The news of my death has been somewhat exaggerated.

Sure, the real @edicted was slain in a fire yesterday, but now you get the privilege of witnessing the new and improved @edicted. Doppelganger @edicted.

Save it for Queen Dopplepopolis!

4:00

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5aokwb

Jesus... Sealab 2021... and it's almost 2021. Wild.

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Seriously though

It makes sense that my girlfriend was legit worried about my safety, but it looks like I also get some sugar from my witness-mates @hextech. Not today, Satan!

So what did I learn?

Well, first and foremost, the easy one is to be more prepared. Let me tell you it was not fun to evacuate from a fire through bumper to bumper backroads passing dozens of fields full of dry grass.

At the same time my tires could blow out at any time. Something like that during an emergency could be its own disaster. I was on the road for four hours driving to a friend's house that normally would have taken 20 minutes. Yikes. Should have just gone out of my way and got to an open freeway asap. I got a lot of "I told you so" attitude when my trip was finally over.

On the other side the coin one of my roommates never even left the house. We were on the very border of the evacuation order so we technically were not required to leave. He stayed. Nothing happened. Do I regret bugging out? Not really. My girlfriend would not have slept well knowing my situation... and I wouldn't have either... in fact it was around 4 PM that I realized there was no way I was going to sleep under those conditions. There was an impending unpredictable wind event that could have swung either way, and we live next to a creek bed with a lot of trees and brush all over the place.

Factorio hardcore mode

In July when I was dicking around doing nothing but work and playing Factorio all day, it felt like the addiction had some sort of small purpose. I was playing the hardest version of the game possible, Marathon Deathworld, and if I died I would start over. It was these mechanics that forced me to be extremely careful. One misstep could cost me the entire game and I'd have to start over. For the record, that game took me like 80 hours to beat once I finally stopped dying. I know.

The lesson I learned playing the game can be applied to real life: you only get one shot and if you fuck up or get careless and unlucky at the same time it can cost you big time.

What would I do differently?

• Bottlenecks

  This incident almost makes me want to own a motorcycle or something just in case of emergencies. What happens if an accident occurs on an already overloaded road? Bottlenecks are a serious issue in an emergency and even just in reference to generalized logistics. The system will fail if throughput fails.

• Procrastination

  I did not pack up as early as I should have (arguably at the start of the day). My car is in extreme disrepair even though I have the money to fix it. I've even been meaning to factory reset my phone because it's insanely slow and my GPS doesn't seem to be working. I didn't get on the road until 6 PM, and by then the route that I had planned out became a completely worthless option.

• Plan B

  I didn't really consider going to another house, even though I should have once shit hit the fan. Obviously, having a backup plan in any situation is a good idea.

• Crypto

  I realized that a little bit of my crypto doesn't have any backups and all of it was sitting in my car. The crypto in my car was worth more than my entire car and then some. If my car had been broken into, I would have lost it all even if the thieves had no idea what to do with it (likely) because I had no backups. This bothered me a bit, to say the least. It's like when I send Bitcoin and the next block doesn't get posted until an hour later. I'm left wondering if I messed up and lost it forever or just worried for nothing. Haven't lost any yet, but you never know.

• Kitty!

  The reason I didn't want to evac initially is because I knew it would be a very stressful situation for my cat. She's very sensitive about these kinds of things. In fact she was panting so loud at one point I thought something was wrong with my car for a second. Oh, did I mention the AC in my car needs fluid and it was 95 degrees for a 4 hour drive? Fun stuff. On top of that shit sandwich she kinda literally pissed and shit everywhere out of fear. So that was fun as well. So I guess the answer here is either leave sooner or go all in and wait for official evac. Also I need to stop her from being able to see out of her carrying case. Ignorance is bliss.

SMF5

I think Amazon is really sweating it, because they made an incredibly foolish blunder. As parts of the town are being evacuated (I had been on the road 12 minutes) I get a text saying the warehouse is open and to come into work for the night shift (was my day off personally).

Your safety is our top priority.

lol

In any case a few hours later they send out another text that states they're closing operations effective immediately "due to an evacuation order". Does that mean they would have stayed open otherwise? I don't even have to speculate how much flak they are going to get for trying to stay open. I have a shift scheduled for right now but here I am blogging it up because they are still closed (not that I would have gone anyway). I get the feeling that anyone can lie to them right now and get free paid time off (if they were even open).

The last text they sent to us asked us to respond with a '1', '2', or '3'. 1 for evacuated and safe, 2 for not evacuated and safe, 3 for "I need help finding a place to go." It was this text that made me realize the sheer blowback of outrage they must be receiving for trying to stay open. Too little too late dummies. Ya got greedy.

They must be really stressing it considering that just built that $35M autosorter and they are counting on SMF5 to sort like a third of a million packages a day. We were already working max 5 hour shifts all day every day, so I can only imagine what their logistics team is scrambling to accomplish at the moment. Yikes.

Conclusion

• I wasn't scared.
• I wasn't annoyed.
• I didn't panic.
• I'm a bit of a pyromaniac.
• I'm one of those kids that almost burnt down their house.
• Fire is my friend!

I was pretty ill-prepared for any kind of emergency though. Truly, this feels like a drop in a bucket compared to what may be coming in the future. The writing is on the wall. Best to plan ahead.