Winter Storm - February 2021 Part 5

Well, Texas being Texas, it's now a high of 70-something degrees.  Skies are blue, and this is the weather people from out of state get duped into thinking we have all the time when they visit during the spring-times.  

Today is the first day that hasn't felt like a total disaster.  Yesterday I was still just sort of wandering around the house trying to figure out what to do and checking to make sure I wasn't spotting leaks or holes in the house that weren't there before.  And, the inside of the house was and remains a bit of a mess.  We've had a hard time keeping tidy during COVID to begin with, but add in our inability to just cook and clean with running, clean water, and it's all a bit of a mess.  

Jamie's dialysis situation is pretty solid.  She had treatment on Friday, and then again on Sunday.  And, today, Monday, she's back on her regular schedule at her regular clinic.  So, despite an ugly week of uncertainty, she's doing well, if a bit knackered.  She did some chores for about two hours yesterday and then tapped out, for which I could not blame her.  

I can't thank the nurses, technicians, social workers and others from Jamie's clinic enough.  While it was clear this was an improvised effort, she had multiple people calling her, giving her information and driving in awful conditions (and with minimal experience) to make sure Jamie and tons of othersothers could get the care they needed.  That's not nothing.

Austin Water has worked around the clock to restore water - and then drinking water - to the city.  Austin Energy did what it could, kept people apprised and got power back when possible.  Police, ambulances and firefighters stayed on duty.  And I have to assume university staff stuck around to feed the kids on campus.  I know there were also people on the UT campus keeping data centers going, keeping the heat on best they could - and power (UT has its own power plant.  No fooling.  It's at about 24th street).  

In my own neighborhood, people offered food, water, and.. maybe most importantly information and tips.  They helped each other out in countless ways that will be forgotten, but I was able to keep an eye on my own home and understand where we were at as the storm carried on as those in the know shared information about what to expect, what to do and not to do, how to deal with water heaters, how to care for pipes, etc...

Winter Storm - February 2021 Part 4

yesterday afternoon, the snow lost its charm

Well, Jamie finally got to dialysis.  You can read her account of the past week here.

With the water main breakages, etc... it's been all sorts of operations that have had to do without, and dialysis centers have been hit pretty hard.  She went from last Friday til today (it is Friday) when - normally - she's in on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week.  

They were unable to run her for the full duration, as there are only a few clinics open, and this morning she was sent to the wrong clinic (at 6:00 AM no less) and then traversed the city on a path I would not have recommended with freezing temps and roads, but she made it, safe and sound.  Of her usual 2.5 hour run she did get 2 hours, so she should be good for a bit.  

Still, these are the 1,000,000 stories of "this went a bit beyond 'we shivered a bit'" that are going to be flooding out of this event.  

My colleagues from work are trying to fix things for a bunch of ungrateful college applicants, and we're having trouble on the IT side as - hey, there's no water for cooling our data center (why we aren't in the cloud - do not get me started).  There's *massive* spikes for electric consumers who were on flexed rate plans (I saw a story about someone who will pay $3800 for this week's bill alone), and the water damage to property is going to be flat out insane.

Winter Storm - February 2021 Part 3

Scout ponders the inevitable slowing of all atomic motion

If you're on the outside of the freeze occurring in our Southern States - and, in particular, in Texas, it's very hard to explain the insanity of the past week.  And, I imagine, you have to do a lot of intentional empathizing to care.  Texans have a semi-earned reputation for being natively hateable, and anything bad that befalls them is schadenfreude.  

The truth is - we *are* in fact dealing with the results of bad policy, hubris and a lack of foresight.  All the stuff you'd expect from the blowhards and braggarts who've run the state for decades.

And it's costing lives.  The closest I can compare this to would be - a hurricane or similar event taking out Washington, Oregon and most of California, including LA, but leaving San Diego just fine.  

Texas is huge.  It takes 12 hours to cross from Texarkansas to El Paso and 13 hours from Texhoma to Brownsville.  That's 29 million people.  Houston is currently listed as the most diverse city in the country (don't believe it?  Go hang around the Univ. of Houston campus), and while it's easy to think of morons like Rick Perry as the face of Texas, it's not the reality on the ground.  Good people and many kinds of people live here.  

