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Florence watching

South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, called for the evacuation of the entire SC coastal area yesterday afternoon with lane reversals for I-26 all the way to Columbia.

The evacuation order is something McMaster is certain to get some flak and criticism later for but given the forecast track, storm intensity, and size at the time, I think it was an entirely reasonable precaution.

Hurricane evacuation orders in South Carolina are called “mandatory”, but nobody is going to come to force you to leave.  However, if you choose to stay, once winds reach a sustained 40 mph (or 39 mph, depending on your source), you’re on your own. Emergency personnel won’t respond because they’re hunkered down for their own safety, or might not even be able to get to you even if they could respond.

Based on today’s 5AM AST forecast track, it looks like we’ll be on the edge of the storm and, barring any unexpected turns to the west, won’t be affected quite as much.  The NHC 3-day forecasts have been fairly accurate the past few years, so I don’t expect many big changes to the forecast track.  Florence has a pretty broad wind field, and it’s expected to slow down quite a bit once it gets inland.  Expecting it to be windy and rainy, but not much more than that.

Hurricane Florence 20180911 0500AST

Hurricane prep continues today with putting away anything on the back porch that can blow away.  Probably don’t really need to, but if nothing else it’s a good drill for next time.

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Accessible freezer/refrigerator outlets

When the power went out during Hurricane Irma last year, one of the issues we had was reaching the outlets that the freezer and refrigerator were plugged into so that we could plug them into the generator.  The outlets are in the wall behind the middle of each appliance, so we have to pull them out to reach the plug.  Not so easy when you’ve stuffed the freezer and refrigerator full to help them stay cold/frozen.

With Hurricane Florence on the way, we wanted to make the freezer and refrigerator plugs a little easier to reach in case we need to run them on the generator.  The shortest extension cords I have handy are either 25′-50′ long, or not a heavy enough gauge to handle the freezer and refrigerator current requirements.

A trip to Lowe’s got me a couple of 2-foot long 12-gauge extension cords (similar to this one but without the circuit breaker) and storage hooks.

Find a wall stud that’s within reach of the extension cord, drill a pilot hole, and screw in the storage hook.  Plug in the extension cord, plug the refrigerator into the extension cord, and you’re in business.  I zip tied the extension cord to the hook so that everything would stay in place.

  • Extension cord behind the refrigerator
    Extension cord behind the refrigerator
  • Easy access refrigerator plug
    Easy access refrigerator plug
  • Easy access freezer plug
    Easy access freezer plug

It’s a bit ugly, and we’re definitely not going to win any style contests, but it works.  Now when we need to plug the freezer and/or refrigerator into the generator, we can just reach over and grab the plug without having to move anything.

Once we get around to having a transfer switch for the generator installed, all of this will become a bit redundant, but that’s ok.  I’ll just patch up the holes and put the extension cords and hooks to use somewhere else.

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2018 storm season is heating up

Statistically, September is the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, and this year is no exception.

Atlantic Tropical Cyclones and Disturbances 2018-09-08
Atlantic Tropical Cyclones and Disturbances 2018-09-08

At the moment, all eyes are on Tropical Storm Florence, which early on seemed like it would stay out in the Atlantic.

Tropical Storm Florence 2018-09-08

Still much too early to say where Florence will hit, but at this point, it seems pretty certain that much of the Eastern US will see something.

After Florence, it seems the next one that will need watching is Tropical Depression 9 (which will likely become Tropical Storm Isaac soon).

Tropical depression 9 2018-09-08
Tropical depression 9 2018-09-08

Season’s getting exciting again.

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Shout out to Home Telecom

A couple days ago, we started having problems with the incoming Internet service (Home Telecom) cutting out at random times for 5-30 minutes at a time.

With a bit of help from my friend Patrick (who works for Home Telecom), he was able to tell me my ONT (optical network terminal) was dropping out.

Put in a call to Home Telecom this morning to open up a trouble ticket with them.  Told them about the service issue, and what Patrick told me about the ONT.  A little bit later, I got a call back saying they were seeing issues with the ONT and were going to send someone out to replace the unit.  An hour later, the service tech came by, swapped out the ONT with a new one and verified that we had connectivity.

After a couple hours everything seems fine so far, and we’ll be keeping an eye out for any more service outages.  So far so good.

Thanks to Home Telecom for the awesome and fast service, especially on a long weekend.

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Thoughts on the Galaxy S7

So far, the S7 is a pretty nice phone, although there are a few things I’m still getting used to.

  • The location of the power button is closer to the middle of the phone than it was on the Nexus 5, so I’m still hunting around for it.
  • The positions of recent apps and back buttons are reversed, so i’m always pressing the wrong button.
  • The touch screen area extends to the edge of the phone, so when I’m holding the phone and my fingers or thumb end up wrapping around the phone, I end up triggering screen touches.
  • The Home button is an actual physical button, so I have to remember to actually push instead of just tapping that location.
  • Speaker is only on one side of the bottom of the phone, which I end up covering up sometimes depending on how I’m holding the phone.  If I’m playing podcasts at the time, the volume suddenly gets muffled and I’m wondering what’s going on until I realize what’s happened.

Android 8 (Nougat) has lots of options to tweak, especially with notifications.  Nice.

Battery life seems pretty good, although I haven’t really worked the phone really hard yet.  

The 32 GB of storage on the device gives  me more than enough space for the apps I want to keep handy.  

Split screen is really nice.  Got a sneak preview of it when I had Android 7 (Oreo) on my tablet.  Comes in pretty handy on the phone.

Still many more things to explore on the phone.