Blog Master G

That winter that wasn’t I wrote about just 11 days ago finally arrived with a vengeance. We had at least half a foot of fresh powder on Saturday, so it finally looks like winter, even though tomorrow’s already March and spring is just around the corner, unbelievably. It’s also been pretty damn cold the past few days… well, pretty much the whole week since last weekend’s blackout.

This photo from yesterday depicts the treemometer at about 6 degrees or so, and it’s pretty much the same this morning:

What a difference a face makes — when you can feel it, that is. Despite the sun peeking out from behind the clouds, yesterday was a bitterly cold day in Vermont, where I hit Pico for an afternoon on the slopes. The mountain had received two feet of fresh powder, so that part I loved. It was just the wind that was painful at first.

After my first couple runs of the day, I couldn’t feel my face or ears, despite their being covered by my hat. There was no way I coud ski without more face covering. Luckily, I had brought my face mask, but had left it in the car. After retrieving the face mask, it was like a whole new world: I could feel my face again and could enjoy the day.

With skiing, as with most things in life, some days you’re on and some days you’re off. Yesterday I was on. The powder brought me back to Tahoe, where I grew up skiing and where I skied regularly until we moved to this coast. I was tearin’ it up and it felt great. The 30 seconds of squats I try to do every day really pay off on the slopes since my quads don’t beg for mercy or give out anymore.

As for PIco, I hadn’t been there in years — probably not since the Vassar Ski Team days — but I could go without it next time. I went there to take advantage of a $29 lift ticket special via a free Pico Card (from my Price Chopper Passbook), and you really get what you pay for in Killington‘s little sister. There was really only one run worth skiing (Upper Pike) and the lift to get you there took way too long. Even the double-diamond run with the promising name Upper Giant Killer wasn’t all that, with barely any snow cover and not all that steep.

Despite the smallness of the place, I had a great day 4 on the slopes this season, and I’m not a bit sore this morning.

I’ve loved squirrels for as long as I remember. They’re funny and cute and athletic. I love watching them sit on their haunches and chew their nuts. I love watching them go flying from tree to tree. And seeing them taunt my dogs as we walk around the neighborhood or hang out in the backyard.

So it wasn’t easy this morning finding a dead squirrel in the street outside my house.

Unlike other road kill that I’ll pass from time to time several blocks from my house, this squirrel was my responsibility; I had to take care of the carcass. The dead squirrel was surrounded by a bunch of fallen tree branches, so in lieu of giving the little guy a proper burial, I placed some tree branches on top of his body after scooping him into the garbage can. Up close, squirrels — or at least this one — are a heck of a lot bigger than you might think. Rest in peace, little dude.

This incident reminded me of the time a number of years ago in Sacramento at Nana‘s house when I got home from school one day and was looking for something to eat. I was rooting around in the freezer and found a paper bag on the bottom shelf of the freezer door. “What’s in here?” I wondered. Hopefully something tasty. I was starving. I removed the bag, peeked hopefully inside awaiting a tasty treat, and there it was: a dead rat. That was one of the few times I screamed like a girl (ladies, pardon the expression). It wasn’t a high-pitched scream or anything like that — more of a “Holy crap! There’s a dead rat in the freezer and not something I can eat!”

It turned out that Nana, bless her soul, had not wanted the dead rat, killed by her cat Abby, to rot or smell in the garbage can during the hot Sacramento summer. So she had bagged the critter, threw it in the freezer, and planned to throw it in the can on garbage day. But then she had forgotten about it. So the frozen rat was hanging out in the freezer longer than expected.

Last night Sarah, my Dad, and I enjoyed a rockin’ good time at the Saratoga County Chamber monthly mixer at the beautiful Saratoga National Golf Club. A highlight and big draw of the event is the $1 cocktail. I learned the hard way that Tanqueray and Sam Adams did not fall into the $1 category. I could’ve sworn that at the last mixer I attended all drinks were available at the bargain rate. You live and learn.

YOU’RE INVITED!
Tuesday, March 14, 2006 7pm
The Steeplechasers Present
a fundraising auction for
Universal Preservation Hall
25 Washington St, Saratoga Springs
www.saratogablog.com/uph

View online invitation
(Crank up your volume)

(Print invitation design by elisa sheehan; online invitation by yours truly with elisa’s design elements)

Google announced today that it’s named Larry Brilliant to head the non-profit arm of the company, Google.org.

