The Jagoff Knight

Holy frozen precipitation! There’s snow in downtown Gothamburgh.

Filming for Batman's, Dark Knight Rises, has moved from the campuses of Oakland to The North Shore and now on to downtown and from the reports I’ve gotten from friends and coworkers, the Dark Knight is a Jagoff. I’m not talking about Christian Bale being an ass and yelling at crew members. I’m just being silly, of course.

From the pictures and reports on television, the sod at Heinz Field… er Gotham Stadium looks more like post WPIAL championship play than preseason, thanks to a few explosions.

Today, one of my coworkers said that the Tumbler made the equivalent of a Pittsburgh Left in front of him at Fifth and Wood, while others reported snow on Oliver.

With the snow in Gothamburgh, I wonder if there would be any issue with the Jagoff Knight being able to save Gothamites stuck on snowy streets.

(In a gravelly voice) “If he wants a ride to the hospital, he’s going to have to walk to the Tumbler!”

To that point, my one friend said, Batman and the Tumbler would have no trouble reaching a snowed in residence. “It would just up and over those parked cars. Or blow them up.”

True. So, true.

Luke Ravenstahl is probably checking with the crew to see if one of the Tumblers can be left for the Pittsburgh EMS. Right after he sees if he can get picked up in the supplemental draft as a place kicker.

How Hot Is It?

It’s apparently so hot in the Pittsburgh and the surrounding regions, known as Pennsyltucky, that people’s brains have melted. Yes, their memory receptors have begun malfunctioning because they are complaining. That’s right, complaining. Lest we forget that six months ago a lot of us had no power, three feet of snow, and little hope of being able to get the kids out of the house and back into school before we went crazy. It must be scorching out there.

I remember sitting in the darkened and frozen cave that was Chez Mongo, wearing full snow gear, exhausted after trying to dig out my car. My wife had put a pot of boiling water on the stove, which was luckily gas powered, in order to raise the temperature to a balmy 46 degrees, so that out cats didn’t rise up and attack us for letting their comfy 70 degree home get chilly. We had been forced to take up temporary residence at my in-laws, which involved packing up a week’s worth of gear for us and our two and a half year old. I remember getting completely unpacked, futon mattress on the floor, with linens on it and clothes out of the suitcase before having the hunch to call our house to see if the answering machine would pick up. One of my cats answered instead informing me that “You better get over here. The house is possessed. One minute darkness, next minute every light and appliance is on full blast. I has a scared.”

Yep, the entire Eastern seaboard was pummeled with snow in February. So much snow, that civil services shut down the government, paramedics told injured people to walk up the road, plow trucks were in short supply and nearly every roof in the tri-state area collapsed. And we all bitched about the cold and the snow and the power outages and the lack of communication and ability to harvest crops and kill rival mafia members. Civilization was crumbling around us as we were forced to *gasp* talk to each other in person.

But that’s all ancient history, now. No one cares about the three of snow that sat on top of their cars. No one bats an eyelash at the thought that if the Sun were to say, “Oh ‘eff it!” and shut off tomorrow we’d be plunged back into cold temperatures. As long as the mercury doesn’t stay on the north end of the thermometer for more than a week we’ll be happy. I mean we could be faced with the prospect of seeing Justin Bieber burst into flames and Lady Gaga might have to stop wearing elaborate costumes and that would be bad. Please, President Obama, invoke sanctions against the Sun and order it to stop being so hot. You are magical and can solve all the world’s problems. You are not some mere mortal in an executive office that has protocol and procedures to adhere to, right? Make the Sun stop. It’s too hot.

Dear God, I have to walk outside, across the grass filled yards, in the bright warm Sun, wearing shorts and stare up at a blue sky that isn’t filled with clouds and a million snowflakes laughing at me with my puny snow shovel. HOW CAN YOU BE SO CRUEL? I have to drive on the open roads, using all lanes, with the windows down, or AC on, listening to reports about beaches and pools and barbecues and concerts and fireworks and baseball games. MAKE IT STOP! I have to see scantily clad ladies laying out and sunning themselves. OH MY RETINAS! (just kidding honey *smooches*) I have to hear the sound of my kid laughing as she splashes around in the pool and gets all tuckered out that she naps for three hours. THE HORROR!

