Monthly Archive for August, 2009

The landlubber’s guide to hurricane preparedness

Published on August 26, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

I’m watching carefully as Tropical Storm Danny gets ready to come up the coast. We’re all but certain to be in the cone of extratropical cyclone activity on Sunday or Monday. It looks like this one is going to skirt Florida and the Carolinas, and could actually make landfall anywhere from here in South Jersey to Boston. New York is right in its sights.

I found myself caught just a little flat-footed with this news since I haven’t had to prepare a Hurricane Kit for years. Having been relegated to shoobie status for the past 11 years and away from the barrier island that I loved, the likeliness of tropical storm activity stopped being an everyday thing. So I’ve set out to prepare my Kit before panic buying sets in, and start listing what we will need to do as time draws nearer.

Ironically, I’m now living almost equidistant from both Jersey coasts (halfway between the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean). This is the area they plan to have people evacuate to when the big one comes up the coast. Unless I want to go visit my mother up in the mountains, there is no place for us to go. We’re actually in the safest place one can be here in the wilds of South Jersey, but that doesn’t make us safe. We just won’t have to worry about waves.

So, as a public service, here is my “landlubber’s guide to Hurricane preparedness” for those of you who have never ridden out the Mighty Wind before. Note that this is only aimed at people who are living 20 miles or more inland. If you’re near water (and, yes, the Delaware Bay IS water for hurricanes) be prepared to get the fuck out when the time comes, and follow emergency directions.

Here’s what you need to know when the Mighty Wind blows:

  • The power will go out. There’s no avoiding it. The wind and damaged tree limbs will bring down wires, and there is no way that the electric companies are going to send people out to fix them before the storm passes. There is a slight chance that in fringe areas, or lucky areas, the power will stay on, but don’t count on it. Expect the electricity to go out, and it could be out for a day or more. Plan ahead.
  • Stock up on fresh water. Fill bottles and jugs ahead of time and put them in the fridge. It’s possible that municipal water supplies will be disrupted either by damage to mains or pollution from sea water. Not every town gets its water from right nearby, remember, so living inland is no assurance that you’ll have safe drinking water right from the tap.
  • You’ll need a battery operated radio. Yes, radio. Those little battery TV’s you might have up in the attic? Not going to work in this age of digital transmission, and you won’t have power for the converter box. The radio is your friend. Tune in regularly to listen for bulletins, most of which will come on your local stations or big news stations. Don’t leave it on, just tune in regularly to get bulletins. Don’t waste your batteries. Again, you might not have power for a day or more.
  • Clear your yard ASAP. As soon as a Hurricane Watch goes up for your area, get everything that isn’t literally planted in the ground out of your yard. This includes cars. Cars may not be blown away, but they can be damaged by blowing debris, which all your stuff will become if you leave it out.
  • Get important stuff away from flood areas. Identification, important documents, irreplaceable keepsakes, etc., should be removed from basements and – if possible – first floors. Put them in ziploc bags, too, if you can.
  • Plastic and duct tape. It’s no joke. You might need to replace a broken window temporarily.
  • If the power goes out, don’t open your freezer except for the quickest of times to remove ice if you need it for the cooler in your kit (see below). Keep the cold air inside.
  • Prepare your Kit. This will have everything you will need for the worst case scenario.

Your kit should include:

  1. Extra cash. ATM’s might be out. Keep a few bucks on you.
  2. Batteries. Lots of fresh ones in every size you might need.
  3. Flashlights.
  4. Candles. Tap-Lights are also a good idea. They can be safer, but will wear down your batteries.
  5. Toilet paper. Don’t laugh.
  6. Non-perishable food like cereal and crackers.
  7. Canned goods. Preferably stuff you don’t mind eating cold if you have to. This is why people usually stock up on bread right before a storm: nutrition you don’t have to cook.
  8. Can opener. Again, don’t laugh.
  9. A small cooler. Stuff you absolutely need to keep cold, and can’t or don’t want to replace, should go in the cooler packed in whatever ice you have shortly after the power goes out.
  10. Prescription and over the counter meds. Make sure you have an emergency supply so you don’t run out while the storm is raging, or the power and communications are out.
  11. Baby stuff. Again, if things get shut down for a couple of days, make sure you have an emergency supply of diapers, baby wipes, and formula or baby food.