We're in an unprecendented weather event - it's not just been record cold in intensity, it's also record cold in duration.  I assume the precipitation is also record level.  I've never seen more than a dusting of snow in my decades in this town.  If we can't see the grass, we think it's a blizzard.

One common misconception I've seen is that we just need snow plows.  Well, what that this were so. 

Winter Storm - February 2021 Part 2

the neighborhood pond is frozen over

Since I was in college, way, way back in the 1990's, I've heard nothing but how the power grid in Texas was outdated and needed overhauls, improvements and extensions.  Some of that has happened, but this being Texas, the loads has been focused on the load the state requires during the summer.   Texas summers can see weeks on end with temperatures in the 100's, and if you don't provide AC, we'd all likely die of heat stroke.  There's a reason Texas was sparsely inhabited by ingidgenous people and Mexican settlers when Anglos set their sites on Texas in the early 1800's.  

Anyhoo...  what we haven't worried about a whole lot has been extreme winter weather.  Most of the time, we get into March and say "man, it never really got all that cold this winter."  I mean, we've had cold winters, and icy spells that kept us off the roads, but it was never a question of "hey, why is almost half the state without power?  And why is it different street by street?"

Because, yeah, two streets over in my same subdivision, people had power this whole time.  Go figure.  And I have no idea why we currently have power and others do not.  

Anyway - hearing that Texas has an outdated grid isn't new.  Now add in Texas' booming population and energy needs.  We've added millions of people every decade for some time.  I believe the last two decades saw about 4 million new Texans for a total of, like, 8 million new people.  And not a whole lot of new sources of power.  

Winter Storm - February 2021 Part 1

Scout figures out snow

We're in the middle of a rough winter storm.  Polar vortex nonsense.

Click here for pictures

Honestly, it's been kind of rough.  We lost power Monday at 2:00 AM, it came back on around 11:30 AM Tuesday - so 30-odd hours without heat while the temperatures never got above 25 and dropped to 7 over night.  The house has done a better-than-expected job of retaining heat, but entropy is a sonuvabitch.  

Mostly yesterday I ate dry and snack foods.  I used the Moka Pot sent to me by Steven H for making coffee.  We cooked up some chicken sausage for dinner and got in bed at 7:00 under 5 blankets, wearing 4 layers each.  We finally decided to go to sleep at 10:00.  

Our plan was to lock oursleves in the bedroom with Scout, but she became very scared in the dark so we let her sleep downstairs.  I don't think she did sleep, because she's been sleeping today.  

The power came back on at 11:30, so I immediately lit our gas fireplace, which wouldn't light before without electricity (lesson learned on that one - light that one if there's a threat of loss of power).  One of our pipes had frozen, so I went to work with a hair dryer, and I think I fixed it.  

Anyway - we're all right.  But with two more storms coming, the roads are bad now and set to get worse.  The biggest problem is Jamie's dialysis, but I have high hopes we'll get her there and get it sorted.

PodCast now (also) on YouTube - Entrusting the Archive to Corporate Overlords

For a long time I've been somewhat nervous about the hosting of the Signal Watch PodCast solely at SoundCloud.  Look, SoundCloud is a good, easy-to-use service, but it's also a company, and those go under, get bought out, change strategies, etc... 

I've used RSS to push the content to other podcasting platforms, and that's been nice - but I genuinely don't know what happens if the SoundCloud goes away.  Will those go away?  What if Stitcher dries up?

Right now those kids at "Google" seems like they know what they're doing.  But, YouTube wants to be about video, and so moving the podcast there had challenges.  When I looked a while back, all the recommendations were about manually transforming each episode into a video - which, individually, not a huge deal.  But multiply that by 135 episodes and a handful of extras, and I'd be hand-converting episodes til next Christmas.  

I changed how I phrased my search parameters for how to get the podcast to YouTube, and up came a service called "Repurpose.io".  They seem legit.  The service is super, super simple to use, and while it costs money, it also works really well.  As of this posting I believe all episodes have made their way to the YouTubes.  

