After Irene

Day One
This is Sunday, the day after Irene came though town. I am incommunicado, having neither electricity nor cell phone service. Many tree limbs are down, as are more than a few trees. A neighbor’s privacy fence lies on the ground. A two story house a few doors away has half its metal roof peeled back, and everything in the upper floor is wet, drenched by torrential rain. An electrical transformer on a utility pole a hundred feet from my house is damaged and its oil leaks out in a steady drizzle. Traffic lights are dark and police direct traffic at major intersections. Trucks carting tree limbs are a frequent sight, as are front-end loaders picking up loads of debris.

I have a tiny battery-powered FM radio. I plug computer speakers into its headphone jack and get a very decent sound out of it. I hunt for news about the hurricane but mostly I hear “All the hits all the time.” After 28 hours, electric power is restored. I’m standing in the street talking with three neighbors when word comes that we have electricity, and everyone heads home to verify the good news. Shortly after that I am able to use my cell phone in roaming mode.

Day Two
Boring. My TV and Internet, both of which arrive via Comcast cable, are still out. I can write, but I’ll have to wait before I can publish it to my blog.

Day Three
I had a weird dream early this morning, in which I was wandering about in a labyrinth of a building. I kept passing certain features over and over, though I had no idea where I was or where I was going. I think I was trying to find an exit. There were other people in the building which I encountered as I traveled the labyrinth. It was almost like being in a video game world, where you go through doors and find rooms or hallways or stairs to other floors – sometimes the stairs were inverted, upside down, and so could not be used. But the weird thing is I knew I was dreaming. I even commented to one of my dream companions, “I hate dreams like this.” I tried my best to make myself wake up, to no avail. I thought of real-world things like the moon; I clenched my fists and struggled to awaken. But I only dreamed on.

Three days after Irene, it seems not much has changed from immediately after. Many homes and businesses have no electricity and many traffic lights are dark. Grocery store freezers are empty, their refrigerated shelves gleaming bare.

The sun is close to setting, and I decide to walk through the ‘hood. First I encounter a little blond girl about 4 years old, dressed in pink and riding a battery-powered motorized tricycle. She is accompanied by a large black man who looks like a celebrity bodyguard. The little girl rides her tricycle into an empty church parking lot. She stops and looks back at the man. “Go on. Ride around,” he tells her as he motions her forward. She rides off across the parking lot. The man flashes me a smile and waves.

On another street I encounter a couple standing on the sidewalk, looking at a cherry tree growing between the sidewalk and the street. The woman tells me she planted it 4 years earlier. It is leaning toward the street, blown over by the winds of Irene. I talk with them for a while. They are trying to decide if the tree can be saved. Doubtful. Mosquitos are biting me so I wish them good luck and walk on.

The setting sun lights up the side of Violet Bank. The Cucumber tree still stands and I don’t see any damage. It has been through many hurricanes since it was planted in the eighteenth century. I had wondered if Irene caused it damage. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had lost limbs or even toppled over. But there it was: a survivor of yet another hurricane.

Next to the Cucumber tree, I meet a woman and her pit bull mix named Vegas. She is from this area but lived in Las Vegas for a few years. Vegas is a rescue dog and very suspicious of me. Initially, he growls a lot, but I squat near him and hold out my fist so he can sniff me. (Never stick out your fingers to a dog – too easy to bite.) Vegas warms up and allows me to pet him, except for the top of his head. If I move my hand over his head, he dodges it.

As I return home, three girls run past my house. Teeny-boppers, tweeners, or whatever they’re called now, they look to be around 12 to 14 years old. One girl wears a neon-green shoe on her right foot and an orange shoe on her left foot. Another girl wears a blue shoe on her right foot and a bright pink shoe on her left foot. (Sometimes my over-fifty neighbor walks around with different color flip-flops. Though I suspect her reason for mixing colors is not fashion related.)

The day is coming to a close. The outside air is cooling so I turn off the A/C and open windows. Through my windows, I hear the hum of distant home generators. I wonder if I’ll be able to publish this post tomorrow.

Day Four
5:28 PM: Comcast got my TV and Internet working. I’m online, therefore I exist.

Irene

9:50: AM: Irene made landfall two hours ago in eastern North Carolina. It’s been raining here in central Virginia all morning. Ten minutes ago the power flickered momentarily – not a good omen. I optimistically set the time back into the blinking digital clocks.

