Archives: September 2004
Thu Sep 30, 2004
Forced Normalization
Yesteday wa back-to-work day for many of us here in South Florida. Some went back on Tuesday, but for others the wait for work and school to return will be a bit longer. Schools here in Palm Beach County will be closed through Friday, which will make a total of 13 days that we're missed--nearly 3 weeks of instructional time. To our north where effects of Frances and then Jeanne were much worse, school has been out for 5 weeks already in one district. School officials there simply can't say when school will start again.
But despite all of those disruptions, we are forcing ourselves to get back to something approaching a normal life. Traffic lights are down on our commutes to work, trees lay on their sides, and mounds of brown branches and leaves (Frances) have been joined by fresh green yard waste (Jeanne) all over our roadways.
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Mon Sep 27, 2004
Refugees in Key Largo
It's good to have Tom Petty's "Refugee" bouncing around in my head this morning, instead of the one that I couldn't shake yesterday--that awful "Key Largo" song.
Refugees is what we are at this point, and yes, we're in Key Largo. Yesterday morning before Jeanne had really subsided all that much, we were tossing clothes into bags, stashing a few days worth of food into the cooler, and with the dog and the cat in tow, we hit the road. It was a blustery 3 hour drive down the Turnpike, but we arrived yesterday afternoon to a comfortable, clean room at a reasonable rate. Hmmm...sounds like a commercial of some sort there.
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Sun Sep 26, 2004
Morning After Jeanne
Hurricane Jeanne blew through our area in the dead of the night, leaving behind lots of damage and more misery in her wake. It's clear that we were very fortunate here in West Palm Beach, receiving winds no greater than 100 mph and little damage. Little is a relative term of course, and my perspective may be vastly different from my neighbor a few doors down who lost the tarps covering their roof. That temporary coverage following Frances did not stand up to the storm, and the inside of their house is now a soggy nasty mess.
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Sat Sep 25, 2004
Ready or Not Here Jeanne Comes
Finally. 11 hours of hurricane preparation are over and I can take a bit of a break. 3 hours last night and another 8 today, and things are finally completely nailed down and I'm ready to stay inside and ride things out with the family.
Have I revealed in a previous entry that we have an unconscionable amount of sh.........stuff that has to be put away, nailed down, and otherwise accounted for? Covering the windows with plywood last night was just a small part of the task of getting ready for high winds. Our entire patio, where we lived following Hurricane Frances by the way, has all sorts of things that need to go indoors somewhere. Seems like that shouldn't take much time, but add in the other preparations--getting in the grub for at least two days without electricity, running extension cords ahead of time so all we need to do is throw a switch on the power inverter to have a lamp and a portable TV and (I can't stress this one strongly enough) a fan to cool us off tonight. We can expect to have a hot, noisy, and uncomfortable night ahead of us as we ride out the hurricane in a house where all the windows are covered and windows can't be opened. Too bad we can't bottle some air conditioned air to release later on tonight--or maybe just sit and suckle from.
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Rushing to Get Ready for Jeanne
Saturday morning at 5:30 a.m. after a somewhat frenzied night of preparations for Hurricane Jeanne. This storm is moving so much faster than Frances that the time available for getting ready is significantly less than what we had before. While Frances approached us at a leisurely 5 mph--and consequently stayed on top of us for almost two days, it appears that Jeanne will rip along at 14 to 15 mph, blast through the area, and be done and gone in a much shorter time.
That's good in many ways, but the time allotted to prepare has been significantly reduced. Needless to say I shouldn't be sitting here typing, but should be finishing my preparations, but without daylight that's a little tough. As the weather guys--all too frequent companions these days--are telling me that the storm is intensifying and that the landfall will happen about 35 miles north of me, they're also telling us that the diameter of the eye is growing and that hurricane winds will extend out 75 miles from the center of the eye. That means we'll be in the thick of things once again.
We've all gotten better at preparations, but there is still so much damage and debris still unaccounted for following Frances that the amount of misery from this storm will surely be amplified. There are still many homes and businesses with damaged roofs in our area, and mounds of trash and damaged household belongings are still piled along the streets all over south-central Florida, that the effects of Jeanne are going to be much worse. Still, we're somewhat toughened and better prepared following Frances. But that feeling of disbelief, that feeling that we're not even psychologically over the last storm, much less physically ready, that this storm is going to be particularly hard to handle.
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Fri Sep 24, 2004
Utter Disbelief
On the one week anniversary of our return to modern civilization--our power came back on--we learned that Hurricane Jeanne will make landfall somewhere near our area in the next 72 hours. To say we are shocked would be an understatement of epic proportions. Shell-shocked is more like it. So many of us were still feeling off balance from the Frances, so many of us were still easing back into some sense of normalcy, that to have another storm off the coast is almost too much to believe, much less accept.
