Flotsam and jetsam

[gwyn]

Random things of today:

I completely forgot that I had access to a digital camera and could take, and share, the pictures of our big blizzard (yes, that's a joke) of yesterday. I did get five inches of snow in a 12-hour period, which was very cool, and everything looked exceptionally pretty, but I'm still not used to having real honest to god cool equipment around, and so I didn't even think of it. I could have taken pictures this morning of the aftermath -- the freezing rain that followed, and left my garden utterly destroyed. I was actually crying over my plants, because all the non-deciduous shrubs are pretty much goners and I will have to cut them down, since they've been bent over so badly or broken by the weight of snow and ice.

While I think Seattle and the northwest generally get carried away with the "snow storm of the decade!" coverage on television, I don't think it's that unreasonable to want to stay home and not go out in it. So I get weary of the transplants to the NW who go on and on about how Seattleites don't know what to do in snow; well, yes, we do, we usually have at least a few inches a year, but the thing is: you cannot drive in snow in Seattle or Portland. I learned to drive in snow when I was in Minnesota during a pretty serious blizzard, and there it was relatively sane, even in whiteout conditions. Because, you know, it's flat. When your entire city is built on insanely steep hills, and overpasses that are steep and/or go over water, so they ice up instantly, driving in snow, which always, always comes on top of a sheet of ice, just isn't this simple thing. Every time someone starts going on and on about the snow and how wimpy we are, I want to point at the auto body shop and say, well, okay, tell that to them. ;-)

I edit these case histories for our company, projects we've worked on, and today I got a doozy -- the Homeland Security agency. Man, oh man, do I have to put my personal politics aside when I read something about how they fiercely protect our freedom and our citizens, blah blah. I'm sitting there loudly muttering to the whole office, yeah, I guess they do this while they're destroying our inalienable, constitutional rights and putting our citizens in jail! Grrr. I'm willing to accept a lot of politics I don't agree with, but that Homeland Security thing is not one of them.

I am coming down from what sockkpuppett and sisabet were calling vid farr recently. I'm still twitching and itching to work on something, but don't have a macrovision hack to do the Firefly vid I want to, nor the Angel eps for that vid, but I'm just so psyched about my LFN vid I could plotz. Both morgandawn and barkley have kindly offered me the chance to maybe put the vid online if I can get it down in file size, and learn to do this online file thing, and I just may end up being selfish enough to take someone up on the offer. Being proud of my vids is uncharacteristic for me; mostly it's just that I've never done anything with edits like these, insanely fast and building and building, so that when I watched it, I found myself forgetting to breathe. It's to a techno song called Atom Bomb. I know there are hardly any folks who'd watch an LFN vid, but I'm still really psyched about finishing it and hope that the Club Vivid folks will accept it for the show at the next con.

Which leads to my last piece of info -- my external hard drive has arrived but due to weather, I still haven't picked it up yet or got set up with it. But this means that I can finally make copies of the Don't Fight in the Snow vid collection that feochadn and I put together last year at this time. We had a limited supply of DVDs, and those have run out, but with extra drive space, I can copy the source killabeez made for us (jesu christo, am I a name dropper today or what?) and make DVD copies of the vids for folks. It's a fairly disparate collection, with a vid each for LFN, Buffy (a Spike vid that's fairly angsty), Due South, Band of Brothers (this is Jo's famous vid to the aria Ebben? Ne andro lontana), Tombstone, Witchblade, Firefly, the Brit series Second Sight, and a couple vids for Magnificent 7 (we like cowboys. Sue us). All but one of the vids were made on VCRs. If you're willing to send me a postage paid envelope, I can send you a disc; I can also maybe arrange to send you two discs if you're interested in the five computer vids I've done since I got my iMac (Miracles, 2 Buffys - one a remake of an older B/A vid, LFN, Keen Eddie). Just contact me privately and I can give you the details. It might be a while before I figure out how to do this whole thing, but I'm assuming if all else fails, I'll yell for help.

Comments

[evemac.livejournal.com]

When your entire city is built on insanely steep hills, and overpasses that are steep and/or go over water, so they ice up instantly, driving in snow, which always, always comes on top of a sheet of ice, just isn't this simple thing.

