The alarm went off. I felt dead tired and a little hung over. I tumbled downstairs in a stupor to check the latest hurricane tracks. They all continued to confirm the news. I finalized my arrangements with Colo4Dallas, answered some emails from customers, and sent out an email to customers letting them know the servers would shut down at 12:30.

There’s something very unpleasant about dismantling a carefully organized and constructed installation of servers. It suggests there was something wrong with how it was put together, when in fact, it was all put together and working just fine. It’s breaking something, on purpose, that was in no need of repairs, and causing it to be unavailable for some unknown period of time.

One can only hope the downtime is less than 24 hours, but when you’re evacuating because of an approaching hurricane, you just don’t know what kind of traffic you’ll encounter.

So there I was: pulling every cable out of every server. Except two servers. One of my clients asked me to leave their servers in place. They assist in organizing emergency services and were willing to risk a long outage when the hurricane hit and power went out, because they wanted to keep their data available until the last minute, preparing for when the hurricane hit.

So, I had to do everything I could to avoid disturbing any of their power or network connections. This presented a challenge: I’d have to leave my main network switch in place. I needed a switch in Dallas! I checked my stock and discovered I had a spare I could take with me. Whew.

I had the van pulled up to the back door and began stacking servers by it. I packed cables and small equipment such as tape drives into large duffle bags. Rush, rush, rush. Meanwhile Stephanie rushed to get clothes and everything else packed that we’d need for a week away. The clock was ticking and every moment made me more nervous about what traffic we’d encounter.

Finally, everything was loaded in the car and van. The dog didn’t want to go in the back of the car. Everybody had to make last minute runs into the house for things they remembered they forgot. It was about 3pm when we rolled out.

The first thing we tried to do was stop for gas and snacks. Station #1 had no gas. Station #2 had no gas. Station #3 had no gas. At this point we reconsidered the 20 gallons of gas I had stored in the garage for the manual gas generators. We decided to go back and get it. On the way in, we stopped at one more station – a convenience store – and discovered it still had gas! So we filled up, but still stopped back by the house to pick up the 4 gas cans to take as spare gas.

I’ve never carried gas cans on top of my van, even though it has luggage racks and I’ve evacuated before … I just wasn’t sure enough of my ability to tie it down securely and not go, you know, ending up on the news in a massive fireball.  Steph’s sister had done it before and convinced me we could do it.  A bunch of bungee cables later, the cans seemed secure.

During the trip I discovered this is the best way to get respect when driving a minivan. Attach four gas cans to the top of the luggage rack. Who wants to have a collision with that?? All the big SUV’s and ricers have never driven so carefully around me. Ever.

It was now 4pm. I absolutely dreaded the thought of the traffic we might hit.

My special route took us north-north-east out of Baytown, then brought us around parallel to 45, finally rejoining 45 right around Huntsville.  Traffic generally moved relatively well, with the exception of when we drove through 2 small towns that were also evacuating.

As we drove through the first town, national guard and police were directing traffic. As we passed one police officer he looked at the top of my van and began walking toward. Uh oh, I thought … he’s going to tell me I’m nuts and lock me up for competing for “most likely to end up as an evacuating fireball.” But he didn’t … instead, he shouted out in a deep Texas drawl, as I drove by, “now THAT’S the right idea!”

After we joined 45, traffic moved steadily at paces between 25 mph and 65 mph. There was a LOT of traffic on the road but it was all moving. We stopped at a station for gas and found they still had supreme left but that was all. We topped off our tanks with supreme, bought snacks for dinner, and moved along.

About 10pm we arrived in Dallas at the hotel. They had our reservation. We got moved in. With my last desperate grasp at consciousness I made DNS changes and IP translation tables to prepare for the servers to go live as soon as possible after I could plug them in at the colocation facility.

Then I crashed.

The email came on Wednesday. I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what it meant, but it seemed to be saying Hurricane Ike had traveled far enough outside its expected path to require a recalculation of the expected path, and that it was was going to be hitting much closer to Houston than earlier expected.

Since Ike was such a problem over Cuba, and still had some decent strength in it, I felt this was probably something to take seriously, even if it turned out to be wrong.

That’s not a decision I can take lightly, though. Whenever I relocate from a storm, it’s because I’m suspecting a good chance of property damage and extended power and service outages. And that means I have to take my 4 internet servers with me, along with another 5 servers that my clients have placed at my office for “colocation.” It’s a very costly, time consuming, and exhausting proposition, and it irritates some of my clients because they lose access to their servers on the very day they’d like to be tying up last minute loose ends before they head out themselves.

