Saturday, September 20, 02003
Not only does this story have a tiger shot by a drunk soldier, but there are some bear and lion action as well. Oh my. No word on whether the bear was shot or not. Apparently that news will have to wait for the phones to come back up. Ah the joys of no-bid contracts.
Posted at 09:20 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Friday, September 19, 02003
All the traffic lights were working on my route, and besides a couple small tree branches there didn't seem to be much damage. The only bad thing so far today is that unsafe drinking water in Fairfax means no coffee at work !
Posted at 01:26 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
It turns out the patio flooded, and water started to seep into the living room, dispite the towels. I went out with a bucket and started bailing water over the side of the building (six stories up mind you. How ridiculous). Happened at around 7:00 PM before the full effects of the storm were supposed to hit the Washington area. I had the bail the patio twice more, and then I had a really good idea. I still had all the soil from the tomato plant experiment from last year. I used it to build a goofy little earthern dam along the outside of the sliding glass door. It held ! The water stopped seeping into the living room, and I could stop bailing. When everything dries off, it'll be a pain to sweep up all that dirt, but it sure beats scooping up buckets of water over the side of side of the building.
Incidently the Little Dutch Boy knickknack in the picture was broken during the storm. Heads up - if you're trying to save the patio knickknacks from being broken during a hurricane, it's probably best not to toss them from the patio into the living room. Doh ! It is fixable though.
Amazingly the power hasn't gone out here yet, even though there are something like two million people in the area without electricity. It went out for a few seconds (enough for the computer to reboot while I was writing this post last night), but nothing significant. When I was bailing the patio, it flickered on and off a few times, along with some weird blue/green flashes from the transformers near Quincy Park, but then things went back to normal. I'm still waiting for the lights to go out.. The office is open, and I should be there now, but I'm waiting for things to calm down a bit.
I'm a bit sore today from all the bailing. I just got a Arlington Alert message saying it's safe for Arlington residents to drink the water. Take that Fairfax !
Posted at 09:24 AM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Thursday, September 18, 02003
Okay, so I'm not sitting in the living room anymore until this is over. There was just a pretty fierce gust, and the sliding glass doors to the patio bulged inward a noticable amount from where I was sitting across the apartment. I shut the blinds that I had wide open before. I figure if the glass shatters the blinds will keep it from going all over the apartment.
Posted at 05:45 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Arlington Alert is starting to prove useful - I just got a message there's a downed wires at Lee Highway and Lorcom Lane. There were also messages saying everyone should stay off the roads, and not go outside unless it was a life or death situation.
I'm getting a bit worried the patio may flood and seep into the apartment. It would be sort of ridiculous to have any flooding damage while on the 6th floor. I'm going to wad up some towels and put them along the sliding glass door just in case.
It looks like on of hte trees outside my window lost a branch.
Posted at 05:29 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
There have been some big gusts coming along now, almost bad enough to get me to close the windows, but not quite there yet. There are some noisy garbage cans blowing around now, and some sirens in the distance. Those cans better blow away soon. Otherwise I may have to go out and put them out of their misery.
I'm stuck downloading 2 weeks worth of mail now since I switched back to Netscape mail on Unix after the last Microsoft virus, and I didn't remember to change the Unix mail setting to delete the mail after it was read. Sigh. So I'm practicing my tinwhistle embouchure in the meantime.
Oopsydaisy - a huge gust almost blew out the screen door on the patio. Time to close the windows.
Posted at 04:29 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
I'm back home now, having bailed around 2:00 PM. The drive back was uneventful. No wind gusts of note, very light traffic. The daily mpg turned out to be a little more than 54 mpg. Not bad for a rainy day, but alas no killer tail winds I've got all the windows in the apartment open now, using the extra wind as an excuse to air out the place a little. When/if things start getting bad it'll only take me 30 seconds to get them all closed. I'm also doing some laundry before the power konks out. Now I'm going to try to dial into the work, since I'm technically still on the clock.
It looks like the patio's starting to flood a bit, and the gusts are picking up a bit now.
Posted at 03:01 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
It's started raining now, winds still don't seem that bad. I went out for some pho at lunch and the shopping center seemed seemed pretty sane. Apparently everyone has piled their stocks by now.
Two people have offered to loan me their SUV if my little car blows away. Ha ha ha ha. The joke was old the first time before it finished it. I don't think my comeback about super tailwind mileage didn't sink in much.
Posted at 01:17 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
I'm at work now. 54.2 mpg on the drive in. Very light traffic, since the entire Federal government has wimped out. Metros even shutting down at 11:00AM. I'm probably going to go home around 2:00 PM, after lunch. Things are very quiet here. Lots of people are "WFH" - working from home, and I am soon to become one of them.
Posted at 11:06 AM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
The winds picking up, but I can still make out some stars through the cloud cover.
I finished my stockpiling last night, when I went to the local 24/7 megamart around midnight to pick up supplies. Luckily my emergency supplies were still pretty much intact from the Great Duct Tape Alert, so the supplies consisted mainly of peanut butter, tuna fish, and beer. I was amused to see that I wasn't the only person in the checkout line getting English beer in case of a power outage forced us to drink it warm.
I also filled the tank on the Insight even though I had just filled it late last week, so I still had enough gas to drive up to Pennsylvania, and probably back again if I needed to evacuate. I just really wanted the full pre-storm panic experience, and it seemed like anxiously waiting in line at the gas station was all part of the game. I'd tape up my windows, but frankly it's way too much hassle.
Hopefully I'll only have live through one of these once-a-decade hurricanes before moving back up North, so I'm going to savor my pre-storm panic rush, damn it., even if this is the second once-in-a-decade storm this year.
Posted at 12:14 AM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Wednesday, September 17, 02003
The main thought I'm currently supressing is
Hmmmm... I wonder what sort of mileage I'll get with a 100 mph tail wind ?
Most likely, driving the Insight tomorrow will be like
piloting the Dodo in GTA3. A curse on my super aerodynamic car !
Posted at 02:28 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Monday, September 15, 02003
Sigh.. There's a hurricane on the horizon. The shit rains down so much around here anymore it's time for some
Washington Area Disaster Bingo
Posted at 11:49 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
The fast was about 65% effective this year. The breakdown in various areas is something like.
- 100% success in no computer/playstation games
- 100% success in seeing DVD or movies
- 100% success in watching no TV, though that's not unusual
- 100% sucess in no blogging
- 75% successful in cutting down music to only classical/folk. Turns out after a long day at work I needed something more lievely to keep me awake on the commute home.
- 50% success in cuting out web browsing, especially the last two days over the rainy weekend.
This year's fast was more difficult than last year's fast, probably because I was trying to stay away from all the 9-11 coverage last year, and I wasn't avoiding anything in particular this year.
One good thing I noticed was that on Thursday's I've fallen into a habit of going out and getting a DVD and eating some take-out. Since there was no DVD, I ended up eating more sensibly that night.
From what I could tell from my limited browsing, it was a pretty slow news week, so there probably wouldn't have been too many posts anyway.
Posted at 08:53 AM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
