‘Storm’ Category

  1. The greatest thing about working from home…

    March 22, 2006 :: 8:42 pm

    … has got to be this.

    Cats in laps rule!!

    Or is the greatest thing about working from home the fact that I brought home my Mac G5 from work, hooked up its ethernet cable, changed its network setting from manual IP to DHCP, and it just worked without me having to do ANYTHING ELSE TO GET IT CONNECTED? (Yet another reason Macs rule!!) Or is it homemade tea and coffee, and being able to cook my own lunch in a real kitchen? Or is it waking up at 8:15? Or is it working in my pajamas and not having to take a shower?

    Oh, who am I kidding. I hate not taking a shower. I feel yucky all day unless I shower as soon as I get up. (Showers rule!!)

    Category Apple, Storm, Technology, Weather, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Guess who gets to work from home?

    March 20, 2006 :: 9:52 pm

    That’s right! Me!!!! Pajamas + cats + homemade coffee. Oh, and sleeping an extra 45 minutes :)

    It’s times like this when I’m glad that I picked the field of interactive design over print design. Not that I don’t love print design, ’cause I surely do. But not everyone in my office gets to work from home while we’re flooded out. I’m just saying.

    I got to the office this morning in my rubber boots and discovered that while the carpeting was very squishy with smelly dirty floodwater, they had already managed to remove all the standing water. The rubber baseboards had been ripped away and Karen and Hillsman had hoisted up everyone’s computers and anything else that was on the floor. Karen said the water was rising so fast she could barely keep up on Sunday.

    This morning the maintenence people had put giant blower fans all over the place… trying to dry out the carpeting? God, I hope not. My esteemed place of employment certainly likes to cut corners and the blower fans were their solution the previous two times the office flooded (did I mention this is the third time in 18 months?) Previously only the two offices closest to the back door flooded. This time the entire basement got it, so we’ve been assured that they are considering replacing the carpet.

    All I can say is: Mold. Eeew. And, health hazard, anyone? The place was already starting to smell weird and dirty and chemically.

    I guess this is what happens when we get 10 inches of rain in 40 hours.

    We had a staff meeting this morning where we discussed options for relocation (after we considered and discarded the idea of continuing to work in our flooded offices while they reconstruct them). Several of us went to scout a couple of locations on campus that had been offered to us, including the White House building (the little apartment building that we worked out of from 1994-2004).

    In the end, it was decided that the web team would work from home, the administrative assistant would work from the desk of another administrative assistant who was on vacation, and the rest of the team would move up to the 3rd floor of McFarlin Auditorium, in a room used to store junk. I’m not sure exactly where they planned to put everybody amidst the boxes of t-shirts, footballs, old lamps, boxes of envelopes, discarded filing cabinets, etc. But whatever, I got to go home!

    Anyway, they sent me packing, so here I am with my little home office setup for at least the next week. Great timing, since today I took my home computer in for its logic board replacement, and I was afraid I’d be computerless for a week.

    Category Storm, Weather, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  3. Why I Like Rushing Water

    March 19, 2006 :: 9:54 pm

    I just had a memory from when I was a kid and wanted to write it down before I forget again. Whenever it would rain hard like today (well, not exactly like today, this is the hardest I’ve ever seen it rain, but you know what I mean), Mom would take me and Bobby and Mikey in the car and we’d drive down to the creek at the end of the neighborhood to see how high it was. Sometimes we’d go up to Parker and across and drive up the creek on that side too, all the way to the lake.

    We were never in any kind of danger from rising water; our house was a block away uphill. Stormy weather has always fascinated me; maybe it was because of these drives that we would take. Mom would always point out how beautiful but dangerous the rushing water was.

    The satellite photo at right is the creek and the trail at the end of our block. The little white pipe that runs across the creek at the top right of the photo is one of the pipes that we used to get to the other side when we’d go down there to play. I think that Bobby fell off of it once while he was trying to cross and Mike and I had to carry him, soaking wet and screaming, all the way home. We would try to catch minnows and we’d often find fossils in the chalky rock of the banks on the far side.

    I think that if we were kids today, we’d never be allowed to go down there by ourselves. But we used to do that all the time; we’d tell Mom we were going to go play at the creek, and we’d just go. I don’t know that it was any less dangerous then for kids to be out playing by themselves than it is today (you could also say is it any more dangerous for kids today than back then?), but I kind of get sad when I think about the experiences like that that kids are missing out on today.

