Multiple keys for rental cars

It's nice that they give you more than one key for your rental car, kind of like having multiple key[cards] for hotel rooms. But what's the point, if the keys are attached via a permanently-closed keyring?

When it rains, it pours (part 2)

This is a quick, but long-overdue followup to my 06/26/2006 post, "When it rains, it pours."

There are all kinds of things I could say about this, but the task of putting it all into words has been kind of daunting. So, I'm just going to post the emails that I sent to my coworkers and school learning team members when I was dealing with water mitigation/cleanup/etc, and link to the 300+ pictures that I took along the way...

Email to Work #1 (06/26/2006 1:46am):

Basement flooded tonight due to nonstop heavy rain.. yard is saturated, sump pump couldn't keep up.. other drainage not efficient either, so water is coming in from at least 3 locations. After spending all evening/night recovering from the initial flooding, now the sump pump has given out completely, so I'm dreading what the night will bring. I will probably not get any work done tomorrow either, as I try to salvage/clean things and deal with kids and stuff.

Email to Work #2 (06/27/2006 11:38am):

Yesterday, I fought with the rain as long as I could, carrying 10gal shopvac buckets full of nasty water from my storm drain up the outside walk-out stairs, while the rain just kept pouring down, and throwing it out in the yard, but in the end, I did not make a very good sump pump replacement. So the water started pouring in from the sump pump pit and the outside storm drain, and quickly filled the whole basement with 1-2" of water.

At some point I gave up on getting the water out, and switched modes to salvaging whatever belongings I could. I spent all day yesterday dealing with that, and eventually, in the late afternoon, a plumber made it out and replaced the sump pump. So now there's no more flooding happening, and hopefully it will survive the high quantities of rain we're supposed to get tonight, but I still have a lot to deal with down there, especially washing and drying all the clothes/towels/blankets/etc. that were down there, and trying to suck up as much water out of the carpet as possible.

We've got water mitigation people coming on Friday night--that was the soonest anyone could come out--but in the meantime we need to do as much as we can, ourselves, because it's going to get pretty gross between now and Friday.

Anyways, I'm going to have to take today off as well, in case that wasn't already assumed. Hope to be there tomorrow. As long as the new sump pump can keep up with tonight's rain, that should be possible.

Email to Learning Team #1 (06/26/2006 8:01am):

hey guys.. Basement flooded last night due to nonstop heavy rain.. yard is saturated, sump pump couldn't keep up.. other drainage not efficient either, so water is coming in from at least 3 locations. After spending all evening/night recovering from the initial flooding, now the sump pump has given out completely, so I'm glad to see that the rain has stopped for now. Gotta try to salvage/clean things and deal with kids and stuff today, and try to find a replacement sump pump (probably in short supply now), a shop vac (borrowed a neighbor's but need our own), and a plumber to heavy-duty-snake out our storm drain...

Email to Learning Team #2 (06/26/2006 3:08pm):

yeah, I thought yesterday was bad. now we've got over 1" through the entire basement, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

i bought lots of stuff at the hardware stuff this morning, but nothing i bought is any match for the continuing rain. plumber should be here soon to replace the sump pump, but there's concern that he may not be able to do that since it's immersed in several feet of water and all.. i hope he has some kind of pump, but the lady on the phone didn't seem to think so. if it can't be replaced today, i will be crafting a homemade water pump->pipe->sprayer solution.

Email to Learning Team #3 (06/27/2006 12:17pm):

sorry for my silence.. been working on basement water issues all day
and late into the night. i will really try to get my part done today.

Email to Learning Team #4 (06/27/2006 12:21pm):

Oh, but the good news is that the plumber WAS able to replace the sump pump, so at this point it's a cleanup/salvage effort only, and I'm no longer trying to act as a manual sump pump. :) Let's just hope that this pump holds up during the heavy rains tonight, since we're supposed to be in for another doozy.

Here are the pictures:
http://www.oatmealcookies.org/pictures/2006/2006_06_25/
http://www.oatmealcookies.org/pictures/2006/2006_06_26/
http://www.oatmealcookies.org/pictures/2006/2006_06_27/
http://www.oatmealcookies.org/pictures/2006/2006_06_28/
http://www.oatmealcookies.org/pictures/2006/2006_06_30/
http://www.oatmealcookies.org/pictures/2006/2006_07_01-basement/

Oops. I broke wiki.com's registration...

I read an article a few days ago about a site that's been getting a fair amount of buzz lately, particularly due to its $2.8 million purchase agreement: wiki.com

I thought to myself, "What the heck, might as well go grab a couple of subdomains while they're still available." So, I went to http://www.wiki.com, and clicked 'Start a Wiki', which took me to http://reg.wiki.com.

The registration process was simple -- maybe even a little bit *too* simple:
1. choose a wiki name (subdomain: something.wiki.com)
2. enter your name, email address, zip code, and captcha text
3. submit

Well, for some reason I got the bright idea to enter 'reg' as my wiki name, just to see if it would let me, and if so, what would happen. I didn't expect to actually WORK, and certainly meant no harm to the site. I expected some form of confirmation prompt after submitting that registration form, but it immediately broke reg.wiki.com.

For at least an hour or two (I didn't notice when they fixed it), you could not register on wiki.com. I thought, for sure, they would delete the wiki that I'd created, but instead, they created http://registration.wiki.com, and changed the 'Start a Wiki' link to point to the new URL.

I've posted a message on http://reg.wiki.com, explaining what happened, and linking to the new registration page. I still can't believe that actually worked! I do think it's pretty cool that they left my wiki alone, even though it broke their site for a while. I'm assuming that they've got a sense of humor and weren't too pissed off, since I didn't even receive a Cease and Desist letter. :)

Can anybody think of any legitimate use for 'reg.wiki.com', or should I just leave it as-is, with a note directing people to the new registration page?