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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  General Discussion  |  Topic: FUCK you Charlie. 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: FUCK you Charlie.  (Read 6743 times)
Alluvian
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on: August 17, 2004, 08:04:14 AM

I just had to get that off my chest.  Power still out, phone spotty.  Of course WORK got power back so I can go to work now, but still have to fucking sleep in 90 degrees plus weather with sauna like humidity as my home is still powerless.

I live in Orlando, storm hit us on the eastside (UCF area) about 9-9:30pm on Friday (prior to that we just had spotty storms as arms would sweep through).  At about 10:00 our power went out.  Storm raged on till maybe 11 or so.  Upon leaving the house for a damage report, our entire apartment complex is now paved in shingles.  Three large pin oak trees in sight are down, one of them smashed up against our patio.  The complex probably lost a dozen trees at least blocking all but one exit.  Current reports put it at a Class 4 upon reaching coast at Santabel Island and still a class 2 when it hit orlando city limits.

The shopping mall near us (Waterford Lakes) was still open so we grabbed some books and saw a movie the next day (AVP, better than we expected and WAY better than sitting home in the sauna).  Just on the few blocks to get to the mall we saw about 3-4 downed power lines.

Radio is talking about a city wide gasoline shortage as the few stations with power to pump gas are swamped with people needing gas for cars and generators.  We have 3/4 a gallon so I don't even consider looking at this point.  We do need ICE though, and that is the other thing that has vanished.  We dont mind throwing out our food supplies, but I have medication that has to be kept cool and costs a nice $1200 per month supply (thank god for insurance).  Luckily my wife and I are not panicky idiots like most of the rest of Orlando apparently.  So we have been keeping it cool with frequent outings to whatever fastfood joints around have power and a working ice machine.  Two supersized cups can fit a decent amount of ice.

So the days droned on.  Power was still out at work monday so no work monday, but christ is it annoying to have no power and spotty phones in this temperature.  Thank GOD the water still worked for us so we could take 3 cold showers a day to keep from going insane (and sticking to the furniture).  Any communities that rely on well water are just fucked.

Oh, forgot to mention that water seeped through the bedroom wall and it now has a faintly rotten smell throughout the room.  The rest of the apartment is home to three ferrets.  Which is livable for us with AC and good ventilation.  Lose the AC and all fans and it gets pretty smelly pretty darn fast.

Didn't buy enough books though.  I could have sworn that I had Asimovs foundation trilogy somewhere in the apartment  so I just bought Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy (amazingly had never read it).  Of course that book is tiny and didn't last more than 2 hours or so reading real slowly.  My wife bought some starwars books that I don't really feel like reading.  Other than that, most of her books are hardcore history books that don't work for me while my brain is sizzling.

Weekend was pretty much spent lying prone waiting for the day to cool off enough to open up the doors and windows.  Or driving around to see what we could scrounge up in non-canned food.  We had plenty of emergency supplies, but cold ravioli is not high on my list of preferences.  Plus we had to keep getting replacement ice in the form of uber huge sodas filled with ice.

On monday we saw a medium sized line for a gas station, so we pulled into line.  After it not moving for awhile I got out and checked those at the pump.  The thousandths digit in the gallons display was moving about one thousandth per second.  Needless to say we didn't need gas that bad.  Leaving the line we decided to drive across the street to a station with even less lines and their pumps worked fine.  Except for the idiots who were spraying gas all over the place because they don't seem to know to turn off the gas before removing the nozzle from the car.  I swear 3 people sprayed gas everywhere in the few minutes we were in line.  There was nothing at all wrong with the pump.  One woman filled up her truck and three other gas tanks and must have spilled a gallon or two of gas all over the damn place.  Fucking stupid tub of lard.  I had a big grin as she was putting the gas containers in her truck and the gas was sloshing out the air vent at an alarming rate due to the containers being WAY overfilled.  Stupid like that deserves a truck that will reek of gasoline for months.

Estimate power return for our county is Thursday by midnight.  Yippie!  I am pretty sure I know the exact line that is causing our power outage, but it has yet to be fixed as it is currently lying on the ground under a tree.

