Forum Moderators: phranque
As always,
Good luck,
Be Safe,
Backup Your Data.
Chris from Miami FL
This is a great ground radar image that is updated in near-realtime:
[radar.weather.gov...]
I am in Virginia this year but will finally be back there in 4 months. I am moving to Tampa in mid December!
You're nuts! I used to live in a small town in Virginia and moved to the Tampa area about 8 years ago. Aside from meeting my wife down here, I wish I had stayed in VA - I'll be moving back there within the next two years when after I sell my company. Way too much growth here. Two years ago I was out in the sticks, now there is freaking Super Walmart everywhere, a ton of traffic, and people that just mill around like zombies. You don't know how good you have it :)
Anyway back to the hurricane ... I guess I'm alone with my thinking :) I could care less if electricity went away permanently. I have two months worth of military rations, I know how to hunt and fish, and I can purify river or pond water if necessary. That's how I vacation - so a few days or even a week without modern conveniences would be like another vacation for me, heh. As long as the house was still there and everything, of course.
What I meant about the Pepsi thing is that if you just want something to drink, get stuff like that. I know people who NEVER drink water, but when they mention a hurricane on the news they go out and buy 10 gallons of bottled water... it's insane. Pick up two-liter bottles of whatever and keep that for drinking - it's less expensive than water anyway. Instead of buying bottled water pick up a water jug or cooler ... you know, like the things they have at your kid's ball game usually 10 or 20 gallons, sometimes more. Fill it up with tap water. In some cases the cost of that jug will be less than the cost of bottled water anyway. Don't DRINK the water unless you have to, use it for everything else you might need water for. Fill the bath tub with water for flushing the toilet (if you can) and nothing more ... don't scrub your bath tub so you can drink from it, just fill it up and leave a bucket nearby. When you gotta flush, dump enough water into the toilet from the tub to cause the toilet to flush.
As for light, the best thing you can get is one of those re-chargeable lanterns. Wal-Mart sells one by Coleman for around $30 that has AC and DC cords for charging. If you're without power for an extended period, you can charge the lantern off of your car's cigarette lighter. Don't use candles unless you're the type of person who regularly uses candles ... those who only use candles when the power goes out end up burning their houses down because they forget about things like wind or how flamable polyester is :P
If you don't have a DC/AC Inverter get one - you plug it into your car cigarette lighter and it gives you one or two regular AC electric outlets. When it's time for dinner if you don't own a gas grill, you can hook up one of those George Foreman grills and stuff like that. Don't waste your car battery on your laptop, ok geeks? :)
Also, if you have a gas generator, make sure you use it OUTSIDE people ... don't put it in the garage and turn it on unless that garage door is wide open. The carbon monoxide will either choke you to death or the fumes will cause a pretty severe fire hazard.
One more thing for those of you who have to evacuate - shut off your water main before you go. If your house isn't destroyed, the last thing you will want to deal with when you come back is water/sewer/septic backups, which sometimes happen with excessive flooding. You don't want any water coming in or going out of your house while you're not there and it's just something most people don't think about until they come back.
LMAO - hmmm, wonder if we live in the same town ;). It is the first thing visiting family and friends say "What, is there a super walmart every ten miles?" to which we answer, "yep". We used to be the sticks as well, well, stickier than now LOL. Last three years everything here has exploded. I was born and raised a Jersey girl and long for "home" LOL - FL has big bugs, too much humidity and of course, too many hurricanes ;).
I'm in north Tampa but at the rate Frances is weakening, we are only expecting a tropical depression by the time it crosses Florida.
Going back to San Fran when I graduatate. Give me a earthquake to a hurricane anyday... It is the waiting that sucks.
I'm in Arizona and only have 100+ temps to deal with right now.
I do use a hosting company in Orlando, FL though and am concerned and wondering if I should switch to another hosting company or wait and see? They have redundancies in place, but for shared servers only one location from what I can tell.
At least it's a major holiday weekend for US based traffic and I expect my sites to be really slow.
Any recommendations?
To each his own. Personally, I would rather be picked up by a tornado and hurled to my death than live in a small town in virginia.
<<I could care less if electricity went away permanently.>>
Sweet! Military rations! That is my second favorite thing to eat after Surf and Turf :)
The main thing you missed is that without electricity there is no freaking air conditioning, which means, it will be 100 degress inside the house...Personally, if the electricity goes out, I head to a hotel and stay until all is back to normal.
Anyhoo, onto the saftey tips..
First back up to your HD, take it out of your computer and take it with you.
Bathtub idea is a must, nothing's worse than taking a dump and realizing you can't flush the toilet...
Forget taping your windows, if they're gonna break, tape isn't going to stop it. It will just be another chore when the storm passes.
Get your gas NOW. If you're evacuating, you're probably going to get stuck in traffic, and if you are staying, you might want to leave what's left of your house when it's done.
Food is good. Especially food you don't have to cook or keep cold.
Now would be a good time to get to know your neighbors, you may need them soon or they may need you.
Above all else, hide! This is not the time to become an amateur storm photographer. It's not the wind that kills, it the sh** flying in the wind that tends ruin a persons day.
You're nuts! I used to live in a small town in Virginia and moved to the Tampa area about 8 years ago. Aside from meeting my wife down here, I wish I had stayed in VA
Well... I kinda have to move - I am in the Navy and chose orders there. I like the job I will be doing there.
What I meant about the Pepsi thing is that if you just want something to drink, get stuff like that. I know people who NEVER drink water...
