Well, despite what some people might have thought or believed, I am still alive. :-)

We actually didn’t fare too badly. Despite losing power relatively early (11:30 PM on Friday night) and the storm being as loud and blustery as you’ve probably heard on the news, it actually caused very minimal damage. The back yard flooded and the front yard was littered with branches and assorted tree debris, but the worst that happened to us was the fact that a thirty foot section of our back fence was knocked down. We didn’t lose water service and the house is intact.

As far as food and water goes, we’ve been good. Our stove is electric, but we do have a propane grill in the back yard we’ve been using to cook on. We also have plenty of water and non-perishable food. It also helps that restaurants in the area have been opening; Monday night we all went to Texas Roadhouse at I-45 and FM 1960 for dinner, and tonight we’re meeting at the Denny’s by my dad’s office for dinner. Also, my preferred Chinese takeout place is open. We’re okay in that respect.

My main gripe right now is about the power situation. If the CenterPoint map is to be believed, my house probably won’t get power back until after Monday. I admit I’ve been going nuts without power; I’ve already been entertaining myself by spending an hour a night on the internet using my work laptop and its cell broadband card, and by watching stuff on my iPod like the Doctor Who serial “Tomb of the Cybermen” and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The thing that’s been worrying me is the fact that I’d start losing email if my servers didn’t get power. The backup mail servers can hold mail for about a week before expiring it, and it’s coming up on a week. So, my boss has been nice enough to let me bring the servers to the office and let me host them here until such time as I get power at home. Hopefully it’ll be back soon… I’m going nuts there, plus without my Playstation 2 my nightly exercise routine is suffering.

Ah, well. That’s where things stand on my end. Life is settling back to normal, and we were pretty damned lucky, all things considered. I’ll just keep trucking along.

My parents and I have done everything we can to batten down the hatches, so to speak. Now there’s nothing for us to do but wait for Ike to hit. I’ve got my TV set to the local Fox affiliate, and am keeping an eye on it. Things don’t look good. The storm is still several hours from hitting us, yet Galveston and Kemah are already experiencing flooding. This isn’t confirmed, but there’s word that at a 3 PM CDT press conference, the mayor of Galveston will announce that the island will be underwater for twelve hours or so.

What gets me are the people who are still at Galveston who are gawking and sightseeing. This is going to be a dangerous storm; it’s so bad that the National Weather Service has said that anyone remaining in Galveston will face “certain death”. The one that got me was this one woman late last night on Galveston Beach who was there with her three or four young children (one in a stroller). A Channel 2 reporter asked her point blank why she was there when there was a mandatory evacuation order. Her response was, “I don’t believe that the storm is going to hit here. I have faith in God and He is not going to let it hit us.” The reporter mentioned that meteorologists were saying it would hit, and she just shook her head and said it would keep moving east. I’d admire her faith if she wasn’t risking her children as well as herself.

As for me… I’m going to stay here and keep online until it’s time for me to go to bed or until the power goes out, whichever comes first. If you want to chat, you can find me on the Mortal Kombat Online IRC channel, or if you have my IM information I’ll be on there. Once power goes out I’ll be restricting communications to SMS. We’ll see how it goes.

My friend Sinc just pointed me to a page where two webcams had been set up watching the Large Hadron Collider. It’s very interesting (if dry) viewing… if you want to take a look, just go to the following link. :-)

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Apparently someone really has it in for us. After Dolly, Edouard, and Gustav failed to hit us, it looks like Ike is going to give us a more or less direct hit. Actually, considering the size of Ike, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a direct hit; no matter where it makes landfall at this point, we’ll still be affected by it. Wonderful.

Before anyone asks, we have no plans to evacuate. We’ve got five pets, and the cats and dogs hate each other. It doesn’t help that the dogs are big enough where there isn’t enough room for all of us in Mom’s van. The city’s pretty much given out a “shelter in place” order, so it’s probably best if we stay off the roads. We’ll probably end up spending tomorrow getting the house prepared; I know Dad was hoping for a large-scale test of the new water pumping system for the back yard we put in, and he may well end up getting it.

On a communications front, well… seeing as this site (and most of my email) is hosted at the house, I fully expect the site to be down for at least a couple of days due to power issues. Those of you with email hosted here need not worry overmuch; the backup mail server is in Minneapolis and will hold incoming email until we’re back online here. As far as communications with me go, well… once power goes out, the best way to reach me will probably be via SMS, as it uses far less power than voice calls do. I have a pair of cell phones with charged batteries I can use once the iPhone’s battery gives out. (Thank goodness the iPhone’s SIM card can be removed.) I’ll send text messages to certain people during the storm to let you all know how we’re holding up.

Ah, well. We’ll be getting out of work at noon today so we can prepare for the storm. Hopefully things will be all right. I’ll let you all know where things stand as they progress.

Kerri-Leigh linked to this blog post over on her LiveJournal. I did some checking and found the image is actually relatively old… relatively meaning it was reported on Kotaku and other sites nearly a year ago.

In a way, I’m not really surprised. In the time I’ve worked over at Mortal Kombat Online, I’ve heard plenty of stories about kids who started playing Mortal Kombat games when they were around four years old. Not that I would ever approve, mind… of course, I was 18 when Mortal Kombat first hit arcades. Still, Mortal Kombat (outside of most of the games, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe excepted) has been aimed at a kid audience, with movies, costumes, a cartoon show, toys, etc. The Grand Theft Auto series has NEVER been aimed at a kid audience, and in its own way this horrifies me more, as Grand Theft Auto is more true-to-life than Mortal Kombat. (I’ve seen far more thugs out there on the streets than undead ninjas or thunder gods.)

I don’t know. All I can say is that I look at a picture like this and hope to God that this isn’t an indication of where our society is headed. Unfortunately, the cynic in me believes it is.

All right, I have to admit to amusement.

My friend Jesse (aka Dementia) goes to Dragon*Con every year, and is heavily into costuming. Every year, she enters in Dragon*Con’s Dawn look-alike contest. Don’t ask me who Dawn is; I’m more of a mainstream comics type person. Well, it appears that this year she got a pretty big sign that she may have been at it for too long.

Like I said, I had to laugh. I also got a kick out of the “CHUG OH GOD CHUG” one. :-) Maybe one of these years I’ll go out and see what it’s all about. We’ll see…