'Death' Said the Devil's Daughter

[akirlu]

I'm not sure the title pertains to this post. I'm not sure it doesn't.

Today I woke up spontaneously at six-mumble ayem and figured my alarm hadn't gone off yet, and so I went back to sleep. Silly Ulrika. I woke up again at ten to eight with the conviction that my alarm had no plans to go off at all. And so it was. It was on, it had power, it was correctly set, it just didn't feel like doing any alarming this morning, apparently. Sometimes it does this.

And so I levered myself out of bed, leaving behind an unconscious spouse and dog, and fired off an e-mail to work explaining I would be late, and I was just working on making a little headway on deleting stuff out of my in box when both computer systems in the study just shut themselves off, spontaneously. Maybe there was a power flicker, maybe there wasn't, but Hal's system went immediately into reboot. Mine did not.

I pushed the power button on my computer. Click, said the button. I pushed the power button harder. Click again.

Best case: fried power source on computer. Worst case: fried computer. Okay, it was old, it was slow, it was going to want replacing soon anyway, but it also had copies of recent fiction writing and notes that may not be backed up on the mother ship. I am strangely calm about this. In a way, it's extra good that deathless_pose exists -- not only did it prod me into doing a lot of writing, but it's got backup copies of my finished fiction. I just hope to ghu I don't have to recreate the unfinished fiction. I really liked the beanstalk terrorist story. Oh, wait, I think I printed a hard copy of that. It could be okay, if I haven't tossed that.

As I was getting ready for work, I heard on the traffic report that 520 was backed up to epic levels because people were crawling across the bridge at 5-10 miles an hour, owing to wind and blowing water. This is a Seattle phenomenon I still just don't get. The wind does not affect ones ability to drive on the road. If the waves were washing over the sides of the bridge, that would impede visibility and traction, but it wasn't the case. As far as I can tell, people are frightened that the bridge might get swamped and sink. So they slow down. Now, to me, if you're afraid the bridge will sink you either a) don't get on the bridge or b) get across that fucker rilly, rilly fast. Going across at a crawl just increases the odds that you and all the people behind you will go down with the bridge, if down it should go. So WTF, BBQ?

So, one very slow bus ride later, I'm walking across campus through curtains of rain with my umbrella tucked under my arm because the rain is essentially sideways, and the wind would turn my umbrella faster than Kim Philby. (You know the rain is sideways when you start getting rain blowing into your windward ear.)

And now I'm at work and sitting down at the computer and the right lens of my glasses pops out.


Things to investigate sooner rather than later:

1) Rilly big USB key
2) Squall parka with hood
3) Optometrist's appointment

The title, btw, is just one that occurred to me as I was going to sleep last night. I was going to put it in my file of miscellaneous writing notes this morning but, um.

Comments

[replyhazy.livejournal.com]

faster than Kim Philby

Excessively well put!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Woke up, not quite alive,
Dragged a comb across my drive.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that the power switch is just confused about what state it's in? I had an Apple computer once where, if it lost power while asleep, it wouldn't turn back on. But it could be fixed by resetting the motherboard.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

High winds will move my minivan to the next lane if I'm not careful.

I had my optometrist appt today and I decided to splurge on new frames as well as lenses. And I have to have visual fields and dilation soon. Ick.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

Oh no. I hope it's not a complete computer failure. As with my recent experience, they suck.

[bedii.livejournal.com]

I have been on those bridges when the blowing water was as high as the top of a car and hitting Metro bus windows--I was on the last bus allowed across I-90 that day. If I remember correctly my wife was on one the day blowing water was going over the tops of Metro buses. This makes it very hard to see--if a commuter's been through one of these they're likely to slow down in the future no matter what the actual condition is.