NetManOne Blog

Oil Rig Explodes in Gulf of Mexico

VERMILION BAY, LA (WAFB) – The Coast Guard is responding to another oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the Coast Guard, 13 people were onboard when it exploded and caught fire Thursday morning.

Everyone is accounted for. Officials are reporting one injury.

The injured worker is being taken to Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma.

The other workers are in the water in immersion suits.

The rig is located about 90 miles south of Vermilion Bay.

The Cape and the islands are now under a Hurricane Watch!

But we can not just sit around and wait for Earl thus my hobby of occasionally dabbling in computers continues to produce. Recently there have been two technological advancements in our household. The first is the new iPod touch NetFlix plugin. This will allow me to stream movies over the internet to my little two by three inch screen with good resolution. I am not sure if this is a good idea since it will force me to watch movies with the screen resting on my nose to get the feel of a full TV. On the other hand I can watch movies anywhere in the house including the bathroom. There are those who say that is an improvement.

The second technological advancement is that I remembered the password to the Linux system I used in Foxboro and was in storage for several months. It took several days but I managed to go through the list of possible combinations. Now the problem is how to get an Ethernet line to my office on the second floor.

I explored the idea of running the cable up the walls or through closets but I was not a big fan of drilling holes in the floors. The walls of the upstairs are covered with foam panel insulation under the drywall, great for keeping in heat but not good for running cable. Each room also has coax running to the basement but because of how the cable is run it is not easy to replace with network cable and Ethernet over coax adapters are very expensive.

Wireless is always an option but the hardware I am using to run Linux is not fully supported thus wires are the way to go.

The final option I am exploring is Ethernet over Power (EoP). It is an interesting technology that runs the network signal through the power lines in the house. One adapter plugs into the socket near the router and the other one can be plugged anywhere in the house. Speeds between the adapters can reach up to 200 megs per second. The adapters encrypt the traffic so if one was to plug into a socket on the side of the house they would not be able to view the traffic.

With all these choices I am not entirely sure what I am going to go with but it will probably be the EoP. I will let you know what I choose and how it goes. With the rain dumping I am sure the Satellite signal will go out thus I will need something to occupy my time. Bring on the home networking and the Linux!

From AccuWeather.Com Atlantic Storms August 31, 2010

For your daily moment of misinformation here is an amusing exchange this afternoon from NPR Talk of the Nation, topic: Sacred Spaces.

Caller: “They should not build a mosque at Ground Zero!”

Neal Conan: “You know that it’s not a mosque and it’s not at Ground Zero, its two blocks away.”

Caller: “Oh…”

Earl is moving closer and the weather personalities still have no idea when and where it is going. This makes for an exciting few couple of days at work and home. At work we just reviewed our disaster recovery plans in case the flood gates burst open and we can test our theory if a server farm can work underwater. I give them a 50/50 chance of making it through underwater though most conventional wisdom and my coworkers’ laughter might indicate otherwise. On the plus or high side Beacon Hill, where our buildings are located, is probably one of the highest parts of Boston and general flooding is not much of a concern.

Speaking of water did you ever think about all that waste water from the dehumidifier senselessly dumped down the drain? The water is distilled and looks clean, why not use it for drinking or watering the plants. It turns out I am not the first to ask these questions and here is a summary of why using this water is a bad idea:

• The water contains no chlorine thus could contain bacteria and fungal spores
• The water does not contain minerals to add taste to the water
• Lead and other contaminates from the dehumidifier
• The water could have picked up particles and other bad things from the air

This is too bad. I would assume that if they create a dehumidifier that produced potable drinking water it would increase the cost tenfold. For now I will continue to dump it down the drain.

Oh wait they have:

http://www.elementfour.com

http://air2water.net/

The dog days of summer are back. This time the dog is in the form of a heat wave followed by Hurricane Earl. Normally I am a big fan of riding out hurricanes and other strong storms. The destructive forces that pound the earth and its puny humans are awe inspiring. I think this fascination was born growing up on the ocean at Fire Island. No matter what people did to push back the water, the ocean always wins.

This time though I am looking at this storm from the point of a new homeowner. The idea of a tree branch or the neighbors’ mailbox crashing through my front window is less intriguing. It is my hope that Earl quietly passes off the coast just giving us rain to water the garden but not drown our basement.

We did have a successful “dry” run of a flooded basement last week when it rained for several days. The sump pump kicked on removing water out of the spider filled bottomless pit we keep in the corner of the house.

I was under the weather at the end of last week and kept a low profile both at work and home but I was able to get up and about for a good part of the weekend, enough to get some housework done and quiz Catherine on such financial topics as long puts and options.

The rest of the week we will keep an eye on the weather and continue to quiz Catherine on her test subjects. If you want a fun game, watch the weather reports as the hurricane get closer to Boston. You will see them get more and more excited until their bones will literally jump out of their skin as they tell us to stock up on bread and water. They live for this stuff.

Unpacking a house takes much effort and builds up a healthy appetite. When we are not furnishing our new abode we like to venture out into the neighborhood and sample the local cuisine and support our neighbors.