FUCK you Charlie.

Anyone else here get bitchslapped by charlie?
daveNYC
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Reply #1 on: August 17, 2004, 08:22:25 AM

And here I thought you were having a 'Nam flashback.
Quote
Oh, forgot to mention that water seeped through the bedroom wall and it now has a faintly rotten smell throughout the room.

Mmmm.... Mold.

Glad nothing particularly bad happened to you.
Dark Vengeance
Delinquents
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Reply #2 on: August 17, 2004, 08:54:50 AM

Quote from: Alluvian
Anyone else here get bitchslapped by charlie?




Three times.

Bring the noise.
Cheers...........
kaid
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Reply #3 on: August 17, 2004, 09:02:45 AM

Hey you bugger stop slapping me.

Glad at least you can get some AC at work but going home to no AC with hot hot temps and humidity has got to be the suck.

I bet the malls with power are loving life as people are most likely hanging out there buying cold drinks and trying to not sweat.


As for books if you need some more the Orson Scott Card Enders game series is pretty good.


kaid
WayAbvPar
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Reply #4 on: August 17, 2004, 09:11:32 AM

I am not sure I would live in Florida on a bet, even before the hurricane. Hot, muggy, prone to hurricanes, tornadoes and lightning, and teeming with alligators, cottonmouths, mosquitoes the size of 727s, and Cubans? No thanks.

When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM

Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood

Libertarians make fun of everyone because they can't see beyond the event horizons of their own assholes Surlyboi
Roac
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Reply #5 on: August 17, 2004, 09:55:00 AM

Quote from: WayAbvPar
I am not sure I would live in Florida on a bet, even before the hurricane. Hot, muggy, prone to hurricanes, tornadoes and lightning, and teeming with alligators, cottonmouths, mosquitoes the size of 727s, and Cubans? No thanks.


Good things about Florida:  gator meat (yummy), and the Keys.  Neither of which is worth living there for, though.

-Roac
King of Ravens

"Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us." -SC
Murgos
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Reply #6 on: August 17, 2004, 11:07:10 AM

I live in Tampa and all I can say is, thanks for taking that bullet for us man.  It's much appreciated.

"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
Alluvian
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Reply #7 on: August 17, 2004, 12:19:10 PM

Did Tampa get much?  I know it missed south, but not sure how much of the outlying storm they got.  Further away from a class 4 vs right on the path of a class 2.

As far as Florida goes, I have been here 5 years now.  Floyd went through when I first got here, that one hit daytona but we got some nasty storms from it.  Lost power for less than 24 hours here in orlando.  Not really a big deal.  This one sucked, but then again it is the first time since 1960 that Orlando has actually been hit by a hurricane.  They are hardly common for all parts of Florida.

Hut and muggy sucks ASS, but only if you don't have power.  If you do have power or a car I will take it over cold anyday.  My car is spitting out cold air in about 10 seconds.  I used to live in Green Bay and I would already be at my destination by the time the car stated to warm up (15 minutes or so).  Plus living up north in the winter is such a fucking bitch to the nasal passages.  I used to have a ton of bloody noses and dry eye problems due to the dryness.

The mosquito problem baffles me.  I had WAY WAY WAY more problems with insects in Wisconsin than I have ever had here in florida.  We have nice ponds right in the apartment complex, but guess what? No mosquitoes at all.  Why?  Guppies.  They are resilient fuckers who LOVE mosquito larva.  Toss a few dozen cheap feeder guppies in a lake and they will breed like crazy and eat any larva long before they ever become bloodthirsty insects.  All ponds I have seen here are teeming with tiny little guppy relatives.  Can't do that up north because they would all die in the winter.  So the bug problem is lesser here, at least in the city.  Where in Wisconsin I could not leave the house after dusk or I would be swarmed by them.  It is a topic close to heart for me as well since I am allergic to mosquito bites.  The swell up to quarter sized marks each when I get them.  In five years here in orlando I have gotten maybe 5 bites, this in an apartment where we keep the door open on nice nights with no screen.

Gators?  Maybe a problem if you like wading around marshes.  Not exactly something I do.  It does not affect my lifestyle.

