That's some bullshit right here.
This has been an interesting week, so I'll just break it down in brief:
1) What the fuck is that noise.
I'm a computer guy, I leave my computer on all night to crunch numbers for protein bending & gene therapy etc. I wake up because I hear an electronic feed back loop. It's fucking loud and I figure my speakers are fritzed for some reason. But that's odd, it's not coming from them. I open the door and confirm it's coming from outside. I look to the left and see black & grey smoke billowing out of the apartment down the way from me. And a woman running toward me in fear with a small child, they seem ok though. There are others over there too, and they just look bewildered. I look right and a bunch of people are evacuated, no one appears in excessive distress and I conclude there are no injuries. I shake my head knowingly.
Figures, I had stuff to do today.
Then I think this next part says a lot about me:
I go back inside and go pee. I grab my high quality ear buds & Mp3 player (I'm going to be out there a while I expect), wallet, phone, and pocket tool, slip my shoes on and head out the door. Pausing to lock it, wouldn't want anyone to take any of my $tuff.
I walked about 50 feet from the nearest wall and called 911, just to be sure. You always have to be sure because humans, as social creatures, figure that obviously someone else has called. The Fire department knows, and is enroute. I think I might hear sirens. At that moment I thought 2 things:
A) The last time I called 911, I had put my life in peril in the desert and had concluded that death was to be avoided if at all possible. And that nothing mattered so much as coming out of this alive.
B) How did I not even take my camera or computer with me.
(A) obviously was a dominant thought, but besides the next thought (hey, I'm kinda hungry) I figured that with the FD on it's way there was NO WAY the fire would get to my apartment.
No way indeed.
It was about that time that the black smoke turned mostly grey and clearish as flames started shooting out of the front of the apartment. I thought about suggesting that the next time you start your apartment on fire, close the door behind you to help contain it. However, I couldn't find anyone who could hear my good advice do to the very loud blaring of the Fire Alarm and the clearly present fire engines & police.
Thankfully, I had ear plugs in my car so I could watch without permanent hearing loss.
Long story short, I watched for 2 hours as they battled the blaze and then was reassured that it'd be "only about 15 more minutes" from a police officer for about an hour before I was hungry enough to walk down to the local Phoa place. ~4 apartments were trashed, several others probably had water and smoke damage. There were no injuries. And the lady who started the fire was trying to fry something and walked away from the stove long enough for, I presume the entire kitchen, to be engulfed in flame. I'm not clear how you go about frying things without an appropriate sized metal lid near by (and maybe some baking soda or a fire extinguisher), but somehow the grease fire got out of control and destroyed a bunch of apartments.
I must stress that everyone is ok, and that the peoples who's apartments became untenable were provided shelter. Knowing that, you should know that this ruined my day. I even got smoke in my eyes. I could have cried.
On the plus side, I got to walk around my town for 6 hours in Pajamas which is pretty awesome. So I got to say some pretty witty things.
People were like, "Hey Johan, what's with that get up?"
And I just shot them back with my clever wink and duel finger pistols and say "'My apartment's on fire' from Calvin Klein's winter line up. It's sort of a follow up to the 'I woke up in an inferno' line, as you may have guessed."
Then, when they'd stare at me blankly I'd add. "I almost mixed it with flip flops this morning, but I'm not that bold."
I think it would have been awkward if it hadn't been 5 or 6 pm when they saw me.
And when the PG&E guy came to turn my Gas back on, he found that it was not connected properly. Now as a professional I know the things you say when you know something is wrong and should never be done that way, but it is that way right now. You can't say everything is alright, but you might not know who is to blame so really don't want to place any of that either. He said that there wasn't a gas leak, so that made everything alright but that (in my words) "My gas lines weren't installed using best practice" to which he added, "It'll be ok for now, but I've got to note it in the logs." He didn't suggest this was to remidy it, I suppose it would be for the fire marshal when my own home becomes a burning wreckage.
I took comfort in the fact that it was warm again quickly after my heat was restored. It's too bad the PG&E guy can't give you the Natural Gas equivalent of extra channels like the cable guy can. "Sorry for screwing up your installation, please accept this Acetylene torch from us to make up for it." I would've preferred a TIG welder, but you can't expect them to just carry one of those around.
2) Goddamn it, not again
So, I was in ANOTHER car accident. This time it was raining, and I stopped for a guy in the cross walk and the heavy Minivan behind me traveling with excessive speed was unable to stop before plowing into my rear end. My rear end is even more trashed then last time (There's definitely muffler damage) and the rear clip is again fucked. Also the trunk is bent and jammed shut, and the right rear break light & housing is garbage & debris.
I really wanted to use the word "detritus" there, but I was afraid it was too early for me to use such a word and feared that no one would understand it anyway.
I then got to work all this shit out with the insurance company, which only took about an hour.
What really pisses me off is that this is probably going to raise my premiums. Why can't everyone just travel at an appropriate speed? Am I the only one who keeps a 2 to 3 second space between my vehicle and the one in front of me. Why don't people realize that my 1000kg SPORTS CAR (with R compound tires) can stop in 40% of the distance of their 3000+kg cars with the cheapest rubber the crappiest tire companies sell?
It's totally bullshit.
At least the person who hit me didn't run off this time, and I know them to boot.
Fuck, it's 930 already and I have to do trivia yet tonight.
I hope this girl's insurance is decent, I don't think there's any way this will cost lest than 7 to 10k with labor. The muffler alone is $800, and the body work is probably going to be about 4k. And this is all going to dry fuck my resale in the ass.
