No Power Means No Shower
By Jonathan | September 17, 2008 at 1:28 pm
This past Sunday Hurricane Ike pummeled Cincinnati and the surrounding areas with wind. We’re not talking about some lame breeze you get in the springtime with bunnies hopping around and flowers blooming; this was the kind of wind that didn’t think about sucker punching you in the gut, knocking you down, and then kicking you in the groin. 70+ mile per hour winds were uprooting trees from the ground, ripping roof shingles off houses, and tearing fences apart. These winds also directly or indirectly caused power outages to over one million Duke Energy customers. Unfortunately for Abi and me, we were one of those customers.
We actually ended up losing power around 3:00pm Sunday afternoon. It flickered on and off a few times until finally settling on off. No big deal, right? It will come back on sooner or later…or not.
2.5 days later power was restored to our house. As of 1:30pm today there still are over 297,000 customers that aren’t nearly as lucky as we are. Regardless, I’d like to recap the past 2.5 days as a list of things that were good, bad, ugly, ridiculous, etc. Here we go:
The good
- After the wind was done blowing on Sunday, the temperatures dropped into the 50-60s at night, and 70s during the day. This meant that we weren’t going to freeze to death, nor would we sweat to death.
- Although Hurricane Ohio was tough, we never saw more than a sprinkle of rain.
- Our 40 gallon water heater managed to keep enough hot water stored up so we could take minimal showers.
- Team Lammi was supportive throughout this whole catastrophe, as they offered up their hot food and some electricity (hopefully we don’t get a bill).
The bad
- After 2.5 days we had to toss out a bunch of food. This was by far the thing that upset me most about the power outage.
- Busy intersections with broken stoplights. At least most people realized they were four-way stops.
The ridiculous
- A few people in our neighborhood were running generators to keep part of their houses powered. Which parts I have no idea. I do know that we saw one guy siphoning gas from his car so that he could run the generator a little longer. Hmmmm, necessary? I think not.
The ugly
- The number of people that thought the world was going to end because of a power outage.
Insult to injury
- Tuesday morning Abi and I were leaving for work when we found out that Abi’s car battery had died. D’oh! Good thing Autozone was open until 10pm.
Things I’m glad we had
- Bread
- Peanut butter
- Honey (goes great with the bread and peanut butter)
- Random snack food
- Flashlights with charged batteries
- Tons of candles
- Matches + lighter
- Cars with gasoline
- Grill with propane
- Friends with power
Things I wish we had
- Ice
- Generator (mostly for the fridge)
- Bottled water
- Ice
- Dry ice
- More ice
Problems for others
- Missing roof shingles
- Missing siding
- Exposed plywood on roof and/or side of house
At 12:49am this morning our power came back on. Things can get back to normal at Casa de Lepolt.
Topics: cincinnati, current events, story, weather | 4 Comments »
Holy Photo!
By Jonathan | September 11, 2008 at 11:12 pm
So I got lazy and decided that it was too much work for me to post photos to lepolt.com…now Google will do all the hard stuff for me.
See http://picasaweb.google.com/lepolt/ for details.
Specific items of interest:
- Packing up to move
- New house photos
- More new house photos
- Even more new house photos
- Anna’s wedding (yes, the Gold medalist)
- Katie’s wedding
- Florida vacation
- Nichole and Steve’s wedding
- Kevin’s favorite photo taken by him of all time
Enjoy!
Update:These links are probably all out of date…I would recommend checking out my pictures page.
Topics: current events | 1 Comment »
30 Reasons I Don’t Buy Crap
By Jonathan | September 2, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Back a while ago when we were still in the apartment, our Toshiba DVD player bit the dust. It was on the fritz for at least a few months before that…sometimes the DVD tray would refuse to open/close, sometimes the DVD would skip tracks, all-in-all creating a really poor DVD viewing experience. When we moved into the house I dumped the thing into the garbage and opted to look to the future. Everyone knows that Blu-ray won the high definition video disc format war, so whether I wanted to purchase a new Blu-ray or HD-DVD player wasn’t the question. The real question here was this: “Do I want to spend $500 on a new Blu-ray player right now, or should I hold out for a little while and wait for the technology to mature a bit and the prices to drop?” The answer for me was #2: wait it out. (Dammit, I’m not buying a PS3!!!)
At this point I’m not ready to spend a smooth half grand on electronics, which is why #2 was the answer. The problem with this is that now we have no good way to watch DVDs. There’s a slight chance that Abi and I both brought portable DVD players into this marriage…but the real issue (finally stated) is that neither of those DVD players has a digital audio output for the 5.1 Bose surround sound system in the house. This means I am unable to get some sweet surround sound effects while watching movies with the sound cranked up rattling the walls, and that’s what I’m really looking for.
