Regular readers will recall that a little while back I said we’d be away for a while due to the death of a friend. Truth be told, his loss was, at the time, the latest in a long string of Very Hard Things 2015 had handed us.
It seems, however, that June might bright A New Hope. (Sorry) But, before we get to the good stuff, let’s go over where we’ve been, shall we?
I think there may have actually been danger of having some sort of geek singularity of awesomeness form on stage.
But before I tell you what I am talking about, some context.
So here’s a story about something that happened to us a while ago when the U.S. played Portugal in the World Cup.
Continue reading “The World Cup, Dinner and Wardrobe Choices”
If you live in the Boston area, odds are at some point you have seen Keytar Bear performing in or near an MBTA station. He’s one of those quirky things about Boston that I love so much.
But he will not be performing for a while, to the loss of all commuters.
[ETA to make some additions and corrections – Geoff]
I honestly am just in shock now.
As if the events in Boston have not brought enough insanity to our world, now the last 12 hours have taken the crazy to whole new levels.
The two bombers lived in our neighborhood here in Cambridge. And that is just for starters.
If you count my time in uniform, I have worked in public safety for a while. I have also worked on business continuity/disaster recovery planning committees. I am probably more well read on much of the literature than many public safety officers and government officials. I take this sort of thing quite seriously, because I know what is possible. And so when I hear people blow things off, even when experts are trying to tell them to take a particular danger or threat seriously, I get a bit frustrated.
The looming storm this weekend is a great example.
Continue reading ““That won’t happen.” Well, sometimes it does.”
The possibility of snow this weekend went from possible snow earlier in the week to winter storm watch to blizzard watch today as the weather forecast for Thursday through Saturday was refined by meteorologists. And all this on the 35th Anniversary of one of the biggest snow events of my generation – the Blizzard of 1978.
Mark Twain had a lot of wonderful witty things to say about New England weather, and the most relevant (and true) for today would certainly be this one, from a speech he gave in 1876:
One of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.
Oh, boy, is he so right. Although the cold and rain was predicted, as was the high winds, I don’t think anyone thought that we would have any appreciable snow here in Boston today, and yet we got enough to turn the roads into quite a slushy mess.
New England weather is notoriously unpredictable. Even with the vast improvements in technology and knowledge, no forecaster is going to be able to predict the weather with absolute certainty, especially far in advance. But when virtually all the meteorologists I read start sounding really concerned about a weather event, it might be time to start paying attention rather than poo-pooing it.
In time for Halloween, the military put on a joint training exercise that features… a zombie attack. While I am amused to no end, I do respect the attempts by the government to get people interested in emergency preparedness by using zombies as a training tool. It’s just like what the CDC did not too long ago. And as Hurricane Sandy should be making apparent to everyone, some basic emergency preparedness is a good thing. I may get to spend some more time outside in the rain like I did for last year’s hurricane, trying to make sure people don’t drive into downed power lines. We’ll see.
-Geoff
The Books are Taking Over... 