The only thing that gives me solace is that six months from now I’ll be back to breathing heavily as I shovel out the car, frostbitten, flush faced and snotty nosed. That will make it all better. Sigh. Yeah blizzards. Hooray for States of Emergency.

‘Eff you, Sun.

In Defense Of Low Tech

The life of a digital gypsy. Sounds kind of fun, huh? Technically speaking, you could spend your whole life working, communicating, and wasting time without being plugged in somewhere. I mean eventually you would need to recharge the batteries on all your devices but think of it, using a cell phone to conduct business over the phone and a laptop to work on with a Wi-Fi signal at say, Panera. You could remotely work from home or at your favorite coffee bar.

Hell, if you were savvy enough you could make a good living without ever stepping foot inside an office or perhaps even own a residence. Companies would pay you to work for them, traveling the world, squatting in an empty cubicle in their office and housing you at a hotel or some sort of alternate housing. You could be a Wi-Fi nomad. But what happens when the signal stops?

NPR recently ran a story about a digital gypsy who does everything without being connected by wires. If you can get past the interfaces of working on a smart phone or laptop then maybe that’s the life for you. Personally, I want a hardwired connection somewhere in my life. I have digital voice for phone and while it may be nice to have something shiny and high tech I recently wanted to go back to the old rotary phones of the 70s and early 80s. Why? We had a little thing lovingly called Snowmageddon this past Winter. We suffered through severe snowfall that darkened the homes of numerous customers up and down the Mid Atlantic. I was without power for two days.

Ok, that doesn’t sound that awful. Sounds like camp. Well, it’s not. I’m not saying that I was close to jumping the cliff because I didn’t have cable or couldn’t harvest my crops or play Bejeweled Blitz. But three things took place that forced me to vacate my home until the power came back on there.

1. First and foremost, the heat. We had no heat in the house and the temperatures dropped into the 40s by the end of the first day.
2. No power means no good sleep. I am a CPAP user and without power, sleeping is rough for someone who quits breathing while they are asleep.
3. No power means no phone. Again, I have digital voice that runs through a modem fed by my cable company. I can’t just pick up a corded phone and call someone. Granted we have cell phones, but see how low tech would have triumphed here?
4. No power means no Internet. Oh the horror. Since I run an online business as a side gig, I could not update this blog, my websites, or my websites’ blog. This is, of course, the least problematic thing I experienced.

Now, I know there were people in more dire situations than mine. A man died waiting for paramedics to get to his house through poorly plowed streets. But think of how many people rely on power and wireless signal to do anything.

I may be Chicken Little but haven’t we seen, firsthand, how putting all our eggs in one basket is a bad thing. We let the banks run amok and we ended up in serious trouble. The automotive industry collapsed and people lost their jobs. People lost their homes. America lost its financial footing and we are still coming back from the brink. Take that lesson and apply it to the Internet and wireless technology. What if we find ourselves without a signal?

IT experts will tell you the Internet’s infrastructure is built for redundancy, that it withstands numerous attacks from hackers, viruses, or anything as simple as a undersea cable being severed. But how long can we continue to rely on something so vastly complex and touchy. How long before we have some sort of EMP disaster that slows us down to a 14.4k speed. Remember Wargames? Same idea. Somewhere in all of this wireless world we need to have a cord plugged in somewhere. In our financial industry, our defense and security infrastructure, and our basic city infrastructure.

Here’s another example. NYT is removing a number of routes from its service to save money wherein they will have to spend an ungodly amount to redo all the signage for subways, bus lines, and maps and ticketing. While it might be less expensive to maintain digital signage and the use of apps for smart phones to be able to freely change information on the fly and reduce the need for costly revisions, what happens if we have a power outage like we did in 2006. Granted the transportation system might be affected but taxis and busses can still run. What if that outage extends into weeks? People, unfamiliar with the layout of Manhattan will not have any way to navigate around. Eventually, old printed signage will have to be brought out costing more money to install and maintain until Con Edison comes back up and running.