Check out our YouTube here.  It's also where we've posted some sketches, taste tests, etc... So, all your Signal Watch needs.

Look, I used to work in digital audio and video preservation, and it's a bear of a field.  And I don't have any memory institutions like a museum, archive or library clamoring for episodes of The Signal Watch.  But right now, I expect that YouTube, which lets me host there for free, will outlast either me or my ability to care about whether these episodes continue to exist.  I mean, maybe when I'm 90 I'll be like "what DID I have to say about Streets of Fire?"  But probably not.  I'll be too busy seeking out water in the wasteland deserts of Trumpland Sector 35 (brought to you by: Confederate Burger).  

It's the same reason I'm like, sure, Blogger.  They're still here.  And owned by spooky ol' Google that's using this blog to mine data and sell ads, but, look.  You people didn't want to join my Patreon, so here we are.

Anyway - I need to do some curation inside of YouTube, so bear with me as I get all that straightened out.  But I do plan to do some curation there and not just dump episodes.

Oh, and, hey, Repurpose.io lets me use the images I already had tagged to the episode, so it's surprisingly easy to navigate on the YouTube menu.

So - YouTube also does this amazing thing where - when you upload audio at least - it checks for copyright claims.  About 85-90% of the videos have some copyright claim due to my use of the music involved.  So, even if the videos went wildly viral, I won't make a red cent.  And, hey, the song owners might!  Good for them.  

The only claim that totally blocked the video from release was "Hungry Like the Wolf" from Duran Duran, which is hilarious.  Fortunately, YouTube just lets me cut out the song.  So - easy, squeezy.  No more Duran Duran.  I can deal with that minor hiccup.

We'll see what other pitfalls await me, but so far, so good.

It snowed in Austin on 01/10/2021

the logical conclusion to a snow day in the ATX

It doesn't snow very often in Austin.  I don't think we got any last year at all.  But every once in a while, conditions are just right, and we get a light dusting.  I've lived in Austin for something like 30 years, and this is the most snow I remember arriving in a single blast (ice is another story.  Janaury of 1997 was bananas).  

It was raining when I woke up around 8:45, and was sleeting around 9:45.  But at 10:30, Jamie was running around looking out windows proclaiming "it's real snow!".  And then it proceeded to snow all day.

I'm aware that for many of you, snow is nothing exciting, but in Austin it's always a quiet day of chillaxing as everyone stays in, yells about it on social media, takes walks outside, and we just stare at this thing that is kind of a wonder when you're way more familiar with "10 days over 100 degrees" or whatever we get in August.

Scout ponders why ground is soft-crunchy-cold

Video 1: Snow in the backyard

Video 2:  Snow from the front porch

Video 3:  Snow from the upstairs porch

Video 4:  Scout enjoys the snow

Thanksgiving 2020

Hey, y'all!

Well, yeah.  This Thanksgiving was weird, but good.  

First - I am thankful for Jamie and how much she looks after me and Scout and everyone else in general, but in COVID times, she's been extra great.  We're now however many months into this mess and she's been both dealing well with having to live with me and has been entirely key to me keeping an even keel throughout.

I'm thankful for a solid job that is unlike to see much damage as the situation around us remains fluid.  It can be crazy, but it's a challenge I am growing to appreciate more all the time.

We live in town with much of our small family, and I'm thankful we're doing well, and I can see people (socially distanced) even if high-fives and hugs are harder to come by.  We've got a solid support system here locally and in California, and that doesn't hurt.

And, of course, I'm grateful for all you knuckleheads who have made COVID-times bearable by staying in touch, co-producing podcasts, reading the blog, and doing Tuesday and Friday movie nights.  It's a heck of a thing that there's a network from New York to San Francisco and Seattle and back again through the midwest, Kansas City and onward to North Carolina and Tennessee.  Y'all are everywhere, and it's alarming.

Just came from

 

 

Actually, this was the best dentist I've been to in forever. Hit me up, Austin, if you're looking to change up.

But I still think of this every time I'm in the chair.

Halloween at League HQ - 2020 (a brief tour)

and, yes, Scout wandered into the picture there at the bottom

It's Spooky Season at League HQ.  We did do some indoor decorating this year.  However, some of this stuff is up all year long.  For example:  My Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein posters are always a feature in The Hall of Gentlepersons.