Plus I've got a slight head ache. I wonder if I can get a "free" head CT out of it.
1) What the fuck is that noise.
I'm a computer guy, I leave my computer on all night to crunch numbers for protein bending & gene therapy etc. I wake up because I hear an electronic feed back loop. It's fucking loud and I figure my speakers are fritzed for some reason. But that's odd, it's not coming from them. I open the door and confirm it's coming from outside. I look to the left and see black & grey smoke billowing out of the apartment down the way from me. And a woman running toward me in fear with a small child, they seem ok though. There are others over there too, and they just look bewildered. I look right and a bunch of people are evacuated, no one appears in excessive distress and I conclude there are no injuries. I shake my head knowingly.
Figures, I had stuff to do today.
Then I think this next part says a lot about me:
I go back inside and go pee. I grab my high quality ear buds & Mp3 player (I'm going to be out there a while I expect), wallet, phone, and pocket tool, slip my shoes on and head out the door. Pausing to lock it, wouldn't want anyone to take any of my $tuff.
I walked about 50 feet from the nearest wall and called 911, just to be sure. You always have to be sure because humans, as social creatures, figure that obviously someone else has called. The Fire department knows, and is enroute. I think I might hear sirens. At that moment I thought 2 things:
A) The last time I called 911, I had put my life in peril in the desert and had concluded that death was to be avoided if at all possible. And that nothing mattered so much as coming out of this alive.
B) How did I not even take my camera or computer with me.
(A) obviously was a dominant thought, but besides the next thought (hey, I'm kinda hungry) I figured that with the FD on it's way there was NO WAY the fire would get to my apartment.
No way indeed.
It was about that time that the black smoke turned mostly grey and clearish as flames started shooting out of the front of the apartment. I thought about suggesting that the next time you start your apartment on fire, close the door behind you to help contain it. However, I couldn't find anyone who could hear my good advice do to the very loud blaring of the Fire Alarm and the clearly present fire engines & police.
Thankfully, I had ear plugs in my car so I could watch without permanent hearing loss.
Long story short, I watched for 2 hours as they battled the blaze and then was reassured that it'd be "only about 15 more minutes" from a police officer for about an hour before I was hungry enough to walk down to the local Phoa place. ~4 apartments were trashed, several others probably had water and smoke damage. There were no injuries. And the lady who started the fire was trying to fry something and walked away from the stove long enough for, I presume the entire kitchen, to be engulfed in flame. I'm not clear how you go about frying things without an appropriate sized metal lid near by (and maybe some baking soda or a fire extinguisher), but somehow the grease fire got out of control and destroyed a bunch of apartments.
I must stress that everyone is ok, and that the peoples who's apartments became untenable were provided shelter. Knowing that, you should know that this ruined my day. I even got smoke in my eyes. I could have cried.
On the plus side, I got to walk around my town for 6 hours in Pajamas which is pretty awesome. So I got to say some pretty witty things.
People were like, "Hey Johan, what's with that get up?"
And I just shot them back with my clever wink and duel finger pistols and say "'My apartment's on fire' from Calvin Klein's winter line up. It's sort of a follow up to the 'I woke up in an inferno' line, as you may have guessed."
Then, when they'd stare at me blankly I'd add. "I almost mixed it with flip flops this morning, but I'm not that bold."
I think it would have been awkward if it hadn't been 5 or 6 pm when they saw me.
And when the PG&E guy came to turn my Gas back on, he found that it was not connected properly. Now as a professional I know the things you say when you know something is wrong and should never be done that way, but it is that way right now. You can't say everything is alright, but you might not know who is to blame so really don't want to place any of that either. He said that there wasn't a gas leak, so that made everything alright but that (in my words) "My gas lines weren't installed using best practice" to which he added, "It'll be ok for now, but I've got to note it in the logs." He didn't suggest this was to remidy it, I suppose it would be for the fire marshal when my own home becomes a burning wreckage.
I took comfort in the fact that it was warm again quickly after my heat was restored. It's too bad the PG&E guy can't give you the Natural Gas equivalent of extra channels like the cable guy can. "Sorry for screwing up your installation, please accept this Acetylene torch from us to make up for it." I would've preferred a TIG welder, but you can't expect them to just carry one of those around.
2) Goddamn it, not again
So, I was in ANOTHER car accident. This time it was raining, and I stopped for a guy in the cross walk and the heavy Minivan behind me traveling with excessive speed was unable to stop before plowing into my rear end. My rear end is even more trashed then last time (There's definitely muffler damage) and the rear clip is again fucked. Also the trunk is bent and jammed shut, and the right rear break light & housing is garbage & debris.
I really wanted to use the word "detritus" there, but I was afraid it was too early for me to use such a word and feared that no one would understand it anyway.
I then got to work all this shit out with the insurance company, which only took about an hour.
What really pisses me off is that this is probably going to raise my premiums. Why can't everyone just travel at an appropriate speed? Am I the only one who keeps a 2 to 3 second space between my vehicle and the one in front of me. Why don't people realize that my 1000kg SPORTS CAR (with R compound tires) can stop in 40% of the distance of their 3000+kg cars with the cheapest rubber the crappiest tire companies sell?
It's totally bullshit.
At least the person who hit me didn't run off this time, and I know them to boot.
Fuck, it's 930 already and I have to do trivia yet tonight.
I hope this girl's insurance is decent, I don't think there's any way this will cost lest than 7 to 10k with labor. The muffler alone is $800, and the body work is probably going to be about 4k. And this is all going to dry fuck my resale in the ass.
Plus I've got a slight head ache. I wonder if I can get a "free" head CT out of it.