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!

It’s (Still) Comin’ Right For Us!

There’s some indication that Ike may be starting to curve more quickly towards the East, which would be a good thing. If Ike passes to our East, we should be in the lowest wind/fewest tornadoes part of the storm.

By the way, am I the only one wondering why the news reports feel compelled to make their weather reported stand there on location in the middle of the hurricane? “I’m standing here in the middle of the street a few miles from Galveston, and as you can see on your screen, hurricanes are windy. Also, wet. Back to you, Fred…”

I’m wondering what happens if the storm floods the sewers and they have to report on that. “I’m standing here hip deep in filth…”

Other than a couple of flickers, power is currently still on and internet it still live. Hopefully it’ll keep up. If we’re lucky and Ike ends up crawling past far enough to the east, we might, maybe, escape without serious power outages…

I’ll probably post again “tomorrow” (well, after sunrise today anyway…) if internet and power are still up when I get up.

It’s comin’ right for us!

Hurricane Ike predicted tracks, going right through where we live as of 20080912T100000
(Click image for Wunderground.com’s interactive “Wundermap”…)

Actually, looking more closely at the picture there I think we may be slightly further west than it indicates, but it’s still very likely we’ll end up losing power for a while sometime tonight, but I still am going to try to get a post up for the Giant’s Shoulders blog carnival – I’ve got the paper picked out and read, I just need to do a write-up before I go to bed tonight. Currently it looks like the winds shouldn’t get TOO bad until late tonight/early-tomorrow-morning so we ought to have power long enough…

Yes, there’s a disturbingly severe hurricane “Comin’ right for us!” and I’m worrying about posting about a classic scientific paper before the blog-carnival deadline while I still have power. How’s THAT for dedication?

First we need to move stuff inside, though. I don’t want The Ascospore getting blown away…