In a Time of Virus: Hell of a Year for a Fourth of July

I think a lot about that grotesque video of Donald Trump hugging and kissing a flag.  It's the act of an insincere buffoon putting on a show for other morons.  Of the 30,000 things he did that should have been a red flag to anyone considering where to place their vote, that image surely could have summarized exactly why this half-assed con-artist should have been left dealing with lawsuits and trying to sell his shitty products and run out of a presidential race on a rail.

That's the same flag people say they would "die" for (I am aware that's a symbolic statement, as much as the flag is a symbol).  But it's also the same piece of cloth that I recall people having serious discussions about creating prison time for anyone burning or desecrating (missing that whole First Amendment business, but, then, when haven't we?).

The United States is on fire enough that as other countries have flattened the curve, they've watched the US's nightmare of a response and put us on lists that suggest it may be years before Americans go abroad.  And I'm not sure that decision is just about COVID.

Twitter and social media have changed the world.  The carefully polished image of America that the post WWII planet received in exports of movies and television has been stripped away to show cops murdering and beating our citizens.  Lipitor customers stalk their front stoops with guns and their faces full of an insane combination of utterly unwarranted fear and rage as Black people walk by.  Our President gives increasingly unhinged interviews and speeches, and refuses to do a single goddamn thing to slow the course of a pandemic that is going to bury this country for years, or longer  if he wins the November election.  And all of that flows outward to nations who had their own dalliances with similar maniacs who seemed like a good idea at the time.

But, yeah.

In case you missed this on twitter

We're doing that "30 Days of Movies" thing on twitter, and I got bored of looking for real movies, so this is what we did for 3 days' worth of posts.

I made the second one first.  I dunno.  I love doing terrible photoshop work.

Day 16:  A film that is personal to you

Day 17:  Favourite film sequel

Day 18:  a film that stars your favourite actor/ actress

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad

Today marks the 52nd anniversary of my parents, The Admiral and KareBear. 

These two have made it through all sorts of nonsense over the years, not the least of which was weathering raising me, which was no picnic.  Anyway, they're still the dream team of parenting and now grandparenting, and their own partnership gave me a pretty good model for how to make one of these marriage things work. 

Of course Jamie and I can't be with them on their Anniversary, but as they live in town, we've been meeting up on weekend mornings in my backyard, socially distant and all that.  It's been really great, honestly.  (On opposite weekends we've been trying to drive to San Marcos as Jamie's dad has a *great* back porch that gets a breeze in the evening).   

The picture above is from last summer when Jamie and I visited my mom's original stomping grounds in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  She's the child of Finnish immigrants, and they still very much celebrate Finnish heritage in the U.P. *  She met my dad when he was stationed near her hometown working on B-52's during the Doctor Strangelove days. 

Anyway - congrats to these two.  52 years is nothing to sneeze at. 


*My dad is an American Mutt.  Name a Western European nation, and he's got a bit of it.  And probably a lot of things we don't know about.  We were all very disappointed to learn our last name is actually English and not a mangled European name spelled out phonetically at Ellis Island.

In a Time of Virus: The Dams Break

It started with protests in several cities in the wake of the George Floyd murder.  George Floyd was a Black man apprehended by police under suspicion he'd floated a bogus $20 bill.  For this, he was pinned to the ground by his throat beneath the knee of a man with a gun, who was supported by three of his fellow officers, as the suspect begged for air.  This went on for almost 9 minutes.

The murder, and it was murder, occurred in broad daylight and on camera, carried out by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  A lot of people will try to call what occurred as a police officer pinned a man's neck to the ground with his knee for 9 minutes something else.  Maybe they'll say it was unintentional (the video suggests otherwise), or just breaking some eggs to make an omelet.  But in the era of cameras everywhere, the past fifteen years taught us how to pay attention to how people are policed and how police do their work.  And how police officers do not police each other.

In a Time of Virus: Everything Out of a Can

People went crazy the last few weeks.

