This weekend is quiet compared to the exciting day I had at work on Friday. The Oculan building is the lowest office in the office park and has the wonderful feature of being surrounded by rivers of water whenever it rains.

Well, on Friday it didn’t just rain. It flooded! We probably got hit with at least four inches of rain, possibly more. All of it was streaming into our parking lot in currents moving at least 20 miles per hour.

I remember talking to my boss about the day’s activities when looked out the window. My jaw dropped at seeing how dark it had become – it was darker than dusk outside. I raced out to my car to grab my umbrella as the first drops began to fall.

Back inside, we watched as it began to pour, bringing up the radar images on our PC’s just to keep track of things. A string of red blotches seemed to line up just south of us, ready to take turns pummeling us with water. And that’s just what they did. Before long, we noticed our parking lot becoming a small pond.

I was thinking how lucky I was not to have parked in the spot known to catch the most rain, as it was under 5 inches of water. But the rest of the lot was filling up fast, too, so I decided to try getting the water down by unclogging a storm drain that clogs regularly.

My coworker Ben was outside taking pictures of the flood. He saw me wander into the currents to work on the drain, and pitched in to help. As we began to pitch gobs of pine straw and sticks away from the drain, I felt something soft and heavy squish in my hand. Looking down in the muddy water, I watched a dark cylindrical shape get sucked into the drain. It was a black snake that had gotten stuck in the grate under the torrent of water, probably long drowned by the floodwaters by the time I had grabbed him. I decided to be more careful next time.

The flood in the parking lot soon subsided to everyone’s relief and we all went back inside. It kept raining, however, and before long I realized the flood in the parking lot was only getting transferred to the large gully next to the building. There seemed to be no stopping it once it got full.

The gully looks to hold a few swimming pools worth of water when its full, and it needed all its area on Friday. The storm drains I had cleared earlier were still clear, but they were not longer draining: they were full! There was no place left for the water to go.

We watched nervously as the water quickly rose in the gully, filling an eye-popping area in minutes. By the time I left for lunch, the water was only yards away from the building. I made it a point to move my laptop from the floor onto my desk, not knowing if my cubicle would be floating by the time I got back.

Fortunately, we avoided an office flood. The sun was out by the time we got back and the water in the gully retreated at a rate of a few inches per hour. Still, it’s no wonder why the office park is called “Water’s Edge.”

Here are a few shots (pic 1, pic 2, pic 3) of the flood, courtesy of Ben.

I was on hold during one of my phone calls today and was pleasantly surprised to hear a Neil Young song playing on the hold music.

I’m going to end my night listening to his Decade CD, perhaps playing “Cinnamon Girl” a few hundred times as I fall asleep. 🙂

I’m reminded of the picture of awe on Beck’s face as he met Neil at MTV’s Rock the Vote in 1999. Who wouldn’t be in awe of meeting the man?

More evidence that the phone line as we know it is dead. From Dan Gillmor:

Previously, I had two phone lines into my house, each costing almost $20 a month for the dial tone plus local calls. One of those lines was split to also handle digital subscriber line (DSL) broadband data access. In addition, I paid a long-distance carrier per-minute rates and a monthly connection charge.

Today I have one phone line, split into voice and DSL services. But I also have a new box attached to the network that links my phone to the Internet.

Dan’s talking about a service called Packet 8, one that charges $20/month for advanced services like these. This is more than you can get from Bellsouth for the price. Far more.
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I was checking out the website of Edmund Scientific today at lunch. This place absolutely rules! I’ve been a fan of Edmund since I was a kid – it’s always been the ultimate place for geek toys.

Check out this roller coaster kit, for example. Or this Kick Dis air-powered puck? Where else are you gonna find this stuff?

Given a fat bank account, I’d be buying these smart toys for myself, …er, I mean Hallie, so she can learn while she’s having fun. Fun for geeks of all ages!

I’ve adjusted the weblog to make previewing your comment optional. This should help get the feedback flowing here.

If you have any other things you’d like to see here, respond with a comment to this story and I’ll see what I can do.

I also added a link to Bill Maher‘s (the Politically Incorrect guy) weblog, too. He now lives in the “Net Stops” section.

The more I think about it, the more the idea of “intellectual property” strikes me as totally innane. This is the product of the past few hundred years, taken to an extreme during the last century. The Native Americans who lived here before would probably laugh at the concept, knowing that such concepts are against the human nature of sharing. Of course, they would scoff at the idea of owning property, too, but that idea still has some life to it.
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This story reminds me of Gulf War Syndrome, an illness I’ve often wondered if I ever safely avoided. Seems there is an outbreak of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness now affecting soldiers in Iraq.

It could simply be that military personnel are more prone to this kind of illness, as they tend to travel to exotic places, meet exotic people, and kill them.

Ha ha! That’s an old military joke. I mean, military people go to far-flung places and mingle with the locals, as well as work and sleep in close quarters. Add to this the fact that running water is usually not available and you have a recipe for an outbreak.

I don’t think Iraqis are behind this, but when you look at how little we know about Gulf War Syndrome (and how little we care to know – some governments are happy to look the other way), you realize there may be something important going on here.

The latest craze is flash mobs, where people materialize out of nowhere to do some totally random thing. I can’t wait for the first flash mob here in Raleigh. To me, it sounds like harmless fun. And perhaps, a good counter to the insane levels of paranoia in this country regarding groups of people gathering lawfully and peacefully. Hopefully it will remind people (and the courts) that Americans have a constitutional right to associate.

Besides, I’m a big fan of performance art and would jump at the chance to participate in something as fun as this!

More about smartmobs here and here.
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I’ve been reading things about how landline telephone companies are in big trouble. With the rise of wireless-only families and the threat of broadband voice-over-IP, the incumbent phone companies have never looked more vulnerable. I know people who’ve cut the cord for good, vowing never to go back. Ma Bell has a serious problem on her hands.

Here’s an article showing how much damage has been done to the landline business. Another article in Wired magazine tells about Japan’s competition against their national phone company, NTT. Broadband providers are hooking up people left and right to 12 Mb/s cable modems, with free VoIP calls among customers.

It may not happen today or tomorrow, but dial tone is dead. Voice over IP, mobile phones, and even 802.11b aren’t going away and will forever change the lowly telephone. The device which changed the world in its 100 years of existence has itself not changed. The world now demands more from its phones and the landline companies which cannot provide it are doomed to become dinosaurs.