Everyone talks about business continuance and disaster recovery of online systems but are we truly prepared to address a situation that involves no t having any systems? How many times have you walked into a room and tried the light switch when you know the power is off? It’s habit. It’s not that you are checking for power. You are assuming it’s there. Can we afford to assume that the power will always be there? And it’s not like I’m spelling Die Hard 4 type of cynicism about our country's ability to handle a crisis. I’m talking in terms of the everyday digital gypsy. If we have a collapse of our networking infrastructure, how does someone who relies on it to do business expect to stay connected? Instead of the factory worker who gets laid off you have the white collar consultant. That person that squatted in a cubicle and lived at the Hyatt using his laptop and crackberry to make sure he could afford that latte habit would be isolated. There are more out there than you think and they are probably responsible for a lot of commerce that helps keep the economy chugging. They may be the second line of impact after the bigger systems like banking, agriculture, and automotive, but those industries might rely on the digital gypsy to keep them working.

For me, I want to stay plugged in somewhere. I want to know that when one thing fails, I have a backup plan. It may not be perfect, but it’s a start.

Snowmageddon 2010

In 1993, the South Western PA area had one of its biggest storms to date. It was deemed the Storm of the Century. It was fitting as how there was less than 10 years left in that century. Not that bold of a statement considering. Of course, at that time, you had to see a plow truck on its roof in a ditch to cancel in my hometown. The following year, during which I was a freshman at Pitt, we had one of the coldest winters on record. To know the campus in Oakland, you are aware of the wind whipping in between buildings. As you turn a corner onto Forbes or Fifth Avenue, the protection of the tall structures are gone and you are enveloped by gust of icy daggers, ripping into your skin. Still, classes went on as the temperatures dipped into the sub zero range.

It wasn’t until, then Governor, Bob Casey was in town for a routine check up on his heart that the issue of cancelling classes was addressed. The Governor put the city into a state of emergency and classes were immediately cancelled. Of course, that effectively closed all student services and I was left to eating cold cereal or Ramen Noodles for sustenance. Still we dealt with it.

Now, to compare the events of this past weekend to those of the Tsunami in 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, or the earthquake in either China in 2009 or the one in Haiti this past January is stretching it a bit. Fact of the matter is that we’ve been spoiled for far too long. Me included. We all sit around and wax nostalgic about having three feet of snow, no school for a week, and a snowman bigger than that damn statue on LOST. And in that same breath we bitch about how we never see that kind of weather anymore. My wife is a snow junkie and wants to see it up to the window. Me, I’d rather have snow on the ground for most of December, including Christmas, and then be done after January 15th.

So, when my wife got all excited that we were going to get “some” snow to the tune of four to eight inches, as was originally predicted by the local meteorologists, she got into this nesting mood and decided that we needed to go out and buy lots of food to hold us over until Monday. “Oh, it will be nice. We’ll make warm dinners and sit and watch the snow in our nice warm home.” Then, as the hours rolled on into Friday afternoon, and the snow started to fall, the tune changed. “Get your ass home, we’re getting a foot of snow!” This was the call I got at work on Friday around 3:00. As we continued to watch the news the totals jumped every hour until we were expecting up to 18 inches. The lights began to flicker in and out as the heavy wet snow began to cake up on the trees and power lines.

Well, we were ready for the snow. We went to bed in awe of the thick fluffy blanket that descended onto our house and trees and cars. What we weren’t ready for was the power outage.

I woke up around 7:00 and called to cancel an appointment I was supposed to have at 10:00. That was because I had a “Dude, where’s my car?” moment when I looked out in the driveway. I went back to sleep for a couple of hours and figured I wake up and enjoy some time in my chair watching the snow and drinking some coffee. Around 9:30, I woke up and we had no power. By 11:00. The temperature was down to 68 in the house and falling. We had no wireless signal due to the outage and our basement, was slowly falling below 56. We made the decision to tough it out at my in-laws until the power came back on later. I spent a good two hours shoveling the driveway and the cars out of the snow. Our road was completely bare because all of the snow was now in our driveway. While the shoveling went smoothly up near the house, the treated snow that was on the road had melted and packed down in my driveway after being plowed. It was harder than hell to get rid of it.

