Engineer2Entrepreneur

Wired News: Games Tackle Disaster Training

Link: Wired News: Games Tackle Disaster Training.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is funding a series of computer games to help prepare health workers and other first responders facing bioterror attacks, nuclear accidents and pandemics.

The Military has used wargames for ages to get ready for things. I'm rather surprised they only now just started doing the same things for this. I thought they had something like this already. Better late then never.

How to steal from the elderly

Link: When a Family Matter Turns Into a Business - Los Angeles Times.
"Her life changed three years ago, when a woman named Melodie Scott told a court in San Bernardino that Jones was unable to manage for herself. Without asking Jones, a judge made Scott — someone she had never met — her legal guardian.

Scott is a professional conservator."

This is scary beyond scary. Without warning or consent someone can take everything away from your or your parents, all they have to do is ask a judge.

Even if you have a will and other legal arraignments some stranger can come in an take over without even asking you.

If your parents are getting up there in age find out more.

How to Prepare for One Really Quick Getaway - New York Times

Link: How to Prepare for One Really Quick Getaway - New York Times.

This is really the "if hit by a bus" list that financial planners have been recommending you compile for your heirs. If you think of the list that way, you will be reminded of your mortality and you will not want to write it. But think of the families displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita or by California wildfires, and the psychological barrier collapses. The list becomes a much easier sell now, said Brent Neiser, a director for the National Endowment for Financial Education. "It forces you to think," he said. Here is what else you have to do to protect your records and yourself: RECORD: Once you have made your basic list, save it on a U.S.B. flash drive. A 256-megabyte drive, which you can buy for $20 or even less if you catch a store promotion, gives you enough space for that file and all the other suggestions mentioned below. Several of the big flash drive makers, like SanDisk and Lexar Media, are now selling more advanced drives that allow you to encrypt the data so others cannot read it without knowing the alphanumeric key that unlocks the code. Some are even shock proofed with heavier rubber and plastic coatings. Those will cost about $10 to $20 more, but are certainly worth it when you consider the sensitivity of the data on them. It is also a good idea to copy the contents onto additional drives for backup and for other members of the family. BONUS: When you are listing the credit cards, also note the credit limits so you will know how much you could spend in an emergency. If your credit cards are at their limits now, you are not going to have any cushion to fall back on. So start paying off balances, beginning with the card carrying the highest interest rate. SCAN: Some important documents are on paper and you will want copies of them with you: tax returns for the last three years (Form 1040 is all you will need in an emergency), a recent pay stub, birth certificates, marriage license, the deed to your home and insurance policy pages that list your coverage. If you do not have a scanner or a printer with a flat scanner, take the pile of documents down to a copy center like Kinko's to scan. Record the image files on the U.S.B. drive. BONUS: Take the opportunity to check your insurance coverage for potential disasters like flooding. With homes appreciating in value, you may also find you need to increase coverage. SHOOT: Some personal finance advisers suggest that you make a spreadsheet listing everything you own and enter the date and price paid and then file all the receipts and ... yeah, yeah. You will never do it. But creating a detailed inventory of everything you own need not be a major chore when technology comes to the rescue. Many households now have a camcorder or digital camera. Walk around each room and take a picture of each item. Then, either store all the photos on a memory card (unless you live in the Biltmore mansion, you can load all the photos on a 256- or 512-megabyte card). Or you can transfer them to the same U.S.B. drive with your other documents.

I have an iPod and am using that for daily backups instead of a flashdrive. But either way this is a good way to carry a lot of information very easily. Make sure to put it in a ziplock baggie to keep water out.

Don't forget to keep a copy of the activation and registration codes for your software. You don't want to have to buy your software all over again.

You don't really need a scanner a digital camera will do just fine. Just take pictures of your documents.

As a backup to your backup you can get a gmail account (2GB) and email the file to yourself, but don't use this as your only backup.

You would also want to burn these files to CD and mail them to out-of-state family or friends. Make sure to use a box and not an envelope, I've gotten a lot of snapped CDs that were sent in padded envelopes. Or use DVD cases as they are a lot tougher.