But as unpleasant as it was, my best guess was that this was the best way to go – it’s better to have one planned day of downtime, than to potentially have a week or more of downtime and uncertain availability of services, resources, repairs, etc. Right?

So I called Colo4Dallas, a colocation facility in Dallas that I used the last time I had to do this. They were very gracious and helpful last time, making them my first choice. They didn’t disappoint this time either, but there was a surprise – they seemed to be saying it would take them a day and a half to get a space ready for me. I thought it over, and decided that would be fine. Last time, I traveled 12 hours and then pulled an all-nighter, about 7 hours, getting everything set up on the other end.

Colo4Dallas needed to know by Thursday morning, at the very latest, if I needed the space. I promised them I’d get back to them to let them know.

Then I went online to get us a hotel. The last time we had to relocate because of a hurricane threat, we ended up with my least favorite option, a “luxury” room for over $300 a night. It was an OK hotel, but for that money I’d rather have had several non-luxury hotel rooms. So I went to choice hotels online, and found a hotel near the colocation facility. In my mind, I had visions of a hotel with a pool for the kids to play in, and a laundry room. What hotel doesn’t have a pool or a laundry room, right? And besides, I barely got the last room available at the hotel, one of the few in the “affordable range” with any rooms left at all, anywhere near Colo4Dallas.

At this point I was grateful for the preparations I’d made when Gustav was still on the way in. Specifically, I’d mapped out two off-the-beaten-path routes, one to Dallas, and the other to Bellville. I rarely print any type of documentation to keep on hand, but in this case had printed directions for each route and kept them by the server rack control console.

Around 5pm there was a wonderfully ironic moment: Stephanie came home and found a note on the front door that a “large freight” service had tried (unsuccessfully) to deliver the new 14kw generator I had purchased for my business -- about 2 weeks ahead of schedule. Since I wasn’t expecting the generator anywhere near that early, I hadn't been listening for the doorbell all day and had missed it. I called them and discovered I had two choices: they could deliver it the following day -- at the height of my mad rush to load all the servers, etc. into the van -- or they could send it back, because they would not hold it longer than a week. I opted to have it delivered during the mad rush. The great irony was that it would be arriving in time for the hurricane - but not in time to be actually installed and useful. Lol. Yuck yuck. Snort.

As the day came to a close, more things confirmed the earlier news. People I talked to said they’d heard on the news Ike was probably headed to Houston.  Other expected tracking sources such as News 2 Houston began adjusting their tracks. Everywhere I turned, the news was confirmed. So, I did everything I could to be ready to shut everything down Thursday around noon, pack it in the van, and head out.

One thing I had to do was set up and test a method of getting email into my customers' mail servers during the 6 to 12 hour outage that would be caused while I moved the primary servers to Dallas. It took about an hour and half to get it set up and tested. The downside was that my customers would lose their email spam filtering. The upside was that they would still receive important emails, even while the primary servers were in transit. It worked. I was ready to move the servers.

And then, I couldn’t sleep. A glass of wine. A second glass of wine. No, it wasn’t working, I was obsessing over this stupid storm and whether it was really coming. I tracked it. I rehearsed my relocation plans and alternate plans over and over in my head looking for flaws. I talked with my sister in law about it, who was also up. I tried to distract and bore myself any way I could. I couldn’t sleep until 2am.

I love this example of man ... simply doing what man was intended to do.

This happened in downtown San Antonio. Michael  R. is an accounting clerk at Frost Bank and works downtown  in a second story office building. Several weeks ago, he watched  a mother duck choose the concrete awning outside his window as  the unlikely place to build a nest above the sidewalk.  

     

(click on any pic to see all the pics and then click to enlarge them)

The  mallard laid ten eggs in a nest in the corner of the planter  that is perched over 10 feet in the air. She dutifully kept the  eggs warm for weeks, and Monday afternoon all of her ten  ducklings hatched.

Michael  worried all night how the momma duck was going to get those  babies safely off their perch in a busy, downtown, urban  environment to take to water, which typically happens in the  first 48 hours of a duck hatching. Tuesday morning, Michael  watched the mother duck encourage her babies to the edge of the  perch with the intent to show them how to jump off!