It just so happens that Mr. Brilliant is 1 of the 100 Faces of Marin featured in my Dad’s latest book.

Anyone who wants a more in-depth look at the new head of what will surely become the largest philanthropic organization in the world should order a copy of my Dad’s book today!

Here’s a preview of what you’ll get. My Dad writes the following on pages 20-21 of 100 Faces of Marin:

“Despite his business success and his life’s work, his heart is still entwined with the Seva Foundation, which he founded in 1978 to restore vision to poor people in Africa and Asia, for which he has received numerous awards, including an honorary doctor of science and being named by University of California as its 2004 ‘International Public Health Hero.'”

Perhaps ironically foreshadowing today’s announcement from Google, my Dad later quotes Brilliant as saying, “Say you decide that you like Chevrolets and not Fords. Or you decide that you like Yahoo! and not Google. It’s all the same. In my case, I felt that it was more important to stay in the monastery and deepen my spirituality rather than work in the world.”

Want more? Intrigued by the quote and want to understand the context? Buy the book.

(Thanks, Dad, for the link to today’s exciting announcement!)

Google Blog announcement.

In the second A_nderson media appearance this month, the Saratogian today published my letter to the editor about the proposed High Rock Redevelopment, which was inspired by my attendance at the public hearing held a couple weeks ago by the High Rock Redevelopment Committee.

High Rock lot should hold theater, new grocery store

Junk mail, although annoying, can also be pretty funny. I have a P.O. Box for Gabe Consulting, which also comes in handy whenever I’m signing up for something and want to protect the privacy of my home address.

All of my own domains, and those that I register for my clients, use my P.O. Box. I get a lot of junk mail there, mostly from domain registrars and hosting companies trying to steal away my business. How these companies get a hold of my information is easy to figure out. What I can’t figure out, however, is how my one-person DBA ended up with its own VP.

For the life of me, I don’t remember hiring this guy:

F ANTHONY BURKE
VP
Gabe CONSULTING

Maybe Yahoo Search Marketing knows something I don’t. Anthony, if you’re out there, why haven’t I seen you around the office lately, you slacker?

Two years ago today I wrote about our encounter with Attack Cat, the most ferocious cat ever to walk the face of the Earth.

Our three-day power outage ended last night. It was a frustrating and eye-opening experience, and we learned a lot about things like generators and surviving in the Northeast without power in the winter.

We were mostly comfortable — we had hot water, flushing toilets (if you’re on a well, you don’t have any running water, as is the case in Kinderhook when the lights go out; this happened several days before our wedding in 2003), plenty of candles and flashlights, and eventually our running furnace. We have a gas furnace, yet it requires electricity to run. If it’s possible to have a hot water heater without electricity, then why not a furnace, too?

Some of us are fortunate enough to have family with generators or have the means to buy one in situations like this, but what if you don’t have the connections or the means? What if the lights go out and you’re stuck in the cold? (Yes, communities do open up schools and other shelters when these things happen, but everyone prefers the comfort of his or her own home to a cot in a school gymnasium.) All the more reason for such a gas-only furnace design (maybe there is such a thing), or, better yet, solar and wind power!

Even before this outage, I recently looked into purchasing a solar electricity system for our home. Our December 2005 kilowatt per hour usage was 665 kWh. One kilowatt requires 100 square feet of solar paneling, so we would need 6 solar panels (600 sq. ft.) to be off the electrical grid. (Let’s set aside practical reasons like the fact that upstate NY doesn’t get as much sun as California, and that we have a lot of trees around our property.) Without any state incentives — New York and California have the best solar incentives in the nation — a 600 sq. ft. solar system would cost $47,000. New York state pays about half the cost, and you get a 30% federal tax credit (max. $2,000), and a 25% NY state tax credit (max. $3,750), bringing the cost of the system down to about $17,750. Our December total cost for electricity was $85.77, which included $6.65 toward our GreenUp wind energy. Aside from the environmental and power-crisis reasons, a solar system is also like paying for your electricity usage for life. At $85.77 per month, 206 months (17 years) later, you break even.