    Category Memories, Storm, Weather | Tags: | 4 Comments

  4. For Sale: Lakefront Office Property!

    :: 9:42 pm

    I am sitting here at my computer in my studio, listening to music loudly, and watching the lightning storm outside my window through the rain. I have rearranged my furniture into a much more pleasing configuration (better feng shui, maybe), there is a painting on the wall behind me whose progress I’m very happy with, a sleek black cat is curled up sleeping on the sofa next to me, and I am drinking a cold diet soda.

    It doesn’t get much better than this. :)

    What’s going to suck, though, is tomorrow morning when I go into work wearing rubber boots and jeans. Why would I do this, you ask? I got a call this afternoon telling me that our office, which is located in the basement of an older building, contains approximately 2″ of water on the floor. My computer is on the floor, as are a lot of my job jackets and god only knows what else that I have sitting on that floor, all of which is now most likely completely ruined. I think the computers, at least, are OK, as our very own Karen Field and Hillsman Jackson valiantly worked to move everything they could onto the desks before the water got too bad this afternoon. Thank god Karen went in to work to type up a paper and discovered the mess. I have no idea what to expect tomorrow. I don’t know where they’re going to put all of us while they rip up and replace the carpeting. The building’s jam-packed with people as it is.

    Category Storm, Weather, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  5. get the cats and board the ark

    :: 3:37 pm

    This is some crazy rain. It’s like end-of-days kind of crazy. It’s rained hard nonstop for about 36 hours now, maybe more. Actually it’s let up a bit now, it’s maybe just coming down at a normal-rain rate.

    Ah, I spoke too soon. The minute I got that last sentence typed in, it started deluge-ing again. Crazy. Seems like it’s making up for all the rain that we didn’t get last year — we were down by more than half of the usual amount, which as you may have guessed, is not all that much to begin with in Texas.

    Yesterday I tried to go up to Frisco to the IKEA store to look for a desk for my office, and halfway there had to turn around and come home because the car had sprung a leak and water started coming in through the sunroof. I knew if I parked it at the IKEA in the downpour for a couple of hours, it’d be a swimming pool on the inside. As it was, I was pretty soaked when I got home. We opened the doors and pointed an industrial fan at the upholstery for a couple of hours last night.

    We went to brunch this morning (driving in the rain doesn’t seem to make the car leak as much as standing still in the rain) and parked under the covered parking at Northpark Mall, then walked across the street to Blue Mesa to meet Brittney and Kirk and Amy. When we were finished, it was raining so hard you could barely see halfway across the parking lot. Doc and I went into Barnes & Noble for about 30 minutes to wait it out, but it never let up. By the time we got back across the street to our car we were completely soaked through from the waist down.

    It took us forever to get home due to flooded streets and people going 5 miles per hour. We came home on Walnut Hill because we thought Northwest Highway would probably be shut down on the creek floodplain — it was almost to the road on our way to brunch.

    The creek in back of our house, while not at the top, is the highest I’ve ever seen it. I don’t think we’re in any danger since it has a good 6-8 feet left to rise before it would top the banks. On the other side of Walnut Hill it’s eaten away a large chunk of the bank and I wouldn’t be surprised if several of these trees go down too.

    Our neighbors across the street are the lucky recipients of all the rain that has been pooling up in the shopping center behind them. I guess the drains in the parking lot got full because it pooled at the back of the shopping center (we went splashing back there to see how deep it was and the water was nearly up to our knees) and came under the brick separator wall into their backyard, through their courtyard (and probably house too) and is now pouring through their front gate out into the front yard and down into the street. It looks like someone turned on several fire hydrants and is just letting them run out the front gate.

    Click here to see a slideshow of the rain.

    Category Storm, Weather | Tags: | No Comments

  6. storm’s a-brewin!

    February 16, 2006 :: 9:57 pm

    it’s really windy outside and the temp has dropped about 35 degrees from what it was at 5 p.m.