Still, with no other choices, I'll begin boarding up the house again, 5 days after finally getting all the shutters and plywood down and the outside of the house looking decent again. Back into the garage goes all the lawn furniture and outside items that might blow away. Back in the kitchen goes the water supplies and food and batteries. Back to the gas station to fill up our cars (gas is already hard to find), back to the bank to have some cash in hand for the extended time that phone lines and power might be out.
What I really want to do is go back to normal, something I was just thinking we were about to be able to do. That won't happen now, and you have to begin to wonder if South Florida will really ever be the same. Will we see a mass exodus of residents moving to less volatile parts of the country? Personally, a job and a life somewhere not near the ocean is sounding more and more attractive.
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Sun Sep 19, 2004
RSS for Education—The Next Killer App
RSS - The Next Killer App for Education: Mary Harrsch, Director of Network and Information Systems for The University of Oregon's College of Education has an excellent rundown of the educational uses of RSS and how, as she says, RSS "gives average people the capability to use technology to solve everyday problems and enrich their lives."
Chock-a-block full of links, this article is an excellent primer on the background of RSS and how it could be used to transform on-line learning.
Via Digital Media Minute.
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Sat Sep 18, 2004
Hurricane Stories
It's been a long while since I posted at my blog here, but for good reason. We've been without power here in West Palm Beach for almost two weeks after Hurricane Frances, and it's taken me this long to get things back in action.
I continued to blog during the storm, but in my rush to board up and evacuate prior to the storm I forgot to get my password and username for this blog and put it on the laptop. So, I've been posting over at the new Community MX blog, CMXtraneous.
Blogging through the storm was an interesting experience. For the first time my posts we're strictly in the personal journal vein. I talked about the experience of leaving you home--not knowing what it might be like when you came back--to the long, dark 13 days that we spent without electricity.
Without further ado then, those posts are republished here in chronological order.
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Thank You Mr. Edison (Sept. 17th)
My power is back on as of yesterday, and after 12 days of urban camping, life is beginning to return to something close to normal. More...
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Day 12 in the Dark (Sept. 15th)
You know, when the power company announced last week that it might be September 17th(!) before everyone in my county got power restored I laughed. "Hah!" I chuckled, "wonder who the poor shlub will be who has to go without electricity for all that time?" Turns out that it just might be me. More...
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Ten Day Blackout (Sept. 13th)
For the most part things are beginning to look somewhat normal here in Palm Beach County again. My street is free of the piles of debris now, and there are more and more traffic lights functioning. Stores and restaurants are open for the most part, and people are getting back to their lives. More...
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Gearing Up (Sept. 10th)
Day 6 with no electricity and life is grand! One big rolling party is what we have here in Palm Beach County. Yessirree! And for added fun and amusement, let's put "the strongest hurricane of this century" down in the Caribbean so we can see the destruction and just freak completely and totally out. Whoo boy! Fun! More...
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Life on Hold (Sept. 9th)
Another day here in Palm Beach County as we do our best to go on with life. It seems like at this point that we're doing nothing but waiting. Waiting for the power to come on, waiting for the traffic lights to work again, waiting for banks and restaurants to open, and just plain old waiting to get back to normal. Looks like we'll be waiting some more at the rate things are going.
In the good news department I've actually seen three power company trucks in our area today--two vans with supervisory guys taking notes, and just a few minutes ago an honest to God bucket truck with a big spool of wire on the back. Based on all the power poles down just around my house though--I can see 4 from my front yard--it looks to be another sticky night here. Wife and daughter have fled once again to the mall or the stores that are open and have power, just to get out of the heat.
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Breaking Curfew (Sept. 8th)
Are you tired of all this hurricane talk yet? I know I'm tired of it all. The wet sticky clothes, the wet sticky air, and the general wet stickiness of living without air conditioning.
Still, there are signs that things are getting back to normal. Last night as I drove home from picking up my wife and daughter at her folks, we passed a Cracker Barrel restaurant that appeared to be open. On circling back on the interstate we were informed that the police had just shut them down due to the curfew. Man, a hot meal for the first time in 4 days sure would have been good.
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Still in the Dark (Sept. 7th)
Another day spent without electricity here in Florida yesterday. As I write this on Tuesday morning we’re going into our 5 th day without power.