Uhh... I have someone that used to work with me on my ship that never drank water - just Coke. I drank 6 sodas last cruise (6 month deployment); for him, that was a slow morning. Oh... and he was taken to Medical after he hit the deck in severe pain due to a kidney stone. 3 days later, a morphine drip and gallons of water to flush it out, he got out. Honestly, he didn't learn much though - now he drinks a little water but still 90% Coke...
Sorry if that sounds a bit preachy - I really don't want to do that, but I don't want people to hurt their system by not drinking water. My Wonderful Wife showed me the importance of drinking a good amount to water daily.
The great news is that Frances is losing strength quickly... hopefully it won't re-strengthen before it hits. Of course, all of that rain and surge will still cause alot of damage.
Keep it Safe everyone!
Matt
Oh, I am so guilty of that. I drink like a 12 pack a day. Haven't learned my lesson either. I swear, it's addictive. I'd rather quit smoking than drinking soda.
On my server, I tarred and gzipped my ecommerce catalog configuration and data, my customized Interchange source, the whole home and httpd directories, and etc - all the stuff that would be difficult or time consuming to redo from scratch. I then bought a "internet data store" account from some provider in TX, I can store 5 gigs for $10/month . I ftped everything over in just a few minutes.
My DNS is run "reverse secondary" with ultradns. To the outside, ultradns is the first name server, but it's a slave to the name server on my machine. If my machine goes down, I can click a button at ultradns and my zones there will all switch to primary. I also run a low TTL.
I figure I could have another box up in a day or two.
Jeff
Good luck everyone! Be Safe!
I don't believe I would like a hurricane.
I've been thru several. I remember standing outside in the eye of Carla [srh.noaa.gov], the first such storm I can remember. I liked that, but I was young.
Florida is not a good place to be right now. If you have to be there, try to get where the eye will pass over you. That way, you can watch all the lawn furniture being chased by the trees going the opposite direction.
But not bad at all. Infact my AC just broke so we openned up our doors to pull out some of the hot air and replace it with cool hurricane air. Just shows that in South Miami currently it isnt bad at all.
I do use a hosting company in Orlando, FL though and am concerned and wondering if I should switch to another hosting company or wait and see? They have redundancies in place, but for shared servers only one location from what I can tell.
Sweet! Military rations! That is my second favorite thing to eat after Surf and Turf :)The main thing you missed is that without electricity there is no freaking air conditioning, which means, it will be 100 degress inside the house...Personally, if the electricity goes out, I head to a hotel and stay until all is back to normal.
The ravioli tastes just like Chef Boyardee. And like Chef Boyardee it's no Five-Star meal, but it's not so terrible that it makes you gag. Though for some reason all I can picture right now is Dave Chapelle saying "Mmmm mmmm, bi---" :P I really don't mind being without electricity or the heat ... I've been to parts of Africa and the Middle East and see what real heat without air conditioning is like :) Besides, what were we all planning to do this weekend? Outdoor Barbeque! No electricity required for that anyway :)
Off topic fun fact: "Chef Boyardee" is not the fictional character formed from the names Boyd, Art, and Dennis as many people believe. A real person, Hector Boiardi, was born in northern Italy in 1898 and was a culinary servant before immigrating to America at the age of 17. His spaghetti sauce became famous throughout Cleveland and the demand grew so large that he started producing it and selling it with dry pasta. He formed the company name "Chef Boyardee" because he thought it would be easier for Americans to spell. Eventually he merged his company with American Home Foods (now International Home Foods) and worked for that corporation until his death in 1985. And now you know ..... the rest of the story. :P
Sorry if that sounds a bit preachy - I really don't want to do that, but I don't want people to hurt their system by not drinking water. My Wonderful Wife showed me the importance of drinking a good amount to water daily.
Yeah, well now they have laser kidney stone removal so drink up, baby! :)
That's comforting to know about the decent datacenters being able to withstand a category 5 hurricane.
I'm no expert, but the hosting company I'm talking about (not sure if I'm supposed to use names) does appear to be "decent" or a lot better looking at their datacenter pictures and reading the features such as redundant power supplies including Diesel Generator, a facility located in the heart of the downtown Orlando's business district with premises provided by multiple tier 1 and tier 2 providers (connects to multiple backbones via OC-3 an OC-192 lines).
I'll stick with them as I've also had no major problems in the past and good support.
dbar
p.s. Mfishy your sticky is full.
Stay indoors, stay safe and keep your heads down! Remember your bathroom is the safest room in the house! Be sure to check in when it has passed.
Remember your bathroom is the safest room in the house!
My bathroom roof, where it joins the house is leaking badly right now :(
But we still have power, so I'm not complaining. Having fun watching the realtime radar:
[radar.weather.gov...]
(just set to reload the page every five minutes)
ps. its really funny to watch the car dealership commercials in between the reporters standing out on the beach in 80-100 mph winds - I guess this labor day is really going to be an economic disaster
It's moving closer to us now - they expect the worst will be tonight (if you believe the news - which I swear hypes it up for the ratings) - half of our fence is currently in my neighbors backyard LOL. As said above, I've still got power and Internet for the moment, so I'm not complaining.
This is the most of a hurricane we've seen in quite a few years in our area. I have decided that A: I seriously hate Florida, B: I'm moving out of Florida and C: I hate Florida. ;)
Stay safe on the east coast - I know you guys are getting it even worse.
Hope everyone in Florida is well - stay safe.
Light-Medium Wind and Light-Medium Rain. I really want to go out to breakfast but nothing is open... grrrr...
I am so happy I didnt take my university up on the offer to house me in their dorms. The people that did haven't been allowed to leave the floor (no elevators, stairs are outside) for 48 hours now. A floor houses about 16 double occupancy walk in closet sized dorm rooms. That would of been hell... especially since I have yet to lose power.
