A Programming Note

by Bryan

I am currently on the eastern edge of the Hurricane Watch area for Tropical Storm Karen. While I don’t anticipate any major problems, it has been a while since we have had a storm up this way, and the local infrastructure has not been maintained as well as it used to be.

If I disappear for a while, don’t worry about it. I know how to handle these things, but The Phone Company is new to the experience.

Oh, we tend to discourage outside media coverage of anything, apparently believing it will be bad for tourism.

13 comments

1 ellroon { 10.04.13 at 12:38 am }: Stay safe! Where do the kitties go during a storm?
2 Bryan { 10.04.13 at 12:45 am }: The ferals have areas under buildings to stay in during the worst of it. The inside cats enter ‘cat space’ and don’t come out until it is over.
3 Steve Bates { 10.04.13 at 12:49 am }: Bryan… stay safe; stay dry. By now you certainly know the drill better than the utility companies. I’m glad to see the forecasters are online…
4 Bryan { 10.04.13 at 12:55 am }: The NHC are nearly the only people working at NOAA since the shutdown.

I’m really thrilled that there is no money for Federal assistance at the moment, a matter I will be taking up with my Congresscritter when I get a chance. I have no idea how prepared the state is under the reign of the Fraudster in Chief.
5 Kryten42 { 10.04.13 at 2:43 am }: Good luck m8. 🙂 Though I am sure you will be fine (given your history etc). 🙂

As for the kitties… They have some remarkable survival skills! 😀 Just imagine how that would help SERE training, if anyone could ever figure out how they bloody do it! 😉 😆

I hope everyone comes out OK. 🙂
6 Badtux { 10.04.13 at 2:59 am }: Don’t worry, FEMA is on the job and will be available to offer assistance immediately after the storm passes.

Oh wait, they’re all out on unpaid leave and have no money to buy supplies anyhow.

Oops.
7 Steve Bates { 10.04.13 at 3:05 am }: Kryten, I’ve been through only three significant hurricanes in my life. (OK, one was Tropical Storm Allison with its record-breaking floods… Stella and I were trapped at home for a few days, but nothing inside got wet.) But Bryan, just in the time I’ve known him online, has been through a couple of dozen hurricanes! They like him; they seek him out. (Or maybe they’re aiming at Hipparchia.) And over the years, Bryan’s outdoor cats (and for that matter ours here in Houston) seem, by and large, to have survived even the worst tropical weather landfalls. SERE skills indeed!
8 Bryan { 10.04.13 at 10:04 am }: Actually we benefit from the multi-million dollar privately-funded windbreak and seawall on the barrier island called high-rise condominiums. It wears a storm out beating up and flattening them, so it isn’t so bad inland.

The new people still haven’t figured out why there were no structures built on the actual waterfront prior to the 1960s other than fishing shacks.
9 hipparchia { 10.04.13 at 12:58 pm }: (Or maybe they’re aiming at Hipparchia.)

last I checked it was aiming for New Orleans first and then planning a side trip to visit both me and bryan so that we wouldn’t fell left out, I guess.
10 hipparchia { 10.04.13 at 1:02 pm }: The NHC are nearly the only people working at NOAA since the shutdown.

and parts of the nws, who are not shy about mentioning that they’re on the job: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mob/

more power to them. and yes, my congresscritter is going to hear from me too.
11 Bryan { 10.04.13 at 2:41 pm }: It is acting weird, Hipparchia, and I don’t like it. The intensity models aren’t working, so it could come ashore as a low or a hurricane.

In any case, we are on the ‘bad side’ and are definitely going to get some weather. I hope it doesn’t stall or start creeping behind us like Georges did. Santa Rosa Country emergency management is already telling people to turn off their irrigation systems and let the ground dry as much as possible before it gets here because the stormwater system is still dealing with all of the rain from July.

I hope there’s someone in Miller’s office who can read 😉
12 Kryten42 { 10.05.13 at 10:09 am }: Just read this in WaPo about NWS:

Alaska National Weather Service office begs “please pay us” in secret message

And PopSci had a more in-depth story:

The Government Employees Responsible For Saving Us From Hurricanes Are Working For No Pay

Also, it’s now impacting the private sector in major *furloughs*. Lockheed Martin just furloughed 3,000 workers due to government shutdown. Others are following suit. Most (if not all) will not get paid for the time they are not working.

Also, people waiting for loan approvals (housing, car’s, business etc.) will not get their loans because the financial companies providing the loans can’t get information from the IRS, DSS, etc. Even if the shutdown is ended this week, the backlog will take several weeks to clear up.

It seems that at least some Repug Senators are seriously peeved at Cruz & his allies, which is something I guess. Via TBogg:

I am Butthurticus! No, I am Butthurticus!

Charlie Pierce has a good (as usual) piece up:

The Democrats Are Bringing Guns To A Gunfight
By Charles P. Pierce at 10:30AM Oct. 1 2013

Senate Democrats are considering leaking emails between Harry Reid and John A. Boehner’s chiefs of staff.

This is more like it, thank you.

Leaking the emails would be unusual, given the taboo over disclosing personal communications between top staffers. But the missives also would reveal Boehner’s position on employer subsidies for congressional staff. Democrats believe the Ohio Republican’s decision to attach an amendment to revoke those contributions to the most recent House continuing resolution was a direct shot at vulnerable Senate Democrats up in 2014. Senate Democrats believe that Republican efforts to force a vote on what some in the GOP have characterized as a congressional “exemption” are designed to politically corner Democrats like Kay Hagan of North Carolina or Mark Pryor in Arkansas, who represent more conservative states. Democrats contend that Republicans just want to campaign on the issue,while hoping the amendment will not pass.

This would only be responding in kind. For years, Washington worked on a system of both written and unwritten rules of behavior. One of the marked characteristics of the reign of the morons has been to trash the informal systems of acceptable conduct. Fine. Let’s do away with all of them and have an actual brawl over what’s at stake.

I also spoke to a leading Democratic congresscritter over the weekend who told me that, very soon, the Democrats in the Senate will start going through the sequester line-by-line, demanding public votes on funding things like medical research and environmental protections, and sticking Republicans with a choice of being for or against curing, say, Alzheimer’s Disease or cancer. As someone who thought the sequester not merely stupid but Beltway stupid, I applaud this decision as well. Forcing people into uncomfortable votes works both ways. Making John Boehner cry should be a bipartisan affair.
13 Bryan { 10.05.13 at 1:42 pm }: I’m including the NWS discussion in a post today. Discussion are somewhat standardized, so it isn’t that difficult to do if you are stuck at desk with no weather to get excited over.

The House just voted to pay all of the government employees back pay when the continuing resolution is passed, so they are going to pay people who were sent home as well as people, like the Weather Service who had to show up. I don’t see how that makes any sense. Why not just end the stupidity and pay people for working?

The contract employees who got sent home are screwed. They never had a prayer of getting paid while the shutdown continues.

This government is so screwed up by these mental defectives.