Year: 2013

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.

Well, this is very un-Colorado-like:

I feel like I moved to Seattle!

I’m in the market for an old Macbook Air for Kyra (to use for school). I found what seemed to be a pretty good price on eBay, until I looked at the fine print in the description:

Umm… it works “really well” but the screen is broken? Clearly this guy’s definition of “really well” is a little different than mine.

The first computer I bought cost $2,500. It was an Apple IIgs and it was awesome. The year? 1990.

A year later I sold that and bought an Intel-based PC. It screamed along with a 33MHz i386 processor and 4MB of memory. Two thousand clams.

Last night I read about the Cubox. It’s a cube two inches on a side, and it’s a full desktop-capable computer with HD video output, 3D graphics, networking, wireless and Bluetooth connectivity, USB outputs, a SATA connection for an external hard drive, yada yada. In short, it’s probably a thousand times more powerful than my first computer. The cost? $45.

Isn’t technological progress wonderful?

Today I’m getting a bunch of spam messages from someone who’s a very bad spammer. They apparently forgot to set up their “Robomail” software, because all I’m getting in the emails is a list of the variables they could use to construct their spammy goodness.

Come on, man, if you’re going to be a sleazy spammer, at least figure out how to use the dang software.