#atlflood (day 3)

Posted by Thomas Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:29:00 +0000

Yesterday on my drive to work, it looked like the bulk of the flood was gone, but it also looked like there was still a ton of water around. Ever since the water’s been restored in Douglas County, we’ve been under a boil advisory. I bet we continue to be under one for at least a few more days. The water’s probably ok to drink, but they’re probably playing it safe. I can’t wait for it do be drinkable so I can stop using very cold Britta water to brush my teeth, as well as doing some much needed laundry.

The road I take to work was closed yesterday and continues to be closed, even tonight, despite being free from water on the road. I haven’t heard the reason, but I bet Sweetwater Creek is still pretty high, and they might not have been able to inspect the bridges yet. I-20 was/is open, though, and I bet I was one of the first few to drive on it after it did open yesterday.

Other than a longer commute and the water (from the tap) stuff, I haven’t been terribly affected. But very close by there is complete devastation to peoples’ homes. I got lucky living on some high ground, but could have easily been a victim had I stumbled into a low-lying apartment complex.

It’s still very hard to believe that what seemed like a very unassuming several days of rain (of which there are many in Atlanta) would cause so much trouble. There was a 100-year flood in Canyon in the 70s, and until now I couldn’t imagine it. I can easily picture it now.

Posted in General | 2 Comments

Movie Catchup

Posted by Thomas Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:17:35 +0000

I’ve gotten back in the Netflix swing (even though I’ve had Ben Hur for like months now). I even managed to see one in the theater.

Baby Mama – better than expected, esp the second time around
Duplicity – the ending left me wanting
Sunshine Cleaning – an excellent and well made indie film
District 9 – didn’t meet up with the hype (though fundamentally a classic storyline)
I Love You, Man – slow and lackluster, esp for the quality of the cast
X-Men Origins: Wolverine – eh, as expected, I suppose

From a while ago:
Last Holiday (the original) – worth watching
3:10 to Yuma – I saw this with Max at the Lake; not bad, but didn’t love it
The Hangover – didn’t meet up to the hype
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – didn’t meet my high expectations
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra – met (average) expectations

I guess I’m only lacking “Terminator Salvation” from my list a while ago.

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Chrome gripes

Posted by Thomas Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:14:15 +0000

Chrome doesn’t:

  • Expose proxy settings through the ui (they’re set via environment variables). So if I want to change them, I have to go to the cli to set env vars, then restart chrome.
  • Display link urls in the status bar when I hover over links. Apparently it does this. Don’t know what I was smoking.
  • Let me middle click in the body of the page to load a new url (this is fixed upstream, but not in the versions I’m running).
  • Allow css ad blocking (http://www.floppymoose.com/).
  • I have to add a trailing slash to the end of everything so it doesn’t try to do a web search for whatever I type.
  • Update: Doesn’t let you hit ‘/’ to start searching.
  • Update: When searching doesn’t let you hit enter when matching a link to go to that link.
  • Update: It seems to take its sweet time sometimes doing what appears to be a dns lookup on the proxy. TTLs anyone?
  • Update: Selected text isn’t automatically the desired search text when opening the search box.
  • Update: Can’t shift delete mistyped urls in the omnibox.
  • Update: Chrome automatically selects text when the omnibox gains focus, clobbering anything I had in my clipboard. Something similar happens with the find field, but it’s that whatever I had in the clipboard goes away completely.
  • Update: Can’t control click and drag to select multiple rows of a single column in an html table.
  • Update: When selecting space delimited text, pressing delete/backspace will actually delete more than is actually selected.
  • Update: Backspace no longer goes to the previous page.

Posted in Technology | Tags , , , , , | 4 Comments

Twitter

Posted by Thomas Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:19:29 +0000

The place where people can’t be bothered to figure out where their friends’ blogs are, call, email, or write their friends, nor be bothered to read or write more than 140 characters. Freeloaders welcome.