I don't really know how else to interpret the furious wrath of church ladies in JC Penny tops screaming about wearing life-saving facemasks.  People told their lives depend on distance and patience rushed to state capitols with rifles to stand elbow to elbow with strangers, their faces bared to cameras and virus particles, screaming hysterically about their right to...  expose themselves and others to illness and death, I guess.

It's now been going on long enough that we're getting reports of these people catching COVID-19, the occasional ironic/ cautionary tale of people's last facebook posts rants about the "hoax" of the virus before the person winds up dead.  70-odd people who went to an "open" rally in Wisconsin are believed to have contracted the virus at the event.  And today I saw something about a church in California that held Mother's Day services exposed over 180 people.

Today is Our 20th Wedding Anniversary: Satellite of Love

On this day, twenty solar cycles ago, I got up to a semi-empty apartment.  It was just me and the cat, who I did not get along with at this point, so we didn't interact much.

Jamie had spent the evening with her parents at a hotel in South Austin that no longer exists.  She would spend the day doing all the things I guess brides do on their special day.

Plus dialysis.  You know, we gotta stay on-brand.

In a Time of Virus: Sunlight and Bleach

No amount of parody or nihilistic social commentary could have prepared me for what it's actually like to see the virus that's taken over the United States.

On Thursday (04/23/20) the President of the United States, who has taken to a podium on a near daily basis for weeks - blathering at length/ incoherently, and showing genuine signs of mental decline (pick your poison as to why) - stood in front of a room of journalists and said scientists should look into shining UV lights or very bright lights on or into people to combat COVID-19.  He also said we should be looking at injecting people with disinfectants containing bleach, I believe.  That bleach clears the lungs right out.  Which, in a way, is true.  You'll certainly be beyond caring about your COVID-cough when you are dead because you've got 20 oz of Clorox filling your lungs.

PODCAST: "Why Do We Watch Movies?" w/ SimonUK (episode 2)

We start our new series which asks "Why do people watch movies?"

No, really.

Why?

What do they mean to us? Why do we care about fictional characters doing fictional things? How do certain movies impact us more than others? What draws us in? What makes us come back?

And who better to ask about "Why movies?" than SimonUK?

Who he is and how he came to be!




Music
One Barrel Chase - John Williams, Jaws OST
Over The Rainbow - Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwoʻole


Why Do We Watch Movies? - Playlist

In a Time of Virus: Within Our Four Walls

From October of 2017 to August of 2019, I worked from home for, technically, Northwestern University in Chicago.  Really I was working for a larger open source software coalition 50%, and for a sub-group of that coalition 50%.  It was a weird and cool job, and I will always look back on it fondly.

But it also meant I got used to the rhythms of working from home long before all this mess started.  Waking up, showering and having a ten second commute is not uncharted territory.  But, man, the days of just sitting in the same chair all day can get to be a bit much.  Especially as it's all-screens all day, tied to video conferencing with colleagues.

Since getting sent home, I have not been getting up early to walk the dog, as my preference is to do it to unwind after work if I've been sitting in my chair all day.  Scout is an easy walker, and doesn't pull toward other dogs.  She just wants to stay within 4 feet of me as we go about our business.  We talk to neighbors from about 15-20 feet away.  Sometimes I linger, sometimes I keep on going after waving hello.

45

Keep the Car Running
Arcade Fire


Every night my dream's the same
Same old city with a different name
They're not coming to take me away
I don't know why, but I know I can't stay
There's a weight that's pressing down
Late at night you can hear the sound
Even the noise you make when you sleep
Can't swim across a river so deep
They know my name because I told it to them
But they don't know where, and they don't know when
It's coming
When it's coming
There's this fear I keep so deep
Knew it's name since before I could speak
Oh, oh, oh, oh
They know my name because I told it to them
But they don't know where, and they don't know when
It's coming, oh when
But it's coming, keep the car running
If some night I don't come home
Please don't think I've left you alone
The same place that I must go when they die
You can't climb across a mountain so high
The same city where I go when I sleep
Can't swim across a river so deep
They know my name because I told it to them
But they don't know where, and they don't know when
It's coming, oh when
Is it's coming?
Keep the car running
Keep the car running
Keep the car running