Pensacola, Florida lucked out on Gustave, but the high storm activity in the Atlantic may mean that it's only a matter of time before we have storm barreling right at us. We locals needs to be diligent at keeping an eye at what is happening out there and be prepared when the inevitable does happen.

If you're new to the area and are not familiar with dealing with hurricanes, I recommend that you read BeReadyEscambia.com. It is a web site created by the Escambia Department of Public Safety to educate and inform residents about what to do before and during a hurricane. For those who are long time locals and hurricane survivors, it would not hurt to look over the site and refamiliarize yourself with some of the information on the site.

As I look out my office window, I realize that Gustave is still lingering as the grey clouds swirl in the sky. As of this post, several flood warnings are still in effect for the area. Possibility of tornados and heavy winds are also still present.

So, if you have to be out there, drive safe and be patient. Keep in mind that we have some extra out-of-towners in the area who took refuge from Gustave. They might not be familiar with the area and might be prone to driving a little eratically.

Labels: hurricane prep

There's a mad dash happening in my office to get ready for a possible hurricane hit.
I've been working all morning trying to come up with a way to be able to get information online to our employees and to the public if and when a hurricane does strike.

As a person who hopes for the best and plans for the worst, I decided that I wasn't going to stake our company's online employee communication plan on something I didn't feel was completely reliable. So, I decided to make a hurricane information web site and host it with Blogger.

By hosting the site with Blogger, I won't have to rely on our local web hosting provider to have our web site up and running the storm. I'm pretty sure they'll be more concerned about saving themselves and their properties than be worried if one of their client's web site is down.

As much as I have faith in capabilities of the hosting provider for my work company and their supposed 98% uptime promise, I always try to have a back up plan or go with a sure thing.

At the moment, Blogger seems a better bet than the local guys.

Labels: blogging, hurricane prep, work

Yesterday, Virgin Mobile USA announced that they will pay $39 million in stock to buy the high- end niche wireless mobile service provider, Helio.

Will this mean that Virgin Mobile users will have access to the fancy phones that Helio offers? I guess only time will tell. Since both company utilizes the Sprint Network, any improvements in coverage and call quality is in Sprint's hands.

Personally, I've been using Virgin Mobile since Hurricane Ivan hit Pensacola, Florida in 2004. The category five hurricane made me realized that everyone in my family needed a way to keep in touch in the event that we were separated during an evacuation. So, I headed out to the Target store and bought a couple of phones.

I managed to get the phones set up just in time before the storm made landfall and the powers went out. Luckily, we didn't have to evacuate out of the state. The cell phone did prove useful in contacting our relatives and friends to let them know that we were okay since the phone lines were down for several weeks.

Even with my post-paid mobile phone service with Cellular South, I still keep a Virgin Mobile pre-paid phone in my hurricane kit just to be safe.

To read more about Virgin & Helio, click here for PCWorld.com's article or Helio Press Release page

Labels: hurricane prep, mobile phones, tech news