mbietz November 30th, 2007
It’s raining in San Diego. We’ve already had more than 1/2″, including a few moments of near-downpour. To put that in context, our average rainfall is only about 10″. With so little rain, the roads are pretty oil-slick, which makes for a crappy commute. And there are worries of rock and mudslides, especially in the recently-burned areas.
But that’s not what I’m thinking about. This is the first big rain since we moved into the new house. It’s a bit like the first road trip with a new lover. You’ve gotten to know a lot about each other, but now you see all the annoying little quirks. I keep wandering around the house looking at the ceiling for leaks. None so far, but I discovered that the front door doesn’t have weather stripping, and with the wind today, we’ve got a puddle on the floor. The driveway also slopes a bit toward the garage, so there’s a puddle there too (although it’s not right up to the door, so probably not an issue).
But now I’ve got an excuse to go to Lowe’s this weekend. 
mbietz October 26th, 2007
The fires aren’t out yet, but the San Diego Fire Chief announced today that there is no more fire threat for the city of San Diego, and Qualcomm has been emptied. The winds and temperatures are now in the firefighters’ favor. We’ve still got pollution issues – the air is still hazy, and the invisible particulate matter is high. We’ve been keeping the house closed up and we’ve got our small HEPA filter and the air conditioning fan on to help. Dan went in to the UCSD campus today – he said the smell was worse there, and there was some ash in his office around the windows (which don’t seal particularly tightly).
But all in all, we’ve been very lucky. No fires got even close to us, and the pollution hasn’t been as bad here as in most other areas of the county.
mbietz October 24th, 2007
Yesterday Dan got a text-message on his cell-phone from the UCSD emergency response system:
“classes r canceled 4 week du 2 uncertnty of fires & xtreme bad air. Res. dining halls, & studnt health centr open & opn 2 serve. resume norml class & work sched Mon. Oct 29. chk ucsd.edu”
Dan wasn’t sure if it was real at first – it was hard to believe that an official message would be written in txtspk.
I recently saw Leysia Palen speak at the e-Social Science conference about “Crisis Informatics.” One of the points she made is that in times of crisis, the official/unofficial dimension of information is often separate from the reliable/unreliable dimension. The text message (at least at first glance) seems to be low on both scales. It comes from an unrecognized number, has few authority cues, and doesn’t follow any of the genre conventions of official communications. On the other hand, it is both very official (coming through a tightly controlled emergency system) and completely true.
For this message, it didn’t matter much. But if you got a text message from an unknown source that said “evac asap. xtreme dngr. leave valubles bhnd.” would you do it?
mbietz October 24th, 2007
7:45am: A little stronger smell of smoke this morning, but again no change in our status. There has been more “onshore flow” with the winds, which is probably the reason why we’re smelling it more. The smokey sky also made for a colorful sky. With the wind shifting, many of the new evacuations have actually been on the northeast side of the fire (that is, farther away from us).
mbietz October 23rd, 2007
10:15pm: I’m back in San Diego. Flying in was interesting – as we were coming in over San Diego everybody had their eyes glued to the windows. Could see the fire lines on both sides of the plane, and the eerie orange glow in the smoke we were flying through. Became even more obvious, though, that the flames are (thankfully) pretty far away from our house. The weather seems to have been slightly more cooperative today. Hope that continues.
But I’m still on Eastern time, so I’m heading to bed. G’night!
mbietz October 23rd, 2007
If you’re interested in tracking the progress of the San Diego fires, some of the most up-to-date info seems to be at the Union Tribune web site, although their servers have been pretty overloaded. The most recent news updates are at the Fire Blog. There’s a relatively recent (and frequently updated) Google Maps mashup that shows the boundaries of the fires and the evacuation areas.
I’m in Ann Arbor right now, but planning to fly back in to San Diego this evening. The airport is running as usual and is planning to remain open.
We live in the very center of San Diego, very near Qualcomm Stadium (one of the main evacuation centers). That puts us east of I-5, west of I-805, and just south of I-8. We’re essentially on the south rim of Mission Valley, and just north of Balboa park.
As for now, our area has not been evacuated, and the closest evacuated areas are many miles away. I just talked to Dan and apparently there is a slight smell of smoke in the air, but otherwise things are normal at our house.
One issue highlighted by the fire officials is that predicting the exact path is a problem because the Santa Ana winds tend to be inconsistent, and over the next couple of days are expected to turn around and head back inland.
So for now our house isn’t in the path of the fire, but it’s wait and see. I’ll post here again if there’s any major change in our status.
mbietz October 17th, 2007
Yesterday I passed my dissertation defense!
Already it feels like a distant blurry memory. It was great having so many friends there, and my parents were able to drive in from Peoria (although when Dad raised his hand to ask a question, I wondered for a second why I’d invited them!). This was the last major milestone. I’ll be making revisions and dealing with the mountain of paperwork for a little while longer, but soon I’ll be Dr. Bietz. (Which, as dad reminded me, has a much better ring to it than “Master Bietz.”)
mbietz October 2nd, 2007
Two weeks from today. October 16. 1:00pm (eastern). I’ll be defending my dissertation. It’s hard to believe it’s almost here. If all goes well (and even if it doesn’t), soon I won’t be a student any more. If you count pre-school, I’ve been a student for the past 32 years. Yeah, there was that year working in the library at Stony Brook, but even then I was taking classes, it was a university library, and I knew that I was going back to school. I didn’t stop being a student, I just took a sabbatical.
I’m looking forward to being grown up. But it still feels weird.