Remember, there’s always a chance that the storm will move out to sea or weaken before it gets to you. But an emergency kit like this is never a bad thing to have. Be prepared.

Woodstock: Why It Sucked. (Or, 40 Years of Peace, Love, and Wasted Promise)

Published on August 17, 2009 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

After tomorrow, blessed be, we will finally be able to go another 10 years before we ever have to hear the name “Woodstock” referring to anything other than a bird.

Still, as much as I hate the hype around one of the worst-planned rock concerts in history – one that was so badly thought of at the time that Joni Mitchell, who would later make 2.8 shitloads of dollars off a song where she pretended to be there, thought it was more important to go on the Dick Cavett Show – I do think it is something to be studied. The problem is that while most people weave hagiographies to this travesty in a mud pit, I think it’s more important to study the complete and utter failure that Woodstock is in nearly every category.

First off, for what was supposedly the greatest rock concert in history, let’s look at a few of the artists of 1969 who were supposed to be at Woodstock, but all felt it was more important to not show up:

  • The Doors
  • The Byrds
  • Jethro Tull
  • Joni Mitchell (as mentioned above)
  • Led Zeppelin
  • The Moody Blues
  • Tommy James and the Shondells
  • Bob Dylan.

Really, now, the biggest concert of the 1960′s and you don’t have The Doors or Bob Dylan? Sure, the Beatles were breaking up and the Rolling Stones were in Britain, but you can’t land Bob Dylan, who lived a couple of towns over and was the voice of the generation that this festival was supposed to personify? Weak. Sure, you had The Who and Janis Joplin, but when the big draw on your bill is Creedence Clearwater Revival? Pack it in.

But even if we want to overlook the second-string lineup of acts (although some, like Crosby Stills & Nash would become even more famous after the fact), there is one area in which the sheer suckitude of Woodstock cannot be overemphasized. Sadly, that’s the one area that the whole big mess that the stoner revisionists and baby boomers keep bringing up. They keep pushing Woodstock as the height of a social movement and something to be proud of.

Know what? They’re full of shit.

Look at the defining moments of just a few recent generations. The generation before the Baby Boomers fought and won World War II and put a man on the moon. The generation before that brought us the height of American literature and arts. Before that, the Progressive Movement changed society forever and World War I changed the political face of the entire world.

And what did the Baby Boomers do? They got stoned, listened to some music, and fucked.

In the mud.

I’m sorry, but when the pinnacle moment of your generation includes the warning “don’t eat the brown acid,” I think you need to reevaluate your priorities.

The saddest thing about Woodstock is that, for all intents and purposes, it was the end of the Hippie movement. It was the peak, and everything else from that point on was downhill. The people at Woodstock could have been energized to go out and really change the world, like so many people have tried to make it out that they did. They didn’t. Nixonism reigned down in Washington. The Vietnam War got longer and bloodier. Domestic unrest and violence in our streets picked up. Peace and Love became just another bumper sticker. If the pre-Woodstock days were summed up by the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” the years after Woodstock were summed up by the Rutles’ “All You Need Is Cash.”

There were half a million hippies at Woodstock. 500,000! That’s a massive number of people, especially at that time. If the Hippies really wanted to change the world, end the war, etc., they could have marched two days south (on foot, in their vehicles they could have been there in hours) and brought Washington to a complete standstill. They could have made their voice and their message heard. Or the people could have dispersed from that point and gone home to organize; re-energized and encouraged by their experiences at Yasgur’s farm they could have left with a new commitment to carry their dreams and actually change the world.

Instead, they all dispersed and went home… where they got stoned, listened to music, and fucked. But at least this time mud wasn’t involved (in most cases).

Woodstock should be held up as the apotheosis of self-aggrandizement. It is a testament to the utter and complete failure of the Baby Boomers. Woodstock was the death rattle of the social movements that had come along in the late 60′s in America. The promise of a revolution of peace and love died with a whimper accentuated by the strains of Jimi Hendrix’ guitar. The Flower Power Company disconnected everyone due to non-payment. As the 6 in the year rolled up off the universe’s perpetual clock display to be replaced by a 7, it took with it everything that the hippies stood for. The memorial plaque at Yasgur’s Farm might as well have been a headstone.

Even The Who, who played their entire rock opera Tommy some time around 4 AM when probably 50 people were awake, recognized the sea change. Actually go listen to the lyrics of Won’t Get Fooled Again some time if you can avoid being distracted by Roger Daltrey ripping his vocal chords to shreds and Pete Townshend destroying his eardrums:

And nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” indeed.

And let’s also not forget that twice as many people died at Woodstock as died at Altamont a few months later.

In ten years, the 50th anniversary of the world’s most disastrous rock concert will come upon us. Everyone who attended the concert (with the possible exception of the two babies born there) will either be on Social Security, in a home, or dead. Maybe by then cooler heads will prevail and those of us who happen to be left half-alive (as Townshend wrote) will be able to cast a serious eye on Woodstock and recognize it for what it really was: three days of escapism, drugs, self-importance, and wasted youth. It really was a teenaged wasteland, and those who hold it up as anything but do the entire world a disservice.

Homophobe John C. Wright can’t hide.

Published on August 15, 2009 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments

Alleged Science Fiction writer and outright homophobe John C. Wright (but more on him anon) put up a very nasty blog post about SyFy’s commitment to more diversity in future programming, tearing into homosexuals.

When he got some similarly nasty comments, in a snit he deleted them and added even more homophobic bullshit to the post. As the heat got turned up more, and people threatened boycotts of his stuff (which is not a great sacrifice having looked at some of his stuff at Amazon), he took the post down. Now he’s trying to hide and act like it never happened.

Uh, Johnny? The internet doesn’t work that way.

For those who missed it, the full, comment-locked, anti-gay screed has been preserved at http://cnx.com/johncwrightisahomophobicdick.html. For those who are curious, and of a strong stomach, here are some choice excerpts:

I am hoping, of course, that future shows will also portray sadomasochism and bondage in a positive light — we are all looking forward to FLASH GORDON’S TRIP TO GOR, I hope. Love affairs with corpses, small children, and farm animals will also be on display in a natural nonchalant fashion in the new raft of progressive shows, titles such as I DREAM OF STINKY, PEDERASTY JUNCTION, and OLD MACDONALD HAD A SHEEP — but no Mormons, whose moral standing we all abhor. The only good thing about Mormons, as we all know, is their polygamy. That we can approve of. Anything that offends the Patriarchy, we like. Evil is our good.

Or how about this one?

Why are you willing to tolerate sexual perversion but not racism? In a world with no standards, what makes a malfunction of love higher on your standard than a malfunction of hate? Is an irrational lust and longing to mimic the mating act with a sex with which one cannot mate, at its root, any more or less disconnected to reality than an irrational fear and hatred of a Negro? How do we know race-hate is not genetic? Look at how scorned and put-upon racists are! Can we spare them no cheap Leftist pity? Why don’t we simply call racism an alternate anti-ethnic orientation, similar to hetero-toleration, but different?

Or my favorite:

In other news, Timothy Leary will be giving Sci-Fi an “F” grade for failing to portray drug abuse positively. Castro and Pol Pot will be giving Sci-Fi an “F” grade for their show BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, which portrays the mass slaughter of innocent human beings in a negative light. Dean Martin will be giving Sci-Fi an “F” for failing to portray drunkenness as life-affirming. Don Juan will be giving Sci-Fi an “F” grade for failing to have a show that portrays serial adultery in a positive light — but Don gives BATTLESTAR GALACTICA an “A” for sleeping with robots. Uncle Screwtape reminds me the any form of sex that is sterile and selfish wins the approval of the Lowerarchy.