    (it was 85, by the way. i’d bet that’s a record high temperature, in a year full of record high temperatures.)

    now an “arctic” front is blowing through and the temperature is supposed to dip down closer to normal. it’s so nutty, hearing about the “impending winter storm” on the local news channels. they talk about this like it’s never been cold here before. like no one owns anything but tank tops and flip flops.

    personally i can’t wait.

    i left work at 5:10 and ran for about two miles, then stopped at the gym. i stretched, lifted weights, and did a little yoga, and left at 6:10 to walk back to the office to collect my things and go home. as i stepped out the front doors of the gym, i could immediately smell something burning in the distance. the wind had picked up quite a bit and the sky was full of giant navy and copper rounded clouds reflecting the setting sun. i was wearing shorts and a spaghetti strap bra-top, and i got chilled really quickly from being sweaty and the strong cool wind. it took me about 10 minutes to get back to my office, and the burning smell kept getting stronger as i walked. it smelled like someone had taken a huge pile of raisins and flowers and thrown it on a wood fire. i swear the air looked hazy too.

    wowzers. i just did a little web search and found out that there are fires in southern oklahoma, so when the winds turned from the north it brought the smoke down to us. that’s pretty amazing. the smell was so strong that i thought it was maybe in the neighborhood to the north of my office.

    that’s a fuckload of smoke. it was making my eyes sting. (or maybe that was just the wind)

    now i’m sitting in my office writing, and i keep hearing things hitting my roof every time the wind gusts. probably leaves, twigs, and maybe a small squirrel or two tossed by the wind.

    Category Storm, Weather | Tags: | 1 Comment

  7. why do i always think a redesign will be fun?

    February 7, 2006 :: 10:34 pm

    yeah. i don’t know what gets into my head.

    i’ve spent three to four hours for the past two nights trying to fix my new layout so it will work in internet fucking explorer. that is its official name, by the way: “internet fucking explorer.” i don’t care if 90% of the world uses it as its primary browser; it is a piece of shit.

    so, anyway, this OUGHT to work better. at least, it works structurally in IE for the mac, most of the time. i have no idea what it looks like on IE for the pc, because, in a when-hell-freezes-over kind of way, i do not own one. i can check it at work tomorrow or if one of my three very kind and helpful pc-using friends whose names start with a “b” can check for me, that’ll be even better. :)

    i’m beyond caring how it looks on IE mac, but i would like it to work in IE pc simply because i have a lot of readers who use that particular platform and browser — and much as i would prefer that to be different, it ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. anyway, mac IE seems to be a good litmus test for pc IE — at least IE5.5.

    i forgot to upload this last week. it actually rained!! i was so excited that i took photos on the way to work, but forgot my camera’s usb cable so couldn’t actually upload any. don’t worry, i had the camera stationary on the steering wheel and just hit the button without actually aiming or composing. my eyes were on the road the whole time!

    this first one was taken at the intersection of northwest highway and buckner.

     

    this one was taken at the end of my street, looking across plano road towards the sonic (open for breakfast! shining that bright red neon glow through the windows of the houses! “you’ll never forget we have tater tots and strawberry cheesecake shakes, any time of the day or night!!!!”)

    Category Blog, Design, Geek, Storm, Technology | Tags: | 2 Comments

  8. katrina and the ants

    August 29, 2005 :: 7:38 pm

    this morning, hurricane katrina narrowly missed making landfall directly on top of new orleans, although it certainly did its fair share of damage to the city and the surrounding areas, and then raged on into mississippi.

    city officials turned the sports stadium into a makeshift shelter “for those who are too sick or too poor to leave the city.” TOO POOR TO LEAVE THE CITY IN THE FACE OF IMPENDNG DISASTER???? WTF??? how sick is that, that your income level determines whether you are able to get out of the path of a fucking hurricane?? however, as it happened, the stadium wasn’t THAT great of a shelter. part of the roof was torn off as the storm passed over. guess it was better than nothing, though.

    an official from the public health research center in louisiana said of the storm:

    “So, imagine you’re the poor person who decides not to evacuate: Your house will disintegrate around you. The best you’ll be able to do is hang on to a light pole, and while you’re hanging on, the fire ants from all the mounds — of which there is two per yard on average — will clamber up that same pole. And, eventually, the fire ants will win.” 

    i have to say i had never thought of that possibility, and now i can’t get the grisly visual out of my head.

    Category Storm, Weather | Tags: | No Comments

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