Blogging Ike- 911 call parody

NOTE: I have changed the title of this post to clearly indicate it is a parody.  I realize that the original title lacking a clear indication that it is comedy was in poor taste given the large number of readers who have been following my blogging of the hurricane events.  I appreciate everyone's concerns and offending any of you was the furthest thing from my mind when I wrote this.  I have been under an enormous amount of stress the past 24 hours and my typical way of dealing with that is to create comedy.  Please take this in the manner I intended when I wrote it and enjoy it.  Heartfelt thanks to all of you who have been concerned.

Harris County Dispatch:  Harris County Emergency Services.  State the nature of your emergency please.
JK:  Oh my god!  We have an emergency here cause by Hurricane Ike!
HC: Calm down sir and tell me your name and where you are.
JK:  I'm at home and I'm JK!  Help us please!
HC: What is the nature of your emergency?
JK:  We're out of Double-Stuf Oreos!  Help us, please!
HC:  Sir, this line is for life or death emergencies only due to the storm.  A lot of people need our help and we must leave the line open for them.
JK:  But you don't understand, this is going to be life or death!  When we got our supplies for the storm they only had one pack of Oreos left and the kids have eaten all of them!  We don't have any left and it's going to get nasty!
HC:  Sir, if you don't have a real emergency I'm going to have to hang up.
JK:  But you have to understand!  The kids are already restless after 24 hours with no TV!  It's getting very testy here and I just discovered they ate all the Oreos!  And they were Double-Stuf Oreos!  Somebody's going to get hurt if you don't get out here and it's not going to be me!
HC:  I understand now sir.  We'll have someone out as soon as we can.
JK:  Bless you.  Can they pick up some Oreos on the way over?

Blogging Ike- assessing the damage

The winds are still strong but not as ferocious as they have been since last night so we've been able to begin a very preliminary assessment of the damage that Ike inflicted.  I've mentioned the uprooted tree in the back yard, it may be salvageable I hope.  Perhaps they can transplant it.  On a more serious note we have determined there is a leak in the roof which means some damage up there.  There is a very slow leak in one of the bedroom closets upstairs.  It's not leaking much but roof damage is never easy to deal with.  That particular side of the house must have been hit harder as the fence between my house and the one next door is completely down.  It looks like it was simply blown over by the hurricane force winds.  There is also a small leak in the front door around the beveled glass insert.  It didn't leak a lot but the high force with which the wind blew the rain into the door looks like it forced water through the seal of the glass.

All in all that's pretty minor and we are lucky if this is the extent of our damage from Hurricane Ike.  We can't walk around outside yet so we may find some more surprises later.  I hope not but it's too early to tell.  If we can just get the wind and rain to stop for a while we'll be OK.  At least it has slowed down enough that we feel like the end is in sight and that's a nice feeling.  This is far from over though, as it will probably be a while before power can be restored.  With such a large area suffering outages there is no telling how long before they get to our area.  The same will apply to repairmen to get the roof and other things fixed.  There will almost certainly be a huge backlog for qualified repair people so we'll just have to get in line with everyone else.  It could have been much worse and for that we're thankful.  I hope everyone in the area came through as swimmingly as we have, no pun intended.

Millions of people like us are now all faced with getting appropriate repairs done and we will all need it at the same time.  This will lead to frustrating delays but just hang in there, it will all get fixed.  A lot of people will be dealing with insurance companies for these repairs and I'm afraid that many will find out what going with a "budget" insurance company will end up costing them in time and money.  Bear with your insurance company employees as they are now over-worked.  Be civil to them, this is not their fault and they will take care of you as soon as they can.  You catch more flies with honey, so they say.  A word of caution based on experience: hordes of unscrupulous con men will come out of the woodwork to take advantage of those who need help.  Whatever you do go with reputable companies to get your repair work done.  It's not worth the risk to save a few bucks and if they promise to save you a lot more than that it's probably too good to be true.  And you know what they say if it sounds too good to be true..

Blogging Ike- some thoughts on gear for next time

I am sitting here in near darkness, as I have been for hours and I have been kicking around in my mind some thoughts on my gear for the next hurricane.  God forbid there's not another one to go through but this is the Texas Gulf Coast.

In spite of all of my mobile gear, the many laptops and batteries, EV-DO connectivity and the like there is one thing I don't have that I really missed.  A wired mouse.  You know, one of those old school mice with an actual wire to connect to the computer?  While I was working away in the dark on the various laptops I wished more than once for a mouse to make that work easier.  Search I did but in vain, it seems I have converted everything over to wireless and the mice were no exception.  My desire to conserve battery power as much as possible kept me from plugging one of the wireless mice into my laptop to work.  I know, it probably would have used so little power that it wouldn't have made any difference but I didn't want to take a chance so I went mouse-less.  Next time I'll have a cheapo wired mouse in the drawer.

