Halfway Home

Back home, but we can't pick up the pups until tomorrow.

Eaglewood

Most of today was spent at Dollywood, whose main purpose seems to be to remind you how good Disney really is. Personal highlight, the eagle sanctuary.

Fishes

First stop the Aquarium of course.

Gatlinburg

We're in Gatlinburg, meeting with the Atlanta Irelands for a few days of Memorial weekend fun.

Dog Filler (Literally)

Mystic enjoys her most loved of all treats, the Dentabone.

Dog Filler

Pet picture, the image of choice for those days when you just didn't find anything interesting to take a snap of. (Not that the pup isn't interesting of course.)

Not Tokyo

Had to go over to Metro ITS this morning, temporarily located in Metro Center while they retrofit the Howard School building. The Titans training structure always reminds me of some chitinous monster, a pill bug with destructive tendencies. It's probably just me.

Deadly Cult

This game didn't sell well initially but has become something of a cult hit for the Wii. It's been hard to find a copy locally, online they were all overpriced due to popularity and rarity, but I finally snagged one at Gamestop.

Altered Carbon

As you can probably surmise from the fact I only got this book last Wednesday. It was really, really good.

Sharks Get Scheidered

The Sharks are out. Meh.

30 Years Of Striking Back

I think the 30th anniversary of Empire Strikes Back was actually yesterday, but that doesn't mean I can't watch the original three in honor of it today.

A Flood Of New Computers

Yet more replacement machines rolled in to be rolled out today.

Monkey Suits And Meatballs

Once a year JIS gets together with the heads of all the departments it supports and has a meeting. What we accomplished, what we will accomplish, and what this year's budget means in terms of staff and projects. This obviously, is my first visit. Formal attire required, lunch served afterwards. Many judges were in attendance, and it was interesting to listen to "judge chat". Was hoping to meet the DA, but he couldn't make it.

Textual Satisfaction

Some new arrivals based on a friend's recommendation just came Rolen in.

A Haiku In Honor Of Amazon Prime

Oh Amazon box
You sit on the porch and wait
Anticipation

Ghostdroid

While sitting alone on my night stand, I heard my Droid randomly snap a picture. This was the result, which is strange considering the lens was face down. I'd have expected nothing, or grainy black. I can only conclude this is an ectoplasmic ghost self picture. No doubt for the ghostographer's Facebook profile.

A Hairy Repotter

Sandis has gone from a cardboard cup, to a little pot, to this medium planter, and now this huge one. He didn't want to move so we had to break his old pot with a hammer, but we think he and his cramped roots will be happier in a bigger home. Yes, I am projecting emotional states onto my plant.

Another Picture Of My Dogs Sleeping On A Lazy Afternoon, This Time In Black And White

That's it.

A Numeral

It's the last in this series.

A New Dawn

It's the start of a fresh day at JIS, and it's been a very busy week shuffling users to different buildings and setting up quickie networks for temporary computers whilst once flooded buildings are being repaired.

A New Hope

It's the one where Han shoots first.

A New Book

It's the sequel to The Warded Man.

A New Game

It's the Diablo of FPSs.

Ironing On Mother's Day

Iron Man 2. 2 thumbs up.

Plucked

Sharks down Red Wings, taking the series 4-1. On to round three.

Blackbird

Another in the "Things Only Interesting To Me" file. My favorite plane growing up was the SR-71 Blackbird. It was a super classified spy plane. I have a terrible memory. Whenever anyone asks me about childhood goings-on I can never recall. But I clearly remember my Dad, with his Air Force connections, getting me a special visit to an air field to see a real Blackbird. I remember we weren't allowed to take pictures, and we weren't even allowed to look at it from certain angles. One of the things I always loved about the Blackbird (and yes I know I'm weird) was that when you fueled it up, the fuel poured out of it from all over. It leaked by design. If you care to know why hit the link above, I won't bore you with the explanation here. Anyway, the point of all this being they just completely declassified the Blackbird, and made it's "owner's manual" available. To think twenty years ago you'd have been shot for looking at this, and now it's on the Internet.

Two Years Of Snacking

Snicker Snack turns two.

Special thanks to Matt, because I had forgotten all about it with the goings on in Nashville.

First Post.

First Year.

You'll notice the name has since changed, as I have learned it's actually spelled "snack" in the poem, not "snak" as I had always thought.

Also, of interest only to me, my first post was about the opening of Iron Man. And Iron Man 2 opens today. Nice of them to do that for me.

Watermarket

My phone doesn't zoom very well, but if you look in the distant center. That long grey roof is the Farmer's Market. Still half sunk in a lake of water. I think that's going to be the extent of my flood photography, there's no shortage of pictures out there.

Back To Work

What the title said. Here's the view out my closest window. You can see the other side of the river is still flooded, and kind of get a sense of how fast the Cumberland is flowing right now if you look at the ripple of water around the bridge.

Water Bill

Day two staying home while downtown recovers. Lee Company was finally able to make it out to check the crawl space and the tankless. No structural or duct work damage is very good, but the tankless was a total loss. Fried and stuffed with dirt. So yeah, 100% out of pocket on that with no flood insurance. That hurts, but it's easy to keep perspective when you watch the news and see what others lost.

Headline

Just a snap of today's front page, for blog posterity.

Aftermath

A day off from work for the worst reason. Downtown is still flooded.

Getting Steamed

And now we're boiling water because they just reported a local sewage plant overflowed, and we don't think the water filtration system we have will do microbial cleansing. It's all perspective though, our house isn't flooded (crawl space not withstanding), we haven't lost power or even cable. There's lots of folks lots worse off right now. Heck the people across the street bordering our new river. STOP RAINING!

Precarious Precipitation

OK, this rain has gotten ridiculous. It's been pouring since Friday night, and I mean no-breaks pouring. There are reports of flooding all over. The tiny little trickle of a stream in our common area (reference: here) is now a lake that is already up to the houses of the people that live on that side of the street. Our crawl space, the one that recently became home to a certain tankless appliance, is flooded and said appliance is out. To prevent as much damage to it as possible I had to crawl under there and unplug it. Fun times.

Precipitation

Yep, as prognosticated, rain. And lots of it.