Still Shivering in the Dark

It’s been over a week now and still no electricity.

The total outage is now below 50,000 from a peak of nearly a quarter million. I guess we’re just one of the unlucky ones.

Tree company from North Carolina begins the tree removal.Our block is dark while all around us the lights are on. The din of generators drone 24/7 while we wonder why the hell our neighbor leaves it on all night. Somehow calling the police to complain about noise seems so menial. Work crews can be seen everywhere, but none ever stop on our street. Last week we cheered the white trucks with blinking yellow lights as if they were liberating Paris. Now we just grumble and wish they’d get over to our block.

We’re making the best of it and learning to deal with life in the dark. Hot showers are the only source of heat so we enjoy a little morning sauna in my bathroom to start the day. Sleeping has been pretty comfortable– after the initial cold shock wears off– since we piled on about 40 pounds of blankets and two cats. Just don’t forget to have everything in place because you do not want to get back out of bed!

Heavy lifting in our front yard.The good news is the weather forecast is for warmer weather and we’ve got a crew taking care of the tree situation. As a matter of fact the big oak that pummeled our roof is probably about gone as I type this. The pile of wood in the yard hides the house and it’s a real shame seeing all that beautiful oak wood that’s going to go to waste. Getting the trees taken care of for a reasonable price was a big relief because there were some very large branches dangling over the roof. One branch fell on the garage Saturday when the north wind picked up during the brief snowstorm.

At least we still have a roof over our heads.

The Perfect Storm

Freezing rain began falling yesterday and has turned much of Oklahoma into a deep freeze. Broken limbs and fallen trees have blocked roads and snapped power lines. Most of Tulsa is without power– officially described as 200,000 households, which sounds pretty darn close to the whole city to me.

Our bad day started last night when the power blinked off about 10:00 pm. The mist turned to drizzle and the sheen of the trees coated with ice became obvious. Jackie and I turned in for the night (what else is there to do with no light, heat or Internet connection?). But it wasn’t long before the eerie hum of self-destructing transformers and rolling thunder woke us. By 4:00 am the crack of nearby trees relenting to the burden of frozen water played like a symphony. Then a loud crash on our own roof sent us scrambling for our Maglites.

The 40-year old oak trees in our front yard had transformed into sinister mortars in a matter of hours. The sound of a splitting limb would send ice and wood smashing onto the roof. Each time our roof was pounded by a rain of ice and limbs we tensed. Would that be all? Or would another large branch fall and cause the entire house to shudder? All the while we grimaced because the roof was only a year old.

By 6:00 am I was fed up with shock and awe so we made a run for our nearest Panera. We absorbed large amounts of coffee and naively assumed the worst was over. The power was still out but new day promised above-freezing temperatures. We returned home after a couple of hours to find more large limbs had fallen, one poking right through the roof into our kitchen.

Fortunately the puncture was pretty close to the attic access in our garage. I was able to saw off most of the limb where it poked through our roof’s decking and put a plastic tub under it to catch any rain that dribbled through. I tried to push it out of the hole but it was much too heavy. Later that day a couple of entrepreneurs stopped by handing out flyers for their tree service. They were looking for future customers, I asked them if they wanted some work right now. They cut off the offending limb and nailed some shingles over the hole.

We’ll see how the patch holds up overnight. The forecast for Tuesday is scattered thunderstorms.

No Need for Alarm

This week I’m in Atlanta for work. One of my tasks during these gigs is recording our presentations, which we later sell on audio CD. I use a Fostex MR-8HD multitrack recorderfor this because it can record up to four simultaneous sessions and uses no tape!

Last night I needed to check the Westin’s A/V setup in this ballroom that we’ll be recording in this morning. A guy from A/V was supposed to be available to meet me there around 6:00 pm. I call and I call and I call. No luck. So I sit in my room trying to get in touch with this guy. About 8:00 I finally give up and decide to go down to the ballroom. Fostex under my arm I head down to the tenth floor hoping to catch someone.

Of course the ballroom is locked. I loiter for a while, call the A/V guy once more, and loiter some more. I find a guy with catering who says he’ll try calling A/V, and if he can’t get them he’ll unlock the room for me. Bingo.

Finally he unlocks the room. I’m trying to figure out how to connect our recorder to the audio mixer when this whooping alarm goes off. Strobe lights start flashing and this electronic whooping noise echoes through this empty ballroom. Holy shit… I thought it was a burglar alarm connected to their mixer! WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP. There was this garbled digital voice babbling something I couldn’t understand.