My household is in a unique position in that we have three different cellular carriers in use.  We also have 3G with all of them so I am in a unique position to offer insights into how they have performed in this emergency situation.  T-Mobile is not 3G in my house but I tested the voice network periodically throughout this ordeal.  My results were sketchy, the signal strength varied although it never went away completely.  AT&T has shown good voice signal but the EDGE network on the iPhone has been less than stellar.  My house never has 3G signal but EDGE normally is full bars strong but the storm has affected that.  I find the EDGE signal bars to bounce between one and three and as a result the bandwidth on the iPhone has been pretty bad.  Most of the time it will do email, albeit slowly, but surfing the web on the phone has been awful.  Verizon has been the champ as they usually are.  The EV-DO network has been rock-solid and the signal/ bandwidth has never wavered.  Voice calls have worked flawlessly and text messaging has not failed once, something I can't say about the other two carriers.  Game Verizon.

I have once again been totally impressed with the HP 2710p which has been my major conduit to the outside world throughout Hurricane Ike.  The battery life with the slice battery has been amazing and the utility of working with the HP on EV-DO has been awesome.  I have really come to appreciate a unique feature of the 2710p that I admit I haven't used much.  The Illumi-Light (I think it's called) is a little light on the top of the screen next to the webcam that pops out when you press a button.  The little light gives just enough light to illuminate the keyboard and this has been so useful in the dark.  This feature absolutely rocks in this situation and I am happy that HP kept this feature on the new 2730p.  It's amazing how it's often the little things like this that make a huge difference in trying circumstances like living with Ike.  The above photo of the 2710p shows the little light in action, forgive the darkness of the photo as it's unavoidable.

Blogging Ike- made it through the night, it goes on

We made it through the night.  All of us hunkered down in the main downstairs room for safety.  The winds have been relentless and still buffet the trees and house fearsomely.  So far we can't really see that much but can see that one of the trees in the backyard has been uprooted.  It hasn't fallen over yet but it looks like it will.  This tree is causing one of the long hedges to be pushed out of the ground and the hedge is standing up strangely.  I can see roof shingles all over the ground, front and back.

The latest report on the radio puts us in hurricane force winds for at least another 3 hours so it feels like it's going on forever.  They are saying the storm proper will not be out of the area until tonight so we have all day to enjoy the wind and rain.  I am conserving the batteries in my gear for keeping up with news and the occasional blog post here.  I am still showing over 4.5 hours battery left on the HP 2710p, an amazing amount considering how much I have used it for the occasional video coverage.  The MacBook Pro is showing I have another 6 hours of battery left so I'm covered for the rest of today.  As always in a situation like this I am really thankful for the Verizon Broadband Access EV-DO.  It's a lifesaver.

Blogging Ike- ABC 13 live coverage online

It's past midnight and there will be no sleeping in our house tonight I'm afraid.  The winds are blasting the house and make a constant fearsome noise.  Rain is falling in waves, sideways at times.  We still have no power as I figured we wouldn't but I'm able to watch live coverage of Hurricane Ike on the great continual live coverage on ABC 13''s web site.  They are streaming the full coverage that they are showing on TV for those who have no power.  They have just reported that current figures from the power companies indicate over 800,000 have lost power so far.  The eye of the storm is not expected to hit our area (northwest) until after 4:30 this morning so we have a long way to go.

Blogging Ike- power is being restored!

Centerpoint Energy tells us that the damage causing our power outage is being repaired already. They claim it will be back on within the hour which if true is incredible.   The storm is not really here yet so this is phenomenal.   Fingers are all crossed on my street.

Blogging Ike- the power is gone

Ike is not expected to make landfal for another 4 or 5 hours but our power has already failed.  We're in for the long haul now.  Thank goodness for battery powered laptops and Verizon EV-DO.  May be a while before I update again.  Peace out.

Blogging Ike- why not just run?

I am getting asked a lot why we didn't consider evacuating and running from Hurricane Ike instead of riding it out at home.  It's a fair question but one that has no easy nor correct answer.  The fact of the matter is that the coastal regions that began experiencing the high storm surge hours before the storm has hit were given a mandatory evacuation beginning yesterday and continuing into today.  The sheer numbers of evacuees from the coastal area saw the major routes north getting clogged with traffic.  It also began the process of insuring that there would be no facilities within any reasonable distance from Houston that would still have room at the inn.  No matter how severe the situation there is simply no way to evacuate 10 million people which is the number of people you are talking about if everyone were to run.  You could then say that not everyone has to evacuate but if not then who?  Who should go and who should stay?  Authorities are telling us to "shelter in place" because the high winds and massive rain that is sure to fall tonight and tomorrow will extend for hundreds of miles to the north.  So where should you run to?  It always seems so obvious that you should just load up and run but it's not a straightforward decision for anyone caught in the middle.  You prepare as best you can, settle in and hope for the best.  It's getting windy now.

Blogging Ike- the waiting is the hard part

 

Blogging Ike- here I am

I have been asked to indicate where I am located in my Hurricane Ike vigil and here I am:

For perspective here is the current storm track forecast: