Posts from — September 2008

[Music video links] How about some Beatles: Money and I’m A Loser, which results in a stop by NOLA for Fats Domino’s Blue Monday followed by Marianne Faithful’s As Tears Go By and ends with understanding of Pink Floyd’s version of Money.

Update: I note with personal sadness that Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright has died after a long battle with cancer.

Oh, yes, the Dow dropped 504 points today.

The aftermath of Hurricane Ike on the Gulf Coast, the flooding in the Midwest, the meltdown on Wall Street, two wars in progress, a Presidential campaign…so what was the lead story on CNN at noon – some old football player is on trial.

Who in hell cares about that? Why would anyone put that on their “front page”?

Hidden in the middle of this CBS report is what everyone on the Coast already knew: oil platforms and pipelines were damaged by Ike’s passage through the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico. While they don’t specifically say it, some oil had to leak out.

I’ve already seen reports from Houston that storage tanks have ruptured spilling fuel in the water, and there was a chlorine gas leak at one of the chemical plants. There’s no point in talking about moving the facilities, because no one wants them, even if the corporations were willing to spend the money on a relocation. Anyone who brings it up had better be ready to accept these plants in their “backyard” and be willing to fight to move them there.

The answer is alternative energy sources, not shuffling the pieces on the chess board.  These are problems associated with the petroleum industry, and they aren’t going away.  The only way of “fixing” them is by reducing the depency on oil, not just foreign oil, but all oil.

So, while the Shrubbery is interfering with search and recovery operations in Houston so he can pretend he cares and show up for photo ops with first responders the second in the line to the British throne is planning on doing something useful.

The BBC reports William to train as rescue pilot

Prince William is to train as a full-time pilot with the RAF Search and Rescue Force, Clarence House has said.

William, who learned to fly with the RAF earlier this year, said he wanted to “serve operationally”.

The prince is an officer in the Household Cavalry Regiment and has also spent time with the Navy and Army.

He said he wanted to build on his experience “especially because, for good reasons, I was not able to deploy to Afghanistan this year”.

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My host is still under a distributed denial of service [DDOS] attack, so the site may be slow to respond.

The tactics have altered and the techs are altering their response to counter. This is wasting a lot of resources on the Internet, and it is hoped that it can be backtraced so someone can spend some time “turning big ones into little ones” while contemplating the errors of their ways.

The techs have found a “silver lining” as this massive overload as revealed bottlenecks in the system that can only be seen under massive loads and will be able to fine tune performance after this is over.

I appreciate your patience. There’s not much you can do about jerks on the Internet.

The Houston Chronicle has the most complete look at the stories surrounding the effects of the storm, but a couple of people noted special places that are gone.

Suzie at Echidne of the Snakes notes that the Balinese Room, Galveston nightclub that was located on pilings over the water has been destroyed, and Cookie Jill was affected by the loss of Brennan’s, a well-regarded Houston restaurant that was lost to a fire caused by the hurricane.

Anyone who stayed on the western end of Galveston island has to be presumed dead, because there is only debris left.  Houses were ripped off of their pilings, and many are now out in the water.  People have no real concept of the power of the storm surge.

Have a look at what the storm surge from Hurricane Ivan did to the Interstate 10 bridge between Santa Rosa and Escambia counties West of me. That was a fairly new bridge, but the reinforced concrete decking was pushed off the supports.

Update: Hipparchia has more pictures of the bridge.

While everyone was watching the Gulf Coast, CNN tells us that Chicago is dealing with flooding:

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) — Chicago authorities asked Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to issue a disaster declaration after rainfall Saturday in the Windy City broke a single-day record that had stood for more than two decades.

The deluge flooded streets and stranded residents in their homes. Officials worked to rescue people Sunday as the city grappled with another day of drenching.

