Archives 2004

Evidently whatever hole that was open is still open because my site was again hacked last night. I am scouring the net for info regarding what sort of vulnerabilities could allow this.

Well what was already a bad weekend was extended into a bad Monday as I discovered my site was hacked over the weekend. They replaced my homepage with a “hacked by” page. I was hacked once before but that was when I hosted my main site on my home server. My main content is now on a commercial provider that runs on linux. I was very surprised hackers were able to get in as such providers normally have their boxes locked down pretty tight. Guess I was wrong. So now I am paranoid. F’in a-holes.

My weekend sucked. Saturday I had a vball tourney in Lauderdale. I was excited because I decided I was going to take the Vette. Cruising across the state in the Vette would be cool. However last weekend I had the problem I blogged where the Vette was stumbling and sputtering on acceleration. However, during the week I started it up and let it warm up and then took it out and it ran just fine so I attributed the stumbling to not being driven for awhile.

Saturday morning I wake up bright and early at 5am to head out. I load up the car, kiss Ali goodbye and drive off. Shortly after I hit the main road I start to feel the same hesitation and stumbling. So I start running through my options in my head. Maybe it just needs to warm up more? How long should I wait till I turn around and switch to the truck. I am debating the entire time until I stop at a gas station about 12 miles out from my house to fill up. Even after the fill up I am still hoping that it will fire up and run like a champ. Well after stopping it stumbled even worse so I had to concede and putt putt my ass back home. I was pissed. I should have just taken the truck in the first place. I throw the stuff back in the truck, quickly tell Ali why she heard the garage door open and I am back on my way. I am flustered because the Vette issue may require expertise beyond my scope and the incident put me way behind schedule.

I had to stop and fill up the truck with gas and I decided to grab some coffee to help wake me up. I had a ridiculous incident while preparing my java. I had just finished putting in 2 creamers and opened the third one and instead of pouring it in my coffee, I poured it into the trashcan. I have no idea why I did it, still groggy, flustered about being late, whatever…. One of the clerks was nearby and asked him if he saw me. He said no but then I told him what I did anyway. He laughed and said it was no big deal, he’s done that before. So I hopped in the truck and sped off. I was a good 45 minutes behind schedule. As I got on the highway I took a sip of my coffee. I immediately felt something hot on my chest. I spilled coffee all over my shirt, the lid wasn’t on right. I hauled ass across alligator alley and managed to get the tournament site about 25 minutes late so I was lucky. My partner had already checked us in so it was no big deal. I immediately went to the bathroom and tried to launder my coffee-stained t-shirt the best I could.

The tournament itself was a nightmare for me. Even though we made the playoffs and went 5-3 I was miserable. Let me get the excuses out of the way. It was hot as HELL but more more humid than hell would ever be. Playing in 95 degree weather on dark sand with little wind is energy depleting before you even put a foot on the court. Our division got assigned to play on the permanent courts with wooden poles. These courts were severely bowled out from the constant use. What this means is as you approached the net you were literally running up hill. The sand was also deep, as deep if not deeper than any I have played in. This combination translated into me not being able to hit the ball. My feet would be dragging in the sand as I approached which meant I could not jump out of the sand at all which meant I couldn’t hit to save my life. I get upset if any aspect of my game is consistently bad. If I serve out I grumble, if I make an errant pass I will get mad at myself, if give my partner a bad set it pisses me off but NOTHING gets me madder than hitting a ball into the net. I did it repeatedly on Saturday. I kept things more or less under control until later in the day. Even though I couldn’t hit, we managed to win games somehow. We narrowly beat teams we should have destroyed. We even managed to win our first 2 playoff games. But from there our luck ran out and we lost in the semi-finals and the 3/4 playoff game. I had several really embarrassing outbursts.

After yet another hit into the net I screamed “JESUS!” and threw the ball high up into the air. A couple times I just laid on the hot sand on my belly after missing short balls just over the net. The grand finale was after yet another missed short ball, I was down on both knees and slammed both fists down over my head and into the sand angrily while yelling “DAMN IT”. I’m sure it looked quite ridiculous to all onlookers. I was so frustrated. So after our last loss I just moped around and dwelled on how shitty I played. The team that won it all was eaily beatable if we played anywhere near or A game, unfortunately I had my C-/D+ game that day. I packed up my shit , apologized to my partner for my bad play and started the depressing ride back.