11:00 AM: CNN says more than 200,000 people are without electric power. It’s breezy now but not yet a strong breeze. My home has aluminum awnings which are composed of individual slats mounted to a frame. Every other slat is permanently mounted, while the in-between slats slide into place and are therefore removable. The last time a hurricane passed by, several removable slats were blown out of the awning and I had to go out into the yard, in hurricane-driven rain, and fetch them before they could blow away. Irene will be passing by tonight. I’ll cross my fingers that the awnings stay intact.

1:40 PM: The wind is gusting strong enough to litter my yard with leaf-bearing twigs from the pecan tree growing at the corner of my lot. I have the refrigerator at its coldest setting in case I lose electric power.

1:55 PM: The National Weather Service says the wind speed is 28 mph (45 kph) gusting to 43 mph (69 kph).

2:00 PM: The red ‘X’ marks my city. The center of Irene hasn’t entered Virginia yet, but my city is definitely inside the storm.

2:40 PM: My electricity just went off. It came back on after 20 seconds. When the TV came back on, MSNBC was reporting 400,000 without power in North Carolina and Virginia. Irene is still 5 or 6 hours from Virginia.

Veggie Burger

My curiosity got the best of me at the grocery store. I bought a package of veggie burgers. The burger looked so good in the picture on the box: the sesame seed bun, the veggie patty – with black grill marks – resting on a piece of lettuce and topped with tomato and onion. It looked like a restaurant burger. I had to know what it tasted like.

Back home in my kitchen, I heated a veggie burger and placed it on a hamburger bun. I added sliced onion and mustard. Then I bit into it.

Want to know what a veggie burger tastes like? It tastes like cardboard.

I’ve never tried to eat cardboard so I can’t claim to know exactly what it tastes like. But a veggie burger tastes just like what I imagine cardboard would taste like. In a word: nasty … like something that doesn’t belong in your mouth. It’s not meat-like in any way; neither in taste nor texture. It doesn’t taste like food at all. At least, not to me, and I’m not picky about food. I threw the thing into the kitchen garbage can.

Why would anyone eat one of these things? And why spend money to buy a facsimile burger when, for no cost at all, you could cut out a piece of cardboard and place it on a bun and have basically the same thing?

I bought ground beef patties today and cooked some burgers. I already had the buns.

Butternut

Here’s how things go at my house. I wanted to cook a butternut sqash I bought today. But the big Pyrex baking dish I wanted to use was sitting atop my microwave oven where it serves as incoming mail and important documents holder. I thought: what else can I use? Then I remembered the other baking dish that the squash would fit into – it was upstairs where it served as a drip-catcher when I had a leak in the roof. I didn’t need it there anymore, as I recently had a new roof installed. So I went upstairs and brought it down. It was really cruddy, so I had to take it outside and pre-clean it then bring it to the kitchen sink for a final cleaning. It’s good to go, now. But do I move my mail from the Pyrex dish to the new one and cook the squash in the Pyrex dish? Or leave the Pyrex as primary mail-catcher and cook the squash in the new dish?

It’s obvious: I don’t have enough baking dishes.

Earthquake

The house started rumbling, and I thought it was a heavy truck going down the street. The rumbling got stronger, and stronger, and stronger. What the hell? Is a huge helicopter hovering over my house? The rumbling continued to get stronger and the shaking became violent. Suddenly I knew what it was. Earthquake.

The news people say it was a magnitude 5.8 quake centered 3.7 miles below the town of Mineral, Virginia. That puts the quake’s epicenter about 50 miles from my house. The motion was up-and-down, not side-to-side. It was not a swaying motion; it was a shaking motion. It was strong enough that I was really afraid my house would suffer damage if not collapse. Then, just as it had slowly built in strength, it slowly faded away. I walked out of my house and saw my neighbors on either side walking out their front doors. I tried to call someone on my cell phone but couldn’t get through. I guess too many people are calling people.

This wasn’t the first earthquake I’ve been through but it definitely was the strongest. I hope my water and sewer pipes are ok. Time will tell. And this Saturday, Virginia is predicted to be hit by hurricane Irene. That means Virginians will have an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week. What are the odds? Really.

