Disaster at the Great Confluence

My heart goes out to all my people in the Binghamton area who are coping with this week's major floods. Above is a stunning aerial photo of downtown - you can find it and many more photos at the Press and Sun Bulletin's web site. Other photos show the Washington Street pedestrian bridge submerged up to its deck. Hang in there, and hopefully you will all be able to move on and clean up with relative ease.

Adventures in utility work

Picture yourself in this situation - you look out your back window to see the electrical transformer on the utility pole in your backyard is smoking, and dripping some kind of stuff, which is also smoking. Well, that's exactly what I was faced with last night. I called our local utility (RG&E) to report it, but one of my neighbors apparently had other ideas, because the next thing I saw was red lights flashing on a fire truck. The fire department cordoned off the area and told me that RG&E would be along, but that I shouldn't go near the thing. They eventually arrived (it was after 10pm at this point). After scoping things out they told me that they would be replacing the transformer in a little while, but to do this they would have to shut off electricity for "a couple-a hours." This they did. It didn't help that yesterday was a bloody hot day. So I lay in bed, covered in a thin layer of sweat, while a big utility truck idled under my bedroom window. The power was out for almost three hours, so I guess it wasn't the end of the world.

And yes, it was pretty cool to see the smoke.

In other news, I have gone to two different ATMs in the past three days that have been out of cash. What the hell, M&T Bank?

The Blogosphere is decadent and depraved

It sure is interesting to put your own name into Technorati... or at least it's enlightening (sorta). For one thing, this little endeavor does not come up at all. In fact, the only post that refers to me is from Mike Rayhawk's LiveJournal, from about a year and a half ago. Why he thought of me way back then, I may never know.

For the record, my real reaction to Hunter Thompson's death was nothing like that. I thought it was a copout - he was afraid of old age or something. There may or may not have been porn involved, I don't keep track of such things.

OK, this has been wholly egotistical. Curse you, summer session, and your scarcity of work!

Libraries totally rock out!

Today's "Able and Baker" by Jim Burgess.

The combination of reading, drinking and rocking out is the best there ever was.

The Hive Mind is stupid and boring

I just read an interesting article that addresses many of the concerns with things like Wikipedia, MySpace, and other "social networking" technologies. These technologies are great insofar as you can get some interesting things out of them, but they are not, in my opinion, the answer to everything. More interactivity never hurt, but as the author points out, it's the connections between people that matter, not the interactivity and "connectedness" and "meta" in and of itself. Maybe these technologies are trumpeted because anything these days that brings more freedom to an increasingly locked-down online world is seen as crucially important. I know, I know, it's long and nerdy, but I highly recommend reading it. As they say, none of us is as dumb as all of us.