Losing power in this temperature SUCKS though.  Power outages in Green Bay were just as common due to bad snowstorms, but we always had wood to burn for a nice fire on those bad days/nights.  Power outages were fun as a kid.  There is nothing fun about this shit.
HaemishM
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Reply #8 on: August 17, 2004, 12:33:38 PM

Glad to know you made it out OK, other than being powerless, sweaty and annoyed. I wasn't aware anyone we knew on the boards was in the path. I had a few in-laws that lost some windows and a porch from it; they live in Daytona.

Zephyr
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Reply #9 on: August 17, 2004, 01:16:07 PM

Poor ferrets, I know they really suck at dealing with heat.  We had to freeze a few bottles of water each day and put them in their sleep sacks when our air conditioning went out this summer.  We tried just baggies filled with ice, but the bastards would always break open the bag and soak their beds.  

It was no fun as they would just lay flat on the floor not moving and staring at us till we finally got the air back on.  Although once it was back on, even the quiet one was clucking her head off and bouncing around.  :P
Murgos
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Reply #10 on: August 17, 2004, 01:35:10 PM

Quote from: Alluvian
Did Tampa get much?  I know it missed south, but not sure how much of the outlying storm they got.  Further away from a class 4 vs right on the path of a class 2.


No, about a day of high winds and light rain was all.

Quote
Gators?  Maybe a problem if you like wading around marshes.  Not exactly something I do.  It does not affect my lifestyle.

Well I have seen gators on the golf course I use which is in a very built-up area.  Really they're more of a south florida problem, the house I grew up in in Miami was near a canal and it always had little 3 or 4 footers around, this was in a very urban part of Miami too not like it was the outskirts or a rural area but I don't recall them ever actually being a problem.

"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
kaid
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Reply #11 on: August 17, 2004, 01:52:20 PM

I live in wisconsin but I visit orlando a few times a year. I have to say for the mosquitos I have never seen anything down there that even raises a blip on my mosquito radar compared to wisconsin.

Be it guppies or whatever else you can go out at night in orlando without becoming a dessicated corpse unlike wisconsin during a normal summer.

Power outages in wisconsin arn't usually as bad as most folks have gas furnaces which don't really need much in the way of electricity for their basic function. So you may be in the dark and bored but I have never been cold in a poweroutage.

Down in a place like florida power outages are the suck there is only so much you can do to cool down especially when everybody and their brother is snapping up all the ice they can get their paws on.

On the plus side there is always the car to cool off and malls if they have their own gens or power are fine for moping around. Still leads to sucky sticky sleepless nights in muggy nastiness.

Kaid
Alluvian
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Reply #12 on: August 18, 2004, 07:52:16 AM

Quote from: Zephyr
Poor ferrets, I know they really suck at dealing with heat.  We had to freeze a few bottles of water each day and put them in their sleep sacks when our air conditioning went out this summer.  We tried just baggies filled with ice, but the bastards would always break open the bag and soak their beds.  

It was no fun as they would just lay flat on the floor not moving and staring at us till we finally got the air back on.  Although once it was back on, even the quiet one was clucking her head off and bouncing around.  :P


They are actually doing remarkably well.  They are sleeping a lot more for sure, and we are changing their water a lot more often.  But they still get up and look around at least a few times a day.  They are not running around and playing but still do their inactive entertainments like chewing on things they are not supposed to and rolling around in the box of packing peanuts we have.  Part of that is their curiosity every night at all the nice smells they get when the door is open.

Power better come back soon though, the humidity from having to open up doors and windows is starting to actually soak the entire apartment.  Wet carpets in an area with high ferret traffic is not a pleasent thing.  I love ferrets above all pets, but you need some ventilation to combat their natural scent.
kaid
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Reply #13 on: August 18, 2004, 09:03:18 AM

Heheh yes cute lil buggers but a lil steenky to not have some ventilation. One can only burn so much incense before it becomes musty ferret  incense flavored stink.

