Fire Information – UPDATED...

It's time for my annual fire information page update.

Cameras are a primary source for ground truth when there's a local and active fire.  We learned the hard way in 2007 that local news sources are, for the most part, completely useless for “tactical” needs – if you're trying to find out about current fire location, current road closures, current escape routes, etc., these sources are just too slow.  Fortunately for us here in San Diego County, UCSD's HPWREN system has a network of cameras at over a dozen sites.  The images from these cameras are updated every two minutes, and they've got date/time stamps right in them – so you can be certain that the information you're viewing is current.  The main HPWREN camera site and a mirror site are both available.  I recommend getting familiar with the cameras most relevant to your location (for example, for us it's the cameras on Lyons Peak), and familiar with tools like Google Earth that will help you identify the landmarks you see in the HPWREN images.  During the 2007 fires, we found these cameras to be the single best tool available to us – we used them to plan our evacuation route, and we used them to track the fire's approach to our home (which, thankfully, it never reached).

There are other very useful web sites as well.  Here are three that I found useful during the 2007 fires:

California Department of Forestry: CAL FIRE Incidents

U.S. Deparment of the Interior/Department of Agriculture: GeoMAC

U.S. Department of Agriculture: Fire Data Web Services

If any of you know about other useful web sites, tools, or information sources, please let me know about them so I can share them with everyone...

UPDATED: There's a small fire (at least for now) over near Sycuan Casino, last reported at 20 acres and good progress being made controlling it.  In the course of researching this, I came across a new resource:

CAL FIRE twitter  (who knew?)

Also, here's the CAL FIRE San Diego County fire information number (only active duing major incidents): 619/590-3160

The IRS and the Black Market...

Suppose you inherited something that was once worth a lot of money, but now cannot be legally sold.  How should the IRS assess inheritance tax on that?

Well, the new owners say (of course!) that since it cannot be sold, it's fair market value is zero, so there is no tax.

The IRS says “Give us $29 million, right now!”

The whole story...

This is going to court, of course.  Care to bet on who wins?

I think most people would agree that here is a clear-cut case of theft (well, attempted theft, for the moment) disguised as taxes.  So far as I'm concerned, all taxation is theft if I didn't agree to it, but when I say things like that people just look at me like I'm crazy :-)

The Two-Egg Problem...

Examined in detail in a most geekly fashion.  Great geekly stuff!

Don't Take That Tone With Me, Fat Boy...

It's really, really hard to excerpt one of Iowahawk's satirical masterpieces.  This one – You Didn't Build That – is easier than most:

Then the economy heard the sound of the Lord Govt returning from vay-cay with the demigovts Osha and Tarp and Irs. It was the cool of the day, and they were hiding their profits from the Lord Govt among the trees of the garden. 26 But the Lord Govt called to the manufacturer, “Where are you?”

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, so I sought a tax shelter.”

And Govt said, “Who told you that your profits were yours? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? ”

The man said, “The retailer made me —she has a thing for serpents.”

Then the Lord Govt said to the retailer, “What is this you have done?”

And she said to the Lord Govt, “Don't take that tone with me, fat boy. And why should I give you my profits?”

Iowahawk made my morning. Go read the whole thing; it's not that long...

Explaining Physics to Turnips...

The inimitable Rachel Lucas, on the Italian press' reaction to the Aurora shootings.  Great stuff, as always...

I Certainly Could Do That...

Today's Dilbert strip is one that just about any corporate software developer will find wryly amusing:

My search for relevance marches on...

Amongst Scott Adams many talents is a gift for staying in touch with the geekdom he no longer is immersed in...