Mother Nature did her best to knock our island fortress off the map.

I still have no cable/internet, but the crews have finally started working on the tree hanging on the wires and blocking the road by my house. I've had to circle back around another way to enter and leave my neighborhood.

Boat rode through fine but battery was spent from keeping the water out of the bilge. Spent an hour running the engine to top it up and rowed to neighbor's boat to tie up a mainsail that got loose and was all over the deck. Other boats dragged all over the place with one Hans Christian aground off the beach. I have to remember to buy my diver a bottle of something to thank him for the great mooring set.

Power died during the storm. Was fixed a couple hours later, then died again when the island's main line went down. Fired up the gnerator to keep the pumps running (we are on a low lot). Still had minor flooding and suspected pump failure. Headed to local tool rental place Friday to rent a portable so I could get the water level below the sump covers and get them off on Saturday afternoon. Headed to the island rental shop, making several impromptu detours around various closed roads with trees laying across them. Trees and downed power lines were everywhere. Arrived at rental store to find a line to rent chain saws and no power. They set me up with a great little portable and 50 feet of 2" fire hose discharge line.

After a day of pumping, I had the water level below the sump covers and pried them off. Sure enough one pump dead with rock in the impeller, the other working away but overwhelmed. With the portable running full time, the lot was slowly drying out, but the phones were messed up everywhere and I was unable to reach the local supplier for replacement. Finally obtained one yesterday and installed it - finishing just in the dark. I love kneeling in the mud glueing PVC together.

Side note - why do they make screw on couplers for PVC pipe? I have never come across one that wasn't completely seized and needed to be cut out and replaced. Its easier to just cut out a length of pipe and splice it back together with a double female connector. Did I bother with a screw connector for the pump? Heck no. That sucker is glued in there.

Also had purchased new gasket for wood stove on Wednesday and set out to install it as soon as the power went out on Thursday - only to find that the bonehead at the shop shorted it by about 4 inches - headed out on Friday to different local stove shop - they had no power but the nice lady sold me new gasket material in the dark "guesstimating" a price. Installed that Friday morning.

With all that, I had been delaying getting firewood and we had about 3 days supply for the stove. I kept hoping to spot a loaded truck on the res outside the casino, but everytime I saw one, they were gone before I could get back to them. Fortunately, power returned Friday afternoon for us. Many still don't have it. Manged to get local firewood dealer to drop off a load yesterday about 9:00 pm. I had about six logs left. Now I'm set until February.

Power came back on in Winslow (island commercial center) yesterday and finally we could buy milk and eggs again. Markets refused to allow customers to open coolers while on generator power. Crews arrived to remove tree blocking our street and fix power cables around noon today - power out for a couple hours while they worked on it. I stacked wood. With luck, Comcast will get the cable fixed in the next day. They've been looking at it, but there were downed high voltage lines all around the mess and trees half hanging on their stuff so they've been waiting for the power company to sort out their stuff first.

I did get a lot of software development done - been porting my app from evil OODBMS to Postgres/GLORP and it is running really pretty well now. Planning a conversion over the holidays. Nothing else to do (apart from install pumps, fix stove, acquire and stack wood) so I got a lot done.

You can't fix stuff for free ya know.

Also, you try x-mas shopping with no internet. Thank $deity I have Amazon prime (free 2-day shipping) and the library has working internet. Just finished that.

Time to head home and resume database conversions.

I before E except after C, or as in A as in neighbor and weigh and, apparently, deity.