*hugs cutty* Sorry about your bunny!

I heard back from the library. They'd like me to contact them in June when I'm free so I can help them repackage their music collection. I'm really excited about this!

Was evacuated in the middle of the night because of an out of control fire. Was the strangest experience: A cop was banging on the door with a giant maglite and said "There's a fire near by, leave NOW"

So I got dressed, threw a pile of clothes in a bag, grabbed my purse, and pulled 3 of my hard drives and put them in the car. From the parking lot you could see flames in the distance about 5-10 feet taller than the trees. Looked like it was about 3 houses away distance wise. Ran upstairs, told my flatmates we had to leave NOW because there was only 1 road left out.

Amazingly it seems like half the families in the complex were just wandering around the parking lot watching the spectacle as if it were a show and had no intention of going anywhere. Also had no idea if the firemen would have to retreat out the last remaining road if the fire reached there, so they wouldn't get trapped.

They must have been doing shifts because there was a lot of people at a staging area behind one of the trucks. Also looked like they had some garnies lined up there expecting casualties. Looked like the last thing they expected was to see a white hearse appear out of nowhere and speed into the woods leading out. Ash was so thick that visibility was about 1 ft in front of the car. I am really starting to believe I need a dash cam. My flatmate left 10-15 min after I did and had a gopro on his car but I have yet to see if it captured anything & by that point it wasn't nearly as bad as what I drove through.

Yikes, sgath! Is your home okay? We've had a couple of big brush fires this month where I live, too, but so far I've been just outside any evacuation areas.

That was smart of you to pull your hard drives -- I don't think I'd even know how to do that, on top of rushing to get out.

Okay, in spite of the seriousness of all this, this cracked me up:



Anyway, I'm glad you're okay! Hope your place and stuff is, too!

-- Nephele

Everything is ok, though it was a pretty close call. The fire was in the backyard of the houses next to the complex, so it had about 3/4 the length of a football field before it would reach the apartment building. The apartment building is brick & has firebreaks so it would have had to have destroyed two "sections" before it could have reached mine. This would have bought firefighters a lot more time but not if they would have been forced to pull out that last remaining road to keep from being trapped.

I used to have 4 external hard drives piled up near the door to my bedroom so that I could grab them & run in an emergency but my data needs have increased so much in recent years that they're way too small now & haven't been kept current in perhaps 3 years. On the mac pro pulling hard drives is really easy: A lever on the back of the computer unlocks the side door which just pulls off. Inside each hard drive is mounted to its own metal sled/tray that can be grabbed & pulled out [as long as that lever is in the unlock position].

I usually keep the door off the computer, but the lever in the lock position so all I have to do is pull the power cord off, pull the lever, and start pulling drives.

You can see a picture of this assembly here. As you can see I have a sticker on each sled saying what the drive holds. The storage-library drives holds all my music [expect the records I've yet to digitize], copies of all the software I've ever used so instead of carrying cds I can burn what I need on the road from my archive. "Other" contains all my digital pictures, ebooks, manuscripts, genealogy files and things like that. The remaining two drives are boot volumes since mac partition tables get corrupted uber easily from power outtages & force restarts any data on them can not be expected to survive [learned that the hard way late last year and lost all the digital copies of movies I had on a boot volume: totally bricked a TB drive that was mechanically sound but with such a screwed up partition table it became a $150 paperweight].

Was really not looking forward to loosing all the antique photographs & books I hadn't scanned in yet, the ~10 linear feet of yet to even glance at data from my grandparents' computers [about 30 years of who knows what], or the ~50 linear feet of my grandfather's papers that I haven't had a chance to glance at or digitize yet [he was a nuclear engineer after the war and was on a lot of historically important projects, maybe half of which I can talk about these days].

I'm glad that you're okay sgath. I'm also glad that your stuff wasn't ruined. But you're the most important.

Oh wow! Glad to hear you're ok Sgath, and that your home is ok!
I don't think I'd be as prepared for a similar situation.

I had a fairly bizarre incident occur today as well actually. [Warning : people with arachnophobia may not want to read this ]


I was sorting through deliveries from Pakistan, opened one box and stuck my hands in to take out the contents, something felt weird on the end of my finger so I took it out, and there was a big fat spider looking at me (it wasn't actually that big, it just seemed that way when I had it practically up to my face).
Anyway, I was a bit stunned and just stared at it as it went to bite me, luckily it hit my nail, and the venom just leaked over my finger, which is when I snapped out of my daze and shook it off my hand.
I have no idea what kind of spider it was, for all I know it was domestic (and therefore harmless) and somehow got in to the box, but it certainly shook me a little.

It has however thought me an important lesson : I am invincible, and need never worry about any kind of consequences for my actions ever again.

I'd have paniced I guess, glad you're all good and nothing happened to your place.
Well organised computer situation you have

Iek, Black Milk, I don't mind spiders, untill they walk on my body...but that experience would probably have shocked me quite a bit

Maybe it was a radio-active spider and you missed your chance to become a superhero, Milky

I had thought about that, but then I remembered this, and now consider it a lucky escape

Good news on my end... Moving out is looking like a real possibility, based on calculations I've done, places I've called, etc.

I'm not quite that bad, but I do tend to walk with the same general swagger as Peter there -except I *smile* at girls instead of pointing at them.

Are you walking to the same musik Orlok?

The new look Forums?
(Sound on for best effect).




Done with this

LOL, I remember when Geocities was completely boss. Hurraaaay for the mid 90s!

First job interview in 20 minutes.
So nervous i might cry.
Wish me luck please.
EDIT: WHELP
I chocked and canceled.
Maybe a different employer, closer to home.
I'm still a scaredy cat it seems.

Good luck Puck!