The good news is that all of the geeks are alive and well after Ike. The great news is that one of us got to actually go on a vacation and left the other two to pick up the virtual limbs left on our blog.
Here are just some quick things I learned from Ike:
- If you are not directly effected by a disaster, you truly don’t know the frustration that occurs with trying to do the simplest of tasks.
- If your IT department is in another city, they will attempt to ‘test’ your system during the crisis, and forget that you need access to your communication tools. (Like taking down email access over the weekend to ‘test’ a new product.)
- If the power comes on across the street, you will learn to despise your neighbors (most of whom you’ve never met before.) It also means that it will be days before the electric company gets around to restoring power to your home!
- Your neighbor, that you thought was the dumbest one on the block, is the only one smart enough to have bought a generator in advance of the storm.
- You have a lot of really nice people in your neighborhood.
- You have an old lady in your neighborhood that you’ve never met before, but she still yells at everyone to get off her lawn (even though you’re removing all of the branches from it.)
- It is good to have family.
- It is good to have friends.
- You learn that by acting locally, you affect so many, and it can make a difference on a regional scale.
- Text Messaging (SMS) is great, but not fail-proof.
- My Amazon Kindle was a surprising resource with its basic web service.
- Twitter was nice to let my friends know how I was fairing.
- My power inverter that I bought for my car (so the kids could watch movies on trips) is a great tool to power a few items (like a fan and other low-powered things.)
- Pool water can help refill the toilet tank!!
- Next time there is a hurricane coming this way, I’m buying ice four-days in advance!!
- I’m a lucky guy to have friends, family and neighbors that helped keep me sane through it all!
- There are still other friends and neighbors that are out there that need a little help to keep sane through it all.
- It is good to be home!