12-XI-2009.

Hurricane Ida, or some such name, has arrived. The perfect storm - it's slow, carries (and drops) lots of rain, it's high tide, and it's pushing sea water inwards. Since it covers lots of land, all the water from the three rivers arrives here.

Did some work on the engine for SHET, the 09 version. Again they didn't supply any documentation, didn't notify any of the companies supplying data for their database, they communicate only with their users, who should retype everything into their online forms. Had to fiddle a lot with the lock indicators, i.e. the long field with one byte for each regular field, where the field's status is written. So that the engine wouldn't overwrite the manually edited values. Each control will have its own lock icon.

Had a chat and then online session with some doctor or higher nurse, who seems to be David's mistress or live-in housemate, whatever. She's translating Feds into italian, and I'm the author of translation.

In the afternoon I was hosting the regular skype meeting. Luckily, due to hurricane, we didn't have the jet fighters overhead. And I already had my Sennheiser headset with short range microphone. Previously, with the little microphone in the webcam, it would sound as if they were flying through the room.

Still had some validation rule to add for the australian registry. The clinic there has some new IT guy, named Star (!), who is a tad slow but eventually gets things done. In a week or two. And I actually did what it took, just couldn't push the executable to them, and it's not because we're under a hurricane - it's them. Tried from Jan's server as well, no dice. Finished my part at 17:17.

Message from Lena's school, "Based on current and continued weather conditions, Virginia Beach City Public Schools is closed today, Thursday, November 12, 2009, for ALL students and staff. Should school be cancelled or delayed on Friday, November 13, you will be notified by e-mail and phone when this decision is made.", arrived at 11:43. Almost on time, she was at school already. Came back earlier, though.

This is not our first hurricane, we're ready. At least we didn't lose power, the cables in this area are under ground, well insulated. When we were buying the house, we had to check that we're above the boundary of a centennial flood, by a foot, but that didn't stop the credit union from requiring the flood insurance to be paid for the duration of the loan. Or was it that we had to pay an independent agent to assess the danger, which cost us 200$. One of those.

By evening, the street was under water. There's nothing wrong with rain drains, it's just that this is above their capacity. Simply too much water. Our cars were flooded about 2-3 inches above their floor level. We finally have a house on the coast.

Around 21:00, the water was already in the patio, which is a whole step above the rear alley level. This being Virginia, the water wasn't too cold, we waded through it in our flipflops.

On the main street, what garden she tried to put together this year was all under water. The magnolia cones and leaves, which I tried to make soil of (it was just bare sand under the tree when we moved in) mostly held. The drip watering hose rose above its soil. We should have dug it in. As I wrote to dad during next hour, "We still have about 35cm until it reaches the treshold. The tide is already ebbing, so this is slowing down. We'll see in the morning, with the next tide, this doesn't promise to stop soon.". Dad started using the pulser and making the silver coloid water. We sent the equipment recently and he's got it, and this morning he drank the first glass of silver water. I'm so glad we convinced him to not go to surgery. The doctor said "six years if we cut it out, two years if we don't". Much later, we found the written diagnosis, it does say cancer on kidney.

We talked with Nina. They took Go's car for a wash. Told her that her car is also being washed, not so much brush but lots of water. They planned to buy some cheap car while there and then run it all the way to San Diego (Ender has cousins there), but it turned out to be quite complicated with tags and titles, so they'll rent something and go tomorrow. Go is giving lessons at the office, something about zBrush or Maya, to the other staff, so she can't go. Haven't heard Ricardo mentioned at all.

Around midnight the water was all the way up the pavement, and it was just the height of the step and treshold, perhaps 20cm altogether, which was between us and the flood. But it stopped there.

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Mentions: David Berton, Ender Aquila (Ender), Feds, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Ricardo Manuel Bariero (Ricardo), SHET, translation, in serbian