I live in the future, but I’m not a clone, or a hologram, or anything exciting like that.
Tag Archives: florida
6863 – Broward County situation report
6862 – And still I wait.
Well, I was hoping to go for a walk this morning… get out of the containment field that is the house. No luck.. the wind outside is at a very strong level, and the rain is coming down in sheets.
Dan’s working on grading, and Jan’s watching TV evangelists, so I figure I’ll feed my own obsessive action by working on the journal a little bit this morn. I prefer to read Real Live Preacher to watching any carnival barker on the tube.
Jan’s making cranberry scones for breakfast this morning…they smell really good.
Though the hurricane is moving exceedingly slow, I have high hopes that I’ll be home tonight, or at worst tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to sleeping in my own bed and having the apartment to myself (and Newtself). Though it’s a two-bedroom house, three people tend to bump into one another a lot.
I have a half-gallon of ice cream in the freezer at home…I wonder if power stayed on long enough to keep it ice-creamy.
Latest reports are that there are 2 million people without power, and Frances is now downgraded to Category 1.
6857 – update
I’m going to stay with Danny and Janet’s place if things continue to be bad. Poor Danny’s allergic to Newt, but he’s willing to sacrifice for me and the little orange guy. Newtie-boy will be banned from the bedrooms, is all. I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to spend time in the living room with me. I’ll bring some Heroclix with me to play to while away the time in a more analog style.
Janet’s rather allergic to me, too, in a different sense. Our beliefs and ideals are fairly different, but she has been nothing but very gracious to me in times of need. I’m thankful for that.
My mother is going to be fine where she is, and if bro needs a place to stay, he can go be with her and Wilt.
To be on the safe side, I’ll be unpacking my PC later tonight, so I’ll be on and off-line as things happen. Danny’s only got dial-up, so I won’t have my DSL perma-connect that I do here. I’m tempted to lave my pc covered in plastic, and have the cam pointed inside for a Hurricane-view. I figure I’ll point it at the windows without wood on ’em to scan for alien invaders or flying coconuts.
Speaking of the cam, here’s the Newt pic of the day:
Current Cam pic – (will change over time)
Currently, you should be able to see my front door, South and East Windows, and bike. I’ll be taking the headlight with me as my personal flashlight when I go. You may also catch me running back and forth to the oven in order to retrieve lunchtime veggie taquitos.
Wilt’s coming by with a lovely bit of 5 x 6 wood to protect my most vulnerable window… the others should be fairly safe, and wood is very rare right now, as could be expected. My landlord claims there’s none to be found… I think that there probably could’ve been some if he was better prepared. I’m also happy to uproot the broad wooden fence outside, and use it as a side-barricade if need be.
current meme – (nicked from bubbles3563)
Leave a comment with your name if you want to know what I really think of you, and I’ll reply and tell you. No lies, all honesty. [I think most people already have a good idea of how I feel about ’em, but I’m happy to reinforce / surprise them.]
Post it in your journal after I do yours so I can see the reverse. (it may take a while, as checking email might get spotty.)
6855 – office secure/ Hurricane Frances PSA
Ok, Office is disassembled, network secure, and everything is safe there.
Now to research what to do for myself.
Hurricane Frances Information Hotline 954-831-4000
Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman announced at a media conference today at 8:00 a.m. the following action Broward County residents and visitors should take in preparation for Hurricane Frances.
• In anticipation of a hurricane warning later today and an in an abundance of caution, a mandatory evacuation has been ordered effective 2:00 p.m. today for the Barrier Islands and all mobile homes. Residents are strongly urged to evacuate. Voluntary evacuations can take place at any time.
• A recommended evacuation has been ordered for those areas east of US1 and for those residents who live on tidal bodies of water. [that’s me. I’m looking into pet-friendly hotels now.]
• Red Cross shelters will open at 2:00 p.m. today. Buses will begin running to assist with the evacuation at approximately 1:45 p.m. along A-1-A.
• Those persons who need to evacuate should first attempt to stay with friends or relatives outside the evacuation zone. The Red Cross Shelters will be available for those that need a safe refuge.
• Shelter guidelines:
– Shelters are a place of refuge only
– No pets are permitted in shelters – a list of pet friendly hotels is posted on the web site
– No smoking is permitted
– Items to bring: medication, battery-operated radio, special diet foods, baby food, personal items, pillows and blankets
– Shelter location information is available on the Broward County web site www.broward.org or by calling the Hurricane Hotline at 954-831-4000
• The Broward County special needs shelters will also open at 2:00 p.m. today. These shelters are for people who have special health care needs and require assistance. Residents in need have pre-registered and will be notified by telephone this morning to schedule transportation.
• There are approximately 17,000 visitors to Broward County staying in hotels in the evacuation area. Hotels in western Broward County are at capacity. Our Red Cross shelters are available as refuge for our visitors.
• Travelers should call the airlines before arriving at the airport to ensure that their flights are still scheduled.
• Port Everglades closed at 8:00 a.m. this morning to all vessel traffic including cargo and cruise ships.
• Homeless persons in Broward County should seek shelter at any of the Red Cross shelters or at the four shelters designated specifically to assist homeless persons. The shelters are:
Broward Outreach Center, 2056 Scott St., Hollywood, 954-926-7417
Salvation Army Lodge, 1445 W. Broward Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, 954-524-6991
Central Homeless Assistance Center, 920 N.W. 7th Ave., Fort Lauderdale, 954-779-3990
North Homeless Assistance Center, 1700 Blount Rd., Pompano Beach 954-979-6365
• All Broward County offices are closed today, as well as all public schools.
6852 – blah, blah, blah
I don’t know why, but I got the urge to make a cartoon out of Newt talking.
(no doubt he’s making fun of how pointless many of my entries are.)
I’m really looking forward to The Incredibles.
Good team. A stretchy, a brick, a speedster, invisi-forcefields, ice… looks like what little I’ve seen is well-written, too.
Dear M. Night Shyamalan,
It seems you can’t make a good movie without Bruce Willis. Call him back for the next flick you make. I loved 6th sense, and Unbreakable.
Signs and The Village, while having good bits in the middle at times, had poo endings.
Your Viewer in FL,
Scotto
Turn Gmail storage into a mountable file system
GmailFS provides a mountable Linux file system which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium. GmailFS is a Python application and uses the FUSE userland file system infrastructure to help provide the file system, and libgmail to communicate with Gmail.
GmailFS supports most file operations such as read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename. This means that you can use all your favorite Unix command line tools to operate on files stored on Gmail (e.g. cp, ls, mv, rm, ln, grep etc. etc.).
Cool.
Woo! I got my check from Google Adsense! Good deal, I wasn’t totally ripped off, after all. A lot of little financial windfalls lately!
Mike from Satan’s Laundromat photographs Critical Mass bicycle riders getting arrested Friday night and finds himself arrested and in jail overnight.
“they suddenly decided to start making arrests without warning, penning people in and arresting entire blocks’ worth of people, including hapless tourists and people getting off work who just happened to be in the area watching. And they couldn’t have been bothered to clean the diesel sludge off the floor of the holding pens where they made us sleep? Someone will pay.”
I hope *somebody* catches hell for that.
I’m glad to see that Cap’n Pete in Disney’s Three Musketeers cartoon has gone back to having a peg leg. Of course, the novel itself is public domain and available online. (you can always download and print it out if you prefer text on dead trees.)
It’s also the origin of GrayPumpkin & Katt’s little cow-kitty’s name. D’Art! (The first Kitty I was ever really social with.)
Hmm… Hurricane Frances travel projection looks like it’s headed this way, around midday Saturday. A lot can happen over the course of a week, but I’d wager it’ll hit the states *somewhere*.
6841 – Travel Pix, part 3 (Deseo la última edición con cantos dorados.)
Okay, last batch form the Saturday walkabout. I won’t be doing much this coming weekend, because I’m on call both days. I’ll settle for playing with Newtie, and watching my New DVDs that came in just last night (If I can wait that long)! Thank you again Oneyed, Sedef, and Granny! I fell strongly that my Plastic Man Archives will make it to me by then, too! Ah, comfort is truly giant monsters, plastic man, newton kitty, and spending the weekend in my jammies.
