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Hemos is Homeless
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sat Oct 16, 1999 09:12 AM
from the no-I'm-not-making-this-up dept.
from the no-I'm-not-making-this-up dept.
So just as proof that life doens't stop when you go to a conference, Hemos got email this morning from nate informing him that
his house burned down [?] last night. Now some rooms are missing and there is extensive smoke and water damage. Now the geek compound is 25% smaller. On the plus side, both Nate and hemos are safe and insured. Update: 10/16 11:05 by H : And to make matters worse, Chris DiBona threw my cell phone in a bucket of water. On accident. But it's pretty ironic.
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Dangers of Closed Source Housing (Score:3)
If this house had been constructed using open source development under the GPL, NONE of this would have happened.
After, NOTHING ever developed by the open source community has ever crashed and burned. Of course, you have to twist bare electric wires to turn your lights on and off, but think of the STABILITY and SECURITY of a home built using open source ideology!!!
(Yes, I'm being a sarcastic troll.
Sorry to hear that your house burned, Hemos. I've had it happen twice when I was growing up and lost my first computer and a ton of good books from the second fire. We lived in a VERY old house with bad wiring...
Just couldn't resist poking some fun at the OSS nazis after reading the response to the Loki contest.)
Re:Donations? (Score:3)
Actually it was a champagne bucket. (Score:3)
Past that the whole house thing -sucks- those pictures are heartbreaking.
Chris
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
You forgot some (Score:3)
7) Port a Quake II client to a mobile robot platform, and network it to your PC.
8) Put 1 Kg high explosives in each room. Fires are put out by explosions. Deprives them of fuel and oxygen.
9) Build the house underground. Underground fires are much rarer. :)
10) Buy up some SDI lasers, and target them at fire hazards. If any show thermic activity, vapourise.
Ahhh ... (Score:3)
On the other hand, the last time I looked, there weren't any trees in the rubbish bin.
Although this wasn't intended to be serious, I guess propensity to catch fire is related to aeration and low water content, neither of which hold in the compacted and very wet environment of discarded vegetable trimmings.
Hey, maybe the Eat Healthy lobby should use this in their advertising: eat healthy or your house will burn down!
Hackers are prone to their houses burning down ... (Score:3)
The moral of the story is, change your diet to a healthy one. I never heard of vegetable waste catching fire.
[Morgaine pushes pizza box deftly out of sight.]
Re:Ow. (Score:3)
They're at ALS damnit! Jeeze. They're great people. You should meet Taco and Malda in person. They were great fun to hang out with. No pretentions at all, they're just normal people trying to be friendly and run a good site for everyone. They were happy to chat with people and got annoyed when they were treated like celebrities. There is no reason to ridicule them for being unable to do anything when they're not even there.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
How it could have been prevented (Score:3)
On a lighter side there are several ways it could have been prevented (written in a manner to hopefully avoid hurting nates pride even more):
1) Cases of penguin mints. Can't start a fire while you're sleeping if you don't sleep.
2) Cases of Mountain Dew. Good for refreshment and dosing fires.
3) Eat only Peanut Butter M&Ms. Their wrappers are plastic and won't catch fire in the trash so easily.
4) Move from the Geek Compound into the Geek Fortress. An old missle silo would do - concrete doesn't really burn well.
5) Hemos. Oh wait, this isn't a poll.
Ye-ouch! (Score:3)
Learning from other's mistakes is much less painful than learning fro other peoples, so /.ers might all take this as a reminder to check their basic fire safety - batteries in smoke detectors, extinguishers charged, outlets not overloaded by plugging six boxen and monitors into one outlet, and so on...reminds me that I've been wanting to set a fire safe to put backup tapes in. (Yeah, if I was doing really important stuff I'd have offsite backups, but like most of us I'm in good shape if I remember to have backups at all.)
Wires (Score:3)
Hemos Now Seeking... (Score:4)
I knew it! (Score:4)
Re:Note: I am Insured. So is Nate. (Score:4)
I know how you feel. About ten years ago, a roomate of mine and a friend (of his) were using a plastic bag as an ashtray. Burned out one room and destroyed most personal belongings on the top floor. The worst part: I was renting the condo from my mother.
Fortunately, while I lost every stitch of clothing except what I had been wearing, the computer and stereo, both downstairs, were unscathed. (I lost a record player, though, remember those?)
But in the end, it was probably good for me. It drive me to live alone for the first time in my life. It drove me to quite the job where they had troubles paying me on time Events like these can be learning experiences. They aren't necessarily all bad. (When it is just property that is lost.)
And now the real question. Is your insurance policy "Replacement value" or "Actual Cash Value"? That is one of the things I learned the hard way. For those who aren't in the middle of this, you want the former as it saves you huge headaches.
Note: I am Insured. So is Nate. (Score:5)
Open-source the rebuilding of your house (Score:5)
When you rebuild/redecorate your house, how about making it open-source. Sort of like the Kasporov vs. The World Chess match - but instead, The World redecorates Hemos' house!
Just think of the opportunities: Slashdot green walls in the computer room, DustPuppy themed vacuum cleaner cupboard ...
On a serious note, I hope nothing irreplacable like photos were lost.
Ow. (Score:5)
People, please leave the residents of the geek compound alone for awhile. half their house just burned down! And don't complain if in the next few days submissions get processed alittle slower.
--
Let's give him some space (Score:5)
I suspect that most of the people replying here have not experienced a house fire, if they had, the tone of the responses would likely be very different.
Perhaps it wouldn't be too much to ask that people posting to this news take a minute to think over what their feelings would be if they lost their most cherished, most irreplacable keepsakes.
Take it from some one who's been there, fires build character, they steel you for the rest of your life.
pjr