And how has YOUR morning been going?
Mar. 16th, 2012 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogRough night, sleepwise. Insomnia got me from before 3 to well past 4, but since the animals haven't quite figured DST yet, I managed then to sleep in all the way past 6:30. I then fell back into a cascade of weird dreams, but was awakened out of them by a harsh call of reality:
This is an emergency message from RIT. Press 1 to hear the message.
Power failure? Snowstorm? (It's 60 degrees here, 70 miles away, but weather can be like that around here.) Or Worst Nightmare? I pushed the button.
Gunman with rifle spotted outside Kate Gleason Hall. Stay where you are. Lockdown procedures in place.
That's a dorm, literally miles from where Emily now lives on the other side of campus, but next to where she lived last year, so, yeah. Parental panic.
Four more calls over the next 20 minutes, repeating and confirming what they did and didn't know. Plus Em calling in, to tell us she was in her apartment, blinds drawn, everybody safe.
I headed to the Interwebs, and found that, for really REALLY breaking news, they're kinda useless. The paper, the television stations there and the one radio outlet with a news staff were, mostly, five minutes behind what we already knew. Finally, though, at about 9:15, I heard the tail end of a WHAM report saying "well, that's good news from RIT, take it away, Bob."
By now, I had my guesses about what the FAIL had been. The RIT home page, which duplicated the texts of the robocalls, was also still highlighting the fact that "It's hockey weekend for RIT." Had the over-observant bus driver seen the other kind of right wing, heading to an early morning practice with his hockey stick in a bag?
Close but no goal, Ray. The TV station closest to campus scooped it around 9:30: it was an umbrella sticking out of a backpack.
I have a friend from here and elsewhere who lost a close friend in the Virginia Tech massacre. I drove by the site of that shooting with her this past summer and saw how the memory still affects her. And there's been another on-campus shooting there since that visit. So I appreciate the need not to take things lightly, no matter how absurd they seem in the bright light of hindsight.
BTW? Although the "all-clear" was finally reported on the RIT website, we still haven't gotten a confirming robocall to that effect. I wonder how many out-of-area parents with less tech savvy are still wondering if everything's okay.
----
The morning also brought a cascade of emails from our local Bankruptcy Court, finally confirming something I've known unofficially for weeks. The judge in Rochester announced at the start of 2011 that he'd be retiring effective the first of this year. He'd been named the the post in the fall of 1991, effective January 3, 1992; I missed his swearing-in because Eleanor was busy birthing a baby that day. It was a very open process; for weeks before his swearing-in, he met with most of the local bankruptcy lawyers, to get input on what we liked and disliked about procedures and such, and the transition was a smooth one, despite there being nothing resembling the modern Internet to keep us updated about it all.
This time, though? Stony silence from the court system for the entirety of 2011, and for the first 2½ months of 2012 when the judgeless court has had one of the Buffalo judges shlep in once or twice a week (and once a month to Watkins Glen) to cover the caseload. Rumors of names leaked from time to time, as did the idea that the Rochester position might be eliminated or combined with an existing Syracuse judgeship because filings in this area are way down. Then, about a month ago, I saw a blog posting that one of the leading candidates had been picked, and it was just a matter of time. Nothing on the court website. No meetings with the nominee to discuss procedures. Until today- when every pending case starting with a 2 (the Rochester division code) got an email sent to all parties that its judge initials had been changed from JCN to PRW. Even now, nothing on the site announcing the change, except for one link to today's calendar now bearing his name (and that doesn't even work when you click it).
None of the news sites there have a word about it, either. I just hope he doesn't take an umbrella with him on his first day on the job.
----
Oops, forgot today's Doonesbury installment:
This is an emergency message from RIT. Press 1 to hear the message.
Power failure? Snowstorm? (It's 60 degrees here, 70 miles away, but weather can be like that around here.) Or Worst Nightmare? I pushed the button.
Gunman with rifle spotted outside Kate Gleason Hall. Stay where you are. Lockdown procedures in place.
That's a dorm, literally miles from where Emily now lives on the other side of campus, but next to where she lived last year, so, yeah. Parental panic.
Four more calls over the next 20 minutes, repeating and confirming what they did and didn't know. Plus Em calling in, to tell us she was in her apartment, blinds drawn, everybody safe.
I headed to the Interwebs, and found that, for really REALLY breaking news, they're kinda useless. The paper, the television stations there and the one radio outlet with a news staff were, mostly, five minutes behind what we already knew. Finally, though, at about 9:15, I heard the tail end of a WHAM report saying "well, that's good news from RIT, take it away, Bob."
By now, I had my guesses about what the FAIL had been. The RIT home page, which duplicated the texts of the robocalls, was also still highlighting the fact that "It's hockey weekend for RIT." Had the over-observant bus driver seen the other kind of right wing, heading to an early morning practice with his hockey stick in a bag?
Close but no goal, Ray. The TV station closest to campus scooped it around 9:30: it was an umbrella sticking out of a backpack.
I have a friend from here and elsewhere who lost a close friend in the Virginia Tech massacre. I drove by the site of that shooting with her this past summer and saw how the memory still affects her. And there's been another on-campus shooting there since that visit. So I appreciate the need not to take things lightly, no matter how absurd they seem in the bright light of hindsight.
BTW? Although the "all-clear" was finally reported on the RIT website, we still haven't gotten a confirming robocall to that effect. I wonder how many out-of-area parents with less tech savvy are still wondering if everything's okay.
----
The morning also brought a cascade of emails from our local Bankruptcy Court, finally confirming something I've known unofficially for weeks. The judge in Rochester announced at the start of 2011 that he'd be retiring effective the first of this year. He'd been named the the post in the fall of 1991, effective January 3, 1992; I missed his swearing-in because Eleanor was busy birthing a baby that day. It was a very open process; for weeks before his swearing-in, he met with most of the local bankruptcy lawyers, to get input on what we liked and disliked about procedures and such, and the transition was a smooth one, despite there being nothing resembling the modern Internet to keep us updated about it all.
This time, though? Stony silence from the court system for the entirety of 2011, and for the first 2½ months of 2012 when the judgeless court has had one of the Buffalo judges shlep in once or twice a week (and once a month to Watkins Glen) to cover the caseload. Rumors of names leaked from time to time, as did the idea that the Rochester position might be eliminated or combined with an existing Syracuse judgeship because filings in this area are way down. Then, about a month ago, I saw a blog posting that one of the leading candidates had been picked, and it was just a matter of time. Nothing on the court website. No meetings with the nominee to discuss procedures. Until today- when every pending case starting with a 2 (the Rochester division code) got an email sent to all parties that its judge initials had been changed from JCN to PRW. Even now, nothing on the site announcing the change, except for one link to today's calendar now bearing his name (and that doesn't even work when you click it).
None of the news sites there have a word about it, either. I just hope he doesn't take an umbrella with him on his first day on the job.
----
Oops, forgot today's Doonesbury installment:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-03-16 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-16 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-16 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-16 05:06 pm (UTC)