Kaid
HaemishM
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Reply #14 on: August 18, 2004, 09:37:57 AM

There is a reason a friend of mine and I came up with the term "Ferret Funk." It came from the godawful, choking reek that erupted from a mutual friend's closet, where he kept three of the little buggers in a cage.

With their litter box.

For days.

Woofa.

Alluvian
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Reply #15 on: August 18, 2004, 02:14:32 PM

Yeah, we have gone on vacation a few times for a week or so.

The first time we thought it was a good idea to lock them up in the bathroom so that if they started crapping badly at least it would be on linoleum.  We also could make sure they had water by filling the tub up a little bit and putting a towel over the edge with a heavy weight on each side.

It really seemed like a decent idea at the time.  The terror we returned to in that bathroom was the worst thing I have ever seen.

After that we decided, fuckit.  Let them have their normal run of the house.  Funny thing is, we tried this run of the house thing 3 times.  All times they have had a PERFECT record for using the litter boxes.  In fact I think those are the only weeks in our ferret filled lives where they actually went in the litter boxes EVERY time.  I still don't understand why they suddenly become perfectly housebroken when we are not there.  Not using the boxes must be their cry for attention or something that they know won't work when they are alone.  Or the fun just isn't the same if they can't watch up complain as we clean up after them.
Zephyr
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Reply #16 on: August 19, 2004, 04:58:54 AM

Ours have their own room, we ended up sawing off some black drainage pipe and popping it on top of a piece of plywood in between the door jambs.  It keeps the ferrets in by not letting them get a grip onto something to pull themselves up and it lets air circulate.  It was better than ferret-proofing the entire apartment, especially when one ferret loves to sleep inside the couch.

With strategically placed water bottles and food stashes we have been able to go away for 5 or 6 days with no problems, aside from them being lonely.

Also aside from the one who we think had a bad surgery to remove her scent glands, there really isn't much of a bad smell in there.  We switched over to wheat litter and any litter box odor is pretty much eliminated.
Alluvian
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Reply #17 on: August 19, 2004, 07:11:23 AM

FUCK.  Estimate for power return went from "All of orange county will be back by Thursday at midnight" to "Oh, except for YOU.  You won't have power back till Saturday by midnight".  Of course they have not changed the happy public service message that all power to their customers will be back by Thursday.  BAH.  I understand this shit takes time, but don't brag about what you are doing if it fucking isn't true.
Paelos
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Reply #18 on: August 19, 2004, 07:42:11 AM

I'd say invite your friends Johnny Walker, Jack Daniels, and Jose Cuervo over this weekend for a little blackout soiree.

CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
kaid
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Reply #19 on: August 19, 2004, 10:35:15 AM

Just got word from one of our friends whose parents have a cottage/house on an island just west of fort meyers. Looks like other than a palm tree some shingles and some minor damage to the porch the house came through okay. The same cannot be said for their jetboat which apparently is a total loss.

Man that storm caused a mess.

kaid
Alluvian
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Reply #20 on: August 19, 2004, 11:30:46 AM

But alcohol just makes you hotter and more dehydrated.  I don't think you understand the heat and humidity bit.  Trust me.  Alcohol is the LAST thing I want to drink right now.

It is like the stupid concept that hot and sweaty is sexy.  Looking at someone wearing few clothes and being wet is sexy.  Actually being fucking hot and sweaty is the least sexy thing there is.  Sharing body heat and moving are not high priorities.  That said, the cold showers at least still provide opportunity.

Bastids gave us about 15 minutes of power just to tease us and then shut it off again.  I am trying to hope that is a good sign.
kaid
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Reply #21 on: August 19, 2004, 12:24:16 PM

I would think that getting power even for a little bit is a good sign. It means that most if not all the connections needed are there. May be some issue with some of the transformers though that may take them a bit to correct.

Kaid
Alluvian
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Reply #22 on: August 20, 2004, 06:47:37 AM

Good news for you!  You don't need to skip over posts of me bitching anymore!

Power back yesterday.  Ah, AC feels sooo nice.  And a hot shower.  And cold soda.  Didn't even turn my PC on yet though.  Still have some more to go in re-reading Asimov's Foundation trilogy.  I love those books.
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