I don’t know whether to be amazed or to think he’s totally insane but there’s a guy that’s blogging from his company’s data center in the business district of New Orleans in the wake of the massive hurricane that left most of the city flooded. They’ve even got what is probably the only webcam in New Orleans set up, and a bunch of pictures of the aftermath of the hurricane. The really crazy thing is that he sounds like they’re planning on being there for the long haul, which is some serious commitment to network uptime I guess. I hope they’ve got plenty of fuel for their generator. Between the flooding, the lack of basic services, and the looting I think keeping the network up would be the last thing on my mind but I guess that’s why I’m a software developer and not a network administrator.
Monthly Archive for August, 2005
Lately I’ve been enjoying Urban Dead, a browser based multiplayer zombie apocalypse game in which you can either play a survivor in a zombie infested city or one of the infesting zombies. Or more likely than not, start out as a survivor and end up as a zombie. It’s a good deal of zombie-smashing/brain-eating fun and, unlike most multiplayer games, not too time consuming. That’s because you only have a limited number of actions you can take each day and once they’re gone you have to wait for them to slowly replenish. That can lead to some suspenseful moments because when you’re out of actions, you’re pretty much an easy target for any zombie that comes along. As a human, the game mainly revolves around finding safe buildings to hide in and barricade, along with venturing out to kill a few zombies or help out your fellow humans from time to time. As a zombie, well it’s all about those sweet sweet brains. At any rate, if you’re playing and happen to see a scientist named Gorman running around in the suburb of Dulston, stop by and say hi and please don’t try to bite my face off or anything.
Time once again for Yet Another Google Maps Web Application. This time it’s a map that shows cellphone towers and has reviews of the signal strength for the various providers in a given area of the map. It definitely seems like it would be a useful tool to check when considering places to live so that you don’t end up stuck someplace with terrible reception. The only downside is that generally the towers are owned by third party companies and so it can be tricky to figure out what provider a given tower supports. That’s where the signal strength reviews start to help out. Downtown KC has towers everywhere but out by us there are actually a lot fewer that I would have expected. Our signal strength is decent though, so I can’t complain.
There’s something magical about mornings when you’re camping. That moment when you first open your eyes and think “Oh crap, I’m still in the woods. What was I thinking? I need a shower and an internet connection.” Jolayne and I went on a float trip on the Niangua River this weekend with some friends from work, and despite the horrors of “roughing it” (ok, we did have an air mattress but that’s more of a necessity than a luxury in my opinion) we had a good time. For those that don’t know, a float trip seems to be something of a Missouri summertime tradition that involves a bunch of people drifting down a river in canoes or rafts. In our case we went with the raft option and bungee corded together 4 rafts in a massive, river traffic blocking, bottom dragging, sunken log hitting, impossible to steer flotilla. However, the point is really to get down the river in the most leisurely manner possible usually while flinging nerf balls around and pushing people out of the boat so the lack of steering and glacial pace wasn’t really a problem. Well, it wasn’t until we realized that we still had quite a way to go and it was almost time for the last pick up at the take out point. That’s when we all de-bungeed and began to paddle in a not so leisurely manner, but we managed to make it on time. Afterward we camped out overnight before heading home. Even though it was fun, I definitely can only handle nature in small amounts at a time. When it was time to leave I was more than ready to come home and fall in love with indoor plumbing all over again.
I think I may have found a new hobby. StuffOnMyCat is website where, well, there’s stuff, cats, and pictures and you can probably guess where it goes from there. I think the only reason why it’s so much fun to put stuff on cats is that they look so pissed off but they (sometimes) put up with it. I’d really love to try this out with Cleo but there’s a slight problem. It just so happens that the 2 things she’s afraid of most are as follows:
- stuff *
- cameras
(* including but not limited to: plastic bags, paper bags, remote controls, shoes, plates, cans, cd cases, cds, loose change, stuffed animals, books, back issues of PC Gamer, headphones, and the second law of thermodynamics.) The triumph of getting any stuff on the cat would certainly be short lived as any attempt to photograph the result would definitely send the cat bolting behind the couch in a shower of upended household items.
Elsewhere