unexpected
Tonight I stepped off the train at 5:45pm and saw the last bit of orange and red sliding from the western sky. It was a slim bit of hope that bolstered my spirits and filled me with warmth.
the undead are in Austin — and are city employees!
A couple pranksters changed the message on two portable road-traffic signs in Austin, TX recently. They were warning drivers, and rightfully so, of the impending zombie attack.
http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/Road_signs_warn_of_zombies
Little did the hackers realize that the zombies are apparently already on the Austin Public Works payroll. See this sad-to-the-point-of-amusement quote:
"Even though this may seem amusing to a lot of people, this is really serious, and it is a crime," said Austin Public Works spokesperson Sara Hartley. "And you can be indicted for it, and we want to make sure our traffic on the roadways stays safe."
This attitude, this complete inability to laugh off a harmless (yes, harmless) prank, especially during a time of severe stress and anxiety in our nation, is just sad. Criminal charges? Indictments? Give me a break, Austin Public Works. You were 0wned on 2 whole road signs for part of one morning. Get over it and move on.
negative 10 deg F
I had two rolls of film developed recently. On one roll were my photos from January 15th and 16th. You may recall that those were the days when it was bitterly cold (-18 deg).
Well, around 4:30 pm, on January 15th it was a balmy -10 deg F. with a wind-chill of around -20. Walking from work to the train station I encountered the following scene:
I don't know why he was wearing only a thin sweatshirt, shorts, and below-ankle socks...but he was. A very dangerous thing to do...
yellow and blue
What to say? There was another (apparent) suicide, this morning, along the Metra train line I use. This time it was in Palatine. It was not my train but two trains in front of us.
Seeing a person covered by a plastic sheet on TV is an abstraction. Seeing a plastic sheet half-on and half-off the railroad tracks 5 feet from you, as your train creeps by at a few miles per hour, is a blow to the stomach. The police mill around, waiting for the coroner. The railroad employees cluster together waiting to (I'm assuming) inspect the track and the train. No one is near the body or even really looking that way. The person is a Something that has Happened. They are alone along the tracks where they came to rest.
Today, the person was covered in blue plastic. The last time this happened, there was one person, but there were two separate pieces of yellow plastic along the rails. I say this not to disturb or disgust but to impart a sense of importance: When you are around trains, please be aware. While this person (appeared to) set out to kill himself, there are others that are left alone along the tracks covered in plastic because of stupidity, because of ignorance, and because of carelessness. Don't be any of those things. Be safe and be smart.
unsure of how I did it, but I did
I did not have the car towed last night. The truck wasn't going to get there until 12:45 am and I wasn't going to go out in the cold and come back by 2:00 am only to get up again at 5:30. So I left the car in the parking lot over night and called a cab to drive me to the station in the morning.
It was -22 this morning. I don't know what the windchill was but it cut deep into my body. It was very cold. The trains were running late but no one knew that. So we all filed out of the station and stood on the platform only to have an express train whip by at 60 mph blowing snow and even more cold air (was it possible?) through our bones.
Through a complicated series of events that are needless to describe, Heather ended up at the train station with a tow truck tonight at 5:00 or so. On the off chance the car would start, she tried it. And lo and behold, the car (eventually) started. No jump, no chicken's blood, no nothing. The tow truck driver said it smelled like I had flooded the car. If I had, I have no idea how I did it. Maybe, because I was wearing boots (which I almost never drive in), when I sat down in the car last night I hit the accelerator pedal? I don't know....but leave it to me to screw up starting a car.
Anyway, Heather was nice enough to hang out while my car warmed up and Nate got to sit in the drivers seat of the tow truck. Hooray for nice tow truck drivers. 
After she was satisfied the car wasn't going to up and quit again, she left and my train pulled in 15 minutes later. I had a (relatively speaking) warmed up car to drive home. Thank you, dear.
Tomorrow it's going to be 21 or 22 deg. F above zero. A 40 degree temperature shift in one day. Amazing.
waiting for a call that will probably not come
My car failed to start for me after I got off the train this evening. It doesn't appear to be a battery issue and the tank was completely full of fuel so I have no clue what is the problem. It almost started but then died again.
I'm very grateful that I didn't have to sit in the cold car for more than 30 minutes or so before Heather's dad was able to come over and pick me up. (We tried jumping the car but that lead us to diagnose it as something other than the battery.)
We called AAA for a tow to our nearby mechanic, after a 20 minute wait on-hold they responded. This weather is hard on everyone. At 7pm they said it could be any time between then and 11pm before a truck would be able to get there. It's now 11:30 and I'm on hold again wondering if I should just call it off. I've already scheduled a cab for a pickup tomorrow. I really don't want to have Heather go over there with Nate and try and coordinate moving the car in the afternoon.... Frustrating.
Anyway, I'm sitting here dressed and ready to go, as I have been for 2 hours, waiting for a call that will probably not come
glad for the snow, not the cold
I've said it before, but I'll take gobs and gobs of snow over the cold any day. Tomorrow and Friday though, it appears the opposite will be occurring.
When I get on the train in the morning, I could be standing in temps of -16 deg F and wind chills of -35 deg F.
On Friday morning, if the forecast holds, the temps in the morning should be -19 deg F with wind chills of -40 deg F. I don't know what that will feel like, but I imagine it won't feel good. I wish I had purchased a winter face mask.
cetan dot org update
Just a quick update on my photoblog: cetan.org.
- Because only files and not the database were lost, I was able to reinstall the software and pick up where I left off. The problem, however, is that because the files are missing, the photo-portion of the blog is just empty past a certain date.
- Because I'm a stickler for details, I set up the software to not obfuscate the filenames of the images I uploaded. So I could, technically, retrieve all the filenames of the images from the database, match these to files on my computer, and copy the files up to the server, thus restoring the site. However, even with this information, it will be a lot of work, and I would still (probably) need to create all the thumbnails by hand. I'm holding out on possible data recovery from the problem hardware.
- cetan.org is syndicated on LiveJournal as
cetan_rss but they still are having problems with external feeds. Entries in the photoblog are not showing up for hours and hours. Silly LJ.
And I guess that's it for now. I'm trying to update once a day during the week mostly from the archives right now. I've been shooting film during the lunch hour and don't have anything developed yet, so it'll be a bit before anything "new" shows up. Also, the weather has made walking difficult and this weeks' range of high temps doesn't really help matters any.
saying cheese
Packing up after the end of our Cousin's Camp-out weekend in July.
Nate saying "cheese!" in the most earnest way!
I know, I should be fixing cetan.org and posting all these wonderful (to me) archive finds there, but I'm lazy and this works...
still sick
It's very hard to entertain a two and a half year-old when everyone is sick. We did go out for a little bit today (the first I'd been outside since Tuesday evening). I'm not horribly sick, but I'm just not feeling well. I wish my throat didn't hurt so much.
So much for my second bit of vacation.