Hurricane Rita Evacuation Story

Link: Instapundit.com - .

We headed Northeast on the Beltway, hit I-10 toward Beaumont. By 10:30 a.m., we had not even gotten 1/2 way there (an hour drive on a regular day), so I decided to take the first open exit and head North. EVERY gas station on I-10 was out yesterday morning by 9:00 a.m., but miraculously, the stations 15 miles off the freeway had gas--must be something about supply and demand. We headed North & East--away from the mass of Houston/Galveston evacuees--for some time, until we hit a Texas Dept. of Public Safety roadblock on a Northbound road. The DPS officer simply said the "road is closed" without explanation, and told us to head BACK to Beaumont and join the parking lot/freeway. I asked him why the road was closed (locals could still use it) and that it made no sense to head back and add to the problem (I was 30 miles North of I-10) at this point, but he said he was just "told" the clear road due north was closed. I explained that he was in essence risking my family's life, since stuck on the road with a 20 foot flood surge, would be suicide. He didn't care and when I said it was idiotic to shut down good roads to force people onto a jammed evacuation routes, he said what was idiotic was to have to talk with people like me.

Yeah, I'm not surprised. Bureaucratic inefficiency at it's worst. It isn't even worth talking to them, sadly, they are just following orders.

I've written before, don't even bother with the official evacuation routes, they'll be jammed to a stop in an hour or less.

A GPS is a great thing but make sure it has all the maps on board because you might not have time to stop and update from a computer. It is better to have a good map or five of your most likely escape routes, all the way. Expect your route to be blocked, whether by an official, washed out bridge or avalanche, just expect to have to go around things.

Oh, he got to his evacuation point just fine.

Escape From Houston - How I fled Rita. By Mimi Swartz

Link: Escape From Houston - How I fled Rita. By Mimi Swartz.

And so, Sam, Chuy, and I drove toward the coast, out Main Street and on to 90A, where there was, indeed, no traffic. At all. Somewhat further on we sped past a beat-up scarlet Nissan with the words "Rita, go away bitch" spray-painted on the back window. Fifteen minutes later, we hit gridlock.

She had a pretty good plan, use minor highways and roads to get through as much of the city as she could.

She tells a story of how she used a GPS device to reroute away from the Interstate and how she ended up taking her son and dog through small towns she had not been to in a long time.

If you are looking to evacuate your city you need to have your escape route not be the Interstate, almost no one plans for these things, they just take the first route that comes to mind: The Interstate. It is also a habit, they use it everyday to get to work.

You are planning ahead you take a different road to work to see how it is during rush hour (as close to an evacuation as you can get) and often it is rather quiet.

I have a routed planned to my wife's parents house using nothing but state highways. and good maps that will let us use even smaller roads.

Which road would you take?

Houston on the Move

Moving 1.5 million people is really hard. While running some errands today, including trying to get some gas, two gas stations were empty. I heard on the radio how one lady had been and still was on I45 for 18 hours and she hadn't even left Houston city limits yet, they are more then a little worried about riding our the hurricane in their car.

Riding a Cat4 out in your own home is one thing, doing it sitting in your car parked on the Interstate is quite another.

There are going to be several lessons learned from this, probably the wrong ones.

If there are large numbers of deaths due to people being stuck in their cars during landfall, then people will learn that they are better off staying at home then leaving during a mandatory evacuation. This is the wrong lesson the right lesson is to leave before the mandatory evacuation order comes down so you can use the roads. Make your decision 72 hours before projected landfall and you should be fine.

Another better lesson to learn is to plan your escape route such that you do not use the Interstate, everyone who doesn't plan ahead will use the first idea that pops into their head and the Interstate will be number one on the hit parade. I would not be surprised at all if the county roads and state highways are basically empty right now all around Houston.

If you are prepared you will not fear. I already have scoped out some state highways that will get us a long way from here in case of an evacuation. You should do the same before the disaster comes to you.