From the outside area of the swap shop – The Fairgrounds –
6839 – Travel pix part 2, plus recipe, and misc.
The Entrance to the Swap Shop. There’s a drive-in theater, the only one in good repair within several miles that I know about. Despite the incoming vehicles, it wasn’t uncomfortably crowded.
6837 Saturday’s walkabout and etc.
Well, I made it to the cemetery, but the office is in the midst of moving the system over to computer, so I didn’t get to drink my Arnold palmer six feet above the carcass of a famous TV dwarf. I was told to call back in a week or two, when the system is fully on-line.
I hopped back on the 40 bus, went to the Swap Shop, bought a pile of tasty veggies at the grocer-realm out front, and caught the 2pm show of the circus. I’m pleased that they don’t have that many animal acts… 99% human acts, save for the elephants. I don’t know why the caution sign mentioned horses, tigers, lions or loud explosions. Also, isn’t that caution sign considered notice?
Note almost invisible scary zombie kid at the bottom, peering at me.
Some other pictures from my trip – This entry is about signage
6837 Saturday's walkabout and etc.
Well, I made it to the cemetery, but the office is in the midst of moving the system over to computer, so I didn’t get to drink my Arnold palmer six feet above the carcass of a famous TV dwarf. I was told to call back in a week or two, when the system is fully on-line.
I hopped back on the 40 bus, went to the Swap Shop, bought a pile of tasty veggies at the grocer-realm out front, and caught the 2pm show of the circus. I’m pleased that they don’t have that many animal acts… 99% human acts, save for the elephants. I don’t know why the caution sign mentioned horses, tigers, lions or loud explosions. Also, isn’t that caution sign considered notice?
Note almost invisible scary zombie kid at the bottom, peering at me.
Some other pictures from my trip – This entry is about signage
6829 – snippets and bites
Well, no dice getting together with the oneeyed and the gang… one of their number wanted to return home once the power was on, so it’ll have to be next time. Maybe I’ll take a day-trip north to see the Edison / Ford Estates and lunch their neck of the woods! I’m glad they made it home ok, and that there was very little personal damage waiting for them.
Bro scammed the Mother out of about $150, claiming it was court costs. Lawyer said there were none, and Bro claims there wasn’t any receipt. Liar. That dumbass burned that bridge, now, too.
I convinced the PR department to not do Donkey Basketball as a fund raiser. Plenty of other fun ways to bring people together and donate money… no need to bring any animal cruelty or PETA picketers to the table.
Apparently T-Mobile was giving away free service all hurricane weekend. Good for you guys! You deserve some praise for that!
I fell asleep far too early last night, something like seven or so… I think I was fatigued from all of the stress over the missing Alabama boy. We were really scrambling the whole time I was at the office
I woke up at about 2:30am, got a drink of water and puttered for about an hour before trying to go back to bed. I really am a night person at heart… That was one of the nice things about IMT – the 4pm to midnight schedule.
how to make a scale model of a city
*really* nice tutorial on how to write tile-based games in flash. via
I’m in the mood for some really good Tandoori Indian food lately… something better than . This bears some research. I’ll have to sniff out my local sources and see what they prefer.
I’ve got to focus more on more than just these little bits and pieces… the journal’s been scattered lately, and I could stand more writing practice. flying_blind‘s recent excellent entry reminded me of this.
Dear Lenny Kravitz – Don’t help the gap. You don’t want to be in there with SJP.
My entry about the Lumbee Indians is still getting activity, over two years after the first casting about for information about Roanoke. Until that research arc, I thought that the colonists had been massacred.
I still have the itch to do a cemetery stroll and look up Miguelito Loveless.
It’s true, I live inside the spread of one of the corners of the Bermuda Triangle. (Usually, the points are Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Miami, but they’ve been known to vary.) I wonder what major areas of supernatural repute are near folks on my friend’s list? Transylvanians? Amity? I know there’s a “stonehenger” or two.