The drive back was fittingly miserable as I drove through strong storms in the Everglades for most of the trip. I got home defeated, depressed and wondering why I even play the damn game. Ali did her best to cheer me up which I appreciated, but still I felt down. We have to make plans on how to handle the last 2 tournaments of the year. Originally we planned to have Ali come with me (something she only has gotten to do once this year) and watch my tournaments. We planned to stay over in Clearwater beach for one of them and South Beach for the other. However the issue of what to do with Nicki is complicating things greatly. I inquired my mom about her willingness to help out and watch her but was met with a total lack of interest in doing so. It frustrates me because if my mom ever needs anything I am always more than willing to help but if I ask her to watch the dog she acts like it is such a monumental pain in the ass that I just feel like not even asking her about it anymore. Some friends of ours that have watched Nicki in the past also were non-commital on the prospect so now we have to come up with other options. It sucks because Ali babies the dog so much that the idea of putting her in a kennel seems cruel to her. It has been one of the problems with owning a dog that we have not yet been able to properly address. Ali and I basically have not been able to do anything away from home for an extended period of time together since we got Nicki.

Sunday came and I had a lot to do and little motivation to do it. The grass needed to be mowed and weed whacked even though a good part of the grass is either under water or a mucky mess from being underwater. I wanted to steam clean the rugs and wash the kitchen floor since everything was still grungy from our hurricane weekend the week prior. Also on the end of the to do list was run some diagnostics on the Vette to see what was wrong and pay the bills. (neither of which got done) So I woke up and instead of getting right to work I played Doom 3 for 2 hours. 🙂 I really was hurting for inspiration to go out in the sweltering heat but eventually I caved and got to work. Ali ran the tractor while I knocked down the weeds. I even tried to wade into the water to knock down the real high stuff which left me sloshing around in wet boots. We busted our asses for a few hours and got it done. As we cooled off in the pool for a few minutes I was just standing in the water staring off into space and Ali asked me what I was thinking about. “Moving” I said. I told her how the constant maintenance demands of the house were wearing on me. How I was sick of our property being a swamp during the summer. How I wanted to not have to deal with the traffic nightmare out in our area and not live so far away from work. I told her maybe it was just because I was in a bad mood and how things have been rough for the past week or so, it could be contributing to my thought process.

Earlier in the day Sunday I had to pull the cold water line to the washer to remove some algae that had clogged the screen. I hooked it back up and tested it to make sure it didn’t leak. However what I didn’t notice was the drain line had popped off. After Ali did a load of laundry she went in to put the stuff in the dryer. She yells out to me that the laundry room is flooded. Great….. The hose had pulled off and pumped all the water onto the floor. That was a nice mess as the litter box is in that room as well so the spilled litter mixed in with the water to make it even more of a pain in the ass. By the time that was cleaned up, the carpet was cleaned and the kitchen floor mopped it was 4:30, weekend almost over.

Ali really worked hard this weekend to help take the edge off what I had to do which was very nice of her. Even so it chalked up to be one of my worse weekends in a long time. Add in the hacked website this morning and it may have gained top 3 bad weekends in 2004 status.

duf.net was hacked over the weekend, I am busy addressing that, once it is secured I will have a chance to post about my shitty weekend.

It’s official. Doom 3 is the scariest godamn game I ever played. Even though the game play is still lame the game environment is so realistic and scary I can’t stop playing it. The dark realistic visuals, the monsters that pop out of dark corners and the erie, haunting sound is truly terrifying. I hope I can finish the game soon so the nightmares can stop.

It poured AGAIN last night. For the last 8 days we have had at least an inch of rain every day. 3 or 4 of those days we had over 2 inches of rain! The yard is a soppy mess and the mosquitos are unbelievable. Last night when I took Nicki out for a walk I was hopping up and down to try to keep them off me while trying to slap the leash on Nicki’s back to keep too many from landing on her. It had to look absolutely ridiculous to any observers.

