A photoblog and other things

Quick update: I’ve put up some of the pics from the Keys and some stuff from hurricane Frances. There ain’t a heck of a lot there (I think I’ve got more somewhere…), and I couldn’t think of any decent comments for some of them, but hey you’re reading this so you’ve obviously got nothing better to do anyway. Knock yerself out, yeeharrr! The Keys, Hurricane Frances

What – you want more? Ok. I’ve uploaded some movies to my Ozemail account. I’ve got two from the time I saw the booty shaking at the Clevelander in Miami’s South Beach. The other one is from the visit to the Everglades. All of them don’t have sound, sorry. For the Clevelander movies, put some RnB music on. For the Everglades movie, put your lips together and blow. Add a “whoa!” at the end when you see the camera shaking a bit (that’s me trying to hold onto the camera). The movies are in Quicktime format so you’ll need the player from Apple to view them. Also, if you can’t download the movies that’s probably because Ozemail have reached their download limit for the day. This is probably not much more than the 10MB space limit they give me. Cheap bastards. Try downloading them again another day.

Clevelander 1 – disabled

Clevelander 2 – disabled

Everglades – disabled

I don’t know why, but every place I want to go to or have been to in this part of the US seems to get hit by a hurricane. Orlando (Disney World) got hit a week before we went. Palm Beach got hit by Frances just last week. Jamaica got pummeled and now Ivan, not content with killing 60 odd people in the Caribbean, has somehow sneaked into the Gulf of Mexico and is poised to hit New Orleans. Of course that’s what everyone at work is talking about at the moment. I was reading this story this morning and that picture of traffic looks all too familiar. Apart from reading that article I was also reading the latest advisory on Ivan which I’ve got an excerpt from here:

IVAN CONTINUES AS AS A EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY FOUR HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR/SIMPSON SCALE HURRICANE SCALE…WITH MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR 140 MPH…WITH HIGHER GUSTS. SOME FLUCTUATIONS IN INTENSITY ARE EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS…BUT IVAN IS EXPECTED TO MAKE LANDFALL AS A MAJOR HURRICANE…CATEGORY

THREE OR HIGHER. OCCUPANTS OF HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS WITHIN THE HURRICANE WARNING AREA CAN EXPECT HIGHER WINDS THAN THOSE EXPERIENCED AT THE SURFACE…ABOUT ONE SAFFIR-SIMPSON CATEGORY HIGHER AT THE TOP OF A 30-STORY BUILDING. AFTER LANDFALL… HURRICANE FORCE WINDS COULD TO SPREAD INLAND UP TO 100 MILES NEAR THE PATH OF THE CENTER.

IVAN IS A LARGE HURRICANE…WITH HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTENDING OUTWARD UP TO 105 MILES FROM THE CENTER…AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTENDING OUTWARD UP TO 260 MILES.

That is a HUGE hurricane! It’s much bigger and potentially much more destructive than Frances was and the worst part of it looks to hit New Orleans. Wow wow wow. In Australia I’m used to cold fronts as the worst sort of weather, and that’s it. In the southern parts of Oz we’re only really affected by slow droughts and quick bushfires (mostly lit by wankerchop fire bugs). This is just a completely other type of natural disaster that has me fascinated. Heaven forbid I was thinking of visiting Kansas – now they’re going to get tornadoes. It just amazes me how much the US gets hit by these natural disasters. Oh, add another tropical storm/hurricane to the list: Jeanne may hit the east coast of Florida. It seems to be heading pretty much in the same direction that Frances was. Is someone playing Sim City with the US? Now all I’m waiting for is a monster attack and then I’m out of here!

If anyone asked me what I did on the weekend, I’d have to be given some time to think about that. I sure as hell know what I felt – incredibly pissed off. In fact, I haven’t been that angry in a long time. Long story short, someone was supposed to catch a flight out on Saturday and we couldn’t find them anywhere as we were going to drive them to the airport. I spent 5 hours trying to locate this person and nearly got to the point of calling local hospitals. The hotel didn’t know where the person was – they were supposed to check out but hadn’t changed their hotel booking. At 8:30pm Saturday night, just as I was about to drive to work to attempt to find out flight details, the person showed up. They’d changed their flights till the next day and had spent the afternoon having fun in South Beach. The person didn’t let us know this because they didn’t want to wake us up. F$#K OFF! That has to be the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard and when they told me that that I got in my car and sped off back to my apartment. I tried to spin the wheels but an Oldsmobile Alero is too gutless for that. I was just so angry I couldn’t actually say anything. Not only did that incident stuff up my whole Saturday afternoon it also stuffed up my whole Saturday night. I was planning on going out and meeting some people in South Beach but of course that didn’t happen because it was too late to get ready and head off to Miami. Yeah, I’m still pretty angry about that.

Sunday was a much better day. I went swimming at Ft Lauderdale and was thinking how nice it would be to have a hammock. There was a guy later on who’d obviously had that idea before and had set up a hammock between two palm trees. What I saw next was just plain cool – he had a pet squirrel on a leash! I sat there watching the squirrel run around for a little while. I wish I had a camera with me at the time.

Talking about things on leashes, in downtown Ft Lauderdale the previous night I saw a couple walking around. They looked like a pretty normal couple until I noticed that the guy was holding a leash… that was attached to a collar around the woman’s neck. I’d heard that Key West (notorious for that sort of stuff) had been evacuated due to Hurricane Ivan (which will miss this part of Florida by a long shot) so that couple must have taken up temporary residence in Ft Lauderdale. Yerrrrr…

Nobody really knows where hurricane Ivan is going to hit. Whatever the case, we’ll probably feel some of the effects here. I and a cow-orker are contemplating getting out of Florida for the weekend through to early next week and heading to somewhere like… ooh New York. A few reasons for this:

1) It’s far enough up North that the hurricane couldn’t hit us there.

2) It would be cheaper flying North than West (so we’ve been told), also taking into account the considerable costs in getting a ticket at such short notice.

3) It’s New York.

4) Due to the emergency situation, the company will pay for all costs (within reason – it may turn out that New York is too far – or too wishful thinking).

5) The Sheraton that I was going to shack up in for the weekend has recently had an influx of what I would call ‘questionable’ people. Ok, they’re here to fix up things that have been damaged from the previous hurricane and their company has provided them with accommodation. Normally it wouldn’t worry me at all. There are, however, over 100 of them. They will be locked down like the rest of us in the hotel for the whole weekend and they’ll probably have copious supplies of alcohol (hell, we did for the last one). Yes it’s cliched and you may think I’m being pretentious, but I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks at the moment. I’m not going to take the risk of being in the same hotel with them. They’re snorting and belching already and I feel like I’ve already been sized up. I just wouldn’t feel safe staying there.

6) The other choice of course is my apartment here, but if a hurricane did hit I am on the top floor and on the corner. That’s practically one of the most exposed apartments possible. Plus, there is no backup power here.

So, I’m in for another interesting weekend. I’m curious to see how this one pans out.

P.S. Oh and Mum, don’t worry 🙂