Saturn has 33 verified moons, now. Continue reading 6829 – snippets and bites
6827 – I don't smoke cigarettes.
Big Kahuna’s in Alabama all this week, opening the state to local law enforcement.
I may be going out to a late lunch with oneeyed and crew after work.I wonder where a good place to dine might be? Some Options
I woke up *voracious*… I could devour a pile of waffles right now.
Philip K. Dick – How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later
divide by zero’s free fonts – I really dig geodesic, levity and two turtle doves
Last night’s fortune cookie.
| “You have unusual equipment for success, use it properly.” Daily Numbers 5 0 8 Lotto Six #’s 39 45 36 37 18 27 |
What, no Chinese Lesson? I’ll resist making any rude “in bed” cookie comment suffix this go ’round.
Found another subset of NOAA’s site, this time it’s South Florida Specific.
Recently re-discovered the lightning strike site, too – Strikes within the last 3 seconds will appear as a yellow bolt. Older strikes will appear as mostly red and blue dots. The smaller the dots, the older the strike. Red and blue indicates cloud-to-ground strokes. Lavender and purple indicates cloud-to-cloud strokes. The display typically reflects a total of the last 20 minutes activity for any given period.
FEMA has now declared 25 counties in Florida as disaster areas. That’s good news for those victims further inland. Aid will be more readily available for the rebuilding efforts.
Storms rolled through central Florida this afternoon – 2000+ lightening strikes recorded in an hour with more than 3” of rain in spots. According to local news additional rain will coming in off of the gulf in the Punta Gorda & North Port areas now.
They are expecting to put a figure to the fatalities in Lee County sometime tomorrow. One optimistic thing is that many people in the hardest hit areas had left for the summer, so it is possible the number will be lower than expected.
The Bradenton Herald is a very good source for information.
The Red Cross is still requesting monetary contributions and that information can be found HERE. They are still the quickest way to get water, food, shelter and comfort to the victims.
As a petty / karmic redemption side note, I hope that this disaster milks every penny out of the evil, evil, evil Liberty Mutual company.
Photos of Disney World preparations, and post-storm Hurricane Charley. (I’m surprised they didn’t just cover the park with a big plastic dome topped with mouse ears.) Interesting to see all the hanging signs tethered in place. (The last thing anyone needs is to be impaled by a flying bit of Jungle Cruise sign.) He’s got other nifty shots, too… like the construction of Expedition Everest.
I’d like to have this as a Disclaimer all around my property. (for web-cam usage)
It strikes me as funny that people don’t think of Morocco, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Egypt as Oriental. It’s not called the Middle East for nothing, y’know. I wonder if Arabs were *ever* referred to as “Orientals” in the old days, before that term was made politically incorrect? I still Figure myself to be an “Occidental“.. “The Orient” is a much niftier term than “Eastern Lands.”
Interesting portraiture by Mary Ellen Mark. Circus Folk in India, including a Hippo Trainer and little people in monkey suits.
Going over LJ’s stats.
It looks like the male population is dwindling, at less than a third of the total gender specified userbase.
Where I fall out of 4,179,761 accounts
I have –
- Updated in the last 24 hours (like 268,799 others)
- Permanent account – something like 0.0003% of the users here (one of 1618)
- Most popular county – USA (2,035,801)
- 2nd most popular State – Florida (191,899)
- Of the very few 35 year olds (7379) (and the numbers dwindle each year!)
6827 – I don’t smoke cigarettes.
Big Kahuna’s in Alabama all this week, opening the state to local law enforcement.
I may be going out to a late lunch with oneeyed and crew after work.I wonder where a good place to dine might be? Some Options
I woke up *voracious*… I could devour a pile of waffles right now.
Philip K. Dick – How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later
divide by zero’s free fonts – I really dig geodesic, levity and two turtle doves
Last night’s fortune cookie.
| “You have unusual equipment for success, use it properly.” Daily Numbers 5 0 8 Lotto Six #’s 39 45 36 37 18 27 |
What, no Chinese Lesson? I’ll resist making any rude “in bed” cookie comment suffix this go ’round.