My one web designer/programmer buddy inspired me to do a quick refresh on duf.net. I haven’t touched the home page in at least 2 years so it was way overdue. I went for something abstract yet clean. I think it’s cool. The picture is one I took at Ding Darling. It is a huge nut that is used to hold an electrical tower to the concrete base. There are various ways you could interpret the symbolism so I liked that idea. I moved to a newer message forum as well. Hope you like it, if not, too bad, I’ll change it in another 2 years. 🙂

This weekend I am going to the east coast to play in another vball tourney. I am taking the Vette. I never took it this far but it needs to be driven so I am going to give it a go. It should be fine. If it rains I could have a bit of a puddle inside from the rotting weatherstripping. 🙁

When I walked into the gym 2 of the guys I talk to were messing with the shoulder shrug rig. The stronger guy had 405 pounds on it. His buddy tried to budge it off the ground and couldn’t. The stronger guy could shrug it once. I took it as throwing down the gauntlet. Although I couldn’t shrug it, I did get it off the floor and was able to stand with it. The hardest part is keeping your grip. The stronger guy was impressed since with my long, lean build I have to move it twice as far.

Later he told me something that just wrecked me. Up until a few months ago there was a couple that worked out at the gym when I did. I talked to the woman on a very regular basis and I talked to the husband, a cuban guy in his late 20’s, semi-regularly. She got a job in a different area of the county so they both started going to another gym. They have only been married a year or so and she has a 8 year old daughter from a prior marriage. Evidently he is now in jail facing possible life in prison for attempting to rape the daughter. The doctor that examined the daughter said it was “the worst case of sexual battery he had seen on a small child” (from the local paper)

I was floored. The guy seemed to be hard working, friendly and “normal”. I never had any inkling that he was off in any manner. I feel terrible for the woman, she seemed to be great and I can’t even begin to describe how bad I feel for the daughter. I saw her several times when she would come to the gym with her mom. This is the most shocking thing that someone I have personally known has ever done. And I had no clue, no hint, no reason to ever suspect there was anything shady about this guy.

I ripped off the video I shot during the hurricane, it is about 7 minutes long, the sound of the wind is the most impressive part of it.

We got ANOTHER 2 inches of rain last night, basically the only things above water were the driveway and the mound the house and pool are on. I was really frustrated. Plus the mosquitos are as bad as I can ever remember them being. They attack the car, they attack the walls, and if they find a living creature they call their buddies and swarm. Before you try to enter the house you have to try to distract the ones hanging by the door so they don’t follow you inside. It really sucks right now. I’m afraid all the water is going to destroy the trees and plants that are not on high ground from root rot. Not much I can do about it but hope we have a few days without rain. It’s a bog right now.

I haven’t had any time to rip the video off yet but here are the pictures that I took related to the storm. Here are the pictures from the Vette work I did on Saturday.

Last night we got home a little late. I had to pick up a rental car so the Nissan dealer could keep the Sentra overnight to ensure they have the wheel well water leak fixed. Then I had to stop for groceries on the way home to replace the stuff we decided to throw out. Yesterday I had the milk and yogurt that we kept over the weekend and I felt sick afterwards. So instead of risking food poisoning, we decided to throw out any of the food in the fridge that didn’t require heating to eat. Publix had ZERO milk so I had to stop at the convenience store to grab a single gallon. Milk appears to be in scare supply currently because a lot of grocery stores had their perishable items spoil due to the power outages.

Last night I worked into the night power washing the deck and the deck furniture. Any time I ventured outside the screen door I ran into swarms of mosquitos. Thankfully I didn’t smell good to them since I bathed in OFF before going out. We continue to get dumped on mercilessly with rain, another inch last night. I finally was able to hook up my pump to assist in moving some of the water but there is so much it will take days to see much of a difference.

I am sure this will be my longest blog entry to date so go refill your coffee and make sure you have a few spare minutes. Also to be clear, any problems we had related to the storm PALE in comparison to what happened 30 or 40 miles north of us. Those people literally had their towns destroyed so in comparison we were quite lucky.

Our office closed early on Thursday, 3pm. We were being overly cautious in my opinion. We shut down and disconnected virtually every computer in the office and covered all of them with plastic to prevent them from having water drop on them. We made extra back ups and I took the tapes with me since I live the farthest away from the coast. It all seemed like overkill to me but hey I guess at least it looked like we were making the effort. When we left it was just another florida summer day, sunny, hot and humid. On the way home I did notice that the Publix was totally jammed, the entire lot looked to be full. Panic stricken lemmings, I thought to myself. I knew we had a bunch of water and enough dry goods to survive for awhile. We’ll be fine. Thursday night was a normal night, we watched some forecasts but I spent most of the night gaming and being happy I had Friday off. The forecast seemed to make it improbable that it would hit us and if it did it was still going to only be a Cat 1 or possibly a Cat 2 storm.

