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Hemos is Homeless
So just as proof that life doens't stop when you go to a conference, Hemos got email this morning from nate informing him that
his house burned down [?] last night. Now some rooms are missing and there is extensive smoke and water damage. Now the geek compound is 25% smaller. On the plus side, both Nate and hemos are safe and insured. Update: 10/16 11:05 by H : And to make matters worse, Chris DiBona threw my cell phone in a bucket of water. On accident. But it's pretty ironic.
This is just yet another example showing the dangers of closed source house construction.
If this house had been constructed using open source development under the GPL, NONE of this would have happened.
After, NOTHING ever developed by the open source community has ever crashed and burned. Of course, you have to twist bare electric wires to turn your lights on and off, but think of the STABILITY and SECURITY of a home built using open source ideology!!!
(Yes, I'm being a sarcastic troll.
Sorry to hear that your house burned, Hemos. I've had it happen twice when I was growing up and lost my first computer and a ton of good books from the second fire. We lived in a VERY old house with bad wiring...
Just couldn't resist poking some fun at the OSS nazis after reading the response to the Loki contest.)
Red Cross is also amazing - I highly recommend Habit as well. Please - everyone take the time to check your fire safety, and make sure you know how to get it. Buy a fire-proof safe. And contribute to causes around you - tithing is a good idea, regardless of religion/creed.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
Past that the whole house thing -sucks- those pictures are heartbreaking.
Chris
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
7) Port a Quake II client to a mobile robot platform, and network it to your PC.
8) Put 1 Kg high explosives in each room. Fires are put out by explosions. Deprives them of fuel and oxygen.
9) Build the house underground. Underground fires are much rarer. :)
10) Buy up some SDI lasers, and target them at fire hazards. If any show thermic activity, vapourise.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Good point!
:-)
:-)
On the other hand, the last time I looked, there weren't any trees in the rubbish bin.
Although this wasn't intended to be serious, I guess propensity to catch fire is related to aeration and low water content, neither of which hold in the compacted and very wet environment of discarded vegetable trimmings.
Hey, maybe the Eat Healthy lobby should use this in their advertising: eat healthy or your house will burn down!
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
... because most junk food comes in paper wrappers. :-)
The moral of the story is, change your diet to a healthy one. I never heard of vegetable waste catching fire.
[Morgaine pushes pizza box deftly out of sight.]
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
They're at ALS damnit! Jeeze. They're great people. You should meet Taco and Malda in person. They were great fun to hang out with. No pretentions at all, they're just normal people trying to be friendly and run a good site for everyone. They were happy to chat with people and got annoyed when they were treated like celebrities. There is no reason to ridicule them for being unable to do anything when they're not even there.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Sorry to hear about the fire, boys. I'm really glad nobody was hurt.
On a lighter side there are several ways it could have been prevented (written in a manner to hopefully avoid hurting nates pride even more):
1) Cases of penguin mints. Can't start a fire while you're sleeping if you don't sleep.
2) Cases of Mountain Dew. Good for refreshment and dosing fires.
3) Eat only Peanut Butter M&Ms. Their wrappers are plastic and won't catch fire in the trash so easily.
4) Move from the Geek Compound into the Geek Fortress. An old missle silo would do - concrete doesn't really burn well.
5) Hemos. Oh wait, this isn't a poll.
Learning from other's mistakes is much less painful than learning fro other peoples, so /.ers might all take this as a reminder to check their basic fire safety - batteries in smoke detectors, extinguishers charged, outlets not overloaded by plugging six boxen and monitors into one outlet, and so on...reminds me that I've been wanting to set a fire safe to put backup tapes in. (Yeah, if I was doing really important stuff I'd have offsite backups, but like most of us I'm in good shape if I remember to have backups at all.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I'm somewhat afraid that my house will burn someday, with all the computers and peripherals plugged in. I did a little research and found out that the best way to reduce this risk is to make sure your computer, power strips, etc. are resting on some sort of non-combustible material (my stuff sits on a sheet of steel). A rackmount type rack would be most ideal, however those are a bit expensive (though they may be a good investment anyway). I also twist tie the wires and cables coming out of the back of my computer together and have them travel in bundles to a location. This way I hope to minimize any chance of dust collecting. Dust improves the change of a power arc from one line to another, which can start a fire. Anyone else have any suggestions?
Cute and elligible female to shack up with.
I just *KNEW* the slashdot flamewars would go too far one day!
That really sucks, and I'm sorry to hear it.
I know how you feel. About ten years ago, a roomate of mine and a friend (of his) were using a plastic bag as an ashtray. Burned out one room and destroyed most personal belongings on the top floor. The worst part: I was renting the condo from my mother.
Fortunately, while I lost every stitch of clothing except what I had been wearing, the computer and stereo, both downstairs, were unscathed. (I lost a record player, though, remember those?)
But in the end, it was probably good for me. It drive me to live alone for the first time in my life. It drove me to quite the job where they had troubles paying me on time Events like these can be learning experiences. They aren't necessarily all bad. (When it is just property that is lost.)
And now the real question. Is your insurance policy "Replacement value" or "Actual Cash Value"? That is one of the things I learned the hard way. For those who aren't in the middle of this, you want the former as it saves you huge headaches.
The cake is a pie
No one got hurt - and thank you for the kind words.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
When you rebuild/redecorate your house, how about making it open-source. Sort of like the Kasporov vs. The World Chess match - but instead, The World redecorates Hemos' house!
Just think of the opportunities: Slashdot green walls in the computer room, DustPuppy themed vacuum cleaner cupboard ...
On a serious note, I hope nothing irreplacable like photos were lost.
People, please leave the residents of the geek compound alone for awhile. half their house just burned down! And don't complain if in the next few days submissions get processed alittle slower.
--
Having experienced my house burning down, I find it suprising to read the remarkable calousness of some of these replies. I can say, confidently, that it altered the course of my life. In some ways, it was good, in others, simply tragic. By the age of 27 I'd built a library of some thousand books. Two thirds of them were lost, including a hand written journal covering about 5 years. My filing cabinet containing many, many documents that were, to me, priceless, gone. Keepsakes from my dead Grandfather. Furnature that I'd build by hand. Photo albums and personal drawings, all gone.
I suspect that most of the people replying here have not experienced a house fire, if they had, the tone of the responses would likely be very different.
Perhaps it wouldn't be too much to ask that people posting to this news take a minute to think over what their feelings would be if they lost their most cherished, most irreplacable keepsakes.
Take it from some one who's been there, fires build character, they steel you for the rest of your life.
pjr