Centennial Blackout Continues

The blackout count reached as high as 225,000 according to the radio today. Traffic throughout Tulsa is snarled by downed trees and dark traffic lights. Not only is our power still out, the phone line went dead this evening.

Brookside from the KVOO Tower shows dark areas caused by blackout.The good news is temps stayed above freezing overnight and most of the day today. Now the heavy load of ice has melted off the trees our nerves are much calmer. Unfortunately there are still some very unstable chunks of oak tree dangling over our house.

My office is still closed– no power or telephone service. I’ve been trying to conduct some business and post web site updates from the neighborhood Panera. An entire new class of Coffeeshop Warrior now exists at any wi-fi hotspot. Coffee optional.

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.

Fun at C-Store Trade Show

Time for my annual tongue-in-cheek video tour of the NACS Show. Here’s another year’s worth of zany products from the huge exposition held by the National Association of Convenience Stores.

Once again the hall was awash in energy drinks. The latest trend is to ditch the espresso-style tiny little cans and go for the gut buster Tall Boy. Yet even more energy. Candy looks to be just as gross as always and the merchandise appears to be fully embracing the China Express, with yet more crap that makes a dollar store look upscale.

Enjoy.
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8735566810538114234&hl=en

This year I enlisted the help of co-worker Tena Wooldridge, who did an excellent job. The video was shot with my JVC DV-800 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. The exterior scenes were shot on the opening day and we roamed the floor on the third and final day of the trade show.

More of my videos & short films…

Air Control

I installed a new windscreen on the R last week. On long trips and windy days the short sport screen just wasn’t cutting it. The wind that is.

The new screen is made by Cee Bailey and mounts to the original brackets BMW supply to fit their sport and touring screens. They offer several styles and this one is the tallest option. Their windshields are made of high quality aircraft-grade plastic (I think they’re Lexan).

It’s a good deal taller than the sport screen that came with the bike when I bought it– and a good deal more useful too! Some might not agree, but I also think it looks pretty sharp. The “ice blue” tint goes well with the silver bike.

I snapped this photo near Inola during a recent ride up around Spavinaw. The radome caught my eye from Highway 412 and seemed just weird enough to make an interesting background.

Click here...

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.