Friday morning was just another morning. Alison had to go to work so I manned the household. I thought I would put the time to use and went and got groceries. While I was out I picked up some extra water just in case. At home I did some more prep like filling both bathtubs with water and put away all loose items on the lanai. Even though I did this prep, I still thought it was unnecessary. The forecasts had the storm still hitting well north of us. I even had the bright idea to setup the live hurricane cam which several of my buddies up north tuned in to. They saw some hard driving rain and some strong wind. As we got into early afternoon the forecast got more disturbing. The storm rapidly increased in strength and then all of a sudden it took an unexpected early right turn which put it on a path much closer to our area than predicted. Shortly after I saw it was now a CAT 4 hurricane, the online hurricane feed went down as our power went off at 2:30. I expected us to lose power during this so I wasn’t surprised it happened. I tried to use an old radio of ours that can run on battery but the contacts were all corroded so it wouldn’t work. I found our little portable TV and used that to monitor the situation. The storm wasn’t expected to make land fall until 3 or 4. With no power my options were limited so I spent the time switching between going outside to witness the ever strengthening winds and cleaning the house. Yes I found it odd that as a hurricane was approaching SW Florida I was cleaning the bathrooms and dusting but I had nothing else to do so it kept me occupied. As 3 oclock came up it was getting bad, scary bad. I went outside with the camcorder and shot some footage. The wind was howling over the house, it was deafening. The trees were all straining against the wind, many of the smaller ones leaned at hard angles. The standing water was being whipped around furiously. The rain was coming in horizontally. I realized that my estimations of a hurricane were woefully short. Supposedly in Collier county the winds didn’t top 85 mph and I’m sure out where we live it was closer to 70 mph but even that speed was enough to put some fear into you. The eye of the storm packed winds nearly double that which is unfathomable to me. I watched on TV as they reported the eye coming on shore around 50 miles north of us and the devastation that was occuring in real time as reporters watched roofs blow off, residential areas become extensions of the gulf and entire buildings getting leveled. During the worst of the storm I basically just paced the house going outside on the lanai to check things in the back and then back inside to view the chaos up front. We were lucky in the positioning of our house. The winds were hitting it almost dead on in the front which shielded the pool cage from taking direct wind. I am sure if our house was rotated 180 degrees the pool cage would have been ripped up.

Things started to die down around 5 and by 6 Ali gave me a call that she was allowed to leave the nursing home. As I drove to get her the wind was still severe and required two hands on the wheel at all times as I didn’t know when the next gust could come up. During the drive in I saw lots of damage but it was mostly of the vegetation type. A ton of trees had been uprooted or lost limbs, a lot of debris was on the road and standing water was prevalent. By the time we drove back home it was calmer but the scope of the mess was again on display, and we weren’t even that close to the eye. So we got home to a dark house and began coming up with plans. My mom was in an area that was a mandatory evac area. She went and stayed with a co-worker but the number she had left did not answer. It was a bit disconcerting but we figured they had power problems just like most other people. As we assessed our needs we had 3 issues. No power also meant no running water since we are on a well system. The info we got from radio indicated that lengthy power outages were likely because of the sheer scope of the problems. Basically 4 or 5 counties had the majority of their households without power. No power also meant no AC. No AC in Florida in the summer is a brutal proposition. Our attention then focused on the refrigereated and frozen food. It would keep for awhile but if the power outage continued for a long period of time we stood to lose everything in there. In retrospect we didn’t have all that much in the fridge so I don’t know why it was as much of a focus as it was for me, but it was. My natural insticnt was to “do something” to try to fix the problem. So I decided to venture out to see if I could find someplace to get ice. Ice would buy us time. As I headed closer to the coast every place was closed. I was in the vicinity of my mom’s so I decided to check out her place. The flooding was bad in her area but did not reach the homes as was feared. My mom’s place had worse damage than we did. A huge tree in the back dropped massive branches on the power lines, knocking out power for her and many of her neighbors. A coconut palm in her front yard had been uprooted and her back yard was a pond. Her immediate next door neighbor fared worse as he lost a ton of shingles off his roof. I continued on my quest for ice. Like beacons in the night, I found a few convenience stores that were open. You could spot them from far away as they were swamped with vehicles. An image I will remember is from the store that I actually stopped at. I parked in a lot across from it because there was nowhere else to park. It had plywood over all of the glass and the doors but on the doors they spelled out the word OPEN in tape. I did quick check and they had no ice. I was amazed at the amount of vehicles on the road that night, most probably on the same journey I was since over 100,000 homes in Collier county were without power that first night. When I came home it was dark, and I was defeated by my inability to secure ice. We decided to just keep the fridge closed and hope that either the power came on or it stayed cold enough until the morning where I could take another shot at it.