O’Hare International Airport recorded 6.64 inches of rain Saturday — breaking the all-time record of 6.49 inches set in 1987, according to the National Weather Service. Records have been kept since 1871.
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There were two things going on that made this site and Steve Bates’s place difficult to reach this morning:

1. My host is reblocking IP addresses to make operations more efficient and expand some of their capabilities, and;
2. The host is under a distributed denial of service [DDOS] attack probably from Romania, that began at 2:30AM CDT, but is getting worse. The attack is using large blocks of addresses, so a lot of people are being turned away automatically.

They seem to have a handle on the DDOS attack, although we’re now behind a firewall blocking most of Romania.

In addition, Sitemeter is updating this weekend, so that could hang up loading from time to time.

Steve, doesn’t know any of this because he’s dealing IWS [Internet Withdrawal Syndrome] due to the loss of power.

On the Hurricane Front – for the first time since August 15 there are no named storms in the Atlantic Basin. It looks like things are quieting down for a week or so.

As I mentioned before in A Potential New Record, if Ike made a landfall in the the US, it would set a new record.

Dolly [Category 2], Edouard [Tropical Storm], Fay [Tropical Storm], Gustav [Category 2], Hanna [Category 1], and Ike [Category 2] – six consecutively named storms hitting the US in a single year.

This is the third time in the Hedgemony’s reign that at least five in a row has occurred, [2002, 2004, and 2008].

The disturbing news, politically speaking, is it didn’t happen in the election year that saw Democratic Party gains. Good thing people don’t believe in omens and such.

CNN reports that 10 Louisiana parishes declared federal disaster areas

President Bush on Saturday declared major disasters in parts of Texas and the Louisiana parishes of Acadia, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, Iberia, Jefferson Davis, Sabine, St. Mary, Vermilion, and Vernon, making federal funds available for recovery from the devastation of Ike.
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In Plaquemines Parish near New Orleans, sheriff’s spokesman Maj. John Marie told AP that floodwaters are higher than they were during hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

A lot of these areas were without power because of hurricane Gustav, and the repairs have been set even further back. Power companies from all over the US send crews, e.g. after Ivan my power was restored by a crew from New Jersey, but getting together all of the poles and towers that need to be replaced, as well as the wire, is a major undertaking. You have to let the ground dry out, because you can’t set a pole in mud.

The misery continues.

If you buy Pedigree dry pet food, or store brand dry pet food, you need to check this out.

Mars Petcare US Announces Nationwide Voluntary Recall

Franklin, Tennessee (September 12, 2008)—Today, Mars Petcare US announced a voluntary recall of products manufactured at its Everson, Pennsylvania facility. The pet food is being voluntarily recalled because of potential contamination with Salmonella serotype Schwarzengrund. This voluntary recall only affects the United States.
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Even though no direct link between product produced at Everson and human or pet illness has been made, Mars Petcare US is taking precautionary action to protect pets and their owners by announcing a voluntary recall of all products produced at the Everson facility beginning February 18, 2008 until July 29, 2008 when we stopped production.
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Steve Bates at Yellow Doggerel Democrat called a friend and had them post a comment saying that he, Stella, Samantha, and Tabitha are fine. They came through the storm with no damage or flooding, but it could be a week or more before they have power again.

The memorial to those who died in the 1900 hurricane in Galveston was destroyed by Ike.

I’ve been watching the live coverage from KHOU in Houston via CBS.com and they showed the rubble from the monument strewn across the road.

CNN is report on the aftermath:

Floyd LeBlanc of CenterPoint Energy Inc. said 1.8 million of the power company’s customers — or more than 4 million people — in metro Houston are without electricity as high winds and heavy rains downed power lines. LeBlanc said 2 million customers represent about 4.5 million people.

“It’s going to take several weeks to get all this power restored,” he said. “We’ve been saying two to three weeks.”
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“Much of the Galveston Island is currently flooded, and there are several fires in that area,” the Galveston County Office of Emergency Management said on its Web site. “Many roads in the county are impassable [because of] to rising water and debris.”

To the east, at least 1,800 homes and businesses were flooded by storm surge in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. And 6 feet of floodwater rushed into the town of Lafitte in Jefferson Parish, said Chris Macaluso of Louisiana’s Office of Coastal Restoration and Management.
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