I held out for a while but was really inkling to watch something with a lot of explosions. After all, THIS IS MY HOUSE AND I CAN BE AS LOUD AS I WANT TO BE BECAUSE THIS IS MY HOUSE AND NO ONE CAN TELL ME TO BE QUIET!!! Last week I made the decision that I would find the DVD player with the cheapest retail price I could find just to hold us over until Blu-ray was a bit more reasonable.
Let me take a moment to explain a few things about my buying habits. When I buy things, especially electronics, my philosophy is to buy very high quality products. There are a few reasons behind this:
- I take good care of my things. When they break, it’s not my fault.
- I have found that nicer things last longer; therefore when I buy nice things I don’t need to replace them because they don’t break.
- This philosophy was pretty much followed out by my father (at least in terms of electronics), so it’s hereditary and I can’t help it.
Anyways, I decided that in my current situation that buying a cheap DVD player to keep me satisfied until it was replaced by a new Blu-ray was acceptable, even though it was against my core beliefs. I mean, come on! DVDs have been out since 1993…even a cheap DVD player should be decent, right? Abi and I stopped by Best Buy one day last week and found a $30 Insignia DVD player, decided it was acceptable, bought it and took it home. We plugged it in and watched a movie. Everything went surprisingly fine: good sound quality, good picture quality, remote worked…this thing was actually going to work out. Sweet, $30, not bad.
Saturday we were doing some work around the house when I decided to take a break and watch a scene from a movie with a great surround sound scene. The office building lobby scene from the Matrix came to mind, so I popped the DVD in. You know the one I’m talking about:
Anyways, I was fiddling around with things trying to skip directly to that chapter, but the remote wouldn’t work. No matter how hard I pressed on the buttons, the selected menu would only go up. Different buttons did the same thing. Hmmm…maybe I can program my Sony receiver remote to work with this Insignia DVD player. Good thought Lepolt, but Sony spits on that crap.
To conclude this long story, I took back the $30 POS and picked up a nice Sony $80 upconverting DVD player, which still works like a champ even after using it twice. So there you have it: 30 reasons I don’t buy crap.
Topics: complain, story, technology | 6 Comments »
In the Spirit of College Football Season
By Jonathan | August 27, 2008 at 11:01 pm
In the spirit of the college football season starting on Thursday, I thought that I would link to this video. Get pumped, and GO CATS!!!
Topics: current events, sports, video games | 1 Comment »
Anna Brings Home the Gold
By Jonathan | August 19, 2008 at 7:30 am
I just wanted to take a moment and convey some big time congratulations to Anna Tunnicliffe, a 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist. Anna competed in the Women’s Laser Radial sailing event in Beijing over the past week. After ten races, she proved to be the most dominant woman out there, beating the silver medalist by five points.
So here’s a big congratulations, Anna! What a way to represent the United States of America! Congratulations!
Read more about the race
http://www.nbcolympics.com/sailing/news/newsid=234270.html#tunnicliffe+sails+into+history
Read more about Anna
http://www.annatunnicliffe.com/content/blogcategory/29/113/
http://www.annatunnicliffe.com/
Abi and I met Anna in 7th grade when she moved to Perrysburg. We all became good friends throughout high school while on the Perrysburg Track and Field team. Abi kept in touch with Anna throughout the years and was a bridesmaid in Anna’s wedding this past May.
Above photo courtesy of the Toledo Blade
Topics: current events, sports | 2 Comments »
New House, Week 2: Emptying Boxes
By Jonathan | July 31, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Week two of the new house was full of much less surprises and excitement than last week…no water on the ceiling, no leaky pipes, and the [long] grass was made shorter. This week we unpacked a whole ton of boxes and tried to find a home for everything in the new place. As of Thursday evening I would say we are about 75% unpacked, although we’re more like 25% moved in. It’s obvious which rooms have taken more neglect than others based on remaining clutter. The office has by far seen the worse of it; there are cables and cords and stuff that should be in/on my desk everywhere. I think this room will be the big one to tackle next week.
Meanwhile we finally were able to get Time Warner out here to install Internet and cable to the house. It was a debacle at first since none of the previous owners ever had TWC, but after talking to five different people on three different days we finally got it straightened out. What a treat, right? Sorry Kevin, I’ll leave DirecTV for you to explore…
I’ve taken bunches of photos of packing up the apartment and moving into the house that I would like to post eventually, but cleaning this place up has been the top priority for Abi and me since we moved it. Baby steps, my friends, baby steps. And no, not from real babies! Leave me alone!
I made one final trip to our apartment today for a little last-minute-end-of-lease vacuuming. Afterword I dropped off our keys to the office, flipped the place the bird and left. The bird thing might be an exaggeration, but I did shout “peace” as I walked out for the last time. It was a bittersweet moment, but rest assured we are on to bigger and better things! I wish I had my camera there for a couple photos of the empty place, but oh well. That’s it. No more 6750 Towering Ridge Way Apt. 198!
To sum this up I can say that Abi and I are incredibly thrilled to own a house! It’s truly amazing, and we love it! Stay tuned for the party!
