currently 10:59pm Friday 5th September, 2008 (NYC, New York)
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August 2003 archives
The following are all the entries published for the month of August 2003. blackout of '03 nyc
Monday 25 August, 2003 at 7:20PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (4) Oops! That last week or so shot by real fast without me posting. Ok I said I'd post about the massive blackout we had last month, so I better get onto it. It's lost a bit of its news appeal now, but since it was one of those moments that will go down in history, I should really write about it since I was here in the thick of it. I'll try and make it somewhat dramatic for you. *snicker* The time: 4pm Thursday 14th August, 2003. The day is cloudless and extremely humid, temperatures pushing into the 90's°F (over 32°C) for yet another day, while air conditioners whine incessantly away on their maximum settings all over the city. I'm sitting at the computer in our apartment wearing a pair of silk boxer shorts, and I'm still sweating. Outside and six floors down a few people splash around in the apartment building swimming pool, making the most of the conditions. Just another day in the Big Apple. 4:11pm the computer screen suddenly goes blank - the power is off, the moment defined by the sudden absense of the usual sound of the air conditioner and the background hum of the computer tower over the last hour or two. The car horns on the streets nearby seem to increase in frequency. It's not the first time a circuit breaker has switched off when we had all systems go in the apartment, so I open the fuse box to fix the problem. All the fuses are ok. Strange. I hear someone yelling outside by the pool area, so I pop my head out the window and hear the doorman telling someone that the whole building is out. The people in and around the pool stop and look around dumbly, wondering if they should be overly concerned. The car horns out on the street increase a little more. I attempt to call IceQueen at work to tell her our power is out but the cellphone won't work. Hmm. A subconscious wariness creeps over me. The normal phone is still functioning - we had purchased a cordless only days earlier, but fortunately kept the old fixed-line phone as a backup. IceQueen tells me the power is out at her work, and apparently all of Manhattan is out as well. For millions of New Yorkers, the subconscious wariness turns to conscious thought - terrorism. Someone brings out a transistor radio by the pool and everyone stops in their tracks and stares at it as the announcer advises that there is a total loss of power right up the eastern seaboard and into Canada. Roughly fifty million people are effected. There's an ominous silence as the radio is switched off after the news bulletin. Nobody speaks for what seems like several minutes, all lost in their own thoughts. I call IceQueen at work again to tell her what was on the radio but she is aware already of what's going on. IceQueen has more information - apparently there is a fire in a large power station site and that is reportedly the initiator of the blackout ..the main point is that it's not an act of terrorism (words to that effect are announced later on public radio). I breathe a sigh of relief, as do countless others affected by the blackout as they hear that news later on - from southern Canada, right along the east coast from Maine down to Pennsylvania and across to Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. That's a huge area. huge. IceQueen and her co-workers are discussing how to get home. No power = no subway. Shortly after, I discover we also have no water. This is going to be fun. I decide we'll need some supplies and quickly get changed into street clothes and head out of the apartment - straight into the total pitch darkness of the corridor and then stairwell. By the time I get down to the 4th floor, my fingers are being burned by the cigarette lighter I'm holding up for light. Yes we had a flashlight, but no batteries for it (yeah yeah I know..). A girl comes into the stairwell from the 4th floor weilding a flashlight so I go the rest of the way down with her. Outside is confusion. Many residents are standing out in front of out apartment building looking a little lost, but nobody is panicking. The intersection down the road is choas. No traffic lights of course, so cars are all over the place and most people are just sitting there leaning on their horns ..a lot of good that will do, but I guess if that helps them vent their frustration, then so be it. Unmarked police cars with sirens blaring race in different directions on the side roads. I wonder if they know where they're going even? I stop for a moment to talk to one of our neighbours and tell him about the power station being on fire (allegedly). He looks relieved. I leave it to him to pass the info on to everyone else as I head to the local shops. The sidewalks are unusually crowded, it seems the power cut has bought everyone out from their homes to wander around like lost sheep. At least they're talking to each other which is something good to come out of this - nobody is a stranger for the moment, we're all in the same boat. At the shops I manage to buy the very last two D-size batteries they had, along with a 9V battery for our alarm clock radio. Lucky. That's the flashlight sorted. We already have a few candles, although the shops all around have been cleaned out already, so just as well. I fill my bag with five 4litre bottles of spring water (it can't hold any more than that) and grab a few 2L bottles of coke to carry as well, and some basic food and fruit that don't require refrigeration or cooking. The lady who owns the shop talks me into buying an ice cream ...they're starting to melt already. I make it back up the 6 floors to our apartment with all this stuff and call IceQueen for an update. They're still discussing it, but it looks like they'll be walking the 7 miles or so home (we don't have a car - no need for one in NYC ..usually). Meanwhile I get things organized around the apartment in case we're without power when it gets dark. The radio tells of millions of people out on the streets of Manhattan and hundreds of thousands slowly walking out of Manhattan to their respective homes in the five boroughs like some mass exodus from a dead city - a clear resemblance to the aftermath of 911. As it turned out, many thousands spent the night sleeping outside on the streets of Manhattan or at Grand Central with no way home - the police were only allowing traffic to flow out from Manhattan, not back in. The few taxi drivers left in Manhattan were (in some cases) reportedly tripling their fare prices. Yeah, gotta love those NY taxi drivers. To the few drivers that were monopolising the situation, I'd like to personally say a big 'fuck you' (the ones that were caught have since been prosecuted. Good work). The phone rings. It's a Kiwi accent! Reporter Scott MacLeod from the New Zealand Herald is calling me for an interview. I smile to myself at the irony of the situation. It's good to hear a voice from back home, regardless of the circumstance (it turns out he got my number from my mother after finding out from some source that I'm in NYC - I don't know Scott personally). A few days later my mum sent me a copy of the NZ Herald - the interview made page three of the weekend world news edition - a full page story which continues further in. I hope that's not my 15 minutes of fame. I call my mum in NZ to tell her what's going on - she confirms giving my number to the reporter and tells me to take care. A little later IceQueen calls - she's on her way home on foot. Poor weasling, that's a long hike. About halfway back they managed to score car service the rest of the way. Very lucky. Later as night falls we light the candles and have a pleasant dinner of pita bread, kielbasa, cheese and a salad, which is more than welcome given the high temperature and humidity. Still no power or water. We talk and play cards and listen to the radio by candlelight. As we live in the tallest building for several blocks we have a great unobstructed view from the windows that make up one wall of our lounge - at night there's a sea of light we look over, with the two lit towers of the Verrazano Bridge in the distance. Some of the sunsets we experience from here are amazing. This night the view is alien. There are no lights whatsoever, the only indication of the Verrazano Bridge being the occasional glimmer of a set of car headlights crossing over. It's eerily quiet out there. Friday morning 15th August: There is still no power or water when we wake in the morning. We do very little other than reading or playing games and listening attentively to announcements on the radio. Apparently there has been minimal looting in NYC overnight, although we hear other cities haven't been so fortunate. As the day heats up, we relocate to the swimming pool for the rest of the day. It's a great day for it. We end up chatting to a lady from another part of NY. She was stranded by the blackout in Brooklyn and a friend of hers who has an apartment in our building told her to stay there ..the friend is stranded elsewhere in NY. As evening approaches we head back upstairs to our apartment and start preparing for another night without power, although we're hearing reports on the radio that some parts of NY are back live again. Friday 6.45pm 15th August: 26½ hours after we lost power, the sound of the swimming pool pump breaks the relative quiet. Lights come on and dormant air conditioners suddenly clatter into life. People still relaxing around the pool and out on the street start clapping and cheering loudly. Other residents lean out their windows (myself included) and add to the impromptu celebration. IceQueen and I both give a yell of joy and relief. Strangely enough, this is the first time I've felt like I'm a part of NYC. Minutes later I laugh as dozens of house burglar alarms start howling. It's over. I've heard reports since that some smaller towns were up to 40 hours without power. Last week we saw a t-shirt in a shop with "I survived the blackout of '03" written on it. Of course. man loses penis
Sunday 24 August, 2003 at 11:13AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (9) I kid you not. This was published on AOL news a week or so ago. Apparently 67-year-old Hurshell Ralls went into surgery for bladder cancer, but came out of surgery missing more than he ever expected. His penis and testicles were gone. Though shocking, he's not the first to get a traumatic surgical surprise. Ralls, a mechanic, says doctors never warned him or his wife that amputation of the penis and testicles might have been part of surgery before he went in for the procedure in November 1999. Ralls filed a negligence lawsuit against the Clinics of North Texas in Wichita Falls and the doctors who operated on him. The civil case is set for trial Aug 25. "It was never even discussed. And I felt like he ought to have at least told us that this might be a possibility so that we could have talked it over even before he was admitted to the hospital," said Thelma Ralls, his wife. In a February deposition, Ralls' doctor said that he determined the cancer had spread to the penis while he was removing Ralls' bladder. Doctors did not send a tissue sample to the lab until after the surgery. A Dallas doctor who examined cell slides later found that Ralls did not in fact have penile cancer. How bad is that? I'd be suing the shit out of them, and no amount of money would be enough to compensate. I hope the doctor is struck off the medical register at the very least. What's worse is that this is not unusual. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reported in 2001 that 95% of doctors have witnessed a major medical mistake, and that many of them involved cancer. When Johns Hopkins reviewed tissue samples from thousands of cancer patients around the country, they found one out of every 71 cases was misdiagnosed! Ok, lets look at that in real numbers.. According to this report to the Senate Appropriations Committee in June 2002, there are 1.2million new cases of cancer diagnosed each year in the US. Note this is new cases, not reviews of existing cases that have gone into remission or spread etc, so this translates to a bare minimum of about 17,000 cancer patients misdiagnosed every year. That is absolutely disgusting. No wonder these guys need so much bloody insurance. Frank Barerra is another cancer patient who was the victim of an error. He was actually in surgery about to have his prostate removed, when a call came from the pathology department - there had been a mistake. His slides showed no cancer. Last January, Good Morning America interviewed Linda McDougal, who was misdiagnosed with breast cancer. McDougal was given a double mastectomy at the United Hospital of St. Paul, Minn., in May 2002. After the surgery, McDougal was told that she actually had no signs of cancer at all. The only advice given: get a second opinion! mars attacks!
Friday 22 August, 2003 at 10:54AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (2)
Mars appears unusually bright throughout August 2003. It looks like a brilliant orange star in the constellation Aquarius and outshines all the other planets and stars visible in the night sky. It rises a couple of hours after sunset early in the month, but around the time of sunset by the end of the month. The last time Earth and Mars passed this close to each other - well, almost this close - a Northeastern astronomer launched a nationwide effort to listen for Martian radio broadcasts. The time before that, Giovanni Schiaparelli saw a series of dark markings on the planet's surface that some interpreted as canals built by an ancient civilization. Here's a rough timeline:
Go check it it out while you still can. It could be another 60,000 years before it gets this close again! spyware and adware
Wednesday 20 August, 2003 at 1:06PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (19) Hey. I'll be posting soon about the now famous "Blackout of '03", but first I'll tell you about something else I discovered on our computer last night: spyware and adware - lots of it. For a few weeks I've noticed every now and then a new IE window would open up with advertising in it, much like a popup ad, except it would always be a full screen IE browser window rather than the expected small size ones you usually associate with popup ads. What was even curiouser was that it would sometimes happen when the only website(s) I had open at the time I knew as fact did not have popup ads associated with them. I also knew it wasn't something on AOL, because they would've opened inside the AOL window. 'Hrmm' I thought to myself. I searched a bit on google for info and found out about one (of several) adware programs called SaveNow. This rang bells, as I had noticed on our firewall some program called 'Save!' had been trying to access the internet and send information out, but I had no idea what it was. Apparently what this particular program does is open new browser windows with advertising content (as it was doing) and then send info to the company that owns the program about what ads you were viewing etc. I also found that similar spyware/adware programs could do a whole lot more: including sending details of sites you viewed, give access for someone to get into your PC and look at files, and even take over your PC altogether. Some also had the ability to dial out if you weren't online and contact someone's server so they could then access your PC and do whatever they wanted while you weren't even there! Scary shit. Fortunately I think our firewall had been blocking the access attempts, but the popup ads were still happening. Microsoft.com had some info and suggestions of how to identify and remove the SaveNow program, but when I followed their instructions, I was unable to locate any related files. Strange, although I knew it was there somewhere because the firewall was picking up the attempts to transfer info, and of course I was getting the advertising popup windows. With some more searches on google.com, I found a couple of applications that could detect spyware and adware and remove it from your system. Kewl. The first one I downloaded was called SpyHunter [live link removed because allegedly it's a scam which actually adds more spyware onto your system!]. This is free to download, but I found that it will only identify the spy/adware, but not remove it unless you purchase the rest of the product. On running this utility, I was shocked to find that the SaveNow program was not the only one on our PC. Among more than a dozen programs of varying severity was a nasty piece of spyware called 'DyFuCa'. This is one of the bad ones that tries to dial out when you're not online (as long as your PC is still switched on) and can give the hacker full access to everything on your PC. I don't know if it was there before I put the firewall on, but I'm counting us as lucky we haven't had our system completely wiped. We used to notice late at night the phone would make a slight 'ting ting' noise occasionally and had assumed it was something to do with the phone lines, but now I wonder if it was actually this DyFuCa spyware trying to dial out. Ok so now I knew these things were there, but how to get rid of them? The Microsoft support site suggestions for the SaveNow adware couldn't locate them, so what do I do other than buy the rest of the SpyHunter utility? I went back to google of course. I found another utility with good reviews called Ad-aware from Lavasoft (not to be confused with Ada-Ware - a ripoff which adds more malware onto your PC). This program was free, and removed the spyware as well as identifying it. When I ran this utility it identified and removed all the spy/adware except the DyFuCa one. Apparently it didn't recognize it. Hrmm. Using SpyHunter again I was able to track where this nasty little piece of spyware was lurking, which was in the registry entries. Using regedit.exe (a standard windows utility) I was able to locate and remove them manually. We are now clean it appears :) Note: If you are removing registry entries, be very very sure you remove only the correct associated ones - a fark up at this point can hammer your whole operating system and result in you having to wipe and reinstall windows altogether (worse case scenario of course). So now you might want to check out your own PC for this sort of crap. Here are some links to free software I recommend you download to make your PC a bit safer from hackers and other nasty parasites: (there are others, but these are some of the better free ones I have found). *
* note : some of the utilities originally mentioned above have since been discovered to be undesirable. Please read the comments to this entry for more details. For a more current list of reliable recommendations, visit the Internet Security section of this website. Hope that all helps someone. lots of news
Wednesday 13 August, 2003 at 4:12PM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (11) As the title says, I have a fair bit of personal and related news. First up, major congrats to some friends in NZ, Yvonne and Pete, who have finally got engaged after 6 years together, although no date set for the wedding as yet. Also to Barbs and Dave who have set a date and are getting married in April 2004! I won't tell you what music they're considering for the wedding, but it would be funny that's for sure. I received both emails within a couple of days of each other - makes me wonder what kind of disease is going around back in NZ. Anyway, in both cases, about friggin time! haha! Gratz guys, that really is awesome news. Also just received in the mail the long-awaited surfing videos I won from surf.co.nz in conjunction with surfvision.com. Dave at nzXsports (surf.co.nz) included a moro bar with the vids, bonus! They don't have moro bars in the US, so it really was a bonus. Yummo. Thanks Dave! Now we just need to go score a VCR player (hopefully within the next few days). For those interested, the vids I received are: Coastal Disturbance 3 (NZ, including some Raglan footage!), Monster Mavericks (Mavericks, US) and Spit 4 (Pipeline, Hawaii). Apparently the Mavericks vid has some hellish wipeout footage as well, which is bound to be damn scary considering Mavs has become one of the world's big wave meccas. Check out this pic from mavsurfer.com:
..it's a rather nice pic of backwash hitting a wave with the sunset behind it, but look at the extreme left of the pic - am I imagining things, or does that look very much like a fark'n big noah (shark) being caught up in that backwash? hmmm. IceQueen and I went to the movies last Sunday night and saw 'Freaky Friday' (Jamie Lee Curtis and Linsday Lohan). It seems to be getting a lot of good reviews, especially for a Disney movie. IceQueen enjoyed it and apparently most critics agree with her. I liked the music in it, but the plot has been done several times already (Tom Hanks in 'Big' for example) and was very predictable for me, but it wasn't bad. If it weren't for the music, I probably would've rated it a 'yawn - seen it all before'. have a groovy day
Friday 8 August, 2003 at 9:58AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (1) Happy Birthday Mum! arnie for president!