The  mother flew down below and started quacking to her babies above.  In his disbelief Michael watched as the first fuzzy newborn  toddled to the edge and astonishingly leapt into thin air,  crashing onto the cement below. Michael couldn't stand to watch  this risky effort. He dashed out of his office and ran down the  stairs to the sidewalk where the first obedient duckling was  stuporing near its mother from the near fatal fall.  

As  the second one took the plunge, Michael jumped forward and  caught it with his bare hands before it hit the concrete. safe  and sound, he set it by the momma and the other stunned sibling,  still recovering from its painful leap.  

One  by one the babies continued to jump. Each time Michael hid under  the awning just to reach out in the nick of time as the duckling  made its free fall. The downtown sidewalk came to a standstill.  Time after time, Michael was able to catch the remaining 8 and  set them by their approving mother.  

At  this point Michael realized the duck family had only made part  of its dangerous journey. They had 2 full blocks to walk across  traffic, crosswalks, curbs, and pedestrians to get to the  closest open water, the San Antonio River . The onlooking office  secretaries and several San Antonio police officers joined in.  They brought an empty copy paper box to collect the babies. They  carefully corralled them, with the mother's approval, and loaded  them in the container. Michael held the box low enough for the  mom to see her brood. He then slowly navigated through the  downtown streets toward the San Antonio River . The mother  waddled behind and kept her babies in sight.  

As  they reached the river, the mother took over and passed him,  jumping into the river and quacking loudly. At the water's edge,  he tipped the box and helped shepherd the babies toward the  water and to their mother after their adventurous ride.  

All  ten darling ducklings safely made it into the water and paddled  up snugly to momma. Michael said the mom swam in circles,  looking back toward the beaming bank bookkeeper, and proudly  quacking.

(Click here for larger pics).

Wow, sometimes my own blog posts come across as so arrogant, like I know so much. Does everybody reading this know I am just as distractible and prone to mistakes as you are? Or worse? I've only been alive for 39 years for Pete's sake! And the main reason I am close to God, or at least frantically chasing after him,  is because I am so consistently  faced with my need for him ...

Man, I hate this feeling.

I've spent most of my day in the church, by which I mean hanging out in one way or another with my friends, or family if you will, in this very diverse yet amazingly intimate collection of believers known as The Baytown Vineyard. We are so different, yet one thing we have in common is to have moved beyond caring about that much, or maybe at all. We simply love to share life together, including the source of it all.

But now everyone has gone home. Times like this, I understand a part of why people form communes.

The enemy lurks close by rasping out curses, lies, and temptations, looking for an entrance. I muse over some of the thoughts, then discard them. Like Trinity says to Neo, "you've been down that road before. You know where it leads." So, having rejected all these enticing rabbit trails, I end up alone with the feeling of loss they attempted to supplant -- I've lost the company of much of my new family for yet another week.

But in the silence, I have a moment to reflect, and blog.

This morning's discussion, and this morning overall, for whatever reason, caused me to come face to face with the real agenda of part of my existence on Sunday mornings - "doing church right." The right ritual, the right atmosphere, the right words, the right everything, it goes on and on. Some of me is just enjoying being with my family. And another part of me is ruining my chance to enjoy that, fretting, yes, fretting, over "doing church right."

It's time to kill this.

Directly over my monitor, hangs a poem I wrote a while back, "Take it to the Cross." It's time for "doing church right" to go on the cross. Next week, I want to be listening to God with that part of me that might be worried about that. I want to be ready to do church wrong, or right, or something totally unclassified, uncategorized. I want to be free. Free to be me. With my creator, with my savior. With my family.

Free to partake in a beautiful desire of God's heart - to be in intimate communion with him and all his creation.

Couple of months back I got one free iPod with a Mac laptop because I was buying it for a school. It's an iPod touch, similar to the iPhone without the phone. It's very thin and light, and has 8GB of memory, enough for what, maybe 7 movies and a couple a hundred albums?

Anyway, it sat in the box for 2 months. Despite my career, I am not an early technology adopter, and do not often get excited about new technology. Frankly, 90% of new technology is worthless and transitory. I'm more interested in technology trends and technology adoption and compatibility patterns.

But I haven't worked out for 2 months, and while the iPod itself was not all that exciting to me, the movies I stuck in my iPod were kind of an incentive to go work out -- not letting myself watch them unless I was working out. Action movies help me work out, and work out longer -- the adrenaline from watching the action fuels my own action.

But today, I used it for the first time. I watched an action movie while I worked out. I used to do this when I worked out at home, using a portable DVD player, you know, the big klunky kind. Well, no more klunky portable DVD players. Never again, maybe. With iTunes I can rent movies for $2 without leaving my home and watch them while I work out the next day.

