Month: September 2013

This is a new one. One of my clients just challenged me to some iOS game called Battle Camp.

I’ve never heard of it, but apparently I can “experience the AWESOME” and do amazing things like “crush bosses”. Uhh.

Too bad I’m an Android guy.

Thom and I are planning to head up to the Tetons next Wednesday for our annual backpacking trip. Last night Dad sent me this weather map, which shows the high temperatures expected that day:

Notice the tiny little cold spot in northwest Wyoming? Yep, that’s where we’ll be. Dad delivered more good news with this analysis of the forecast:

Whee! I don’t mind a little rain while I’m hiking, or an evening in a tent while it rains outside, but it’s not much fun to spend three days in the wilderness while it’s grey, cold, and either raining or snowing. I mean, it’s September!

So, we’ll see how things develop… fingers crossed.

Today JPMorgan Chase bank was ordered to refund $309 million to customers, and pay an $80 million fine, due to unfair credit card billing practices.

They were also ordered to pay $920 million in fines over the “London Whale” scandal.

Oh yeah, and in July they settled for $410 million over accusations they’d been manipulating electricity markets in California and the Midwest.

And let’s not forget the $6 billion the Federal Housing Finance Agency is suing for due to bad mortgage security practices.

The good news is at least some of these greedy and unscrupulous activities are being brought to light, and the bank is being forced to cough up some dough. The bad news is these fines are only a tiny fraction of the bank’s overall profit… small enough that they’re probably just considered the “cost of doing business”. It reminds me of chemical companies who intentionally broke EPA laws by dumping toxins into rivers because the fines were less than the cost of proper disposal. Banks operate on the same principle: they cheat and rob, and then pay some pesky fine, because the profits from their shenanigans far outweigh whatever hand-slap they receive.

Sigh.

Tonight I went out with Alex, three men, and two other teenage boys. We headed over to The Greens, which is a really nice golf-course community in the southwest part of town. I’d been in the neighborhood just to the south on Monday, and clearly these were some of the worst-hit homes in the flood. As we drove down the streets tonight, we saw piles of trashed furniture, carpet, drywall, and of course mud in every driveway and spilling out into the street. There were front-end loaders digging through the piles and dropping them into huge roll-off dumpsters. What a mess.

We hopped out of the van and started asking people if they needed help. To our dismay, we talked to three different groups who were cleaning out their garage or hosing down the driveway or whatever, and all of them said they didn’t need any help this evening. They’d been working on cleanup since early in the morning, and frankly they were just done (it was approaching 7pm). We were sort of bummed, because here we were, ready and willing to help, and it seemed like no one needed us!

Then we came across a couple of women cleaning out their garage. They said they were pretty much wrapping up for the night, but one of them yelled to her husband, who was just hauling a wheelbarrow full of mud from the basement. He dumped the mud in the street, looked at us, and said he appreciated the offer, but he was burned out. He yelled down into the basement to his buddy, who yelled back to say, “Seven guys? Are you kidding me? Let’s get back to work!”

So we did. We spent a couple of hours shoveling mud in the basement into five-gallon buckets, hauling the buckets up through the window well, and then dumping them in the street. After we’d cleared out a lot of the mud on the floor, we attacked the drywall. The water had reached within a few inches of the basement ceiling, so all of the walls were completely ruined. The sheet rock crumbled a bit, so we basically tore the walls down in pieces and then shoveled the pieces into buckets and out into the street.

At one point I was shoveling mud in a dark room (there wasn’t power in that part of the basement) and couldn’t even tell what was in it. There were toys and electronics and books and who-knows-what. I saw a few old LP’s, but they were coated in slimy dark goop and I couldn’t even tell what they were. The guy who owned the house was a bit of a film aficionado and had some old 8mm reels as well as a reel-to-reel projector that must have been fifty years old. It was, of course, ruined. He was sad about it because it had belonged to his father. But he put on a brave face and said that maybe he could clean it up eventually and get it working again. If not, he said, he’d put it on a shelf as a decoration.