As the temperature inside the house reached the low 50s, we packed out enough for an overnight trip and left. Our cats, which I hated to leave had enough fur to keep them warm, and they could always tunnel underneath our bed covers to stay warm. We were heading for civilization. While our road was sufficiently plowed, the surrounding main roads were hardly touched. We barely made it to my in-laws who were nice enough to carve out a space in their driveway that was big enough for our van.

Every couple of hours, I called the house to see if our answering machine picked up, letting me know the ordeal was over. No change. I called the power company who told me that the best prediction for all customers to have power restored was Friday. This was a week after the storm. I feared we were going to have to pack up our cats and bring them over to the house, putting us at eight in one house, which is only three cats shy of crazy cat lady status. That evening we went back to check on the cats and became excited. As we drove through our neighborhood we saw signs of power on along our road. However, once we reached the top of our hill we noticed a block or so section that was still in the dark. Our hearts sank as we feared that our hopes of dodging that deadline of Friday was too good to be true.

My wife and I slept in her old bed which was uncomfortably small. If this was going to be an extended stay we needed to make better arrangements. We decided to go back Sunday morning and retrieve the mattress from our old futon as well as enough clothes and food to help out her parents throughout the week. We both travelled back to our house along the bad roads and found that the temperature in the house was now 48. The refrigerator was defrosting and the tray underneath was full. We had taken the biggest items that required cold and put them in a cooler on our back porch, which was down near 30 degrees as the outside temperature dipped down towards zero. I built a fire in the basement to being the temp back up over 50 and we gathered up the rest of our stuff needed for the week. We fed the cats and made a plan to bring them back over if the temperature dropped below freezing. We also turned the faucets onto a drip after running hot water through the pipes.

After coming back to my in-laws I learned that some electric company trucks were in the area and hopefully we’d be back in business soon. That estimate of Friday made me still cringe because I realized that the power company was going to hit the biggest areas first to restore the most power to the most residents. Then they would move on down the line picking up the few spots that still needed it. That meant that our area would probably be last as we were only a couple of blocks among thousands of residents without power.

We unpacked all our belongings, stocked their fridge and made preparations to be there for awhile. Just about time for Super Bowl kickoff, I felt the urge to try calling the house one last time. A few of my Facebook friends who lived in the area were without power and had updated their status to say they were back up and running. The previous attempts to dial were met with no ringing and that familiar shrilling tone and voice that stated it was sorry that it could not complete my call. This time was different. One ring. I was slightly excited. Two rings. I was getting more excited. Three rings. Oh, boy! Four rings. Hot damn. “H, you’ve reached…” My answering machine picked up the call. Our power was restored. And probably within a half hour of us leaving with most of our worldly possessions. “Son of a bitch” I yelled. Just to be sure, I called again and as the fourth ring passed, I held the phone up to my wife’s ear. “Yeah!”

I took a car load back and shut off most of the faucets. I made sure everything was still running and the temp was already up to 64 degrees. Yep, it had come back on shortly after we left. As we settled back in to our home, got warm showers and slept in our nice soft, BIG bed we realized that we don’t appreciate what people go without on a regular basis. We take for granted the simplest of luxuries that we think of as just standard, everyday rights. You walk through a darkened house and immediately try the same light switches fourteen times because you just assume that they work and don’t even realize that you still don’t have power. It’s habit, not instinct. Instinct would be making yourself more prepared for such an outage. Having enough warm blankets for the duration of the outage or at least enough flashlights to see where you are going.

But, in all, we bitched and moaned about not having power for a total of 24 to 30 hours. The storm rated fourth on the list of total inches of snowfall in our area, behind that storm from 1993. We lost power but didn’t end up any worse than being put out of a weekend. For all the fear of freezing pipes and kitties, the temperature never went below 40 degrees in our house. It just goes to show that if you want to get your power back on in a storm, don’t call and complain to the power company. Don’t twitter or bitch on Facebook or hope to use other social networking sites to shame your provider into working faster. All you have to do is pack up all your stuff and plan to be out of your home for a week. Then, the power will magically be restored once you unpack at your temporary shelter.

Oh, and don’t buy a hell of a lot of food that needs to be refrigerated. That’s a sure fire way to get your power to go off in the first place. Take care to all those still in the dark and stuck in the snow.