Turns out it was the fire alarm. The garbled digital voice was saying something about not using the elevators. A hotel employee walks through the room. “That’s the fire alarm,” he calmly announced as he walked out.

Oh great, I thought, now I leave and I still haven’t tested this rig and/or somebody steals the damn recorder! I ignored the alarm and finished testing my connections. WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP. Since I was alone and the stage was about a hundred feet away the alarm came in handy as an impromptu mic test.

Once I was finished I boxed up the recorder and headed down the escalators (they were still running but the elevators were locked down). Fortunately this ballroom was on the 10th floor, which is sort of a huge mezzanine, so I could get downstairs without using the still-locked elevators.

I noticed there wasn’t any panic or rush of people heading downstairs. When I got down to the lobby it was as if nothing had ever happened. WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP. There was a long line of people checking in and everyone was ignoring the blinking lights and whooping.

The alarm finally stopped and everyone continued… um, ignoring it.

Watching the Internet Work

Add the Blogger Play Gadget to your iGoogle home page.Last week I came across a new TWS* that is pretty cool. The folks at Google had played with this little gadget internally for months when someone had the bright idea to make it available to the public. It’s called Blogger Play and it’s a window on the world. Or at least the world of people that have sites on Google’s free blog service, Blogger.

What it “plays” is a slide show of photographs that people have added to their blogs. As a new image is added to any one of the millions of blogs powered by Blogger, they show up in this random shuffle. The eclectic mix of images is a mesmerizing procession of snapshots and images from people all over the world. I was fascinated at the wide variety— family photos, technical drawings, corporate logos, you name it.

The viewer allows you to modify the speed at which the images change, and pause or stop when you see something interesting. If you care to learn more about that image a link and information about the blogger who uploaded the image is also provided. Click the picture and you’re taken to the blog where the image originates. Well, it’s virtual origin at least.

Play quickly became so popular that Google whipped up one of their “gadgets” so users could add a miniature player to their iGoogle starting page. Have a look and see what you think of this unusual window on the world.

Blogger Play

* TWS = Time Wasting Site

Winding Down the Drive

My BMW R1150R at the tourist info center on the west end of the Drive.Brad and I made a run down to the Talimena Drive this weekend.

We unknowingly picked a great weekend to go— cooler weather and less traffic. In a week or so the leaves will start turning and the twisties will be crowded with Land Yachts full of gawkers. It was almost like we had the place to ourselves!

We headed down with cameras and gear to start collecting some video to eventually find it’s way on to Places 2 Ride TV. The plan is to begin enhancing the content available there with video segments about the places to ride and roadside attractions along the way. The Talimena seems like a perfect place to start this project. Eventually we hope this would grow to become a standalone site, then shortly followed by fame and fortune. Ahem.

It's no Rocky Mountains. But the Ouchita National Forest is pretty cool just the same.After setting up the tent at a campsite on Lake Wister and a bite to eat in Poteau, we made a quick loop around Heavener and a portion of the Talimena Scenic Drive, or just “drive” as the locals call it. At one scenic turnout we marveled at the rolling hills stretching from one row of mountains to the next. The once majestic mountains of Southeastern Oklahoma have been beaten down by the millennium, but to my eye, still offer a view worth an oh-ah.

The ride back to Wister was purdy as a pitcher. As the sun set I tried to keep my mind off the threat of deer darting across the road (a constant threat but multiplied during the twilight hours). We cruised along and enjoyed the ride.

Brad plays locomotive engineer. But safely.At the Queen Wilamena Lodge we ran into several other motorcyclists. Some of them were from Dallas and stood shivering as the wind howled through their light mesh jackets. I remarked how different this landscape must seem from than anything near the Metroplex. They heartily agreed.

It reminded me how great it is to live only a couple of hours away from such a great place.

Here’s a couple more photos from the trip (click to enlarge)…

Cushmans in Kinta
On the ride down we “discovered” this gathering of Cushman scooter owners in Kinta, Oklahoma.

Stateline Tavern on US-270
Since Mena, Arkansas is in a dry county this is the closest place to the Queen Wilamena Lodge to buy a beer.

Bottle Caps in front of the Stateline Tavern
The parking lot of the Stateline Tavern is carpeted with bottle caps…

Outhouse behind the Stateline Tavern
and the ladies room is well ventilated.

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