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i got about 1 1/2 hours of sleep, then got up to eat supper in the hotel. it was nice to have a warm meal that didn’t consist of junk food. not that the food was that good. dave appeared to have not died in the hurricane, and in fact seemed nominal. i guess getting to hunker down in a $400/night room for free on some other company’s bill agreed with him. i decided to spend my own time in the crowne plaza tonight since it was already paid for. i did have to pony up $10 for 24 hours of wireless access. you have to pay for wireless in a $400/night hotel! so i’m sitting here watching cable tv, drinking some coffee, and getting online. boy, this is exciting. i’ll be going back to my house tomorrow after i check out of the hotel. hopefully no trees fell over and no idiots broke into my house. i’m not too worried, but you never know. in dumb news, i actually forgot my cell charger at my house, so even once i got back to the hotel i couldn’t use my cell phone. oh well.

been up since 9am working to get all the systems back up at the data center. mostly done, but i’m tired. i’m going back to the hotel to take a nap. maybe i can get access to some of the videos we made last night. i guess i’ll eventually get home someday. at least i’m not stuck with all the evacuees, waiting my turn to get back into town.
i’ve not talked to dave since…uh…yesterday afternoon. i wonder if he’s enjoying his free stay in the hotel? my cell went dead yesterday evening because i didn’t know i’d stay in the data center and i left my charger in the hotel room.

got about 5 hours of low quality sleep. thankfully, work provided an air matress or it would have been no quality sleep. meanwhile, i went outside and it was basically the same as last night…some wind, a bit of mist/rain now and then, occasionally a bit of a gust. nothing too bad. looks like it’s going to be much worse for those that evacuated and are trying now to return than those of us who stayed.
i’m curious to see if anything happened at my house, but i’m still at the data center at work. i’ve still got power there because my answering machine is working. i sure could go for a nice hot breakfast with some meat and eggs. maybe tomorrow.

well, i must admit the winds picked up some. enough that it was almost worth it to be outside. but we eventually bored of amusing ourselves with fake news reports and retired back to safety inside. now i’m back in the data center and i guess i’m going to go to bed. i’m sure the news reporters will continue to tell dramatic stories about the horrible, crazy, scary, cataclysmic things that are happening all around me. i’ll try my best to sleep through it.

just went outside the data center. the hurricane is still officially lame. i don’t care what the stupid over-zealous news reporters say. if people have any sense (questionable), they’ll realize this and when something really bad *does* eventually happen, no one will believe the news. they are absurd. yes, there’s wind. yes, there’s rain. yes, some places will have some wind damage, downed power lines, transformers blowing, etc. but this is nowhere near the disaster they predicted, nor the one they have continually tried to act like was going to happen, then maybe going to happen, then still might possibly happen, then they just gave up and started fabricating bogus stories that were laughable as the deployed reporters tried to act like the waves were crazy, the rain was horizontal, the wind was blowing them around, etc. it’s completely pathetic.
in other news, we’re about to go outside and record our own news story. i hope we make it back alive…

well, i’m in the data center at work now. i checked into the hotel around 1pm. my room is on the 9th floor, facing toward the northeast. we went outside about an hour ago on top of an 8-floor garage. not much wind, no rain yet. no excitement. saw on tv the quality humans who take advantage of situations to loot and break into things have started early. i hope some of them meet someone with a weapon and good aim. looks like new orleans may end up worse than houston. but we’ve got about 24 hours before we can see what actually occurred on the Texas coast.

well, the media continues to try to work everyone up into a frenzy. *sigh* it’s now supposed to be a cat 3, and the eye should hit near the texas/louisiana border. winds in houston shouldn’t be over 65mph or so. i am going to be leaving my house and heading to either the hotel or the data center. i’m undecided at this point. should be a pleasant drive down a mostly open 59n. i kind of wanted to stay at my house just in case some windows broke or something so i could move stuff, but i guess i’ll just come back later and see if anything happened.

dave and i left the house so i could check in to the hotel (for work). the hotel was full and most hotel services were unavailable. lemaster (co-worker) showed up at the same time. we all decided to go searching for a place to eat. we drove around for about an hour…no success. although the roads were very light on traffic so getting around was very easy. the only things we found open: jingi (sp?), berryhill (no food left…just the bar, i guess), brasil (coffee house), baskin-robbins (?!), and a few convenience stores (all with no gas). closed: katz’s (“never closes”), two house of pies, chaco’s, ihops, chuy’s, all grocery stores, etc. it’s crazy that everything is already closed. this is going to make for a long weekend. oh well. i ended up coming back to the house and leaving dave at the hotel.
i didn’t see any traffic backed up on or connected to 59s (610, beltway 8), but people are still evacuating and stuff’s all backed up. i just heard on the tv that someone’s grandmother died in their car on i-10 because the emergency personnel couldn’t get to them or do anything. lots of people are stranded in cars without gas, and there is no gas in waller county, which most of the main evacuation routes go through.
it’s still my opinion that we have created a culture of fear in our country, and this is a good example of an outcropping of it. people are still streaming out of all parts of houston, even areas where they really shouldn’t have to, even if a cat 5 was in fact going to hit houston straight on (which it doesn’t appear it is…but the media seems to try as hard as it can to keep everyone amped up and scared about how horrible things might be).

dave finally showed up. turns out he’d been by earlier and figured i was at work so he didn’t ring the doorbell.
we went out around noon to find a place to eat. most gas stations were out of gas and many were closed, plus most places to eat were closed and the few that were open almost all had really long lines. we saw 59s south of beltway8 was backed up…and it isn’t even supposed to be an evacuation route. we ended up eating at a sandwich king, which was good and had a very short line, but they were low on food and actually closed before we left. they had a tv on, and it was showing how bad 59s was backed up. obviously the true evacuation routes are insanely backed up. jack and sue called from i-10 to say they’d jumped to the east-bound lanes after they saw a gas truck going west down it, and evidently a lot of people started jumping over to it. they’ve opened up all lanes on 45 and i10 to outbound traffic. i just heard on the tv they’ve decided they aren’t going to do that with 290. so the folk on 290 are just screwed i guess. lots of people are running out of gas, cars overheating or breaking down, etc. people seem to be handling things pretty well so far, but i think the culture of fear and paranoia that the media creates isn’t really helping the situation much.
i’ll probably be going in to work at some point this evening. i’m not sure yet if i’ll stay at the hotel or if i’ll come back to my house.
dave is currently on my couch snoring…

well, the radio show was last night. afterward, i met a few folk at a bw3 in midtown. they had already put plywood up and were closing at 10:45pm. came back to sw houston, no backed-up traffic on 59 where i was. i could see bw8 north was backed up at 59. around 2am dave from the radio show called me and said he’d broken down at 610 and i-10, and wanted to know if he could stay with me. i said that’d be cool, but he needed to get towed, then catch a cab. he called around 7:30am saying he’d gotten a cab, but i’ve still not seen him. i stayed up until around 5am trying to clean the place up some, but still no hurricane planning. the direction of rita has continued to shift toward the east, and evidently they now think it’s going to be a cat 3 when it hits. the roads appear to be totally insane. jack and sue called from richmond around 8:30am. they’d been “evacuating” for about 5 hours. i got out of bed around 10am, and i called them at 10:30am and they were still in richmond. i used google maps to help them take some backroads toward i-10 since all i-10 lanes are going to be made westbound.