The boys were real troopers, hauling all of that mud, and when we finished the family was laughing and shaking our hands and basically in complete disbelief that we’d just been walking around the neighborhood offering to help complete strangers. They took our picture and told us over and over how grateful they were and how awesome we were. It was really cool.

Back home, I asked Laralee to take our picture. It’s hard to tell, but that mud on my jeans and Alex’s shorts is probably a quarter-inch thick. I think our clothes weighed ten pounds more than usual. And I don’t even want to talk about my boots.

Tonight I spent about three hours pulling wet, soggy, muddy carpet out of the basement of a total stranger. He had a large, beautiful finished basement and the river water had filled it about four feet deep, trashing everything in it. By the time I was done, I was literally covered head-to-foot in mud, my clothes completely soaked. I suspect I didn’t smell too good, either. But it was a good feeling not only to help this guy take the first step in cleaning up this disaster, but doing something to help someone I don’t know and will probably never see again.

Well, it looks like the rain might actually be coming to an end around here. That means the cleanup effort will begin in earnest. Although we weren’t really affected at all, just a mile away there are lakes of water in streets and neighborhoods. On the south part of town, where Left Hand Creek overflowed its banks, there was mud everywhere– streets, yards, garages, and basements.

On Saturday it was grey and cloudy but not raining, so Alex and I went down to that area to see what we could do. Alongside about a hundred people from church (multiple congregations), we spent the afternoon shoveling mud. It was soupy, pretty much like chocolate pudding, and it turned out the most effective tools for moving it were snow shovels. We pushed tons of it out of yards and sidewalks, hefted it out of basements in buckets, and did our best to not only clear it off properties but create channels for water to flow. The sheer amount of mud was staggering: it looked like the street had a thin layer of it, but when you stepped on it you realized it was knee-deep. Alex and I both took off our boots, which weren’t really going to help much anyway, and waded through the mud barefoot. By the end of the day we were caked with it.

Sunday it rained again, all day. At points, it was absolutely pouring. More areas of town were evacuated, and some people who had been evacuated and then returned home were asked to leave again. As before, our house and area of town were fine, but I can’t imagine the frustration of those people who basically were hit with a second flood.

Now that the rain is subsiding, the city work crews are getting organized and figuring out what to do. They didn’t want to take a lot of action over the past few days because they knew more rain and mud were on the way. I don’t know if all the work we did on Saturday was undone by Sunday’s rain, but I hope at least some of it was worthwhile.

School has been cancelled through Wednesday at least, and we’ll see if the kids will go back on Thursday. During the next few days I imagine we’ll have plenty of opportunity to help those affected by the flood move more mud around.

I feel so bad for those whose homes have been trashed… it’s amazing what even a little bit of water and mud can do. There are people in Estes Park who were evacuated and may not be able to return home for months. I’m grateful my house and family are okay, and want to do whatever I can to help those just a few miles away who are struggling with this mess.

Here’s an aerial view of the field where I usually play lunchtime ultimate…

Well, today proved to be a little more interesting than I’d expected. After the news of the school closure, the kids were happy to hang around the house while I headed off to work. It was raining a little as I drove to the office, but nothing serious– it’s been raining for days, so I didn’t think much of it.

I arrived at the office to find it empty. Normally a few people are there before me, so I thought maybe they were just slow coming in. I settled in and fired up my email to find a discussion amongst the team about how a bunch of roads in Boulder were closed due to flooding. James had come up to the office from Gunbarrel (just north of Boulder) and had to plow through three feet of water. Luckily he’s got a high-suspension 4×4 that could make it. He grabbed his computer from the desk and promptly went back home to work there.

I had some breakfast, wrote a few emails, and then figured it would be more fun at home than at an empty office, so I headed out. Again, the drive was fine. There wasn’t much traffic, and a light smattering of rain.

