Irene feeds Sandy

It's now the 13th year of this century. Already this century New Jersey has experienced two major hurricanes. Hurricane Irene in August 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012. After Irene struck, President Obama declared all 21 counties of New Jersey to be a Disaster Area. It was the worst storm in the history of PSE&G, our utility company.

Then, in 2012, Sandy struck. Sandy had the largest diameter ever recorded of any Atlantic hurricane. It impacted twice as many PSE&G customers as Irene. Hopefully, this sequence of worsening disasters doesn't continue in 2013 and the rest of this century.

Here I am sawing Irene droppings into kindling. I used remnants of Hurricane Irene to feed the fire that warmed is in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy while we were without the electric power which is necessary to run modern heating systems.

Grand Oak withstands Sandy by Shedding

You've seen the photos of many trees downed by Hurricane Sandy. Here's an oak tree that stood steady.

It's interesting that instead of large branches breaking off of this tree, the tree "shed" what seem to be thousands of branch ends which ranged from a few inches in length to a few feet. You can see some of them piled up in a line in the street above. Here is a photo of a typical one.

It's as though the tree knew that it had to relieve the force of the wind so it discarded leaves and tips so that it could survive these immense forces. Reminds me of a ship's crew tossing cargo into the sea to avoid the ship sinking cause of encroaching water making it too heavy to float.

Hurricane Sandy hit Princeton hard on Monday

Southern Way is a relatively short one-way street in Princeton. At the end is Cedar Lane. Although Southern Way was hit hard by Irene, it made out better with Sandy. Perhaps Irene and some other storms in recent times cleared out the weak trees. Cedar Lane and other streets nearby are a different story. Here is the view looking east - to the right from Southern Way.

You can see yellow police tape tied to some of the dangling wires! So let's look a little to the left.

You are seeing the top of an electric company pole pulled off to the left. What caused it? Looking west, towards the second pole further to the left, we see:

Since our electric supply appears to be fed from that end of Southern Way, you should not be surprised that we are without power. PSE&G estimated that it will be restored Monday evening.

Hurricane Sandy approaching New Jersey

The calm before the storm - scenes of the season in Princeton:

Blue Berry Identification

Today, I spotted these blue berries growing near the canal in Princeton. I also noticed them growing in Marquand Park near the parking area.

Someone from the US Dept of Agriculture helped me identify this plant. It's Ampelopsis brevipedunculata, the porcelain berry.

Wow! Mia Farrow tweeted about KDB's Gay Talese video!

Here's a tweet from Mia Farrow about KDB's New Yorker video about the writing lair of the legendary writer Gay Talese: https://twitter.com/MiaFarrow/status/254661331876192256

Marbled Orb Weaver in our front yard

Every day recently that I walked through one part of our front yard, I encountered a massive web rebuilt from the previous day. Finally, I spotted the builder and identified it using Google:

BEACH CREATURES Video

Although this video was published just over a year ago, it's such a great video about a such a great creation, that I decided to post a link to it again. It's about a Dutch artist and his wind-powered sculptures that walk on the beach: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/09/beach-creatures.html

No Budget? No Pay!

Like any public corporation, Congress should be required to pass a budget annually. It has passed a budget and the spending bills required to fund federal operation only four times in the last 60 years! See No Labels: No Budget? No Pay!

Park City, Utah in June

An advantage of working in Telecommunications, is that we take an annual trip to a Telecommunications conference. This year we stayed at a fabulous lodge in the Park City mountains. It's a shame we had such busy meeting schedules and not a lot of time to enjoy the location. With the industry continually changing, lots of training is required to keep up. Over and above the typical areas like T1, DS3, PtP, MPLS, PRI, OC3, Fast & Gigabit Ethernet Line Services, we had significant training on mobility management and cloud options. It was good that the last day, Saturday, was a break from work. We tried golfing at about 6500 feet above sea level on a windy day. By the way, it was our first time on an actual golf course! We had taken some lessons in May, basically learning how to putt and hit the ball down the driving range. It was an interesting experience to say the least. Luckily, the day was set up as a scramble and we had two experienced golfers in our foursome.

Montauk in April

At the end of April, we spent a long weekend in Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island. Being off season, it was very pleasantly quiet.

Joe at the ocean

Val near Montauk Manor

December Trip to Paris

Been very busy. Finally posting that we took a rather enjoyable trip to Paris at the end of December. Weather was a little warmer than in the Northeast US at the time; however, those cool days would feel great about now.

KDB on the Musée d'Orsay balcony

Joe & Val on Ferris Wheel over Paris

Hurricane Irene in Princeton

Our power was restored after almost two days - the partial vacation ended. Actually, while the power was out, we put in lots of time needed to clean up the numerous branches and twigs spread around our property.

There were two very unfortunate deaths in Mercer county:
* one was a Rescue worker who was confirming that no one was trapped in a car submerged on Harrison St near the canal which is about half a mile from our home,
* the other was a landowner who removed a manhole cover hoping to clear water from his flooded property - the large amount of water already rushing down the pipe apparently created a vortex that sucked the man into the sewage pipe.

Here is a view of the stairs and tunnel for passing under the railroad tracks at Princeton Junction train station: http://foureleven.tumblr.com/post/9518080147

What is SMA?

SMA is Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a genetic disease that occurs in approximately 1 out of every 6,000 kids; it leaves the spine underdeveloped. See A Thousand More by Kristina Budelis, Piotr Malecki and Jeff Rhode.

Tools for Managing and Protecting your PC Files

There are some great tools available on the web to help you manage and protect the files on your PC or MAC. I discuss aids to using your PC in greater detail at my Joe Budelis Help page. Here, I'll just mention two of the web sites that I recently started using that provide a great service and it's free for their basic offering.

Do you work on more than one computer? If so, wouldn't it be great if files on the two (or more) computers that you work on were kept synched? Well, files on more than one computer are kept synched by DropBox as long as each of the computers is connected to the Internet.

Have you ever lost files cause of a failed hard drive, viruses, trojans, or some other reason? If so, you know that it's important to back up your files. You can set IDrive to back up files on a scheduled basis.

In both cases, you receive a certain amount of space free. The free space can be increased by referring others to these services. In fact, by using the links in the two preceding paragraphs, you will increase the size of my free space.

Joe Budelis wins iPad at 2011 Telarus Agent Conference

Joe Budelis participated in an educational "team game" at the 2011 Telarus Agent Conference which emphasized some interesting facts about Telecom Carrier Service offerings and built team spirit. The game was played by four teams to be the first part of a selection process for the person to be awarded a newly purchased iPad. Then, a random drawing of those in the winning teams selected Joe Budelis as the winner of the iPad.

And the Snow Melts

Icicles from snow melting on roof.

Another Snowstorm hit the Northeast!

Before


and


After





Or

should

it be

Summer

and

Winter

Rome and Florence during a NJ Blizzard

We left for our Italian vacation on one of the last flights out of Newark before airport operations were seriously hindered by the December 26, 2010 snow storm. Although the weather in Rome and Florence was wintery, we were lucky to get out of the NorthEast USA before many flights were canceled and not to have to shovel and otherwise deal with the major snow storm.


Here is Valorie and KDB smokin' a clove on the front steps of a church in Rome. There are more photos of our vacation on FLICKR.

Valorie published Why is Hypoglycemia on the Rise?

After considerable research, Valorie published an article on Hypoglycemia in her Gaia's Pen blog. Whether you know what hypoglycemia is or not, you will likely find this article to be interesting.