For the last few weeks the news has been telling us over and over again to make sure we have flood insurance, to make sure we’re “prepared”, and to make sure we have an emergency plan.  That’s because near a dam on the Green River, there’s (apparently) an earth embankment that’s likely to (somehow) fail this coming winter, resulting in a flood anywhere between three and ten feet deep.  (Update: Some news stories predict the dam over-topping; others predict the embankment failing.  It’s hard to know which is actually the official prediction.)

A few days ago, my wife commented that the news mentioned the National Guard preparing accomodations for 5,000 displaced people in the event of a flood.  Five thousand?  There are probably five thousand people in my apartment complex.  The flood zone is much, much bigger than my apartment complex.  Where are all these people supposed to go?

It gets even better, though.  Yesterday evening, the news played some comments by some woman high up in the local (city or county) government.  Her comments went something like this:

We need to learn from Hurricane Katrina.  After Katrina, the city ran out of body bags, and families were stuck with bodies for weeks and weeks.  We want to make sure that no families here are stuck with a body for weeks.

So much concern over body bags proves to me that they’re expecting a lot of deaths.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to tell everyone to leave the area?  That way, nobody dies! Gee, what a novel idea.

I feel like the local government is completely clueless about what to do about this flood.  Nobody has ever explained why they aren’t fixing the levy.  If money’s the issue, I’m sure the tens of thousands of people in the flood zone could all pitch in and fund repairs – I know I would be willing.

Update: I found a local news station’s story on the King County Council meeting.  This was the actual quote:

KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Chris Egert said one council member asked about body bags while others made comparisons to Hurricane Katrina.

“I want to know what we have in the supply of body bags if somebody gets killed,” asked Kathy Lambert of the King County Council. “Do we have a supply of body bags so families will be able to deal with that?”

Update 2: Another news story on the same station’s site informs us that

Engineers are working 24 hours a day on a temporary fix at the dam, but they don’t know how well it will work.

It is not amusing when people steal my drinks from the fridge.

That is all.

I like Project Euler.  If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a website with a few hundred math/programming puzzles to solve, and it keeps track of which ones you’ve solved, who else has solved them, etc etc.

Yesterday, I was working on solving one of the problems.  The way you know you’ve solved it is by entering the answer into the website, and they tell you if it’s right.

I wrote some code, ran it, and got an answer.  They said it was wrong.  So I double-checked my code, ran it again, and got the same answer.  Wrong.  I re-wrote the code from scratch, and got the same answer.  Wrong.

Finally, I got fed up and googled the answer.  Someone’s blog listed what they claimed was the answer – but it was wrong.

So I copied the algorithm used by that blogger, and ran it.  It produced my original answer.  Not the answer they posted on their blog – the same answer I had all along.

I submitted it again, trying not to scream in frustration.  This time, it was accepted.

I don’t know why the site didn’t accept my answer the first couple times.  I don’t know why that blogger posted the wrong answer but the correct algorithm.  I guess Project Euler just wanted to waste some of my time?

(If anyone’s interested, you can see my Project Euler profile here.)

I saw one of Apple’s (presumably) new PC vs Mac ads today.  (Some of you are going to say “that’s not new”.  I don’t watch much TV, so it may as well be.)  The ad in question is the one with the guy that plays Putty in Seinfeld.

A girl is looking for a new computer.  She lists off a bunch of features she wants; Putty (the PC) says he has them.

Then, the kicker: “I don’t want to have to deal with thousands of viruses.”

Putty says “Oh.  Well all PCs have that.”  Unsurprisingly, she says she’ll just get a Mac.

What’s wrong with this picture?  Oh yeah.  “Thousands of viruses.”  Really?  When was the last time you encountered a computer that had thousands of viruses on it?  Even if you can think of a time, I’ll bet the user was doing something completely and utterly moronic (like installing every pirated program in sight, or surfing porn sites, or opening every spam e-mail, or… you get the idea).

Guess what?  Macs won’t protect stupid users from doing stupid things.  There are viruses out there for OSX, using the same tactics that they’re using for stupid PC users.

My Windows machines never get viruses.  Sure, I run Avast! Antivirus, but I doubt I need it.  It’s more a formality than anything.  Want to know my secret?

I’m not a moron. I don’t follow links in spam e-mail or seedy websites.  I don’t visit porn sites.  I don’t install pirated software.  Basically, I employ a little thing called “common sense”.

I can’t say I blame Apple for exploiting America’s obvious lack of this essential skill, but I’m still allowed to be annoyed by it.  My rage is more directed at American stupidity than Apple’s slightly deceptive or misleading advertising.