Trying to sleep that night was miserable. I was mid 80’s and humid in the house. I think I got about 2 hours of sleep. I was woken up at 2:30 am by a brief shot of power! It blipped on twice for about 2 seconds each time. I was excited and figured they were working on our outage diligently and we should have the juice turned back on shortly. After those 2 blips nothing else happened for the rest of the night. I could not sleep and was sweltering so I got up and left the dog out, she had to go for some reason. When we came in I knew there was no way I stood a chance of sleeping in the bedroom. So I took out a spray bottle, sprayed myself with water, reclined in the chair and tried to sleep. That resulted in my having a million 3 minutes naps that were filled with non-stop disturbing dreams. I later tried my luck at sleeping on the sofa but that was only marginally better. I got up early to no power and immediately turned my attention to what I can do to make things more bearable. I came up with the idea of using a DC to AC power inverter that I had in my stash. It’s intended use is to do things like power up a laptop or a cell phone charger. I looked at the electrical ratings and they were ridiculously small but I thought maybe they rate it conservatively. So I pulled the truck up by the back door, ran an extension cord out to it, and then had Ali plug the fridge into the line as I stood watch out in the truck to make sure the box didn’t burst into flames. It looked ok out in the truck so I went inside. I saw the light on the icemaker was on, yes! But then, 5 seconds later it went out. It kept cycling on and off, obviously the fridge pulled more power than the little inverter could offer. I screwed with it for awhile but finally conceded my brain storm wouldn’t work. So I came up with a new plan, what I needed was a more heavy duty inverter. I headed out with 2 things on the list, an inverter and ice. I found one, capable of 400 watts of output at Lowe’s, I also watched some guy returning a generator since his power didn’t go off and before I could inquire about purchasing it, there were 3 people on it like flies so I didn’t bother. I figured with my new high power inverter it would get us by. I also was able to score ice on the way home, 3 ten pound bags. First order of business was hooking up the new inverter and trying to fire up the fridge. It didn’t work either, shit!!!! All it did was keep the fridge on for a slightly longer period and then shut off. I felt like a mad scientist that had his experiment miserably fail. I was so sure it was going to work. Evidently the limiting factor was how much juice could be pulled from the cigarette lighter. Damn it. I later found out that a fridge can pull 800 watts, my cig lighter was rated for no more than 120 watts. So we attended to the ice. We took the milk out of the fridge and put it in the sink and then dumped a bag of ice over it. The other 2 bags were used to throw on top of frozen food that we stuck in a chest cooler. We had no choice but to hope the power came back on soon. We spent the rest of the day watching news reports on the devastation, reading and doing little things around the house. I was crawling out of my skin. All the things I really wanted to be doing required power. I was frustrated but realized that patience was key as this outage was unlike anything our area had ever seen before. Our neighbors had enough and bagged out after the first night and got a hotel room. Our neighbor across the street had a generator. I think crazy Jack high tailed it as well and went somewhere else with his family.

During the day I finally got to talk to my mom. She was fine and had lost power like we suspected. She went back to her place to no power but she had phones and running water. She had 2 more things than we did. (our phones went dead Friday night as well) Surprisingly, the furniture store was open Saturday so she was going into work. So I continued the day sweating my ass off as I tried to do some “work” like doing some vette projects, picking up some of the mess in the yard, and straightening the trees that were at 45 degree angles. The mosquitos at our house are now near unbearable, even with the mosquito trap. We have so much standing water that having 5 traps around the house would not control it. In order to be outside I had to bathe myself in mosquito repellant. So by the evening I smelled like BO and OFF mixed in a repulsive manner. My method of “bathing” was creative. I would go in the pool and try to get everything wet and the major dirt off. Then I would run into the shower and soap up my hair and body while I was still wet. Then Ali would act like a human showerhead and dump cups of water on me to help me rinse off. It was funny but did a good enough job of at least getting the stink off. I found through trial and error that the only thing my ac inverter could power was a fan. So we set it up in the living room and camped out in front of it. We got several calls from concerned friends and family members checking on us while we waited things out. I was REALLY going stir crazy. The bagged ice I got earlier was basically melted in the sink so I had to go out to find more. At a different store I found 25lb solid blocks of ice. I grabbed two and waited in a line 20 deep to pay for it. Now we moved the milk and anything we deemed as “important” from the fridge side to the freezer side and loaded the 2 big blocks in the freezer to keep the temperature down. Surely that had to work.

