Tag Archives: Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy – Update

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The preparations have been completed to the things I noted earlier. I was going to shut down the computer systems at 9:00 the earliest tomorrow morning, but I’ve decided to shut all systems down earlier than planned. I have 4 servers, 2 NT based ones for file/print sharing, and another one for the active directory, and a third running as a lab app server (trying to implement SharePoint) and a little Lacie network drive that attaches to my LAN. I did it remotely via my Remote Desktop Connection upstairs in my living room writing the story on my laptop and watching all local stations.
This is coming at the worst time of the year, one just another disaster to deal with, secondly we are approaching the holiday season. Veterans Day (a bank holiday – i.e. kids out of school), the Thanksgiving mini vacation, then the shopping seasons from mid November to just after New Years, and just the hustle and bustle and the ambient anxiety. This storm is just making the ambient rush just accelerate.  Maybe it would be best if I move to a new town, to a more quieter area or just people that don’t rush around.
As I am realizing my area isn’t going to get hit as I had thought of earlier, New York, D.C. and Southern New England are my concerns. From Mystic, Connecticut to D.C. from Battery Park City to Providence are somewhat troubling for me. I can’t imagine what these urban areas are going to go through. The suburban and rural and smaller communities have been a target by Mother Nature for the last few years. I’ll be monitoring the world south of me as long as I have power.
I think its best to not visit Southern New England or New York City later this year. My mother and I were planning to visit NYC the first week of September, and we have gone to the  LEGO KidsFest in Hartford the last 3 years and we visited Mystic, 3 weeks prior to last years Noreaster a year ago exactly to this day,
Its going to be somewhat troubling to witness this storm. It’s simply an understatement to even say that.

Disasters and Relationships

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I am attempting to put a current event that might be a big disaster in the coming days to an area that hurricanes happen once in a generation and how friendships and or other relationships correlate. 
I have personally had a crappy year to date in my life (as described in some of my posts.)  I just think part of it has to do of dealing with summer-like weather dating back from late February (the ant indicator as they invaded our kitchen) to now dealing with “stink bugs” invading my house. On top of dealing with summer 24×7 and just trying to get through a day to then start feeling a rumble that felt like an earthquake (that was in reference of an earthquake that occurred last Tuesday evening, the first-ever experience for this writer.)

Then I go back to my day to day life, wearing summer attire in late October, and going through other headaches, to then start to read headlines on Tuesday about Hurricane Sandy approaching the Northeast corridor of the U.S. This comes on the heels after a major fall snowstorm hitting my area a year ago to this day (that really caused gridlock); and the 21st anniversary of a “similar” Halloween storm that was the storyline in the major film The Perfect Storm.*  The weather people can’t predict this storm, and even the computer models are very conflicting! Talk about uncertainty! Never mind my social circle is small to begin with!
*take that film with a grain of salt, never seen the movie, because I heard inaccurate portrayals of the actors, it was dramatized of course!
these last few years have been pretty crazy in the Bad News Department. I’ll do a quick rundown of what happened in my region in the last 6 or so years alone:

  • In May 2006, we had 20″+ of rain falling during the week/end of Mothers Day
  • In late December 2008, we had a massive ice storm that paralyzed communities North of Boston
  • During late February of 2010, we experienced  some record warm temperatures (near 60 on some days) that lead in with a windstorm and a huge coldfront to hit my area on Friday, February 26th. This caused near hurricane grade winds with winter like weather on Saturday and March like weather on Sunday, then another warmfront the days after, with damages that caused widespread outages for power and telecommunications services for many areas for about a week!
  • Then, Hurricane Irene hitting the Northeast part of the US, including Washington, D.C., New York, Boston – while the real brunt of the storm effected the Carolinas, and Upstate New York and Interior parts of New England (something the mass media failed to cover.) This happened a few days after a large scale earthquake rocking the East Coast on August 23rd of last year.

As I am dealing with trying to prepare with ether flooding, or huge wind damage, I have a very small social circle. In the bullet point on the 2010 windstorm, I had “friends” in Middlesex and Essex Counties in Massachusetts that got unscathed. Unfortunately I was dealing with that cliche “bad things happen to good people” while the people that don’t get punished for being bad people. The ones in interest both live in cities where they never go offline, one of those cities was blacked out outside of the downtown area and this individual never knew what was happening until this individual went and looked out of their window.
Now granted these people don’t have TVs, they don’t have landline phones and are totally Internet Connected. (and because of their stupidity, things like the Emergency Alert System is getting pushed to cell and smartphones by new FCC rules) And that same stupidity of these people, are like I have described before; self-absorbed and if they did look out for me, it was half-assed anyways.
Then the social media aspect makes me just sick. The Weather Channel has not only dumbed down their website to the point they are attracting the socialites. It drives me nuts when I see the red banner on top of their website to click and “warn your friends”. Then I see the cable channel having graphics like “#sandy” to tweet the storm.
Sure I have family members  that we will be looking out each other during the storm, sure I’ll be hanging out with my mother as this storm approaches. But its the secondary relationships that really bothers me. I have had questionable “friends”, and I would logically assume that friends would reach out during times of trouble, whether they are personal or meteorological.
This storm is coming at the worst timing as I am trying to get a break from this stressful year. Now this storm may just cause even more and more stress, and I can’t wait till the end of the storm for the post-mayhem goes away, as we go into the holiday season of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas and then New Years.