Friday night Catherine and I satisfied our craving for fresh and fried seafood eating outside on a picnic table at the Lobster Barn. This hole in the wall seafood barn / shack near our house serves the freshest seafood this side of route 3. Catherine chowded down on a fresh haddock sandwich and I enjoyed a savory lobster roll complete with a buttered roll. We finished off the meal with fresh fried clam strips that left us in a state of ecstasy and a fried food coma. We plan on getting the stuffed clams next along with a bag of steamers.

There are not inside tables or inside eating area so be prepared to take your food home or eat outside on one of their picnic tables near the parking lot.

If you are in the area or just looking for a great seafood meal check out the Lobster Barn, you will not be disappointed.

I am a bit of a hot sauce fan. My taste buds have recently enjoyed the bliss of Tabasco Habanero Sauce. It is not for the faint of heart as the Habanero pepper is one of the hotter in the world.

To see what other products Tabasco produces I went to the site and saw a product that is just bliss in a bottle. Or shall I say a Gallon Jug. Yes, Tabasco can come in Gallon Jugs.

Happy Friday!

I made an interesting discovery the other day when clearing a space in the office for the desk. In the closet on the back left corner is a hole into the basement. It is not a large hole, just about 4 inches by 6 inches and covered up by a piece of cloth underneath. I can not imagine what it was used for since it is so small. It will be one of the mysteries that we can create a great story around about the previous owners.

Important note when looking to buy a house, move furniture and boxes in closets to get the real story.

There is not much to report from this past week, work on the house has slowed somewhat because we are tired from work, Catherine is studying, and we have a new found love for Netflix. Every night and day Catherine is nose to book studying for her exams that should take place in the next few weeks. This weekend she will be locked in her newly setup office. By setup I mean there is a desk and chair surrounded by floor to ceiling boxes.

I plan on spending this weekend in the yard, pulling weeds and dead plants, starting up the mower for the first time, and watering the heck out of the grass. The cooler temperature is hopefully just the thing to get the grass back to life.

Our neighbor in the lot behind us created a fire pit in his back yard. Initially I am leery of this as open fire close to our house is a tad disturbing. I am hoping that all the effort he put into its creation, digging the hole and placing down a layer of cement and stone for a foundation is an indication that he is not totally reckless. Though, he is still on my list for the fireworks the other Monday night.

And the fun continues!

Home is where the heart is they say. We love our home so much that we want to stretch out the unpacking to enjoy the experience as much as possible. From my standpoint, the grill and kitchen are set up thus I consider the move finished but Catherine would rather not live surrounded by boxes and half filled shelves. It’s a fair request and we are moving room to room getting things in their place.

There are some major purchases we would like to make, for example we would love to have a dining room table that can stretch to 108 inches to accommodate our families, a new living room couch would be fun, and some type of guest bed so people would not sleep on the floor. The B list includes several chaise lounges to place in reading nooks, a new TV, and a fancy bed frame.

The lawn is still a strange shade of yellow due to lack of rain and the new lawnmower is still in the shed due to lack of grass but our hydrangeas are looking very full and colorful. The bushes are next to the fence and our neighbor likes them as well, enough to water them with water from her kiddy pools.

We are still exploring the house and all of its quirkiness. On Monday night we learned a downside of having a skylight above our bed. Just as we went to sleep we were thrust out of bed by fireworks light show put on by our neighbors. We assume that the parents were away and the teens were at play but still, who sets off fireworks on a Monday night?!

There is still plenty of summer left and I can not wait to see what happens next!

The buzzer rang at 6:30am and a long day of work started. The 26 foot truck or ‘The Big Dog’ as the U-Haul manager called it was the largest vehicle I have ever driven and was a good substitute for coffee as I drove through the narrow and uneven streets of Foxboro. It does not have much pickup but it stops well with the help of hydraulic breaks.

The workers arrived at 9am in Foxboro and because of either the heat or the medicinal substances they must have regularly consumed the progress was much slower then the Lithuanian body builders we hired to move out of Brookline. Though the Lithuanians smelled like they woke up in a swimming pool of vodka, they could carry 5 boxes under each arm at a time and finished the load and unload in 2 hours.

4 hours of packing later we drove up to the Weymouth house and with the help of Catherine’s family we were unloaded by 4pm. The movers we hired did stay till 2pm and thankfully moved the heaviest furniture into the house leaving us with the remaining boxes.

That evening after Wii and a bottle of campaign we went to bed only to arise at 2pm the next day. Yesterday evening we picked up most of our stuff out of Braintree and went back to the house to crash. We will pick up the rest of the stuff throughout the week or the weekend.

Tonight after work we will get a garbage can (important) and window supports for our air conditioners (very important). The internet and phone have been ordered and we should be up and running on Thursday (the most important).

A yellowish yard greeted me when I arrived at the house yesterday to pick up the mail. It has been weeks since it rained here in Eastern MA and we could use a good soaking. I have been watering the plants the last couple of weeks but my plan of not watering the grass to prevent it from growing has worked far too well.

In conjunction with running the sprinkler last night in a frantic effort to save the lawn, I have found the perfect lawn mower online at Home Depot. As it turns out, tonight Catherine and I are going to Home Depot to pick up an air conditioner that will fit in our upstairs window and just maybe we will look at the mowers.

I really don’t want to turn into a lawn care fanatic; though we already decided not to use non organics and chemicals on the lawn. I just don’t want ours to be the worst on the block.

As it turns out, the weather says it will be partly rainy tomorrow during our move. Oh JOY!