Then around 8pm, Saturday night, as we were on the phone with my mom, the power clicked on!! I was estatic and yelled out for joy as my mom listened. I told her she should come out to stay with us since we now had power. She said it was ok and hung up so I could go enjoy my electricity. Ali and I went right to town. We cleaned out the freezer and discarded the stuff that was mushy. I dumped the ice in the pool and we started up a load of towels since we had next to none that were clean. I disconnected my power inverter rig as I was practically skipping around the house with happiness that we could sleep in AC that night. Ali called up our neighbors in the hotel room and gave them the good news that power had been restored. Then just after she told them, almost on cue, ZAP, blackness. The power stayed on about a half an hour, just long enough to undo the work we had done. I was besides myself. As Ali was still on the phone with them I screamed SHIT NO! Then slightly lower I used some stronger curse words. I was completely deflated. It would have been better to not have it come on at all than have it come on only to be taken away again. Well I was optimistic that if they fixed it once they could easily do it again. In my quest to “do something” I hopped in the truck and did a drive up my street to survey things. The very last house on our street had power and all the homes across the canal that were on our line had power. Seemed simple enough, there must be a faulty component right after the first house, I’m sure they will be back in no time ot fix it. They didn’t come back. I had to hook up my inverter system again and fired up the fan. We had no ice so I basically said F it and if we lose the food we lose it. We pulled ut the sofa bed, put the fan on high and fell asleep to the background noice of my truck running right outside to power our single functioning electrical device in the house.

I woke up repeatedly all night, hoping to see the clocks blinking 12 but it never happened. I slept a few hours but again I was exhausted as daylight came. I could not believe that they did not come back to “fix it right” I called the automated electric company problem line. Even though I knew it made no sense, I think I rationalized that if I called them repeatedly reporting the same problem it would make things get fixed faster. By Sunday morning I had had it. I needed to blow off steam. I decided to take the Vette to go get a paper and some fresh milk so I could at least enjoy my pop tarts. As I pulled out onto the road the Vette started to stumble. When I tried to accelerate it would sputter and buck, sounding like it wanted to stall. It lurched down the street and was thinking to myself that it was just because it hadn’t been driven in awhile and needed to be opened up. As I turned onto the main road it didn’t get any better and before I got much further I pulled off to the side and decided the last thing I needed was to get stranded so I sputtered back home and parked it. Great, another problem I can deal with, it will have to wait. I was in the car long enough to hear an announcement that the Lowe’s had a load of generators available. That perked my ears up. I doubted they would still have them by the time I got there but it was worth a shot. I informed Ali of my plan, got the OK and sped toward’s Lowe’s in the truck. On the trip I saw what looked like an army at the county fairgrounds, less than a mile away from me. It was packed with utility trucks, at least a couple hundred of them. They were streaming out of there in a huge line. I never saw anything like that before, it was wild. Of course seeing this further aggravated me that they couldn’t fix the power that was only one street up from them.

When I arrived at Lowe’s I was surprised and excited to see they had pallets of generators stacked up in front of the store. What luck! I walked over and checked them out, they were 5500 watt generators, more than enough to power the criticial aspects of the house. I asked the price, 650 bucks, steep, but price was of little concern to me at that time. I called Ali once again to confirm she was ok with me plunking down another big wad of money on top of the outstanding wad that I am trying to get a handle on. We both agreed that a generator is a good thing to have regardless. We experience regular power outages down here and a generator could make those much easier to deal with so it’s not like we won’t use it after this emergency. I went in and paid for it and then pulled my truck into the line of vehicles that were waiting to snap one up. It was a non-stop stream of people without power, desperate to aleviate their dilemma.

