Blind Assassin, Treasure Island, Pattern Recognition
News ·Friday December 22, 2006 @ 18:22 EST (link)
This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.
It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
December 20: Went to work to check messages, then to the house, cleaned up more insulation and fished out more valuable prizes, which we moved to another bedroom. Thought we smelled gas outside by the gas line, near where the tree fell, so called Puget Sound Energy who promised to send a technician sometime that night; he didn't need us to be there, so we went back to the hotel. Power was restored to our place at about 1950; we'd been following the PSE status page (and the King County road alerts page), and called the neighbors a few times to check. We ate at Outback that evening; we'd only been eating about once a day. We stayed at the hotel overnight, since the house had no heat and we weren't sure if the power would remain on. But at least with power we could return the following day.
December 21: PSE had left us a note on the door that they had turned off the gas and would need to install a new regulator (no charge to us) but we needed to remove a tree that was leaning over the gas line. We called Alpine Tree Service, the same opportunists we'd been using (remember, we hadn't seen an invoice yet and they'd been very slippery about telling us their rates), and they came out and moved and cut up that section of the tree. Even though the tree was out of the house there's still piles of branches in the driveway, about 50' of (very thick) ivy-covered tree in the back yard, itself hidden by a veritable forest of still-connected branches. After Alpine came we called PSE from a neighbor's place and they installed a new regulator and relit our pilot lights and ensured all was well.
I booted up the computers—Internet wasn't up until later in the evening, which meant we had no phone until then either—and was skimming some CNN Money lists (via Fark, I think); I found an item about removing oneself from credit card junk mail lists and called 888-567-8688, 3 to be so removed (they need an SSN, but CNN's fairly reputable so I risked it). Writing on January 5, 2007, I don't think I've seen any credit card spam in the mail lately, so perhaps it's working. CNN Money also advises keeping six months income in savings (not just three as I'd heard previously) if we start relying on just one income.
December 22: Browsing Micronews today, the Microsoft internal weekly newsletter (which just renamed itself to something utterly forgettable and will be coming out daily, or not at all and it'll just update a site that nobody will ever read, or at least far less people than read the weekly digest): How Not to Come Home from the Christmas Party tells the woefully sad tale of a (presuming from the photo) faddish couple who—horrors—had no power in their house after they came back from a party, and then got locked out of Microsoft and had to sit in their car. Please. If you're going to cover the windstorm, don't pick a peripheral inconvenience.
Also in this issue, in the letters to the editor: "Can I Opt Out of Child Coverage?" [Regarding the Dec. 8 Micronews: Half-Million-Dollar Babies]: I'm glad the $500,000 babies are healthy and the parents were able to focus on taking care of them without stressing over the bills. But as a child-free employee, I will never incur the birth cost, parental leave or child-care expenses. I'd be thrilled to opt out of such coverage.
The response blathered a bit, failing to either get the point or to the point, and eventually vaguely said "this change is something our team is working on." I remember asking a similar question at athenaHealth in Boston, and the response being equally vague, because how can anyone (save baby-eating
Satanists and terrorists) not worship the almighty baby?
Books: While without power, being mightily scarred by having to watch TV with commercials, I finished The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood) and the deservedly classic Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) and am now (January 2) starting on William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (yep, of Neuramancer fame).
