The price of gaming in the sub-tropics.

Say some prayers for me please. I'm in Cape Coral Florida and tonight about 6:00pm EST CAT 4 hurricane Irma is passing by going up the west coast. I'm hunkered down in Fort Myers in my office data center 4 story building built in 1923 which is a hot riveted steel structure in the middle of the block and is a bunker and even the NNW facing windows are original 1923 thick glass set in a steel frame so this building has weathered many hurricanes over the years. But anyway I look at it, late this afternoon until Monday morning it's going to be a rough time.

Edit: Rode out CAT 4 Hurricane Charlie in 2004 in our office which was a block over then. My home is in west central Cape Coral and has some large pine trees that I fear could fall and damage it. Didn't happen in 2004 (a miracle) but this storm is much larger in size and moving slower than Charlie did and thus the high sustained winds will be a longer duration. My home just missed the east eye wall of Charlie by 8.9 miles so it was a super close call then. I'm praying that Irma's eye stays off-shore so we miss the 140+ mph eye wall destructive winds.

Edit 2: Very surreal. Downtown Fort Myers feels like a ghost town right now (8:45 am EST Sunday) and I'm in a waiting and holding my breath time now so I updated the wiki and spreadsheet daily deals (I like routine so I had the time... been updating these for over 4 years now). Got my gaming rig here at my office so I can play PoE in between the weather updates and when my nerves are steady enough and I need some kind of a distraction.

Edit 3: It's over now. The eye of Irma came in at Marco Island (south of Cape Coral) and went east of my Ft. Myers data center where I rode out the storm. My 4th floor office has a beautiful west and NW view over the downtown and to the river about 1/3 mile away. The NW eye wall hit us just after 6:00 pm EST and lasted about 2 hours. With 100+ mph winds raging by our building it was mother nature at full fury. There is debris everywhere (as expected) but our building never lost power. Amazing considering our governor just held a press conference stating that 65% of the state is without power. My home 10 miles west of downtown Ft. Myers has massive trees down and severely damaged ones but not 1 hit my house so that's a small miracle and good news for me personally. I'll be camping out at my office for a couple days more until at least water is back (0 pressure when I ventured out to my home this morning). Final bit of great news was the storm surge flooding never happened along the river. I'll take any bit of good news I can get right now.

One of our critical business WISP infrastructure is a 300ft. communications tower. It survived and our radios at the top are functioning when we fired up a generator to power test them. The fiber link to the top is also good (what a huge relief). There is a power substation right next to this tower that is still off so until that is back on and the tower has power again I'll still be stressed out.

Thoughts and prayers... and good luck!!!

Good luck!

Just looking at the situation here is spooky already.

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widardd wrote:

Good luck!

Just looking at the situation here is spooky already.

Just reported 94 mph winds in key West (eye is passing just east of them).

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cipher_nemo wrote:

Thoughts and prayers... and good luck!!!

Thanks. Any prayer that can influence this monster to keep it moving west of Sanibel (one of our main barrier islands) and keep the eye wall off the coast would be much appreciated. My home is on the west central side of Cape Coral and about 12 miles from Sanibel.

Sounds like you're safe. Hope you have food and water for a few days. Getting rid of poop is also an issue, as your plumbing is pretty much out of your control.

Hang tight though. You'll make it.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Sounds like you're safe. Hope you have food and water for a few days. Getting rid of poop is also an issue, as your plumbing is pretty much out of your control.

Hang tight though. You'll make it.

Yes, I know where I'm at is 100% safe, the downtown power grid my data center is on is the same as all our city and county government so even if it goes out it will be the highest priority to get restored and I'm 4th floor so no chance of flooding. My car is in a parking garage but only 4 feet up from the street and the Caloosahatchee River was forecast for a 6 to 10 ft. rise tonight (my building is about 1/3rd of a mile from the river and 8:00 pm is high tide). But that was based on the center going to our west. The last few hours as it pulls away from the Keys it has gone almost straight north and if that continues then it will be 20 to 25 miles east of Fort Myers and maybe I won't need to make an emergency run to my car in the parking garage behind my building (there is an alley way to get to the back) after dark to move it up the garage ramp to keep it from being flooded out. Needless to say I'll be needing my car more than ever after this is all over. The cleanup is likely to take weeks or more.

It's just a car. Don't kill yourself over it.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

It's just a car. Don't kill yourself over it.

No I'm not going to do anything crazy and jeopardize my life. But hurricane force winds spiral out in bands so in a lull between them there could be a time if needed. Maybe this hurricane will be like Charlie was and we don't get any flooding. In about 7 to 8 hours I'll know.

Latest update is about 6:00 to 6:30 pm here in downtown Fort Myers. Only good news is top winds are slightly lower at 110 mph (max CAT2) to 115 mph (low end of CAT3) which is a little down from the 125 to 130 mph as it rolled into Naples (about 40 miles to the south of Ft. Myers). Other good thing is video from Marco Island (barrier island south of Naples where the eye made landfall) that someone shot in the eye of Irma shows no power poles broken off. In Charlie of 2004 when I drove up to Punta Gorda (1/2 hour drive north of Ft. Myers) to help a friend who lived downtown coming up US 41 we saw every single power pole along the road snapped off a few feet above the ground like they were toothpicks. When we got to Punta Gorda it looked like it had been bombed out. So far video out of Naples and Marco Island is bad but not CAT4 bad. I'm hoping power stays up as I'm only 2 blocks from the substation but the worst is about 10 miles out.

Edit: Obviously I still have my fiber link in my data center as I'm able to post. Next hour to two will be brutal.