I triumphantly returned home with the big box. I asked Ali if she could help me unload it. She said sure but as she was getting dressed, I was impatient and decided I could unload it myself. 2 guys at Lowes strained a bit to get it in the truck yet I figured, hey I workout, I can do it. Once I got it off the tailgate I tried to put it on the ground in a controlled fashion. I slowed the descent but my back was tweaked doing it. It weighed at least 150 pounds. Yet another dumb moment to add to the list. Ali yelled at me for not waiting and then helped me set it up. It fired right up. I collected all of my excess extension cords and constructed my homemade power grid. I connected the fridge, the big screen TV, the tivo and the fan to the generator and it powered them all just fine with juice to spare. I originally had hoped to also power the water equipment with it but didn’t have a 240v adapter to do so. After we got it fired up, Ali, Nicki and I went on a road trip to see if we could find such an adapter. We tried two places, the second being a Home Depot. It again was a memorable visual. Every single tree in the parking lot was uprooted and knocked over like a giant bowling ball had gone through. Neither place had the necessary hardware. I was tossing around the idea of cutting the end of the included cord and wiring it directly to the breaker box. Ali strongly voiced her objection to such an attempt and I agreed to not potentially electrocute myself. So we still had the afternoon to kill. After the power came on Saturday night I had my Sunday plan laid out how I could get everything back in order. Of course all these plans required AC so they were futile. Ali offered to hop on the tractor and mow the grass so we decided to clear the dry land and let her do that. I did some additional outside work as well. It was mid 90’s and humid just like it had been all weekend so again I was a mess. I never even took a break to take one of my pool bath’s. Ali got ahold of a co-worker we are friends with and she offered us a shower and dinner. We took them up on the offer. We left our house with the generator humming away.

It felt great to take a real shower after 3 days and enjoy a normal dinner. Sitting in AC was a nice treat as well. My fancy thermometer at home showed the inside of our house was in the mid 80’s with humidity somewhere in the 70% range. I also enjoyed using a toilet without having to flush it with a bucket. We hung out there awhile and got to catch up with the rest of the world a bit. I actually got to see some golf and my first glimpse of the olympics. (wow the stands looked empty) About 9pm we headed home, hoping we would see lights on our street. Our hopes were answered! Our street had power, we were saved! (again) We checked the clocks in the house and it looked like power had been on for 25 minutes. Oh oh, we didn’t hit the half hour mark yet so we were skeptical. 45 minutes passed, we must be in the clear! Hooray! So Ali restarts the laundry, she loads up the dishwasher, I disconnect the generator and start cleaning things up. An hour has passed and we still had power. I scrubbed down the sides of the pool and threw the pool cleaner in to let it start cleaning that mess up. Even though I just took a shower I told Ali I was going to take another one just because I could. I took Nicki out for her before bedtime walk. As I stepped back into the house, POP, there goes the power! I was furious, I was swearing up a storm, I was trying to control the urge to punch the first solid object I came in contact with. I grabbed my cell phone and call up the electric company. I gave my info to the lady and tried to calmly explain the background of the problem, acknowledging I understood that they were swamped, yet I did not understand why they would attempt to fix a problem and not wait around to see if it actually worked. I also protested that it took them over 24 hours to revisit the issue after it failed the first repair attempt. The lady was very nice and understanding. Of course she had no definitive info on what was going on and could only relay that with some problems it is trial and error and that this scenario was happening all over their service area. She offered me some advice on things to look out for if the power keeps clicking on and off and then hung up. It was worse regaining and losing power than it would have been to just not have it for that time period. Then about 5 minutes after I hung up, the power came back on! Alright! At least this told me they are watching the line now. However the power kept bouncing up and down. Finally we decided I would just hook up the generator to the fridge, fan and alarm clock and if the power comes on great, if it doesn’t we will still be ok. By the time I got it all hooked back up and into bed it was close to midnight. I had my best nights sleep of the weekend and thankfully we had power when I woke up and it appeared to have been on for a considerable time. My ass was severly dragging but I made it into work on time, ready to face the week after one of the most miserbale but memorable weekends of my life. Friday the 13th holds new meaning for me.