Vegetarian-like

I just found out that I’m a vegetarian. Or rather, a type of vegetarian. You see, I was always under the impression that vegetarians only ate plants: vegetables, fruit, grains, nuts, legumes. But apparently my impression was based on bad information.

I recently learned that a vegetarian can also eat dairy products. If you’re a vegetarian and you eat dairy, too, you’re a lacto-vegetarian. In addition to milk and cheese, you might want to add eggs to your diet. Then you’d be a lacto-ovo-vegetarian.

My friend Dave’s wife insists she is a vegetarian. In addition to dairy and eggs, she also eats poultry and fish. So that makes her a lacto-ovo-fish-fowl vegetarian. I’m like her, with the slight difference that I also eat pork and beef. I’m a type of vegetarian called lacto-ovo-fish-fowl-pork-beef vegetarian. And there happens to be a lot of us.

It’s comforting to know that when I sit down to a plate of baby-back ribs or sirloin steak, that I’m eating a healthy vegetarian meal. And what about those few people who actually eat only plants? They don’t even call themselves vegetarians any longer. Now they’re “vegans”. They did that to set themselves apart from the animal-eating vegetarians.

Who knew that steak wrapped in bacon was totally vegetarian? I love Newspeak.

What’s Up With All the Euphemisms?

I don’t drive a used car, I drive a pre-owned car. I’m not watching a TV rerun, I’m watching an encore presentation. I’m not feeling old, I’m feeling chronologically challenged. Politicians never retract a statement, they clarify their position. If your doctor advises you to have surgery, be sure to ask him or her about the odds you might experience a negative patient care outcome.

You might need out-placement if your company out-sources your job. I’m sure you’ve never been fired from a job, but perhaps you’ve been decruited or dehired because you were redundant after a skill-mix adjustment. Maybe you were given an early retirement opportunity during a personnel realignment. I was rightsized, unassigned, and selected out when my company was defunded and had to restructure, retrench, and streamline in order to rationalize the workforce and invoke a workforce imbalance correction.

Why in the world are all these euphemisms necessary? Can’t anyone just say what they mean? I would like to expound further on the subject but right now I have to talk to a man about a horse.

Clock Revisited

I went for a walk, leaving my house at 6:30 AM. The morning air was slightly cool. As I crossed an intersection, I felt and smelled a warm, moist, slightly perfumed current of air. Someone was running a clothes dryer and it wasn’t even 7 AM yet. Laundry is a chore that awaits me today. But right now, it’s too early to think about laundry.

I took my Clock program I wrote about previously and tinkered with it. Now it’s an alarm clock and it looks like this. (Well, by default it does.)

I can change how it looks. If I right-click the clock, a context menu appears which allows me to choose any color for the digits as well as a new skin. For example, blue digits and a chrome skin look like:

Clicking the “A” button brings up the alarm dialog that allows me to specify the time of day for the alarm, as well as daily, weekday, weekend, or one-time options. The alarm dialog also lets me choose a sound for the alarm. It was supposed to be a two day project but I spent three days on it. On day one, I wrote the code for the clock. A lot of that involved designing how the segments worked. On day two, I added the alarm functionality. On day three, I created a Help file and an About box, and I created the chrome skin and tweaked the graphics and debugged the code.

It was an enjoyable little project. I guess I’ll add it to my library of free software. But first I have to create a setup program that will check for and install the necessary runtime software for people who are still using Windows XP. Then I’ll upload it to my website for the world to enjoy. Or more likely, three or four people.

Late Night Meanderings

I popped an over-the-counter sleep aid pill at 8:30 PM, watched some tube while I waited for it to kick in, and went to bed around, oh, 10:30 PM. I read a Discover magazine for about 15 minutes then dropped the Discover to the floor beside the bed and turned off the light. (Strangely, my first impulse was to write “turned out” the light. Turned out. Where did that “out” come from? Perhaps it originated in an archaic phrase, “put out the lamp”, which referred to a kerosene lamp that had an actual flame that had to be extinguished – put out.)

My antihistamine-drugged brain fell asleep and I dreamed a long dream. (In my dream I was held prisoner by Homeland Security, who seemed intent on pissing me off every way they could, and which they did, and of which I made sure to let them know by pissing them off every way I could. But that’s another story.) Then I awakened in darkness. I lay in bed for a long time, a half hour or more, before I rolled over and looked at the clock. It’s glowing digits proclaimed 1:44 AM. I had slept for three hours, almost. Thank God for over-the-counter sleep aids. Where would I be without them? Probably right here, typing a blog post.

