:: xcomputerman.com ::

There’s something about a good storm that turns your life upside down and sets you in the right direction. Back in Houston now and picking up where I left off, except that I’m not exactly picking up where I left off … there’s something about the calm after the storm. Putting things together again, not exactly the way they were before I left them. It’s a fresh outlook, a new day altogether. The blistering heat wave has finally left Houston, and suddenly life is better than it ever was. As weird as it may sound, I am thankful for this storm.

So far it looks like Rita is going to turn out to be a non-story for us. Thank God he answered our prayers and spared us from the fury of this storm. So far no casualties reported in the entire affected area, but we have to continue to pray since there are usually a lot more casualties due to the flooding afterwards in situations like this…have to be particularly concerned about Northeast Texas where the storm is expected to stall and dump a lot of rain.

At this time I highly doubt we will be returning to Houston until sometime on Sunday. The gas situation is still a major concern, and right now I-45 is still getting pounded by rain. Hopefully the return will be much less chaotic than the exodus was. I’d certainly like to be able to make it back to Houston in under 10 hours at the most.

We finally made it to our hotel in the Dallas area this afternoon. That was after a 15-hour trip from Houston - a trip that should normally be 4 hours. We left Spring around 8:30pm last night, and got on the contra-flow lanes on I-45 by making a U-turn on the feeder ramp. A couple of miles south of Woodlands Parkway was where the traffic jam began, and it continued pretty much all the way past Huntsville. I don’t know at what point it broke free, because by then I was fast asleep … had to make my sister take the wheel after nearly 7 hours of continuous driving. I slept for about 3 hours and eventually woke up just south of Corsicana.

We were then greeted shortly afterwards with the news that a bus had exploded just south of Dallas on 45, and we ran into a massive traffic jam as state troopers forced everyone off onto the Highway 287 exit. One of my friends texted me an alternate route, so we climbed onto the feeder and drove on down. In a moment of sheer stupidity, I decided to attempt to continue on I-45 in the hope that the accident would be cleared by the time I got there. I think we had driven at least 15 miles before I heard an update on the radio saying that the accident was still there and that the freeway was still shut down. We immediately exited, and that couldn’t have been any more timely … if we had waited till the next exit we would have been stuck in what was basically a 10-mile long parking lot. So we made the U-turn and drove back down to highway 34, which we took north to 175 and eventually after about another 90 minutes we arrived in Dallas. We would still have to fight through another traffic jam on I-635 before eventually making it to the hotel.

Once we got here, I just got into bed and passed out…between phone calls and text messages from lots and lots of concerned people, sometimes a little irritating as I tried to get my sleep on, I eventually just went out cold.

This stupid hotel, as fancy as it is, has no Wi-fi, and they charge $10/day for internet access. Pffft. Perhaps they might be humane enough to waive the charge for us, but I’m not pinning any hopes on that. So right now we’re here, watching CNN, praying and hoping about the property we’ve left behind in Houston. A massive nuisance it is, indeed.

Finally got out of there. Shoved everything as far away from the windows as possible, packed up my computers and documents and put them in the car. It took me over 4 1/2 hours to drive from my apartment (about 3 miles south of I-10) to Spring. That trip normally takes me 40-45 minutes. And the only reason I made it here so quickly was that I avoided the freeways as much as I could, choosing instead to take a longer route (Eldridge to Jones Road). It took us 2 hours to travel 3 miles! I don’t think I would have survived this trip if not for a couple of old heavy metal CDs (Skillet, East West) cranking out all the way at 140dB. Hungry and totally sleep-deprived. As I sit here I barely have enough strength left to even type.

We plan to head out of here very early tomorrow morning. Destination is someplace north of Dallas, near the Oklahoma border. The governor has just issued an order to reverse the southbound lanes of I-45 (and I-10/Highway 290 as well I believe), so hopefully all this traffic should thin out soon. Whenever there’s a pipe, there will be blogging.

That’s what they’re telling us right now…unless the storm continues to slow down. 120mph winds around my part of town…surely the windows will be blown out. I’m definitely making sure 100% of my valuables are locked up in closets. Getting ready for that insanely long drive north any time now. At this point I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to find new accommodation once I come back to Houston. I wonder how long it will be before things return to normal.

It looks like it may be worse than we originally thought. They’re now telling us the eye of the storm will probably make landfall much closer to Freeport than Matagora, which means the Houston metropolis will get a pretty good whacking. Most of the freeways are jammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic right now.

The plan right now is to pack all the most valuable things into the cars, move anything else away from windows and into closets, and get out. There’s so much stuff it’s almost exasperating. Hopefully we’ll be out of this apartment by 4 am in the morning, and then we head north to Dallas. This building had better survive the storm, or I’m not going to be pleased when I get back.

Rita is fast turning into a massive nuisance for us down here in Southeast Texas. For me particularly…between the past 48 hours of furiously studying research papers in anticipation of what was to be a project proposal presentation tomorrow morning, an incredibly hectic week at work, and everything else in between, it’s been particularly difficult to pay attention to this storm. But nature sometimes has a way of forcing us to pay attention, so I took an extended lunch break today and headed for H-E-B and Wal-Mart. Too little too late, all the water was gone, and the shelves were almost bereft of canned food, bread and disposable silverware. Grocery parking lots all over the city are jam-packed, and the freeways are a nightmare. I’m gonna have to find some side streets to take home this evening. Hopefully this web server will stay alive through the storm…but at Cat 5, as unruffled as I am about this storm, I’m not taking chances either. Backup all the data, pack important stuff and move north. I’ll be blogging from there for as long as I can remain online.

Meanwhile TI in Stafford hasn’t announced closure yet, and I wonder what they’re thinking. Surely they don’t expect anybody to show up for work tomorrow morning. I know I’m not going to.

I’ve tried not to blog about this hurricane, but I decided to put up a few words nonetheless. I have family friends who lived out in New Orleans, and I still haven’t been able to get through to them yet. Today was the first time I was able to get through to the cellphone number, but I immediately got voicemail and the mailbox was full. I’m trusting God that the whole family is safe and sound, but it sure would be nice to at least know where they are and how they’re doing.

We were at Lakewood last night, and there were a number of refugees from LA in the service. Pastor Marcos Witt asked them to stand while we welcomed them and prayed for them and all the other people who had been displaced by the storm. I hate being confined to my cube here at work now…I’d love to be able to go down to the Astrodome and help out all those people somehow.

Links for information, how to help etc:

• WWLTV has latest news and updates about the storm.
• Lakewood Church coordinates with the City of Houston for relief efforts. Visit that page to see how you can help/contribute.
• See this thread on the Cache-22 message board for information about donations and assistance for storm victims. One of our users is reporting that there’s a hospital paying $9.00/hr for waitstaff to work at the Astrodome.
• Interdictor - live blog with first-hand updates from the middle of the chaos.
• Volunteer Houston - Disaster Relief Registration Form.
• Red Cross Donations.
• Live video feed from New Orleans’ WDSU.
• Satellite Photos from the NOAA.

I’ll post more links here as I come by them.