getting home after 4:30... Brr... Well, let's see how things turn out.

What is the best expression?

Here's something I wanted to share with you. Few months ago I got a homework assignment at school to do a story containing at least 20 Estonian expressions. I have now translated it to English and supplied some language comments too so you could understand what I am talking about. Have fun!

What is the best expression?
By Tarmo Tanilsoo

“Morning!”, the news anchor Eva said when she entered the news edition of LRET 1. “Morning, morning! We have a major trouble! If I was bull, I would jump into the well,” says Janno, another news anchor. “Well, trouble drives bull to well, but what’s the problem?” asks Eva. “We got an assignment to find the best expression.” says Janno. “Vaat kus lops! (Estonian expression what is used when very surprised). This is indeed difficult.” Just then Fiona comes to work. “Morning!” says she. “Morning! I think we have the most difficult assignment on channel’s history. We need to find the best expression of all times,” says Janno. “Oh no! My head is already full of sticks! Now we are going to feel water and whistle.” exhaled Fiona. “Maybe we should make a competition on the news.” offers Eva. Janno and Fiona agree. “I will talk with the editor. Let’s stop building air castles, let’s grab the bull by the horns, maybe we can organize something!”
“LRET 1 launches new expressions contest “Vaat kus lops”. Viewers are asked to send their favorite expression to the contact info shown on screen and write, how this expression has realized or not realized in real life. We will award the best expression,” chimes Eva’s voice on news edition’s TV. Through the air, news spread across Estonia like wildfire. Meanwhile, muddy Janno walks into the news edition. “What end of the world did happen to you?” asks startled Fiona. “This is horrible. I made live report outside, I slipped and landed in a mud puddle! It is so embarrassing that it makes you sink into the ground.” exhales Janno. “Don’t start giving flour and mush!(This expression means like “don’t give this absurd!” etc, hardly possible to translate) We will make fun about this in our New Year’s Eve specials, including you!” shouts Fiona. Janno doesn’t say black nor white, but shrugs the shoulders
Next morning when they come to work, each of them found huge amount of papers. “You gracious time! (like Good grace!) What is this?” asks Fiona. “These are letters from our viewers. Very many happened to see our news yesterday at 4 PM.” says Mark, the news editor. “Now we did bear’s favor (favor, what brought negative consequences) to ourselves. It takes whole day to survey them,” exhales Eva. But then Mark horns into the conversation. “In several cases, expressions were repeating. I sorted mails by them.” says he. “Be thanked! (like Thank you very much)” says Fiona. They choose 10 pest expressions so they could announce the winner at 8 PM news
“It is now 8:21 PM and those were today’s news stories. But the newscast doesn’t end with that…” says Fiona on the air. Janno enters the studio. “Now we should have Janno here who will announce, who won expressions competition we announced yesterday,” says Fiona. Then she asks: “And there he is. Do we have a winner?” “We have a winner, but we are not going to announce it at once. We will start now at 10th place and will go upwards.” replies Janno. “Which of us will now read the first?” asks Fiona. “You,” replies Janno. “All right. 10th place. Mihkel who wrote about “stomach is so full that you could kill a louse on it” sent this expression to us. He used this expression after eating so much that he could hardly move.” says Fiona. Janno continues: “9th place. Kind like molten water. This expression has been used several times on Karl who sent this.” Fiona says: “Owner of 8th place is Jaana whose water started to boil,”(Play of words. In Estonian language version, word veri(blood) was confused with vesi(water) in this story) Janno asks: “Water boiled?” Fiona replies: “Sorry, blood started to boil. Yes, she sent this expression to us. She had went so angry once that she commented this with boiling blood.” Janno continues: “I think that somebody’s blood just started boiling that you confused water with blood although I can hardly hold my laugh. Somebody had caused owner of 7th place, Marek, to have blood boiling so much that Marek was calling him “eternal snake!” Here it was written, that he applies “eternal snake.” Fiona says: “Pepper on your tongue! And the same is written by Mikk, who got the 6th place.” Janno: “Owner of 5th place has name Andrea in her passport and she didn’t found her newspaper. She said, “vanished like twig to the water”. Fiona: “Owner of fourth place is Vilja, who gave new and old to a person, who had played a trick on her.”
Somebody whispers to Janno: “How long yet it is going to take? Weather studio will start a riot if they don’t get to the air pretty soon. We need to fit “Watching the tropics” also to this half hour.” “We have three left,” whispers Janno. “Now, we need to hurry up when we want to stay on schedule. Third place is “no deed no face.” Mihkel who sent this wanted to cook, but failed heavily,” says Janno. Fiona continues: “Second place is owned by Rait whose lung went over liver (expresses becoming angry) on a day when everything went behind the fence (expresses fail, unsuccess). But now first place!” “Drum roll!” shouts Janno. Drum roll will be on a background for a moment. “I don’t even see a finger to put into my mouth (expresses zero-visibility). Once there was such a fog that the winner Silvia commented the visibility with this expression” continues Janno. “We congratulate the winner and we will contact you shortly. With this we end our today’s broadcast, in a moment we will continue with weather and we will have news again at 21:00. See you!”
And now the winning expression reaches the human who gave the assignment to find it. “Njaa, pretty interesting results. But maybe would you try it again?” says Tiit, the program director. “Go to the Moon! After this water and whistle!” lashes Fiona out. “All right, I was kidding. I am OK with the results. I will now call to the NASA and then start packing my bags,” says Tiit. No one knows if Tiit took expression “Go to the Moon” literally or was joking, but news edition was full of giggling for whole evening.