John, you’re a dick. Revel in it. There are lots of dicks out there. I’m one of them. But don’t try to hide your dickery. If you don’t want people to know you’re a dick because it means they will like you less, then the only real option is to stop being a dick. You might be happier for it.

Speaking of tech nightmares

Published on August 2, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

For the past two days, a number of strips at GoComics.com, including The New Adventures of Queen Victoria, have failed to update.

If you read the strip there, I’ve changed the code at the strip’s main page to pull from my own server instead of GoComics, so if the page at GoComics is still showing last Friday’s strip, stop by the strip’s home page and read the strip there.

Sadly, there are no comments on the main site, and that’s my favorite part of the process.

Comcast Doesn’t Care

Published on August 2, 2009 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

If you follow me on Twitter you’ve probably seen a number of rants recently from me with the hashtag #comcastdoesn’tcare.

In case you’re wondering, these are plays on the name of another Twitter user, @comcastcares, who is the person at Comcast in charge of mollifying people who are pissed off at them.

My problems with Comcast go back to long before Comcast as we now know it existed, really. The local operation has been headed by the same people through three different acquisition/mergers (Teleprompter to Sammons to Suburban to Comcast). So even though the overall company has changed, nothing locally has really improved. If anything it’s gotten worse because the home office keeps moving further and further away, and the layers of bureaucracy keep growing fatter and fatter.

My current problem has existed for over a year, but has become acute in the last couple months. All traffic will stop and all TCP/IP connections will suddenly reset. My connection is not lost, my IP address is not reset, it’s just that every bit of communication between my machines and the outside world ceases.

Suddenly, at least once an hour, it’s like the internet doesn’t exist for anywhere from five to twenty minutes. Two days ago I was lucky to get three minute windows, followed by a five minute outage. So I started queueing up tweets to be sent whenever my connectivity returned with the “#comcastdoesn’tcare” tag.

That brought me to the attention of @comcastcares, whose very name is a lie.

It’s not my machine, because it happens on both hard-wired computers and on my WiFi connection.

I have replaced my cable modem (which led to Comcast taking the modem I owned and replacing it with one I have to fucking RENT) and it didn’t solve the problem. I replaced my router, my switch, and my WAP. It’s all brand new wire both inside and outside the house. I spent a small fortune in equipment hoping to find the defective little bit that was causing these problems and it’s absolutely nothing on my side.

If I call Comcast “technical support” (ha fucking ha) they tell me to reboot my computer. I explain that the problem is in their network, not mine, so jump ahead in the script or escalate me. They tell me to reboot my computer. If I do that (one time years ago when I did it I had a hard drive failure and lost 100gb of stuff I needed for audio production, too) or pretend to do it and the problem doesn’t clear up, they want me to take my computer down to the basement and plug it right into the modem. They must have a script that they’re forced to follow to try and solve minor problems that are on the user’s end, and if there’s a real problem they have no fucking clue what to do.

And I’m not alone. A while back people discovered that this sort of thing was happening back when Comcast was throttling bittorrent connections. RST packets were being sent to over-active users effectively killing their torrents. When the FCC came down on them, they said that they would stop interfering with specifically bittorrent traffic, and look into more modern “network shaping” efforts.

I will bet that’s exactly what’s going on with me. I have a lot of traffic, mainly VOIP but also video going to our TiVos and public domain video I download to work with for the eventual return of “The Idiot Box.” I’ve never gotten a high-traffic warning or notice from Comcast, so I assume I’m nowhere near their theoretical limit for “unlimited” service. However, my connections keep dying or freezing.

I’m left with no alternative but to assume that the RST floods from Comcast are continuing, and I’m one of the users that they’ve started targetting with them. I’ve seen no evidence to the alternative, and tech support wouldn’t be able to fix it if they could fix their ass with a blowtorch.

So, @comcastcares, if you want to “help” me, you’ll get Verizon to finish wiring our town for FiOS.

UPDATE: November 1, 2009 Got a call from Comcast, insisting that they’ve checked their network and that it’s officially not their fault. I take that as confirmation that this throttling is being done deliberately. Too bad they’re a monopoly, huh? Once more, "Comcast Doesn’t Care."