First, I wish all of those in line of this storm the best, and I pray for everyone's safety. I have an uncle in Hallandale, and I wish I had called him today. I need to find skeeto's map to see how close he really is.

Second, I want to thank Phil for the fine job he has done moderating these boards. I was very upset to get a PM from him tonight expressing his frustrations with respect to some comments directed at him. They are undeserved. If you think it's hard reading all the posts, think of how hard it is to MODERATE them. The football comment was made by us because we felt the NFL was being shallow-minded with respect to the most important issues down there, like everyone's lives and property. That was an issue, and even though it wasn't about the storm per se, it was an issue nonetheless.
I know this is off-topic, and feel free to remove this, but I don't want to lose Phil, and we are close. No one person is as important as the situation at hand, but this is a person that really cares about all of you down there-like his extended family.
I am not going to say I understand what everyone is going through, because I don't. I have never been through that. I do imagine tempers can be short-(displaced anger?)

While I'm off-topic, I may as well go all the way. I am tired of watching everyone with a microphone and a camera stand in the middle of a violent hurricane. Some may think "if they can survive it, so can I", and that is dangerous. Sadly, nothing will change as long as nothing bad happens, but no one actually breaks new scientific ground out there-and to me it is irresponsible.

I don't want to leave out the other mods, but Phil does a lot of heavy lifting around here. THANK YOU ALL FOR ALL YOU DO.