Laralee and Kyra decided to go out and do a bit of shopping, so they took off while I went to work in the basement. A little while later, Laralee called to report that they were stuck in traffic. Apparently all of the major roads in south Longmont were completely gridlocked. As it turned out, the St. Vrain Creek– which runs east-west through the middle of town– had flooded and was basically dividing the city in half. No one could get north or south across the creek (now a raging river). Looking around a bit online, I discovered that Boulder was faring just as badly due to flooding in Boulder Creek. Surrounding areas had it worse: Lyons was cut off from everywhere, and residents were instructed to boil any water before drinking it. Aurora was mostly underwater. I-70 was flooded. The entire Denver area, it seemed, was suffering in various degrees of flooded rivers.

Strangely, here at the house it was lightly sprinkling. The sun even came out for a little while. Laralee said it was pouring down where she was, just a few miles away. After an hour in traffic to travel about half a mile, she and Kyra decided to abandon the car and hike home. They parked at Home Depot on the southwest corner of town, bought some rain ponchos, and started walking. They passed hundreds of stopped cars. The police were evacuating a good chunk of south Longmont, taking people to emergency shelters.

On their way home, Laralee took a few photos. Here’s Martin Street; at the top right of the photo is a bridge that crosses the St. Vrain. A few bikers are in the center of the shot, braving the water (here it’s only about a foot deep).

About half a mile from there, they crossed a bridge over the St. Vrain and looked down on the bike path. Normallly the creek is maybe ten feet across– as you can see here, it’s probably a hundred.

They finally arrived back home, drenched, about six hours after they’d left.

Crazy stuff. But at least Kyra had the earrings she’d gone out to buy.

Well, this is a first in my book. School has been cancelled today due to… rain.

There’s some flooding in a few areas around Boulder, and apparently several creeks and rivers are at 25-year highs and still climbing. It’s been raining for four days straight.

(Insert another Seattle joke here.)

Laralee went to Idaho for the past week to visit her mom. After she bought a ticket through Travelocity (our go-to source for airline tickets), she was surprised to learn at check-in time that she had to pay $25 for her carry-on bag. I know all of the airlines charge for checked bags these days– a jerk move, in my opinion– but I had never heard of carry-on bag fees.

After a bit of research we learned that it wasn’t something we could change. Apparently if we’d bought the ticket through the Frontier site instead of Travelocity, they would have generously waived the fee. But who knew? And why should it matter anyway, since they’re still getting their ticket fare?

Anyway, we coughed up the $25– grumbling the whole time– and she went to Idaho. Now she’s coming back to Denver, and she’s at the airport with a bag to check (something she’s bringing home from mom’s house). She learned that it costs $25 to check the bag at the airport, but if she checks in online it’s only $20. Huh?

So, fine, she called me so I could hop online and pay the stupid fee. I went through the online check-in process but didn’t see a place where I could choose the checked bag and pay for it. I was, however, warned that if I didn’t pay for a carry-on that I would be subject to some penalty if I tried to board the plane with a bag. Nice. I went through the check-in process and wasn’t able to choose a checked bag at all. Now she has to pay the extra five bucks because she’s doing it at the airport.

Yeah, yeah, it’s just five bucks. But I’m more upset about the principle of the thing. This is ridiculous. When I look online for flights, I don’t see the actual price I’ll be paying: now I have to do mental gymnastics to figure out whether it’ll be $50 or $100 more than my ticket price, just to bring a bag with me. It’s not like a lot of people travel with no bags at all. This is just another price-gouging money-making scheme by the airlines.

After this frustrating experience, I decided to look at Frontier’s site to figure out their crazy new fees. They have a page that lists all of the “optional service” fees, including anything to do with bags. There are fees for checked bags, which is pretty much standard now, but in the carry-on fees section it says it should be free. Apparently they don’t even have the right information on their own web site.

Further poking around on the internet found the a “worldwide baggage fee chart” which compares fees on all airlines. It looks like Frontier is the only one who charges for carry-on bags. Nice move, guys.

I used to prefer Frontier to other airlines (especially United!) because they tended to be less expensive, and the trips just seemed nicer. Well, as “nice” as the horror of air travel can be these days.

Frontier, with this latest stunt you just lost my business. I’m not interested in paying $50 for a silly little carry-on bag.