Bloody weather
June 18, 2007
What do you think when you get up, see beautiful sunshine and a very light breeze outside? “Why, I’ll just open the window and air my flat a little while I take my shower!” I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Read on…
That’s what I thought this morning. I got up, threw open the window, and jumped into the shower. When I came out, I got liberally doused in dirty water and hail. It was hailing in my flat. Not outside with a little falling in mind you. Hailing. in. my. flat.
At this point, I’m still a little bewildered and slow in the head, so it takes a second or so for the brain to make the necessary connections: electronic stuff doesn’t like water. Which is kind of a bummer when your computers and stuff are all within a few meters of the window. You know, in those “Rain won’t be able to reach that” spots. Except that with enough wind, as I discovered, everything within a three meter radius gets soaked.
A couple of hours and a lot of drying later, here are the learnings that I take away from this little adventure.
- Water really does get everywhere.
- The positions I instinctively chose for the power strips (high off the floor and in a corner right out of reach) avoided me the joys of either a fried fusebox or an electrical fire.
- Macbook pros seem completely indifferent to external conditions, and keep running happily even when doused with liberal quantities of wet stuff (at least until I pulled the battery and started sponging it up; I wonder if it’ll start again. Actually, I just booted it, and it’s as if nothing happened. I am now a believer.
- Books are surprisingly good at getting no water whatsoever on them, and that is really cool. Books are not the kind of thing I enjoy losing in this manner.
- Class notes and related works are just as surprisingly no bloody good at holding back H2O in any way, shape or form. Hopefully they’ll still be readable once they’ve dried, it’s not like I have final exams in a week or anything.
- It takes a couple of hours to get 90% of everything 90% dry. The rest is unfortunately spongy material, and so will have to be dried the old fashioned way, with sun and a draft.
- This is not my best day ever.
- I hate, hate, hate Belfortan weather. And it apparently hates me right back, as the hail storm started a little after I left the window unsupervised, and stopped shortly after I slammed it shut. With nothing but blue skies and sunshine before and after.
Bloody weather.