dominic eidson: Tag hulksmash

Hurricane Ike and chance of rain...

Dominic — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:57:00 -0500

This is what we did at work thursday:

Indicate on this page how many inches of rain
you think we'll get, and how many GW's you put 
on your guess.

(We'll audit the edit history -
no last-minute changes saturday through monday)

    * 3.00" - D***** - $1
    * 0.5" - M***** - $1
    * 2.78" - M***** - $1
    * 0.00" - R***** - $1,000,000 (real money)
    * 1.5" - C***** - $1
    * 1.6" - C***** - 1 latte (true currency)
    * 1.4" - C***** - $1 
    * 3.5" - B***** - $1
    * 0.75" @ ABIA - S***** - $1
    * Trace - R***** - $1

On the flip side, the last 3 days have been spent coming up with disaster scenarios and how to keep hospital systems running despite any disasters…

I figured we needed a break for some silliness.

The internet is down, please wait....

Dominic — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:42:00 -0600

This posting is mostly for my friends who may or many not be internet-savvy enough to know how to look past all the fear mongering and hyperbole that’s been put out there by media regarding the recent network cable breaks overseas.

I will try to summarize the information that was presented here, here, here and here - if you want more in-depth, please to go those links. :)

In a nutshell: Last week two undersea cables were cut in the Mediterranean north of Egypt. Whether this was an accident or not is still to be determined. The affected cables were SEA-ME-WE-4 and FLAG Europe-Asia.

The countries hardest affected by these cable cuts were Egypt, Pakistan, India and Kuwait.

Iran, contrary to common belief, was not even in the 10 top affected countries, despite having lost approx. 20% of it’s connectivity.

Don’t get me wrong, losing 20% of a countries internet connectivity is bad - real bad - but nothing compared to the 90+ percent for Egypt and Pakistan.

An interesting point of note, is that many of the countries have managed to recover some of their lost connectivity - but they’re far from being out of the woods. And even if in the next week or so more of the connectivity is re-established, it won’t be until cable repairs are completed that the internet for those affected, will be back at full speed. (Currently, some of Europe is getting across the Mediterranean via the US and Asia….)

Attempted burglary

Dominic — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:14:00 -0600

Saturday, while I was in the Barton Creek greenbelt in Austin, someone attempted to burgle my truck. Fortunately a fellow rock climber witnessed the act and scared the perpetrator away - unfortunately he did not get the perpetrator’s buddy’s truck license plate.

This all happened about 5 minutes before I showed up. Bummer. Had I not tried to go after that one geocache, I might have seen them in the process of jacking my truck. That would’ve been interesting.

I wonder how I’d react when confronted with someone breaking into my vehicle.

They didn’t get in to the truck, but they did do some body damage to the truck door. I don’t have comprehensive insurance coverage, so I’ll be footing the bill on the repairs myself. Hope it won’t be too expensive.

What do you get...

Dominic — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:31:00 -0600

When you combine the following:

30-40 foot waves
a small ferry (that’s a car-carrying boat)
motor trouble
The semi-truck of doom

… Carnage:

Basically, a small ferry was on its way from Norway to the Faeroes, and ended up having motor trouble due to the height of the waves. (Waves too big, boat too small, propeller comes out of water when boat is on top of a wave) This led to some extra swinging around, which toppled the truck, and damaged some-160 cars.

Click the picture for the full story (in Norwegian.)