I can't imagine what would happen if it snowed in San Francisco.

It just...doesn't compute. Driving would be physically impossible.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

It's pretty intense! And yeah, Seattle's an awful lot like SF, so... brrr. I used to always have to drive no matter what, so the studded tires and front wheel drive were godsend, but it just doesn't help when you're caught on a 15% grade.

[minim_calibre]

As a Seattle native, who does know how to drive in the snow, chose not to yesterday, and saw a bit of red when I saw non-residents mocking our snow ability online, thank you.

I'm not sure how much damage my garden took yet. Most of it should be fine, and the roses were due for a bit of a pruning. I'm a little worried that there will be downed branches in the backyard from the neighbours' trees, though.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Man, I hope you didn't have any downed trees or power outages! I was shocked how many people I saw on the way home tonight without power. And my feet may never warm up from all the sloggy slushy slogging.

[minim_calibre]

Nope! And our bent bushes are now mostly upright, and there seems to have been a minimum of damage.

Things are warm, bright, and soggy here.

[kumi.livejournal.com]

I was shocked how many people I saw on the way home tonight without power.

I was one of them. I lost a power for 16 hours.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

There's also the fact that places like Minnesota and Cleveland are used to dealing with snow, so they have the plows and the salt crews all up and running, continuously, and with a broad enough coverage. Columbus is a lot flatter than the Cleveland area, but it was a lot harder to deal with in the snow, because they just didn't have the crews to get things under control.

And, uh, I'm interested in the vids but in no way organized enough to send a postage paid envelope--I suck mightily at such things (haven't sent half my holiday cards *yet*!)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

It's really true -- while we have plows, they can't get to the really steep hills anymore than our cars can, and they're usually trying to plow the main roads, anyway. Which leaves a lot of us out in the...er... cold. I did learn this weekend though that I don't want to use sodium chloride on my walkways and such to melt ice -- I want calcium chloride because it's safe for plants and such. Which was kind of a cool thing to pick up in the midst of all that.

And for you, punkin, anything can be arranged, re the discs. ;-)

[umbo.livejournal.com]

*smootch*

(I have to admit I was kinda hoping you'd say something like that ;-)

Firefly, vids, NaA

[claudia-yvr.livejournal.com]

You've got mail :-)

[varina8.livejournal.com]

When your entire city is built on insanely steep hills, and overpasses that are steep and/or go over water, so they ice up instantly, driving in snow, which always, always comes on top of a sheet of ice, just isn't this simple thing. Every time someone starts going on and on about the snow and how wimpy we are, I want to point at the auto body shop and say, well, okay, tell that to them. ;-)

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post. I walked most of the way home last night because some idiot in a pick-up with nothing in the bed felt a burning need to go up 10th East from Roanoke, despite the Do Not Enter sign. He, of course, went sideways and took out the lane, blocking three buses.

Every time I hear the mantra about how good the winter drivers are in [fill in the Midwest or Eastern state], I want to suggest that the speaker consider living in one of those states instead. I grew up in snow country, own a set of chains and know how to put them on and drive with them. That said, if given my druthers, I'll usually grab the vacation day, walk or bus. Frankly, very few people's jobs are so crucial to the running of the city that they can't stay home for one day.

[klia.livejournal.com]

Every time I hear the mantra about how good the winter drivers are in [fill in the Midwest or Eastern state], I want to suggest that the speaker consider living in one of those states instead.

*g* Well, yeah, I can understand that. The thing I found after moving from IL to CA was, people drive stupidly in bad weather no matter where you live. Here, where winter is rainy/foggy, there are idiots going 90 on the freeways during torrential rain and in low visibility. And people wonder why there are so many crashes. I mean, duh, get a clue.

Frankly, very few people's jobs are so crucial to the running of the city that they can't stay home for one day.

There's a very different attitude in the Midwest. After the blizzard of '79 (30" of snow on the ground), and also during severe cold snaps in later years (-27F, wind chill -80F), people were still expected to show up at work. And those who couldn't make it in were forced to use a vacation day, which is just stupid. I think that happened to movies_michelle, yesterday, though, so apparently, that dumbass attitude that you should risk life and limb just to go to work is spreading.