Posted in Technology, Tweets | 1 Comment

#atlflood

Posted by Thomas Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:55:29 +0000

Seriously. A *ton of water. They sent us home early yesterday, which was good. I got some milk and DP on my way home. No water when I got home. :( Water this morning, though. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought Sweetwater Creek would have been flooded this much. Good and bad that I was unawares[sic] of the flooding, because I got to see it firsthand, and I also went back to take some pictures (pictures forthcoming). It’s perhaps the lull before the storm, because it’s supposed to rain some more, though not as bad. My apartment complex isn’t flooded at all, and surprisingly neither was the bridge across Sweetwater Creek State Park this afternoon. I basically don’t have any way to get to work that doesn’t involve driving around the world. :)

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Fjord

Posted by Thomas Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:05:09 +0000

I totally forded something I shouldn’t have… but lived to tell about it. ;)

Rain, rain, go away. I totally forgot my wallet this morning (which makes it hard to buy things like gas, dp, and milk), had little water pressure this morning (but this time was able to take a shower — a few weeks ago I had zero water pressur), and didn’t know that there was a boil-water alert in effect until I got to work. :(

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Cards

Posted by Thomas Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:08:20 +0000

…is cancelling credit cards he never uses anymore…

Posted in Tweets | Comments Off

Geocoding

Posted by Thomas Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:58:42 +0000

…spent the whole day coding up a geocoder…

Let me know if you’re in the market for a simple city geocoder. :)

Posted in Tweets | 7 Comments

E means E

Posted by Thomas Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:09:14 +0000

I did something dumb tonight. Never again will I roll my eyes when I see someone on the side of the road having run out of gas.

I’ve known for several++ days I needed gas. The fact that this tank took me 100 more miles than I normally go between fillings should have tipped me off. Or the fact that my car took several tries to turn over this morning, and then again when leaving work.

It was both a good and bad thing it died sitting at an intersection. At least there was a gas station at a corner. When the light turned green, and the yukon wouldn’t go, there was actually a tow truck right behind me. Then pretty soon a sheriff’s deputy showed up behind me and nudged me into the gas station. I could have done without his seeming tone of “you’re a frickin’ idiot, what have you been smoking/drinking tonight?”, but he did leave me to fill up in peace, having never gotten out of his car. I don’t know if that was a good thing or he was just being lazy, or what. I put 10 gallons in, so that if it wasn’t me just being out of gas, I wouldn’t have a full tank with nowhere to go. I turn it over and voila, it runs! I go down the road to the Quik Trip I intended to go to initially, filling up the rest of the tank. This time it’s 19.5 gallons. That makes a total of 29.5 gallons. The manual says the tank holds 30. I would have sworn it was 32, and anyway I thought there was a fudge factor.

My heart’s still racing a bit. But this illustrates my point of why I think I don’t pay nearly as much attention as I used to, because when things go bad, it’s often not nearly as difficult as you think to get out of a tough spot. Hopefully I can chalk it up to life experience, but I should know better and chalk it up to luck and someone looking out for me.

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Labor Day

Posted by Thomas Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:34:49 +0000

…has spent more time than I’d care to admit this weekend fighting with python’s compete and utter lack of timezone support. Please add this to the list of reasons why I hate python. And please don’t waste my time with “you should just use <insert third party library here>”. They all suck too.

If I have a timestamp with a f*ing -0400 or EDT in it, you should know perfectly how to convert it into epoch! There is no excuse for that shit. If I have to tell you that EDT == UTC-4, you fail. Doubly fail if you silently throw away timezone information, or well you can just read this and this. At least I’m not the only one…

</rant>

Posted in Technology | Tags | 1 Comment

Tired

Posted by Thomas Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:56:28 +0000

Why do I always wake up tired, but go to bed not?

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Inbox Spam Poetry: Duck Tales all seasons

Posted by Thomas Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:52:24 +0000

Then I visited this e-store, tried blue pilules and understood, why there are so many stories around it. I just recommend you to try. Fistful of dollars will bring you desire!

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