Archive: October 26, 2003

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Where There's Smoke...

Sunday,  10/26/03  06:05 PM

...There's Fire!

We have raging brush fire here in Ventura County, fueled by hot, dry Santa Ana winds and high temperatures.  So far 80,000 acres have been burned in Simi Valley, and fourteen homes have been destroyed.  The Ronald Reagan library is threatened, as are the communities of Moorpark and Wood Ranch.  Portions of Highway 23 and 118 have been closed.

We're not in immediate danger here in Westlake Village, but we've spent the day under a gloomy yellow cloud with ashes everywhere.  The sun is a dull orange disk.  These Santa Ana winds are miserable anyway, and now they're dangerous.  Everyone is snappy and worried.  Not good.

Fires are burning in other parts of Southern California as well.  A big fire in Crestline has 40,000 people evacuated.  Nearly 400 homes have been destroyed in Clairmont.  And down in San Diego, a fire north of Miramar has burned 90,000 acres, claimed 100 homes, and caused the entire town of Ramona to be evacuated.  Really not good.

 

Sunday,  10/26/03  06:27 PM

I understand LAX is closed at the moment, due to smoke from the various fires enveloping Southern California, as well as the loss of FAA traffic control sites in the San Bernadino Mountains.  I'm attending the Microsoft Professional Developer's conference next week, a huge conference bringing thousands of people to L.A., and this is not helpful.  Sigh.

Scoble is blogging up a storm from PDC central.  He notes the technology behind the keynote.

Doc Searles used the smoke to get some amazing pictures of sunspots.

All day we've had intermittent power outages; last night we lost power for a couple of hours, but during the day today it has just been momentary spikes.  Which reminds me to say, I really love my MGE Pulsar UPS.  I have three servers and all my network equipment connected through one little 500VA UPS, and it just works great.  It gives me about 30 minutes of battery power, and smooths out all the spikes and intermittent outages.  After the two-hour outage last night it came up smoothly and recharged fully in about four hours, ready for more.

Dave Winer wants to know what is the Peer Site Network?  I don't know, but it looks interesting.  Kind of a public Extranet.

Matt Webb on the magic number 150.  "Robin Dunbar predicts that the maximum group size that humans can maintain as a cohesive social unit, based on the ratio of neocortex volume to brain volume, is 147.8.  The AOL Instant Messenger servers impose a hard limit on the number of people you're allowed to put in your buddylist: 150."  Cosmic.  Oh, and there's more...

 
 

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