Some random blurbs about the weekend:

The local ABC and NBC station did “tagteam” coverage. (evidently they are owned by the same company) So the anchors from both stations were on the same set broadcasting on both channels. It wan’t just the anchors. We had all the weatherman and reporters doubling up on their segments as well. It was like all-star news. For whatever reason, recollections of the Hanna-Barbera allstar cartoon thing kept popping in my head. Where else would you have seen Hong Kong Phooey, Jabber Jaw and Yogi Bear in the same cartoon? The TV news coverage was round the clock from Friday morning into Sunday evening.

Some idiotic assholes had signs up outside their houses already Saturday morning saying stuff like “FPL, where’s the power????” Cripes give them some slack.

Without power you hear a lot more things. At nighttime I usually have an air filter running in the background providing “white noise” During my restless Friday night I was never more aware of all the noises around me. Most of them sounded like they were coming from my digestive system.

I explored new territory in propane gas grill food prep. During the outage not only did we make conventional meals like burgers on the grill, I also did a frozen pizza and hamburger helper on the grill.

Why ANYONE would live in a mobile home in Florida is beyond imagination for me. They ALWAYS get smashed like toys.

The hurricane only dropped about 2 inches of rain on our house. However the Thursday before we got 2 inches of rain, the Saturday after we got another 2 inches and then yesterday we got another inch. 7 inches in 4 days has turned our property into a soggy, mosquito paradise.

I can’t believe my pole supports actually saved those three trees. I thought they would have been uprooted for sure.

I really rely on electricity to help keep me entertained, probably a little too much.

The ideas I have in the back of my head of being a survivor contestant took a serious blow. If the lack of personal hygeine didn’t drive me insane I think the boredom would. I’d have to be one of those annoying types on the show that had to be constantly doing something. I’d be valuable to the tribe in the beginning but once I did all the work that had to be done I would probably annoy the others and they would vote me off.

Is it possible for us to stop spending money, just for a little bit?

Toyota trucks are tough, mine sat there idling throughout the day and night without the temperature gauge budging an inch. It takes whatever I throw at it.

I think I almost thought the whole hurricane would be “fun” Windy, rainy, lose power for a bit, not a huge deal. I was very, very wrong. The images of the destruction north of us is incredible. It looks like a 10 mile wide tornado went through certain areas.

I have pictures from our house and around the area. I also have a few minutes of footage that I shot from my back porch that I will make available soon.

I am off work today so I got the bright idea to broadcast the view out my front door for anyone wanting to see what a hurricane (or at least being on the perimeter of one) looks like. If you want to see it, open Windows Media Player and then select OPEN URL. Enter http://duf.homedns.org:9090 That will connect you to my home box and my camcorder that is pointed out the window. I only have limited bandwidth so of course I can’t support more than a few connections at a time. If our power goes out of course the show is over so check it out while you can!

Last night I planned to go home and mow down the area that had been under water since I knew after the storm we would be inundated again. I also wanted to do prep work by securing thin trees and putting away anything that could get blown around. As I approached our area the skies were pitch black. It was a deluge. We got 2 inches of rain so everything was underwater again. Having the ground be saturated isn’t the way I’d like things to be the day before a hurricane could possibly hit. The rain didn’t stop me, I still pulled things in and put most of the loose items in the shed which supposedly is rated to 130 mph. As I was picking up it was pouring down on me. I also noticed that the Jacaranda tree we were so happy to get the other week was all brown and looking like it was near death. I assumed it was because the roots were drowning in the water logged soil. So I looked around for some high ground to move it to. I located some and dug up the tree in my flip flops and moved it. The water had washed away most of the insect repellant I coated myself with so as I was transplanting the tree in my shorts and flip flops, the mosquitos were attacking me mercilessly. At one point I looked down at my legs and I had at least 20 of them on me. I largely ignored them and instead worked feverishly to get the tree in the ground. I temporarily attached a pole to the trunk of the tree to try to give it some strength against the high winds that were to come. I doubt that it will survive but maybe we will get lucky. I also attached poles to two smaller trees that are in the front yard. I came inside soaked, full of mosquito bites, dirty and smelling of OFF. We filled up some additional containers with water and did a quick inventory of food. We should be fine if things go bad.

When I drove home yesterday the grocery store was as full as I ever saw it. There are alot of people down here that are freaking out. I doubt that it will be all that bad except for the excessive water that will arrive. My mom is a couple hundred yards from docks off the river so I am worried about her. She isn’t too concerned but I’ll be ready to go retrieve her if necessary. Our office may close early today and be closed all day tomorrow.