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07/22/2004: Hurricane Elvis: July 22, 2003
Mike Hollihan has a very, very good piece commemorating "Hurricane Elvis", the hurricaine force windstorm which pretty well devastated a fair swath of Memphis on July 22, 2003 (Mike's permalinks have been bloggered since about the late Paleolithic Era, so just follow the link and scroll down to the July 22 post titled (appropriately enough) "Hurricaine Elvis").
I was fairly lucky; at the time I'd not yet moved over to Midtown Memphis. I arrived at my place of work around 6:15 or so, and was lucky enough to get about 25 yards or so away from the door of my building when the floodgates opened up. I still managed to get drenched running the 25 or so yards to the door, but that's life. I went to my office, fired up the computer and the coffeemaker (not necessarily in that order), and began the day.
I don't say a lot about my employer here; that's mostly because I don't want the slightest thought to even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing your mind that my semi-coherent rants and ramblings here are in any way representative of the official positions of my employer. For the record, my employer doesn't even pay me enough to have my own personal opinions on issues, much less pay me enough to have an official position for it. But, I do need to point out that I am lucky enough to be employed in a place that has business requirements for redundant power generation. And the building I'm in is pretty damn substantial. So as Hurricane Elvis raged, the lights (and more importantly, the computer network connection) stayed on, the air conditioners continued to run, and everything was pretty much dry and comfortable. Sure, I knew it was raining, but BFD. And living where I did a year ago, there was minimal storm damage to my immediate neighborhood, so basically, Hurricaine Elvis represented pretty minimal inconvenience to me; getting drenched in the parking lot in front of my building was pretty much the extent of it. So I can't write as elqoquently about the effects of Hurricane Elvis on the city as Mike does. So just go read his description. Now. I'll be here when you get back.
Len on 07.22.04 @ 12:00 PM CST