In USA, I would be Democrat...

First yes, I haven't written to here for ages. But this is just that I didn't have Internet in my home earlier, I have it now. But here's interesting test results. I found that test posted at Talkweather forum and I gave it a try. And here it is.

You are a Social Moderate (50% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (18% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Summer

Finally typing to the blog. Well, the summer's here. And I'm right now
laying in my bed, reading newspaper and listening to the radio.
Finally, summer is here and I can have a rest from school. There will
be school's anniversary and reunion of nearby villages on Saturday.
Pray for good weather... I'm still messing with my podcast. Meanwhile,
some extra rooms will be built to the house... And I get a room on the
northern side of a house... Well, summer's here and currently 18 hrs
12 minutes long days are now shortening. This can be depressing
because we have only 6 hours of sunshine. Yes, sun sets at 3.20 p.m at
the winters.. But well, this is our yearly life. Reminding, only one
state in USA is as north as Estonia is - Alaska.

There is convection

After seeing towering cumulus clouds as rain clouds left, I've reached
conclusion that we have some kind of convective activity. TCU's are
relatively high and it is just 8 a.m.

Raining

Weather pattern has significantly changed overnight. I woke up under a
cloudy sky today and father reported it is raining... Whoa!

School scheduled on June 3!!!

I am at school right now and just heard in the math lesson that there
will be school on June 3rd too! That's Saturday! Reminds me days far
back in Soviet Union when school was from Monday to Saturday...

Schoolday has been pretty stressful today. There was a test in music
but I don't think I did it good. An old math test was returned with
4(70-90%)...

As soon as I get home, I need to start making homework... Last lesson
is about to begin.

Well, gotta go now. Some people are picking on me what am I typing.
They think I am visiting rate.ee from cell phone. Don't make me laugh!
I think I am only guy in the class who came to study! Classmates
attitute clearly shows it

Horrible event I just heard

Well, I was reading Talkweather.com forum from my cell phone and read
about tragic event with one user's ex-wife and their baby. A
completely insane driver hit the ex-wife and baby got killed. I have
no words... And I thought Estonians have bad traffic culture. Thank
god they caught that driver. Jail that driver and throw away the key!
And this is not the best punishment I can think of...

I send now my condolence to that forum user(can't remember his user
name right know). I have no words to describe your emotions you may
have.

Breaking news - Our cat's latest addition

Our cat Garfield has given a birth. We discovered the kitten just five
minutes ago... He-or-she seems to be name. We should start choosing
name for him-or-her now. I keep you posted