Vacuum

Snowtober: power outage maps for Halloween 2011 storm

THIS WEEK IN MAPS, for Sunday, October 30, 2011: A late October snowstorm is heading up the East Coast of the United States for Halloween. Here's maps of the affected areas, showing what parts of the electrical grid have had the worst impact from the heavy, wet snow in the forecast.

New Hampshire

As of 2:00 a.m. Sunday, 32% of PSNH customers are without power.

Massachusetts

NSTAR list of power outages by town (PDF) for midnight, Sunday; no map. The NSTAR outage center lists contacts. Over 52,000 customers without power out of 1.1 million served (5%).

National Grid at 1:30 a.m. on Monday shows substantial outages statewide.

Connecticut

Connecticut Light and Power, a Northeast Utilities company, has a map that shows that the outages from the storm are worse than from Hurricane Irene. Over 700,000 of CLP's 1.2 million customers are without power (56%) as seen on this map as of 1:38 a.m. Sunday, October 30. Area codes affected include 203, 475, and 860.

The Ridgefield Press storm live blog notes trees down, power outages, traffic accidents, electrical fires due to trees falling on live wires, and other storm-related damage in Ridgefield, CT.
More local news coverage of southwestern Connecticut news from papers in the Hersam Acorn Newspapers chain. Power consumption, actual and forecast, from CT Energy Info.

New Jersey

Eastern Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

The PhillyBurbs.com story about the outages has photos of the tree damages in Bucks and Montco counties. PECO spokesman spokesman Ben Armstrong told the paper that Saturday’s storm was the worst October storm in the utility’s history.

West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania

Is Your Power Out? Call 1-800-Allegheny (1-800-255-3443) and let us know.

Map as of 8:06 a.m., Saturday, October 29, 2011.

-- 30 --

== Updates == * Tue 8:30 a.m. PA, NJ, CT updates * Sun 2:25 a.m. More CT including Hersham Acorn news chain for SW CT * Sun 2:00 a.m. Connecticut Light and Power * Sat 8:21 a.m. start work on map collection for Sunday "publication"; Allegheny Electric

Typepad on iPad, edited elsewhere

No support for rich text editing in safari, but otherwise performant. Kind of nice.

I'll need to really learn markdown for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it descends from setext.

Ann Arbor

A2B3 lunch is Thursday as always. Ann Arbor Parks did trick or treat today, Sunday, noon to 4pm on the Huron River.

Arborwiki makes a good companion as you go for errands around town. Ann Arbor City Council elections and a millage are coming up. The Ann Arbor Chronicle has characteristically thorough coverage of the League of Women Voters forums. Some project, not yet identified, has North Main torn up at Catherine. A second project has North Division down to a single lane. Expect delays.

No one was hurt in last week's fire on Harpst. I'm trying a neighborhood LinkedIn group to see what kind of density I need to get enough people to make a group worthwhile; it might make sense to grab people closest first and then out by distance.

Metro Detroit

Tigers lost in the ALCS, and I'm looking forward to spring training.

Power outages from the Saturday windstorms were worst in Warren.

National

Occupy Chicago has had a lot of protest, via the Chicago Tribune which was on the scene.

Occupy Wall Street took over Times Square.

Living

I am tracking steps with a pedometer again, thanks to Paul Resnick and a research group at UMSI. Statler and Waldorf have taken over the Muppets twitter account. New movie due for Thanksgiving. Cue the Muppets.

Recipes

The wind on Saturday made farmers market blustery. Squash of all sizes and varieties were there, and there's nothing like a big old Hubbard squash to keep the corner of a table down. A farmer was doing the frost dance but said they had none at the last full moon. Traditionally, it's said that the best way to open a Hubbard is to take an axe to it, or to throw it down into the cellar.

Working

It's hard to have great weird ideas when you are closing trouble tickets. My new employer Nutshell has an office where my former employer Pure Visibility used to have it's offices.

Obituaries

Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie, Einar Steffrud.

Books

Books moved recently include Kawabata's, Snow Country, to be shelved on the Heikki Lunta shelf to prepare me for winter.

Tech

Pinboard now supports Gopher urls in bookmarks.

Sports

Michigan football lost to State. It was as good an excuse as any to call my aunt who went to East Lansing.

Meta

Wow, I have a lot of categories.

October 26, 2008: Trick or Treat Down The River, Argo to Gallup

Trick or Treat Down the River returns this fall

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 16, 2008 — City of Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation – Don’t miss
the chance to “Trick or Treat Down the River” with your family on Sunday, Oct. 26. Begin your
trip from the Argo Canoe Livery anytime between noon and 4 p.m. The fee is $22/boat (no pre-
registration required).

Experience the Huron River in all its fall beauty while also enjoying trick-or-treating by canoe or
kayak. All ages welcome to canoe or kayak from Argo down to Gallup Canoe Livery, stopping
along the way to collect candy and drink swamp muck given out by costumed characters on the
banks of the river. For details call 734.662.9319.