Not to be trite, but it’s hard to truly appreciate simple basic necessities until you don’t have them. I came home yesterday after riding the storm out with my in-laws to the first hot shower I’d had in 4 days. Back in Stuart where I came from, not only are they without power, but since most people are on well water, even that basic commodity is in short supply. I watched yesterday as the neighbor lady came down to the pond to fetch some water so she could flush a toilet. Most seem to have drinking water, but there are plenty of people lining up at relief centers for ice and water. Today more of those will be available as relief workers have been arriving over night. Thankfully I have a few more days of supplies so I won’t be venturing out for those things. A good cheeseburger would sure taste good sometime today though. Or a bad cheeseburger for that matter.
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Cleanup Day (Sept. 6th)
We’re digging out down here in South Florida today. The winds have finally died down to just a stiff breeze, and the rain has stopped (for the most part), and the real cleanup can begin today. More...
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Into and Out of the Eye (Sept. 5th)
It’s 8:30 am here in Stuart and we’re getting slapped by the backside of Hurricane Frances. What a long ride this has been. Starting 24 hours ago the winds have steadily risen until last night at about 8:30 that the full force of the storm hit us. For about 4 hours we experienced steady hurricane winds of 80+ mph winds, with gusts up to and over 100 mph. And then at 1:00 am the eye of the storm finally rolled over us and things were relatively calm.
While the eye was over us I had a chance to walk around with a flashlight and survey the damage here. We’ve been lucky in this neighborhood. Tree branches as thick as your thigh were snapped off and tossed around. In this house one of those branches hit the corner of the roof and took off a gutter and knocked loose the vinyl covering under the roof. So good news in that regard.
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Leaving Home in a Hurricane (Sept. 4th)
(It was my intention to post about Hurricane Frances at my personal blog. It seems like in the rush to get out of the house that I forgot to get my log-in information on to the laptop for the other site. I'll ask for your indulgence as I post here instead.)
I evacuated my home in West Palm Beach yesterday, not by choice. I’m now 30 miles north of West Palm, hunkered down with my father-in-law and brother-in-law. Since my wife and I weren’t sure that the family was completely safe, I headed up here with the dog and the cat and lots of groceries to ride out the Hurricane Frances.
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We're All Weather Geeks Now (Sept. 4th)
When you have little to do except sit inside as a huge storm swirls around you, many of us here on the east coast of Florida have become weather geeks in ways that we never would have thought. Go ahead, ask me about feeder bands and freight-training thunderstorms and eye walls or squalls. A steady diet of local TV coverage of the storm has me prepared to talk about all those things with great authority.
As I write this another squall is passing through, bringing 60 and 70 mph winds. The power is still on, so I get to live vicariously through the TV reporters standing next to the ocean and the rivers in the area. Hopefully the power will hold out for a good long while but there’s sure to come a time when we switch over to radio.
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Riding the Storm Out (Sept. 4th)
Wish I could remember who sang that song, since it’s been rattling around in my head the last few days. Was it Boston? Kansas?
We’re getting hurricane force winds here in Stuart Florida as Frances comes ashore. Power has been out since 11:30 this morning but the phones are still working. Gusts are up close to 100 mph at times, and we’re expecting the winds to grow until we have sustained winds of 100 mph for some time. That seems to be one of the big stories of this storm—just how slowly it’s moving. (The other being just how massive the storm is.) We’ll have winds of 70+ mph for another 10 hours or so, then 4 hours of calm as the eye passes over, and then another 12 hours of strong tropical force and hurricane winds as the back side of the hurricane passes over.
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Fri Sep 03, 2004
Hurricane Frances Bears Down
Today is the last day for people here in Florida to prepare their homes and get ready for what promises to be a very very serious hurricane. Tens of millions of people are already affected by a strong hurricane the size of Texas that will sweep ashore sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. And with such a strong storm it's not a matter of if there will be major devastation, but only where.
I spent a FULL day yesterday getting ready and was finally finished, exhausted and soaking wet from working all day in 90 degree plus weather, about 8:00 last night. In addition to my own house I helped the elderly couple next door get their shutters in place and pitched in with my brother over at Mom's house getting it ready. Not something you'd want to do for recreational purposes.
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Thu Sep 02, 2004
Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season
We're in heavy hurricane preparation mode here today in Palm Beach County. As Hurricane Frances bears down on us, those of us who respect the power of these storms are making preparations for the worst and hoping for the best. With Hurricane Charley fresh in our minds it appears that more people than normal are doing what needs to be done to get ready for a storm of this strength.
Right now it's very quiet. In the pre-dawn hours the stars are out and winds are light. But today promises to be a whirlwind of activity as half a million Floridians evacuate their homes. My wife and daughter will be flying out this morning to stay with her sister in Asheville, NC. My day will be filled with helping prepare my Mom's house before she goes off to stay with my niece, getting our own house boarded up, and then heading north to help my father-in-law get his house ready and to ride the storm out with him.
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