Category Archives: General

General

Armageddon

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…in Colorado Springs. Good luck to all my friends in the area. I’ve heard they’ve evacuated the Air Force Academy.

[Update a couple minutes later]

It’s not a forest fire any more. (Note that these pictures are from last night, not sure what status is this morning, except I saw on Facebook that Stephen Green was getting ready to potentially evacuate).

[Update a few minutes later]

Here are more pics from the Denver Post. This could be one of the worst fires in the nation’s history, in terms of residential damage (and perhaps loss of life, too, if people don’t evacuate in time).

[Update in the afternoon]

As Stephen Green says, it looks like Hiroshima.

General, Technology and Society

High-Speed Rail

25 Comments

I’m on the Acela from Union Station to BWI.  Free wi-fi, but it’s too short a trip (twenty minutes) to justify getting out the laptop.  I’m just going to look out the window and enjoy the fastest train ride I’ve been on since I was in Europe.

[update a few minutes later]

This is the slowest high-speed rail I’ve ever seen. Just north of DC the train came to a complete halt for a couple minutes. It then proceeded at a pace sufficiently leisurely that we were passed by the Orange Line to New Carrolton.

OK, I’m now officially screwed. They just announced that they have an engine problem and are backing up into DC.

Whoops. Now saying that they’ve fixed it. We’re finally accelerating. But we’ve lost several minutes. It’s already nine minutes past scheduled arrival time. I still may not make it.

[update a few minutes later]

On the bus to the airport. It will be tight.

[10:15 EDT update]

I made the flight, with checked luggage. Next stop, Dallas.

Administrative, General

Light And Scattered Blogging

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I’m at ISDC, but it’s not blogger friendly.  No tables or power for laptops, poor bandwidth. I didn’t even bother to bring my laptop today because the utility/hassle ratio is too low. I’m posting this from my phone.

And tomorrow I’ll be flying back to CA.  But hey, it’s a holiday weekend.  Why are you reading this blog anyway?  Go out and do something fun, and remember those who sacrificed to make it possible, on Monday.