Thursday 7 August, 2003 at 12:58AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (32)
Hey, if actor Ronald Reagan can get elected to President, I see no reason Arnold can't make it to governor, and California is just the kind of place to do that. Actually he might be quite good, because many politicians (in my opinion) make their decisions based on how it will affect their popularity rather than what is best for the country, whereas I have the feeling Arnold would not think that way. It's going to be damn interesting to see what happens. Worth noting is that 'Hustler magazine' publisher Larry Flynt has also declared his intent to run for governor there. The most recent poll on AOL for preferred candidate shows Arnold holding 75% of the votes (which is huge), and that's from a current total of just under 180,000 individual votes so far. The current governor has 14% of the votes. Only in America. arrogant pretentious bullshit
Tuesday 5 August, 2003 at 2:58AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (12) As you can tell by the title of this post, I'm currently shaking my head at the sheer ignorance and stupidity of some people. I was looking at this entry on a website called 'Back To Iraq'. The fourth comment down was entered by some complete and utter fucknut named Gerald, and this is what he had to say: ..But really, the USA does know what's best for the Iraqis. The Citizens of the USA are very, very familiar with the culture of Iraq, and what the needs of it's people are, based on our extensive knowledge of it's history, it's religion, and our first hand experience of many cultural differences that set it apart from our own society and history. We, the citizens of the USA, would go so far as to say that we know more about Iraqis than they know of us. Therefore we are undeniably qualified to vote for a Christian president who, like us, knows what is best for the people of Iraq, and will represent our righteous judgements for what is best for the Iraqis. What the fuck? That entire comment is the most arrogant pretentious piece of bullshit I've read for quite some time. What I find even more hilarious is that of all the cultures and people I've met from around the world, Americans (in general) are the least informed people of all when it comes to knowledge of the world outside the boundaries of their own country. I say this from extensive personal experience, so if you don't like it, I don't give a shit. It's highly likely this idiot knows jack shit about the Iraqi people, their religions or their culture. Indeed, if he knew anything at all, he would not be making such insensitive and delusional comments at all ...and how dare he presume to speak on behalf of the citizens of America as well, it completely disgusts me. Then to turn around and say there should be a Christian President elected in Iraq? What a fucking nimrod. Please excuse the language in this entry, it's just that such glaringly obtuse comments such as his make me wonder how the human race ever managed to make it out of the swamps ...apparently some haven't, at least intellectually. ..add on about 15 minutes later.. A couple of people have added comments on that site that Gerald may have been speaking sarcastically, although I'm not convinced. Gerald has yet to comment again one way or the other. If he does clarify it, I'll let you know. ..update the following day.. Well some people thought the whole comment was written in sarcasm, some didn't. Since Gerald had not replied on the page in question, I emailed him and asked. His reply: "It was all very, very sarcastic." So there ya go, I was wrong. My apologies to you Gerald - you're obviously not a fucknut after all, and if by chance you took the advice in my comment on the website in question, feel free to pull your head out of the sand. I'll leave this post here anyway just to illustrate how things can be misinterpreted. There's a moral there somewhere I'm sure. the da vinci code
Friday 1 August, 2003 at 2:31AM (Nereus) :: permalink :: comments (118)
The ending of the Da Vinci Code webquest ..well I won't tell you what happens at the end, but it's the challenge of the quest itself rather than the result that makes it entertaining anyway. If you get stuck (which you probably will) I have all the answers to complete the quest. Try to solve it yourself, but if you can't, then you can view the solutions further down this entry, step by step, both in brief, and then in more detail. Good luck! ..update 10th March, 2004.. There are now two quests available: the da vinci code solutions
These are the answers (in brief format) to solve the original Da Vinci Quest (scroll down for more detailed solutions):
These are the answers to solve the second Da Vinci Quest (scroll down for more detailed solutions):
Many visitors here have asked for details of how the solutions were found, so here's how: ..continue reading entry "the da vinci code" » |
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Something I should have mentioned earlier, but there's still a few days left in the month. I came across 
It was only a few weeks ago that I saw a poll on a website asking whom people would most like as President of the USA. Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the options, and he had by far the highest percentage of the votes. I guess he saw the poll too, because guess what? Arnold announced yesterday during a taping of 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno' his decision to run for California governor! He called it the toughest decision he's made since getting a bikini wax in 1978.
The original Da Vinci Code quest is basically a promotion for the Dan Brown novel 'The Da Vinci Code' (read