[varina8.livejournal.com]

There's a very different attitude in the Midwest.

That's true. Of course, there they also have snow clearing equipment and salt trucks by the fleet. Here you only get that quantity of heavy equipment in the mountains where it is needed regularly. Plus drivers generally treat mountain snow with a certain wary respect.

You're right about the change in attitude toward snow. I so remember that Midwest attitude of show up with your shield or on it. The only time my grade school closed for weather, it hit -17. I figured that the nuns didn't care because they lived right next door.

When I got to Seattle 20 years ago, I was startled by the way people would casually take the day off and go sledding on the streets or break out their cross-country skis. There was an assumption that a day or two off work was far cheaper than investing taxes in equipment that the city only needed for two weeks out of the year. That attitude seemed to change when the economy heated up.

I've had jobs both here and in the Midwest where I was classified as "necessary personnel," which meant I would show up or face possible termination. It's a relief to not be in that position anymore.

[klia.livejournal.com]

I've had jobs both here and in the Midwest where I was classified as "necessary personnel," which meant I would show up or face possible termination. It's a relief to not be in that position anymore.

Yikes, I can only imagine. It sure sounds awful. I'm really glad you got out!

[kathyh]

I know there are hardly any folks who'd watch an LFN vid, but I'm still really psyched about finishing it

Well, I'd watch it. I'm in the UK and actually getting to see LFN at all was a major achievement. One of our channels put it on in the middle of the night, changed the timeslot without notice, took it off for weeks on end with no warning, but we persisted. We haven't watched Season 5 yet, and we're missing the first half of Season 1, but we're really proud of ourselves for defeating the TV schedulers and getting most of the series on video.

Sorry about the snow and the plants. Having seen a bus slide into a tram in snow (fortunately no one was hurt) on a completely flat surface I don't blame you for not wanting to drive. We're usually warned not to drive in snow here unless our journey is absolutely necessary.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Cool! Well, at least there'll be one person who might want to check this out if I can figure out a way to get it online. That's the big question, though -- even though morgan's walking me through a lot of it and offering space, I still am like, "DUH?"

I had no idea LFN had been so difficult to get over there -- I'd heard they had troubles with first series, but then I thought for some reason it had settled down. I swear, Warner Bros. is the stupidest company around -- they just have no idea what they have, and no idea how to promote interest in it. Here's a thought: If you let the fans see the whole series, then... gasp! They might become fans and watch the rest!

[jidabug.livejournal.com]

So I get weary of the transplants to the NW who go on and on about how Seattleites don't know what to do in snow; well, yes, we do, we usually have at least a few inches a year, but the thing is: you cannot drive in snow in Seattle or Portland.

A-freaking-men. It's actually pretty flat in most of Portland (at least in downtown and most of the burbs), but I still decided to not risk it yesterday. We just don't have the resources to keep the roads clear. Even today, it was a bit dicey out there. They just don't make allowances for what is *normal* and what is not. Tons of snow and ice around here? Not normal. So, when I hear about the superiority of drivers in places that are used to snow, I just raise an eyebrow and ask archly, "And how are you in the rain?" Because, honestly, they usually have no clue about driving in that. /rant

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I heard that you guys also can't use things like salt to de-ice because of the environmental concerns. Sand just doesn't help on sheets of ice! I wonder why they won't use calcium chloride... oh well. When that wind and snow comes out of the gorge, there's not a whole heck of a lot of hope for a city with most of its roads on overpasses above water. Yoiks!

[jidabug.livejournal.com]

I heard that you guys also can't use things like salt to de-ice because of the environmental concerns.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they don't salt the roads. Run off into the rivers would be a Bad Thing (not that that stops them dumping god knows what else into them).

When that wind and snow comes out of the gorge, there's not a whole heck of a lot of hope for a city with most of its roads on overpasses above water.

They had an interesting article in The Oregonian this morning about Portland's micro-climates, between the rivers, the west hills, the coastal range, and the gorge, we get some weird stuff in different parts of the region. Almost as fun as predicting what will happen in the Sound region.