Day: September 13, 2008

I WANT MY FRIGGIN’ ELECTRICITY!

99%(!) of Entergy Texas’ customers are apparently without power right now. I wish they’d actually put some effort into preparing the lines for severe weather and streamlining the repairs, instead of letting the whole thing fall apart and then getting the state legislature to approve yet another “Hurricane Cost Recovery Charge” to be added to everyone’s bills to pay to return everything to the same “ready to fail at the next batch of severe weather” state…How do I get in on this deal?

Being without air conditioning in southeast Texas this time of year is almost intolerable. If they manage to restore service quickly despite my cynicism, I’ll probably feel a lot less cranky…

On the upside, it appears there should be some scenic carnage visible out on the lake if I manage to get some time to get out and paddle around a while between bouts of moving bits of broken tree around the yard. Here’s a sample shot taken from the shore of Lake Conroe earlier today:

Continue reading I WANT MY FRIGGIN’ ELECTRICITY!

Ike’s blowing through…

Power has been out since 2am, and the cable(TV|internet) is out as well. It’s times like this I’m glad I can “tether” my cellphone to the computer and get internet access that way. It’s painfully slow by modern standards (56k dial-up) but it works even when the power’s out.

The region of Ike’s eye just went by a little while ago. We were near the western edge of it, according to the weather radar. Winds died down somewhat and we were able to get the dogs to go outside and drain themselves. Now the wind is picking up again as it heads north.

Fortunately, our house (as far as we can tell without close examination) seems to be intact. At least, there are no streams of water leaking in or trees sticking through a wall or shards of glass all over the floor. The yard’s not so lucky though – large sections of trees are everywhere, and several sections of the useless “rustic” ranch fence that surrounds the back yard are crushed. Maybe the homeowner’s association will let us put up a real fence now.

We should now have another 6-8 hours of slowly diminishing strong winds to sit through, and then the worst of it should be over. Hopefully it won’t take too long after that for them to get power restored – it’s kinda hot in here. Meanwhile, we’ll just sit and watch the wind playfully ripping chunks of tree loose and flinging them to the ground.

There ought to be some interesting things to see around the lake once the wind dies down enough for it to be safe to go paddling around again.

And now I’m signing off for a bit while I’ve still got some battery power left. Probably more updates later…