cellio | random bits

The good news is that our DVD player now works. The bad news is that the repair guy says he didn't do anything to it. All I did was to disconnect it, drive it to the repair place, wait several days, and pick it up. (Prior to that, of course, I had disconnected the cable, tested it, cleaned it, reconnected it, and still gotten no sound.) I had forgotten that repair folks have an uncanny knack of looking at a device and causing it to work. I wonder how long the effect lasts.

He also pointed out a test to eliminate the TV: run the signal through a VCR. Yeah, it degrades the signal and that's not a permanent solution, but it's good enough for a test. Running a DVD signal to a VCR never occurred to me -- but then, bootlegging DVDs onto tape never occurred to me, either.

At Shabbat services we had both rabbis, for the first time in at least a month. We also had a large turnout, including some prospective new members. I guess that's one way to tell that summer is ending. :-)

This week, my rabbi said, pretty much all of the congregations in town (not just Jewish, everyone) started organizing efforts to relocate storm refugees to Pittsburgh. (Those that want to come here, that is. No one's insisting, but we do have space.) Apparently we've got hundreds of spots already and buses ready to go, just as soon as FEMA will let us talk to the refugees and drive those buses in to get the ones who want to come.

This map shows some of the bigger disaster risks in the US (funny). I forget who provided the link.

There have been lots of posts on some SCA lists trying to organize replacement SCA stuff for the folks hit by the hurricane -- new garb, scrolls, etc. Their hearts are in the right places, but most of this seems months premature to me. Let those people get housing before you start saddling them with stuff!

Why do so many people on mailing lists believe that a major event trumps the topic of the list? These people seem to think that somehow you won't find out about national news if you don't read it on the SCA kingdom list -- as if that was each subscriber's only source of information. Sheesh. The people on the lists I frequent are being better about this than they were for 9/11, but still... I've been deleting a lot of stuff from the moderation queue for one list.

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PS: when we got evacuated from our rented condo/townhouse in Framingham in 1978, we luckily lost only the paper stuff in the basement, and all the labels on all the canned goods on the pantry shelves down there. We had time to move the cars, pack a bag, etc., because the water was rising about an inch an hour, and I told my profs I was going home to try to save what I could of my house. (Excused absence, duh!) My next door neighbor helped me raise my washer and dryer with concrete blocks and pallets until they almost touched the ceiling; we did the best we could for the other folks in the unit (most of them were quite elderly). (In case you're wondering, my (first ex-) husband stayed at work 30 miles away until I called him to say that if he wanted to be able to get into the house, he'd best get home.)

They finally evacuated us because the water was rising to the level of the building electrical boxes, and the tops of our porches. Thank the powers that the James only nearly filled our basement with water; we got nothing in the upstairs itself.

Throwing everything out, including the plasterboard walls that separated one basement from another, and then washing the whole place down with bleach solution afterward was not fun. My neighbor the fire fighter got a 3" pump for the 5 of us in the unit to pump out with. Which meant we could get into the basement and start work a lot sooner than folks who were using their hoses and syphoning. Which meant our mildew problem was a lot less than many others in the complex.

We saved our washer and dryer by washing with distilled water and then drying the motors in a 100 degree oven for several days; then the guys in my husband's department (all gadget geeks) cleaned out all the other mechanisms, and so on. What a relief!!

The mucking out of nasty stuff remains a horrific memory; we bought 2nd-hand waders to try and stay clean-ish, and washed our hands with 2% bleach every time we stopped working in the basement. And, we had to try and remember what had been in the cans on which shelves, as they had no labels anymore! Surprise, surprise, surprise!

There's some funny scenes in one of the Bagthorpe books (a kids series) when all the labels have been taken off cans (in a quest for entering competitions), and no one knows what anything is.

I suspect it's a lot funnier in fiction, though.

"Ok kids, tonight's dinner will be... (apply can opener)... chili! That's much better than last night's pumpkin, now isn't it?"

Yeah, that's got to be a lot funnier when it's not happening to you.

(Laughing!) For some reason, that reminds me of Miles Vorkosigan's mother and father, surviving on Oatmeal and Blue Cheese Dressing ;-)

The good news is that most of them were veggies or fruit.

Actually, they had a point system set up, for getting closer or less close to what was actually wanted.

Of course, compared to other things the Bagthorpes lived through, this was peanuts. (They're really funny books, but I'd be appalled to deal with a little kid who likes fires, floods, and writing on walls; many strong personalities; and a complete lack of concern for others.)

I'll ask my son if he's read them; if not, I'll drop by the library and see what they're like. Thanks!

Throwing everything out, including the plasterboard walls that separated one basement from another, and then washing the whole place down with bleach solution afterward was not fun.

That definitely sounds like a messy job, yes. I remember a flooded basement in our house when I was a teenager (I forget which storm caused it), but it was only a few feet, not all the way up. I shudder to think what the cleanup task would have been like if it the flood had been as bad as yours.

My parents still live in that house and it happened to them again last year with Ivan. Insurance covered the appliances that were totaled, which is a big help. No one in my family would have known to take apart the motor and dry it in the oven. :-)

No one in my family would have known to take apart the motor and dry it in the oven. :-)

There are advantages to hanging out with geeks. ;-)

I'm glad they had insurance. Dad's company tried to claim that it was the river flooding that caused the damage (not the hurricane) and therefore, since he didn't have flood insurance, they wouldn't do anything. FEMA got in their faces for them, and also picked up the difference between the insurance payment and total loss.

Our problem came not only from the river coming in the windows at the far end of the unit, but also from hydrostatic pressure (right whatsis name???), where the water leaks up through the concrete. Once we got all cleaned, the condo management painted the whole set of basements with some sort of sealant before we could move back in.

There were geeky arguments that sealing it would make all the units pop up out of the ground from water pressure, but I'm (again) unsure of the outcome, as I moved out in July of the next year (after the Gigantic 60" snowstorm, which coincided with my senior year in college...).

random bits

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unlabeled cans

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