I'm traveling for the weekend in one of the six cities I've experienced year-round. Updates may be spotty. Right now, I just need a nap.
I was thinking back to a somewhat strange question: where in the world have I experienced all 12 months of the year? I mean, I think you have to do that in order to say you really know a place.
Before I get to that, let me explain the post's title. The second time I ever set foot in New York was 30 years ago Monday, on 4 December 1987. (The first time was 23 July 1984.)
New York is also the second place in the world, after Chicago, where I experienced all 12 months of the year. I crossed that finish line on 1 April 1989, during my first year at university.
The other places (and dates) are Raleigh, N.C. (1 May 2010), London (1 September 2013), Los Angeles (1 October 2014), and San Francisco (29 October 2015).
L.A. really surprised me. Half my family lived there for 30 years, but between school, work, and dumb luck, it took over 40 years from my first visit there (19 April 1974) until I finally, finally experienced an October day there. And that was a work trip—I didn't even intend to do it.
The other odd bit is that the entirety of the time I spent in North Carolina is documented in this blog.
I think this post will interest about six people, but since one of them is me, and the rest of my brain is working on some pretty slippery user stories for work, up it goes.
There's a lot going on at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters, so I haven't had a lot of time or energy to post this weekend. Regular posting should resume tomorrow.
Just a quick note. I've had a Fitbit for three years as of today, and so far, I've logged 14.4 million steps. My mean over 1,097 days is 13,170 steps per day, though my median is 12,616, reflecting the fact that I have a number of very-high-step days against almost none when I failed to hit 5,000. I've hit 10,000 on 949 days, 87% of the time.
And now I'm going to ratchet up another 4,000 on my way home.
I'm excited about my new project, but as we ramp it up, I'm becoming aware of a cost: sleep. And that's not good.
Thanks to my Fitbit, I have a pretty good idea of how much I'm sleeping. Here's what October looks like so far:
The 11th through 13th and the 16th through 18th were travel days. And then on the 17th (the "wake" column of the 16th) I had to get up at an ungodly hour to get to the San Antonio MEPS by 6am.
I think this will settle down quickly, but wow, I'm really feeling it today.
Too much to read today, especially during an hours-long download from our trips over the past two weeks. So I'll come back to these:
But more seriously:
Lunch break is over.
This is my first moment to catch my breath (other than sleeping) since Friday. While I'm doing that, read about Chicago steak houses. Next post later today.
I'm in Northern Virginia for a project meeting tomorrow, so not much to post today except that I'm here. Tomorrow, though, should be very interesting. I hope to have photos. But it will soon become clear why I might not actually have any photos.
Team meeting at 8am Eastern, and it's midnight, so off I go for now.
Hurricane Maria's eye passed directly over Vieques earlier this morning and has now struck Puerto Rico proper:
Hurricane Maria roared ashore Wednesday as the strongest storm to strike Puerto Rico in more than 80 years, knocking out power to nearly the entire island and leaving frightened people huddled in buildings hoping to ride out withstand powerhouse winds that have already left death and devastation across the Caribbean.
The storm first slammed the coast near Yabucoa at 6:15 a.m. as a Category 4 hurricane with 250 km/h winds — the first Category 4 storm to directly strike the island since 1932. By midmorning, Maria had fully engulfed the 160-km-long island as winds snapped palm trees, peeled off rooftops, sent debris skidding across beaches and roads, and cut power to nearly the entire island.
In an unfortunate twist, some residents of Vieques had stocked up on critical supplies in advance of Irma only to donate what they had left to harder-hit areas such as Tortola and St. Thomas. Residents rushed to restock before deliveries to the island stopped and the power flickered off yet again.
There isn't much news coming out of Vieques yet, but having been there less than a year ago, I can't imagine that much of it remains standing. The shops and restaurants on Calle Flamboyan are (were?) less than 50 m from the beach, and barely 3 m above the Caribbean. I hope everyone got out OK.
This hurricane season may not break records for numbers or aggregate storm severity, but it will probably do so for destruction and cost. With St Martin and Barbuda all but destroyed, it looks like Vieques and Culebra are next:
Hurricane Maria went through an astonishingly quick transformation from a minimal hurricane to a Category 5 monster in less than 24 hours. As of 9 p.m. ET [Monday], Maria had maximum sustained winds of 250 km/h, and the island of Dominica was right in the path of the worst of the storm's winds.
The National Hurricane Center has warned Maria is now a "potentially catastrophic" storm. This is the only Category 5 storm to strike Dominica on record, and may be among the fastest rates of intensification of any hurricane on record.
The National Weather Service office in San Juan issued a statement on Monday afternoon warning of the massive threat this storm poses to the island. The winds alone could cause locations to be "uninhabitable for weeks or months," the Weather Service stated, in addition to warning of a potentially deadly storm surge along the coast.
I visited Vieques in November, and I've visited St Martin twice before. I hope both islands recover quickly.
Note to Scott Adams and other climate-change deniers: The intensity and destruction of this year's hurricanes don't prove human-caused climate change. They are predicted consequences of human-caused climate change. By "predicted" I mean that, 20 or 30 years ago, climatologists warned this is exactly what would happen as the planet got warmer.