Topics: house, updates | 2 Comments »
New House, Week 1: What We’ve Learned so Far
By Jonathan | July 25, 2008 at 12:00 pm
The first week of new home ownership sure has been busy. Due to lack of internet you’re going to get a quick list of notes and no new photos. Stay tuned for further updates…
What we’ve learned so far:
- ALWAYS remember to put the bonnet nut back in place before turning the water on
- There really is enough water pressure coming out of the pipes on the 2nd floor to hit the ceiling
- Spraying cold water on a hot light bulb will make it explode
- So far none of my tools have been more important than a wrench
- If you have old parts, it’s best to replace them IMMEDIATELY instead of trying to figure out if they’re really the cause of the problem…because they are
- A simple fix is probably the best fix
The last item is probably the most valuable at this point. That being said, however, I would not have learned about most of the other items on this short list had I just taken the “simple fix” path. Sometimes screwing something up yourself is the best way to learn. I’ll agree with that so long as the end result isn’t a catastrophe!
Topics: do it yourself, house, story, updates | No Comments »
Hey, Would you do me a Favor? It’s Quick and Free! (And Legal!)
By Jonathan | July 14, 2008 at 9:36 pm
The abridged version goes something like this:
- Join this Facebook group
- Sign the wall with: “I hope you win the Klondike contest, Joel! 1 point for Jonathan Lepolt.”
- Tell all your friends!
- There is no step 4.
The long version goes something like this:
A friend of a guy I work with entered a contest to try and win $100k. My last blog post was trying to get you to watch the entry video and vote on it. Much thanks to all you voters out there, Joel is now a semi-finalist in the competition.
I should note, real quick, that I have never met this guy in my life. Ever. But it’s all good. Yan says he’s cool.
If you take a minute to read his webpage or his blog, you’ll find out that he has deemed himself a professional contest winner. Crazy, right? He’s won tons of cool stuff already, and now he’s trying to win a Klondike competition for $100k. In his last competition as part of his winnings they gave him an iPod Touch. Since he already has an iPod Touch, he decided that he would give it away in contest fashion, hoping to get more people to vote for his Klondike video.
The rules are simple. All I have to do is get as many people as possible to join his Facebook group and sign the wall. That’s it. There’s absolutely nothing in this for you, only for me. It’s crazy for me to ask my loyal readers to do this…but heck, I’d do the same thing for you! All you need to do is write two sentences on the wall. The first saying anything about Joel, the second saying “1 point for Jonathan Lepolt.” Whoever gets the most points gets the iPod.
So come on! Be a part of this crazy contest for me. I’ll owe you one!
For complete rules and details, check out this post.
Topics: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
What Would “Happy Joel” do for a Klondike Bar?
By Jonathan | July 9, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Apparently Klondike is running a contest to see who can come up with the best commercial depicting their slogan, “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” A guy I work with (Yan) has a friend that submitted a video in an attempt to win $100k.
Yan has been asking pestering everyone that he knows to visit the website, register, and vote for his friend’s video. After sending countless IMs to me in addition to some threatening phone calls, I finally gave in and decided to check it out. The video is actually pretty clever, and the song is kinda catchy.
So here’s my promotion for this guy, ‘happyjoel’. Yan said that Joel said that if he wins he’s buying everyone something nice. It’s possible I made up that last part, but what the heck? Go check out his video, and vote. Five bars out of five bars is preferred:
Topics: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
28,000 Feet Below Cruise Altitude
By Jonathan | July 1, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Where does 28,000 feet below cruise altitude put you? For the sake of argument, let’s assume that today your plane will be cruising at 28,000 feet. 28,000 feet below that puts you in Terminal A of George Bush Intercontinental Airport. That is exactly where Abi and I got to spend a great deal of time this past weekend waiting for our plane to arrive. The problem for us on Sunday, however, was that our plane arrived too late. Since it arrived too late we never ended up at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, which means we missed our connecting flight to Dayton International Airport, which means we never made it back to Cincinnati on Sunday evening as originally scheduled.
To keep it brief and to avoid sounding like I’m complaining, there was rain and lightning that started about 4pm Sunday. Our flight was supposed to leave at 5:15pm. So long as we were in the air by 6:03pm, getting to our connecting flights in Charlotte would not be a big deal.
Then our plane was delayed. Then our plane was diverted. Then our flight was cancelled.
Oh well, we’re back in Cincinnati now…time to get back to business. I will say, however, that I am a little disappointed in US Airways for not providing anyone with food or lodging that evening. While originally they said our flight was cancelled due to weather, there were other planes flying in and out of the airport at the time of the cancellation. It was around 8pm, which isn’t too late for a flight. I think the crew decided that they were done for the day. I understand the regulations, but it would have been nice to get the real story…and a free hotel room.
A special thanks to Kevin, for pointing this out.
Topics: Uncategorized, complain, story | 4 Comments »