Earlier in the week, I told you how I “accidentally” missed the emergency drill, and how it didn’t exactly break me up because I know where the mailroom is. I’m there six times a day if not more. I don’t need a drill to show me how to get there. Well, wouldn’t you know it, yesterday an actual storm hit. Two separate Tornado Warnings, both of which caused the evacuation of the office into the mailroom. Nice.

The first time, I was in the break room getting a glass of water when we saw one of the local channels break in with a “Severe Weather Update”. We watched Top Jimmy get his weather woody on, getting way too excited about the prospect of actual tornados, and basically decided to ignore it and go back to work. Then the sirens went off. And people freaked out. We went to the mailroom and waited it out. While we stood in there, I kept my mouth shut because even though I didn’t take it very seriously and wanted very much to joke around, I know some people were quite upset by the storm and I respect that.

After we left, we headed back to the breakroom to see what Top Jimmy was saying, and where the radar showed the storm. It appeared to be headed away from us, so we went back to our desks. I was offered $25 to get on the PA system and scream out “Its coming right for us! Everyone to the mailroom!”.

My mother always told me to save your money for a rainy day. My rainy day came Monday, as you read yesterday, when my computer died. So for the second night in a row, I busted out my old laptop and prepared to spend some of my rainy day cash on a new computer by buying someone’s old computer on eBay. I’d much rather spend $500-$800 on a slightly used computer than $2500 on a brand new one that will be old real quick. Its good fiscal sense, really. So here’s Day Two of the Great Polyfro eBay Mac Hunt.

***

You want to push my buttons, snipe me on an eBay auction I really want. Last night it happened again. Twice. The first time was nothing unusual. Last ten seconds I get outbid by some ass. Rending of garments, swearing of words, slamming of fists. Same thing second time around. The third auction for a PowerMac ending last evening I exacted some measure of revenge…

At 10:10 this morning, the National Weather System issued a nationwide weather drill (or maybe it was just city-wide? I dunno). The sirens outside went off, and the safety committee at the office had a goal to get everyone into the mailroom within 20 seconds.

Now, you’ll recall that last year I took an excruciating 2 minutes to get there, stopping for a donut and a can of pop on the way. This year, I never made it at all. I had an “urge” to go to the bathroom at 10:09, and so off I went. I took my sweet time — turns out the faucets in there are really limed up bad! — and when I came out at 10:15, the meeting was over.

“There you are! You’re supposed to be dead!”

“You would be all blow’d up!”

One guy was with me. He’d been outside smoking and missed it as well. “Easy now, he was in the Number Two shelter. Probably safer than the mailroom anyway.”

“You bet.” I answered.

I don’t like practicing things. I like doing things. I quit playing organized sports mid-way through high school even though I was rather decent because I hated practice. Loved games, hated practice. I’ll be in the mailroom in a scant 10 seconds in a real emergency. Know where it is. Go there everyday. But not in a drill.

You bet.

I know I promised you stories from the power outage at Hy-Vee when I was in high school. Then my computer died and instead of writing it last night, I spent hours trying to fix it and then, when I declared it dead and signed its death certificate at 9:47 PM Central Time, I spent the rest of the night on eBay trying to buy a new/used one. So those stories have to wait for tomorrow.

–

Last night the Great West Omaha Power Outage claimed a victim: my PowerMac G4 Tower. Shortly before 7:30 pm, the fan began to fail, and by 10pm the processor, hard drive and several ports on the back also failed. Its worth noting that everything worked perfectly until the power surge/outage/surge back on. Also worth noting that the surge protector blew up on the first surge and then subsequently failed to protect on the second.

Nice.

Saturday, the intent was to record a podcast at noon. To give myself sufficient time to get alive before the recording, I woke up at 9:30, which was a struggle considering the craziness of Friday night. Went to BK for the double-meat croissanwich, because I needed food like nobody’s business and nothing fits the bill better than sausage, bacon, egg and cheese on a croissant. Hash rounds don’t hurt either.

After running on the nature trail behind my house, I was sufficiently awesome’d to record.

So at noon, Cliff, Dick and myself are sitting around hashing out the show and as we go to enter the studio — the back bedroom which has been converted into the eponymous Polyfro Studios — I stop off at the bathroom. And before I can do my business, the light goes out. I finish in the dark, and come out asking if the power is out elsewhere. It was.

My immediate reaction was that the construction guys building a house across the street must have hit a line. My neighbor from two houses down had the same thought, and wandered out in his snappy sweatpants/hoodie/ballcap ensemble to inquire about what might have been done. The construction guys know just enough English to pack up their stuff and get the hell out of dodge before OPPD shows up to yell at them.

I grab my OPPD bill and made sure I’d paid it. I have had this problem of forgetting. But it was current. So I called the outage hotline, and kept getting “Network Busy: Cannot connect” errors on my phone. Clearly, the end is nigh. Try again. Same error. Try a third time. This time I get the automated OPPD computer voice dude thingy. Creepily, it knows my address without me telling it anything. I feed it information and am told a technician will be assigned to my problem. Nice.

We wait 15 minutes, and when its apparent that: