Of Feeder Bands and Jump Drives

About an hour ago we got our first rain showers from Ernesto. And about an hour ago I decided to plug in my jump drive to back up my computer just in case. [phfft] Nothing except an error message: "G:\ drive inaccessible." I made a quick call to SanDisk, got on with technical support, and after a couple of tests, they adjudged that it was fried. Who knows why. But I still had my receipt from Office Max where I bought it ten days ago, so I hopped in the car and made it over to the store as they were beginning to put up the hurricane shutters. Office Max exchanged it with a smile and a shrug -- "Ai, these things happen " -- and I picked up two four-packs of D-cells just in case. I made it home, did the back-up with no trouble, and now I'm all set.

The radar is showing the first big feeder bands approaching the Keys, and we're getting some preliminary gusts. NBC6's Jackie Nespral (remember her from the Today show?) is saying the real storm should start around five with the worst hitting around 8 or so and lasting through the night. The projected track has shifted a bit to the west, but we're still supposed to get five to ten inches of rain and winds up to 60 mph.

I pigged out at lunch on perishable food; hey, if the power goes out, it will all have to be chucked, so what the hell.

Oh, by the way, NBC6 came up with a novel suggestion for making sure you had telephone communications if the power goes out. They touted a new kind of phone, which they call a "hurricane phone." Instead of the cordless models so popular today, this one has a cord from the receiver to the base, and a wire from the base to the wall outlet. What a great idea! And you can get them from BellSouth. Or, if you're like me, you can use one like this:

I'm ready for anything.