« why... even when I'm leaving... do I get f*cked... | Main | smurfing with a smurf »

eurotrip and other such crap.

feeling very odd today. it's not your typical day. there's a strange energy in the air, and there's a lot of panic, due to the conference this week (starting today).

so far, i've managed to not get drafted into driving a 15 passenger van for the golf outing. that's only because i've been working on fixing an emergency POS POS issue.

tomorrow, we're supposed to be installing a large SAN. however, a 6-week clusterf*ck of a mixup at the vendor which we thought was resolved 3 weeks ago, reared its ugly head again yesterday, and after an hour on the phone, we thought it was resolved again, only to receive email that they are trying to ship us the wrong parts. for an install TOMORROW.

back to the conference... we got free shirts. black with big square red logo patches. fantastic.

then, we got our name badges, and the first thing to mind was the movie Eurotrip... and the tour-guide twin's pack for his ID, money, etc etc... "Frommers says to carry ...." I wish I were joking. That's what it is. It's one of those packs with a bunch of pockets for whatever and a window for your ID. It's sized for a passport, a couple pens, a small notebook, an ID, and also has pockets for wallet and change. And it hangs around your neck, because, instead of being really useful and having a strap where you could attach it properly, it has a shoestring. Yep. Spared no expense. Oh wait, they saved the money on these to pay for dinner at the 4-star restaurant.

*sigh*

ok... and what's going on with the weather, anyway? have you seen all the crap that's been happening? 20" of snow in Denver. Sure, that's common, in a month or so when it's been cold and snowy for a while. And the hurricanes... you heard about Rita and Katrina, but what about Stan and Tammy? And mudslides and earthquakes and wildfires and it's all enough to make you turn off your TV.

I had a "holy crap" moment while watching the news this morning. Thanks to all the activity everywhere else, and admittedly a "lack of weather reporting stations nearby" it was barely a blip on CNN, but New Hampshire and some nearby parts of New England got swamped with 15" of rain in 24 hours thanks to Tammy. 15 INCHES. Roads, bridges, homes, and in one place, 5 miles of power lines were washed away...

Floodwaters tore up pavement and dug gullies 12 feet deep and 20 feet wide for miles. The destruction was one of numerous obstacles to restoring power and telephone service. "Five miles of utility poles were taken out along Route 123 in Alstead and there's no road left. So where do we put the poles?" asked David Graves of National Grid, which owns the local power utility.

The worst? It's still raining, so they said on the news this morning.

I wonder what lakes and rivers look like now. I wonder how my family is doing. I wonder if everyone can still get to work, or to the doctor, or if anybody lost a home. I think I may email cousin Linda and my friend Nik just to be sure.

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)