It was convenient, it was fun, and I think I'm assimilated into the iPod population now.

Next week I'll be borrowing a new gen iPhone from one of my customers, to try out what we might could do with it for his company. Who knows ... I might get assimilated into that next. But not likely. I don't think they have remote desktop capability in them yet ... which would be just awesome, because they DO have a Cisco VPN client in them already.

Did you see these?

My Favorites

Take it to the Cross

Getting Past the Labels

How I miss my Home - (God's Heart for Christian Addicts)

How to Eat Cheetos Without Dirty Fingers

Are you showing your True Colors?

What we do to good looking people

Self Discipline I Might Be Better Off Without

Fast Political Change is Worthless

Recent Events

Here comes Baytown

Pics of our New House

Meeting ALL the Neighbors

4th of July BBQ Outreach Block Party Thing

"While we were all worshipping I heard the Lord say to me right in the middle of the worship- There is going to be a Earthquake in San Francisco. I was shocked at this and continued  to  worship then I heard it again.

I saw an eagle flying up the coast of California where the ocean meets the shore along the rocky cliffs. Then I saw the eagle land in a tall evergreen looking tree. Then a shaking happened and the eagle took off again and it then flew over San Francisco and I saw the center of the city caved in from the apparent effects of an earthquake. After this I also saw that churches from the north, specifically Redding CA, and the people in them were streaming down into the city to help the survivors."

These are excepts (edited for brevity) of a prophetic vision I just received from an old friend, who receives visions sometimes but has never found it imperative to send any of them to me or all the other people she sent it to. I believe she is sincere. 

I also hope this does not happen. I hope she saw or received this incorrectly. But if it is a vision from God, obviously it is imperative that everyone get out of harms way. If you know anyone who lives or works in San Francisco, please consider forwarding this to them and asking them to pray for discernment about this (and whether to get out of harms way or not).

She also said the following:

It is my prayer, that the Lord will be merciful and reconsider his judgment of that city- Great devastation is going to occur and there will be many precious lives lost. Please intercede on behalf of this city and our dear bothers and sisters who live there. I cannot even imagine the grief that will be coming to those who live there. Also please forward this to every church group / intercessor group that you are in contact with. Let us pray for God’ Mercy together.

I wholeheartedly agree. I also think it is very important for each person reading this to pray for discernment before making any decisions or taking any action. I believe the Spirit of God will confirm this in each believer and even willing, listening nonbelievers, if it is from Him.

Bottom line: pray for discernment and if He says ignore it, ignore it.

Today, me, my son, and my best friend Shae moved my business servers to my new Baytown office (part of my new Baytown house). That’s 11 servers, 6 firewalls, 8 battery backup UPS’s, a laser printer/scanner, and a huge mound of cables. I’m so tired I don’t even want to think about how much work I’d still have left to do without their help. Especially Shae’s. He moved fast and just kept going. He even put up with my overly uptight personality-of-the-day. Sometimes I lose my sense of humor under pressure. J

Just to spice things up a bit, yesterday the supplemental office air conditioner at Baytown decided to stop cooling adequately in anticipation of the arrival of the servers. (It’s generating less than a 5 degree difference between incoming and outgoing air, and considering it ran much better the first week it was in, this symptom almost certainly indicates a freon leak). It was not enough of a justification to cancel the move – I’d already notified customers and vendors of the move date over a week in advance.

So I set up 3 box fans, to redirect cool floor air from an adjoining room through the office and onto the servers. We’ve also turned the house thermostat down to 68. Between that and the fans, the server area has gone down from 90 to 80 degrees. (Yes, 11 servers generate a lot of heat). Hopefully the air conditioning warranty repair people will come soon. Keeping the whole house at 68 degrees in August is not going to be cheap. At least I got to turn off the big unit at the Houston office.

Our church community, the Refinery (Vineyard Church of Baytown) has decided to start meeting at our house. I mean, for actual Sunday morning services. No really! You should come see it – it actually works really well. Thankfully the den and living room are joined by a large opening, and between the two of them probably about 50 of us can fit in. I guess we’ll probably find out soon since summer will be over and everyone will be back from vacations and such.

You know, it feels real now. It feels like we’ve really moved here now, and I’m starting to understand at least some of the most immediate obvious parts of what we’re doing here, even if I’m still more than a little confused and uncertain of how it’s all going to turn out.