i got up this morning a little earlier than i’d planned. i started stopping apps before i left to help keep the usage low on the powermac — so it of course immediately locked up. i had to reboot it at that point, so i went ahead and installed updates and rebooted some more. i set the cam and the music going and left for work.
once i got to work, i started… “working” you ask? no, setting up a med center cam, of course. then around 6pm my cam at home went dead. i was curious if the power went out or something had happened, so i decided to drive to my house. and also pick up some folding chairs. while on my way out, a security guy sort of started grilling me a bit. then he saw my essential personnel badge, which i’d modded from “66” by adding another “6” in sharpie.
a co-worker went home with me and we picked up the chairs. sure enough, power was out at my house. my block and a few around it are horrible about losing power. how bad? i lost power for an hour during the last hurricane. by “last” i mean gustav. which was nowhere close to here. no other areas around us lost power. anyway. the power was out, so i grabbed the cam and brought it to work with me.
once back, a few of us went up to the top of the attached garage and i started doing live broadcasting. then a few more people showed up. in total, there were 7 of us. i was getting pretty crazy and acting stupid. i was sitting in a folding chair in the middle of the top garage floor talking to my macbook air while wearing a skull mask and goggles, and everyone else was standing around laughing and making comments. then someone else walked up.
it was the security guy from earlier. evidently someone from another business had called and said there were a bunch of people doing something on the top of the parking garage. the elevators are turned off, so he had to walk up the stairs to check it out. fortunately, he thought it was pretty funny. he pulled out his camera phone and took some pics, and was telling people on the walkie-talkie they needed to see what was going on. a bit later another security guy showed up. we all sat around and joked for awhile, then they left. we were being pretty stupid and reenacting internet memes and such. it was funny. and there were quite a few different people i knew watching the stream at that point and making comments in the chat channel.
since then, about the only thing i’ve done is a few more short live broadcasts, and went outside for awhile with a couple of guys and smoke a cigar.
oh yeah, the hurricane. not much has really happened here. some wind, very little rain. i guess it’ll get worse over the next hour or two, but i may very well be asleep. i’ve eaten way too much junk food.
I enjoyed the web cam broadcasts. It was interesting to watch out your window for awhile. I believe that I saw the girl who rents the apartment in back. It was Saturday morning here while you were on the roof, so I had plenty of time to enjoy the antics. The audio was pretty rough at times — not sure if that was the wind or something else. I noted that your voice was clearer when you were talking off camera rather than facing it. Not to be critical — just thought you might like to know. My wife was looking over my shoulder for a time, and I’m not sure what her impression was of all of it. She is sick, so I doubt that she is in the mood for much silliness. Anyway, good to see you.
I note that drudgereport.com already has links to the inflammatory headlines that you predicted would occur. I hope and expect that are not as bad as they indicate. One report already boldly predicts:
The hurricane strength winds through this morning will cause extensive structural damage and shattered glass in the upper levels of the towers the fourth largest city in the U.S.
“Extensive structural damage???” That’s sounds to me like destruction of a building — I doubt that will be the case.