I ate way too much yesterday. I don’t know why. Wait, I remember why: I was hungry. But why was I so hungry? Don’t know. Yes, I do know. I ate a lot of carbs yesterday. Carbs always make me hungry. I ate a hamburger (hamburger bun carbs); I ate a “bacon & tomato on whole wheat” sandwich (bread carbs); I ate a couple of baked “chicken cutlets” (breading carbs) and three egg rolls (wrapper and cabbage carbs). I ate a bowl of “high fiber” cereal that was much sweeter than I would have preferred (all kinds of carbs, from the high-fructose corn syrup coating the carbohydrate flakes of cereal to the lactose in the milk). I wonder, if I ate some more carbs right now, would it help me to go to sleep?

In fact, I was reading a web page about how complex carbs eaten along with tryptophan-containing protein can calm the brain and let you sleep, and at the end of the article a reader had posted this comment:

I've been sticking to mostly vegetables lately to lose a couple pounds, but find that I don't sleep well. Last night I had a big ole honkin' bowl of spaghetti and a slice of garlic bread, and slept straight through the night. Do I have to choose between a good night's sleep and better fitting clothes? Anyone?

And another reader posted this most helpful comment in reply:

No, you don't. Sooner or later you're gonna die. Enjoy your food and drink now, 'cause you ain't eatin' or drinkin' when you're dead. "better fitting clothes"? Who gives a rat's a$$ about that? Who's lookin' at ya? Would you rather look good or feel good? I say, EAT! DRINK! BE MERRY!
P.S. That spaghetti and garlic bread sounds fantastic!

Mmmm. Spaghetti with garlic bread. Damn. Now I’m hungry again.

Binary Clock

For fun – yes, fun! – I coded a software clock that can display time in binary numbers. (My programs can get complex, so sometimes I write something simple just to unwind my brain – call it my way of doodling – and I know what you’re thinking: this guy needs to get a life. Well, to each his own.)

Below, the context menu (accessed by right-clicking the application window) shows the settings are 12 hour mode, decimal display, and display seconds.

 

Below, the clock is set to binary display with seconds off.

 

Background and text colors can be easily changed as seen below. Here, the display is set to 24 hour mode.

 

In the final picture, below, I kept 24 hour mode, changed to binary display, and turned seconds off. By chance, the time was 16:32 – both numbers being integer powers of ‘2’ and therefore represented by a ‘1’ followed by zeroes only.

Sometimes while writing a program I have to work out how to do something, and in this case I had to figure out how to convert an integer representing hours, minutes, or seconds into a textual representation of that integer expressed as a base 2 number. After some pondering, I came up with what I thought was a clever yet elegant algorithm to do that and wrapped it in a function. Here’s the result:

Private Function IntegerToBinaryString( _
                     ByVal n As Integer) As String
    'determine the largest power of 2 that is smaller
    'than the number "n"
    Dim txt As String = ""
    Dim d As Integer = n
    Dim exp As Integer = 0
    Do While d > 1
        d >>= 1
        exp += 1
    Loop
    'create a string that represents the number "n"
    'expressed as a base 2 number
    d = CInt(2 ^ exp)
    Do While d >= 1
        If n >= d Then
            txt &= "1"
            n -= d
        Else
            txt &= "0"
        End If
        d >>= 1
    Loop
    Return txt
End Function

It only converts positive integers, which is all I needed, but the conversion is fast. Give it the number 1 and it returns the text string “1”; give it the number 9 and it returns the text string “1001”; give it the number 59 and it returns the text string “111011”.

And as I patted myself on the back for creating such a cool little algorithm, I discovered that I needed only to have written this to accomplish the very same thing:

   Convert.ToString(n, 2)

A rookie mistake. A smart rookie, of course, but still, I should have known: before I try to figure out how to do something, I should first ask Google how to do it.

What’s Up With …

What’s up with food companies putting half-a-serving amounts on their products’ nutritional panels? Tuna fish cans, back in the day when they held 6 ounces, claimed to contain 2.5 servings. Does that mean I can make 2.5 servings of tuna fish salad? Does it mean I can make 2.5 tuna fish sandwiches? Who gets the half sandwich? Is the can designed to feed two adults and a small child?