Found another subset of NOAA’s site, this time it’s South Florida Specific.
Recently re-discovered the lightning strike site, too – Strikes within the last 3 seconds will appear as a yellow bolt. Older strikes will appear as mostly red and blue dots. The smaller the dots, the older the strike. Red and blue indicates cloud-to-ground strokes. Lavender and purple indicates cloud-to-cloud strokes. The display typically reflects a total of the last 20 minutes activity for any given period.
FEMA has now declared 25 counties in Florida as disaster areas. That’s good news for those victims further inland. Aid will be more readily available for the rebuilding efforts.
Storms rolled through central Florida this afternoon – 2000+ lightening strikes recorded in an hour with more than 3” of rain in spots. According to local news additional rain will coming in off of the gulf in the Punta Gorda & North Port areas now.
They are expecting to put a figure to the fatalities in Lee County sometime tomorrow. One optimistic thing is that many people in the hardest hit areas had left for the summer, so it is possible the number will be lower than expected.
The Bradenton Herald is a very good source for information.
The Red Cross is still requesting monetary contributions and that information can be found HERE. They are still the quickest way to get water, food, shelter and comfort to the victims.
As a petty / karmic redemption side note, I hope that this disaster milks every penny out of the evil, evil, evil Liberty Mutual company.
Photos of Disney World preparations, and post-storm Hurricane Charley. (I’m surprised they didn’t just cover the park with a big plastic dome topped with mouse ears.) Interesting to see all the hanging signs tethered in place. (The last thing anyone needs is to be impaled by a flying bit of Jungle Cruise sign.) He’s got other nifty shots, too… like the construction of Expedition Everest.
I’d like to have this as a Disclaimer all around my property. (for web-cam usage)
It strikes me as funny that people don’t think of Morocco, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Egypt as Oriental. It’s not called the Middle East for nothing, y’know. I wonder if Arabs were *ever* referred to as “Orientals” in the old days, before that term was made politically incorrect? I still Figure myself to be an “Occidental“.. “The Orient” is a much niftier term than “Eastern Lands.”
Interesting portraiture by Mary Ellen Mark. Circus Folk in India, including a Hippo Trainer and little people in monkey suits.
Going over LJ’s stats.
It looks like the male population is dwindling, at less than a third of the total gender specified userbase.
Where I fall out of 4,179,761 accounts
I have –
- Updated in the last 24 hours (like 268,799 others)
- Permanent account – something like 0.0003% of the users here (one of 1618)
- Most popular county – USA (2,035,801)
- 2nd most popular State – Florida (191,899)
- Of the very few 35 year olds (7379) (and the numbers dwindle each year!)
6826 – yikes – punta gorda details
I’m amazed at the level of damage in Punta Gorda… very reminiscent of the hurricane Andrew situation before. The thing that gets me is that very few people really took it seriously until it was too late… I think that’s thanks in now small part to TV news blowing *every* weather event totally out of proportion.
A million people without power, and two million people were asked to evacuate. I wonder how much damage will be caused by looting, and how many people are going to get gunshot wounds as a result of walking around in the wrong part of town, now that the weather has passed by.
6824 – The trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw.
Took myself out to lunch and a movie yesterday afternoon. AvP was much less than what I expected. Very poorly directed… the last thing I want from an action movie is to be bored. It made me want to go back to play the first person shooter, so maybe that’s what they were going for… more video game sales. The effects were quite good, but that’s about it… I’m guessing they went pg-13 to bring in a younger contingent, and a lot of it could’ve been improved with more visual direction. I should’ve gone to see Bourne, instead.
Lunch was better… cheese trio sammich at Blimpie. I stopped off at the library after, to cool off before making the march home.
Note to self, bus schedules have changed, download new pdfs to palm.
I wonder how long it’ll be before they try for a Land of The Lost movie now? Or maybe Ultraman (in the US – I can’t seem to find any of the old Asian ones on Bittorrent)? I just like scary humanoids with big round eyes, and head-fins. (I already got my Rocketeer movie.)