(from a PDF press release; why oh why can't the city send out press releases as text)
(needs a photo from a previous year)
("swamp muck" ? ugh)

costume (exploding vacuum) from the Terry Jones opera "Evil Machines", 2008

In the "this might be too weird for this year's Halloween costume" department:

from Live Design Online, "No One Meaner than a Vacuum Cleaner"

The opera (Evil Machines) features wild cars and other evil machines, pitted against friendly household appliances, including a beautiful egg whisk and the alarm clock that loves her. Veteran costume designer and Monty Python movie alum James Acheson had a hand in designing the opening chorus of six evil vacuum cleaners. The chorus is joined by a 15' giant evil vacuum cleaner, who — with the help of an inflatable body, a fan, and some CO2 — literally bursts with pride, showering dust and bed bugs over the orchestra and the first few rows of the audience.

The BBC has a video with a Terry Jones interview and some of the dancing vacuums (sorry, can't embed it).

Opera singers appear as giant appliances in Monty Python creator Terry Jones' new 'opera' Evil Machines which is being premiered in Lisbon, Portugal.

The Guardian weighs in (in Jan 2008)

Evil Machines, a new opera devised and directed by Monty Python star Terry Jones, looks set to come to London. Starring singing tumble-dryers, a giant red telephone and a 15ft-tall vacuum cleaner, it has just opened in Portugal, to standing ovations.

Too weird for words, but topical and seasonally appropriate in the oddest way; see at 2:40 in the video below.

Halloween costume: vacuum with attachments

in some extremely silly world, here are practical ways to get dressed for Halloween as a vacuum cleaner with attachments.

From "coolest homemade costumes dot com" in their home appliances section:

My husband started with an empty box, free from the grocery store and cut it down to fit her. He then wrapped it in some black vinyl, attached some parts from old vacuums we had in the garage (handle, hose and attachment, caddy with brushes). The red Hoover emblem was a piece of red sticky-backed felt.

The feet (power head) were two pieces of 4" foam hollowed out, one on each foot for movement. We decorated them with more red felt displaying 12 amps and aluminum foil for a headlight. While trick or treating so many people asked her to clean their houses for fun!

   

A red upright Hoover costume for a 3 year old (photo at link)

Disney's Family Fun has this one, submitted by Julie L of Arglye TX:

Made with a black sweatsuit and red felt, the vacuum bag portion of this costume gets its full shape from newspaper stuffing, while foam core is used to make the sweeper. Toilet paper rolls painted black and attached to a knit cap create the handle, and a black cord is the final touch to the wearable appliance.

Finally, here's a twist I hadn't expected: rather than you dressing as a vacuum, dress your vacuum (in this case the Roomba robot vacuum) in a Frogger costume from myRoomBud.

The video commentary:

Ever since Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried played Roomba Frogger down in Texas, we wanted to play it too except we could not afford to use one of our Roombas ... so we hacked a Frogger game to use one our RoomBud costume characters, Roobit the Frog. Well that wasn't good enough so using a RooTooth from RoombaDevTools for the wireless bluetooth connection to our computer and a bit more coding, we put together a game that we can play on the computer and have Roobit the Frog RoomBud actually run along the floor doing the same maneuvers as the Frogger character. When you get your little Roobit across the river, your Roomba will start to vacuum!

Ann Arbor Halloween hours and events for October 31, 2008

As promised here's a collection of Halloween information for Ann Arbor and the area for 2008.  I'll be updating this page as new stuff comes in.

City of Ann Arbor - offical hours

TRICK-OR-TREATING MAY TAKE PLACE 
IN CITY OF ANN ARBOR NEIGHBORHOODS 
ON FRIDAY, OCT. 31, 2008, BETWEEN 5 AND 8 P.M.

more on the halloween pdf press release for 2008 for ann arbor

Burns Park - Costume Parade

from the Burns Park Elementary PTO newsletter:

Our annual Halloween Costume Parade is a much-awaited event in the  neighborhood. The parade will begin at 2:15 on Friday, October 31.  Weather permitting, we will parade into the park and around the block. Students bring costumes to change into at the end of the day for the parade. We encourage you to come and enjoy.

Ann Arbor District Library

Celebrate Halloween all week at AADL: Kids in grades 4-5 can join us for an alien autopsy at our Weird Science Halloween party on Sunday, Oct. 26, from 3-4 p.m. at the Pittsfield branch or make pirate costumes and treasure maps on Tuesday, Oct. 28, from 4-5:30 p.m. at the Traverwood branch. Grades 6-adult will hear chilling tales of investigations by the SouthEast Michigan Ghost Hunters Society on Thursday, Oct. 30, from 7-8:30 p.m. in the Downtown Library Multi-Purpose Room, and younger kids can dress up for our annual Halloween Party on Friday, Oct. 31, with stories, songs and treats at 9:30-10:00 a.m. or 10:30-11 a.m. in the Downtown Multi-Purpose Room (just prior to the Main Street Area Association's Downtown Treat Parade at 11:00 a.m.).

Halloween stores

Year-round costume stores:

Packard and Platt: Fantasy Attic

Enjoy these temporary stores, temporarily:

W Stadium near Pauline (in the former Ace Barnes Hardware): Halloween USA

Other event listing

Ann Arbor realtor Missy Caulk has a list of events around the area.