My favorite buffalo chicken bites box claims to contain 3.5 servings per package. I consider it to have two servings max, one serving if you’re a teenager.

I bought a pre-made salad today that claims to contain 4.5 servings. It’s just pieces of lettuce with a sprinkle of cheese, bacon bits, and faux grilled chicken. I want to ask them, “Are you sure it’s four and a half servings? Are you sure it’s not two servings, or maybe even one serving?” How come putting lettuce in a small container makes a single 290 calorie serving, while putting the same lettuce in a larger container makes makes several 130 calorie servings? Are food companies playing games with us?

You bet they are.

Add Cart

Every two months I receive a utility bill from the City. It’s itemized: refuse, sewer, water, storm (storm water disposal), and something called “add cart”. I just look at the bill and pay it. I never knew what “add cart” meant, but it’s always $4.20. I figured it’s a fee that the City adds. Like my cell phone bill. I have a monthly charge, a tiered overage charge, a Federal Universal Service Assess Non-LD surcharge, a Virginia State Gross Receipts surcharge, a Virginia State Special Revenue surcharge, an Administrative charge, a Regulatory charge, a Virginia State 911 Tax, and a Virginia State Sales Tax. So when I see “Add Cart: $4.20”, I just pay it.

Today I got curious about it and called the Utility Department. They told me I was being billed for an additional trash can. I found out they’ve been billing me for two trash cans since 2008.

I’ve never had more than one trash can. The lady at the Utility Department told me that the number of trash cans at my house has been verified every six months. I told her that the person or persons who have been verifying two cans every six months for three years might not be doing their job. After a little wrangling, the lady said she would remove the $4.20 charge from this month’s bill and future bills.

“What about all the previous charges going back to 2008?” I asked her.

She said she couldn’t refund those charges because I had never complained about them. Seriously, that’s what she said.

I changed out of my shorts and t-shirt into more serious looking clothing, put on my Naval Special Warfare Command ball cap and drove to City Hall. I went to the Utility billing office so I could talk to the lady.

I was nice, of course. I asked her under what theory of law can the City make a mistake and overcharge someone and then get to keep the money because the person being overcharged doesn’t immediately spot the error. After all, if the bank makes a mistake and puts too much money into your account, you can’t keep the money. If the government accidentally makes your tax refund check too large, you can’t keep the money. How does the City make a mistake and call it my fault because I didn’t tell them about it?

I left City Hall with all the erroneous charges credited to my bill: one small victory for a taxpayer at City Hall.

Morning News

There was a major electrical storm here last night, so I unplugged my computer. This morning I reconnected the power and the pc acted dead ... it wouldn't boot up, the monitor stayed dark. I turned it off and on several times, unplugged it and plugged it back in, but it was no go. The internal fans ran but that was the only sign of life. Finally I turned it on its side and removed the side panel. I pondered what to do next (jiggle the cables? unplug and re-plug the connectors?) I pushed the power button one more time and this time the pc booted up normally. I think it will be ok as long as I never turn the power off again.

Being connected to the larger world once more, I began surfing the news stories. I read that a Tucson SWAT team stormed the home of an ex-Marine they suspected of being associated with smuggling drugs. They banged on the front door then broke through it. He was sitting inside holding an AR-15 (his wife and son were in the house), so the SWAT guys shot at him over 70 times, hitting him more than 20 times. They claimed he fired at them first, but an investigation determined his weapon was not fired and was never taken off the safety position. The officers found guns in his house but nothing illegal was found. An investigation concluded the actions of the SWAT team were in accordance with Arizona law and SWAT training. The officers involved in the raid were not charged with anything and all of them continue at their jobs.

But I say: if the law allows cops to break down your door, storm into your living room, and shoot you dead as you lawfully sit in your house minding your own business, then there is something seriously wrong with the law.

It’s Premium, Folks

I saw a TV ad for the Mickey D chicken club sandwich. The ad showed the crispy chicken version, although the product also comes in a grilled chicken version. It looked tasty, so when I drove past our local franchise around lunchtime, I had to duck in and buy one. Enough said. Check out the photos.