Okay, so I got busy and didn’t get to write a second post during the storm. It all went pretty fast after the wall passed. Unfortunately, the storm made a slight right turn and I didn’t get to experience the calm in the eye, but that may have been a plus. Everyone who is acquainted with me would know that I would’ve been outside and scrambling for the door as the other side of the wall approached. There are trees down all over, but through some miraculous blessing, we maintained power and water. We were among the 4% in the area that did. My wife’s mother and grandfather are still without power and we’ve been to their part of town twice, delivering ice, batteries and corded telephones. With my last employer, I was constantly purchasing those ten dollar GE telephones from Walmart to test phone lines. They have come in handy lately. I cannot emphasize enough that people should not eliminate all the hardline phones in favor of cordless ones. If you lose power, you are sunk without it.
The other erie thing we’ve experienced is the complete loss of the stoplight system in Houston. They are one of those things you take for granted until they are not there. HPD is too busy with other issues to be out directing traffic, but navigating a 16 lane intersection without any direction as a four-way stop is death defying right now. Perhaps this could be a National Guard thing for future storms or maybe Civil Defense (not sure if Houston has this).
Well, I may have some time tomorrow to put up the video I promised. There is much more to share, such as the tunnel that was formed by the lines and poles on West Houston Center Boulevard. I will make a concious effort to get it up soon.
Well, anyone that’s been on my myspace profile lately has noticed the flippant remarks relating to Hurricane Ike. Though I have seemed to make light of the situation, things have been pretty rough in the Houston area. Hannah and I have been shooting video, though it’s been difficult in the dark, even for the professional media. I will do a quick edit sometime this morning and toss the vids on YouTube. I am planning on staying up all night to monitor this thing. Its hard for the weather radar to pickup tornadoes with a hurricane in range due to cloud thinkness. Channel 2 news has recommended that one person in each household stay up to listen for twisters. An Indiana boy on tornado watch… go figure. Well, I’ll post again once the eye is overhead. Getting a little loud outside right now.
With the hurricane season at it’s peak, I’ve decided to include a section focused on DR. I hope to add links to sites detailing weather and EOC information for the United States. If anyone elsewhere would like to contribute, please email me at <mike at itadmins dot org>. I’d also like to add sections convering power systems and other details.
Stay Tuned for More Info!
Today, Google relased Chrome Beta, an open source web browser based on Firefox and Webkit. I am currently writing this post from Chrome. The biggest benefit I see to Google’s method of writing this program is the intense resource management. If one tab locks up, the others are fine. From a technical perspective, this is the best idea since tabbed browsing itself. Here is a link to the download: http://www.google.com/chrome
As a System Administrator, I am constantly looking for the ultimate commands to make my job easier. Moving files around, renaming files for archival purposes, downloading updates, and building reports are a lot easier with scripting. This is another document for the reference library, folks.
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
Score one for the consumer. The head of the FCC has recently announced that they are proceeding with charges against Comcast for traffic shaping, or selectively slowing down and blocking specific protocols on their internet service.
I haven’t been a very big advocate of bitorrent, but this will also prevent ISPs from messing with services such as Skype, Vonage, and other VoIP traffic (a big deal to me).
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5huAOgy6g1S5wW-7ft0FRuIypdzLQD91RD0RO0
The way I see it, everyone should be entitled to the connection speed that they sign up for, regardless of what they want to send over the line, within the guidlines of the law, of course.
This is a long shot, but I’m hoping they find proof of blocking competing services, something that has been brought up in the past: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/02/139241 .
At that point, they will face an SEC investigation which will make the FCC one look like a bad dream.
As a contribution to the community, I am performing a crude usability test. For years, bookstores have been selling thousands of self-help teach yourself office application books. My curiosity focused on a book that my wife recently finished. I have in front of me an Excel 2003 book and over the next few months, I will follow the lessons in OpenOffice.org Calc and take notes on the differences and intricacies of teaching myself to use a spreadsheet with a book published for a specific application. I’d like to leave a brief disclosure: I was originally taught on Lotus 1-2-3 and know my way around a spreadsheet very well. i will try to remain objective by sticking to the book and noting any variance of functionallity thoroughly. There are one hundred lessons and I will try to perform 10 lessons per post. Stay tuned for more info…
Ahhh… the good old days. I had ones of these DataLink watches when I started flying on my first tech job. It saved a ton of time and helped me reschedule several flights, including one where I was north of the border without my luggage. Forget about cellphones, pdas, and wireless internet connections. All I needed was a pay phone and my watch. Sadly, the battery’s dead now. Maybe as project, I will try to get this working again… without the headaches of Windows 95!
http://datalink.fries.net/