Let's WRUP the s*** out of this...
Hey it's me, Scrooloose, and it's WRUP time again. I didn't get to writing one last week because we had a pretty major Mono wind event that knocked out my power for five days. Winds got up to 55 mph here locally. I live at around 3,200 feet elevation and higher up, like around 7,000+ feet wind speeds were clocked at a ridiculous 190 mph. Power was shut off for safety at 1am the night the storm started and thank goodness because trees fell all over the power lines around here and snapped power poles all over the place. There was no moisture with that storm so it could have easily turned into a wildfire fueled by 50 mph winds. Thankfully we thought ahead around here and filled up about every container we could with water for drinking, cooking with and keeping the toilets flushed. My home is all electric and I'm on a well, so no water when the power is out.
We made it out of that storm with relatively little damage. I lost some shingles on the house and the separate garage, a few trees came down and it blew deck furniture and trash cans and everything not bolted down all over the place. Neighbors all around us had trees fall through their roofs, garages, car ports and fences etc. In fact, as of now that damage still exists for most of them for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the insurance adjusters have yet to show their faces around here and if you repair something on your own then you've decided to undertake the job yourself and insurance won't help you. So there's a house I can see that's in two pieces still because a pine tree fell right in the center of it. Secondly, right after that wind storm an atmospheric river came along and dropped a lot of snow on the area. So even if people got help with insurance they can't really work to get things fixed because it's covered in a foot or more of snow and ice. I got a little over a foot of snow at 3,200 feet and above 4,000 feet, people saw snow build up from 2 to 10 feet high.
So as we were preparing for the last event to take place I manged to get a few bundles of shingles and repair the roofs of my own buildings. No need to involve homeowner's insurance for a few hundred dollars in repairs. I'll be helping some folks not far away from here once the snows clears out (and I get my new chainsaw bar, finally) in getting some trees off their fence that fell from a friend's property. I also would like to give a shout out to the hundreds of workers that showed up and got the power back ASAP. These people had a huge task ahead of them and the speed and efficiency at which they worked was pretty amazing to watch.
In other news, I'm sure you've all seen the GameStop stock silliness. Robinhood, the free trading app, has restricted trading and even sold people's stock without their approval. They also received a seemingly magical one billion dollar cash injection right after stopping the sales of specific stocks... hmm what a coincidence. Robinhood is backed by Citadel, a major market maker for shortsellers. Citadel more or less said --Hey, this kind of behavior is only okay if we can do it. Shut it down and we'll give you a bunch of money-- Or at least that's how I see it. Robinhood, of course, says it's all about protecting the people and the platform. Wall Street wants to accuse the group of Redditers that performed the shorting of collusion with foreign powers, this is by the way absolutely ridiculous and they know that. This kind of short selling happens all the time in stocks, that's why brokerages exist for it in the first place. It's just that this time the open and unregulated market that Wall Street lobbied so hard for bit a lot of very wealthy people in their giant alligator skin wallets, so of course these Redditers are evil, unamerican criminals who are out to ruin the country. I'm sure we can all expect some very one-sided regulations to show up quite soon that prevent normal traders from making the kind of moves they did here.
What are we all playing this weekend? Seriously, I'm asking...
AJ: Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Wipeout: Pulse.
Greywolfe: magic: the gathering! but also four in february. i have no real idea what i'm going to be playing beyond my first game for that, which is going to be a replay of quest for glory 1. my save game for my ongoing adventure in 4 is on another hard drive [on a parked pc], so i have to start replaying all of them to get back to the point where i was.
Scrooloose: As usual I'll be hitting up Deep Rock Galactic. new biomes are coming soon and they promise some extra mechanics and new bosses. That should be fun. I'm also still trucking in SnowRunner. Pun very much intended. The Yukon maps are very challenging and I love it.