If you plan to be in the same house for that long (and can afford it), or are building a house, I think it makes great sense. Every year after those first 17 you’re ahead of the game, you’re doing your part to conserve the planet’s energy, and you’re not going to be in the cold if the power goes out.

Below is our MacGyvered furance-powering system we used to heat our home for two days:

Happy plays shadow puppets:

View more power outage 2006 photos

Little did I know the irony that my blog entry from Friday morning would bring (The Winter That Wasn’t), for later on that day a near-hurricane storm (more typical in this area in the summer than in the winter) ripped across northern New York state, with winds recorded as high as 67 miles per hour (a hurricane wind is 73 MPH). Branches fell, trees were knocked down, and a DOT worker was killed in Spa State Park when a tree fell on his truck.

Fortunately for us, our house did not suffer any damage in the high winds on Friday, and the spruce trees in our yard proved their strength, barely rocking in the powerful winds. My backyard ended up as a repository for a neighbor’s wreath and grill cover, along with random debris and stray newspapers.

I began to get calls around noon on Friday from friends who had lost their power. I thought I had lucked out, but then around 2 or 2:30pm Friday my luck ran out. Out went the electricity and with it, the furnace.

Then it got cold. Really cold.

At the peak of the blackout, about 225,000 National Grid customers across the state — including all Saratoga County residents — were without power, and about 65,000 of us, including a good portion of Saratoga Springs, are still without power — three days later. When I called the power company this morning, they told me that it could be 8am Monday morning or later until our power is restored.

We had to leave town Friday night to find a place to eat, so Justin joined us for drinks and dinner at Red Robin in Clifton Park, where we enjoyed the onion ring tower, among other greasy delights.

Friday night we had no heat — just lots of blankets. And Mother Nature pulled a cruel trick on us, deciding to give us single-digit temperatures this weekend when we’re without heat. When we woke up Saturday morning, the thermostat downstairs read 37 degrees at 9:12am (don’t let that 61 on the right in the photo fool you; that’s the target temperature). It was probably much colder than that in the middle of the night.

Luckily, Jen’s from a pretty rural area that loses power a lot, so her family is more prepared for things like this than we were. My father-in-law saved the day yesterday when he arrived with Jen’s uncle’s generator, a 55,000 BTU NASA-esque space heater, and a kerosene space heater. We hooked it all up and watched as the temperature slowly rose from about 41 degrees on Saturday afternoon up to the mid-50s (where we usually keep our thermostat anyway). The concern was that the water in our radiator pipes could freeze and burst, making a tremendous mess.

After we got the heat raised, Jen’s dad pulled the ultimate MacGyver and rewired the electrical outlet on our furnace so that we could plug it in to the generator. And voila! There was heat. We turned off the generator before going to sleep last night, so it was about 40 degrees inside when we woke up this morning before firing up the generator.

It’s been an intense, insightful, and challenging experience so far, and really makes me appreciate our modern conveniences that much more. At night, the stars shine more brightly than ever and it’s really, really quiet. This morning as walked the dogs around our neighborhood, the only sounds were the low rumbles of generators parked outside the cellars of a few fellow holders-on who haven’t left town for warmer ground. We really do take electricity for granted in this country. Our lives and our livelihoods depend on it (can we say solar and wind power?).

Today we’re at a coffee shop in town with power and wifi. Hallelujah! My Internet craving has been sated.

Tomorrow: Day 4 without power.

(More pictures of our MacGyvered setup forthcoming when power is restored. Here they are.)

This winter has been disappointing, thanks, no doubt to global warming. We’ve hardly seen any snow. I was jealous of the NYC snow storm last weekend that made the city look like it does most winters here in Saratoga Springs. But alas, it looks more like spring out my window on this warm February morning; it’s about 50 degrees right now with a bit of rain. We only have a few patches of dirty snow around the neighborhood, when this time of winter usually has snow banks packed several feet high. Hopefully March will come in like a lion and give me some much-wanted snow. We only had a few small snow storms early on in the winter (December). There wasn’t much in January. I’m still waiting for a 26-incher like the record-setting one in NYC last weekend.

Three years ago today we were living in San Francisco — where the median home price just declined to $607,000 in January 2006 — and protesting the start of the war that was about to begin in Iraq. Good thing we’ve spent $241,551,654,830 (and counting) on the war. “Instead, we could have hired 4,186,121 additional public school teachers for one year.”