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The Four Mile Fire

mike — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:36:05 +0000

This was the view from our back porch as of Monday evening, looking west:

A fairly large forest fire is burning in the foothills of Boulder. We saw the beginning of it at around 10:30am while out walking Thatcher and watched it quickly grow into the major conflagration it is now. Unseasonably high temperatures combined with a drier-than-normal August brought about what amounts to a tinderbox in Colorado at the moment.

EDITED to include this time-lapse video of what we were basically watching from Erie last night, shot from Flagstaff last night:

Since we saw the first plumes, we’ve seen or learned the following about what is now being called the Four Mile Fire:

Flashes of fire visible by the naked eye almost 20mi away. Turns out those may have been exploding propane tanks, common for heating in the mountains.
A friend’s husband, who’s middle name just happens to be Everett, has been working nonstop since the fire was first reported. He’s fine, but not expected home for several days.
Anna’s grandparents, aunt, and uncle have been evacuated safely along with their pets. But leaving their home on Sugarloaf at about 5pm last night, Anna’s aunt saw the fire roughly 100yds from the house. We haven’t heard any updates on whether or not their home is still standing.
A fried of the family who works with CDOT has been sent to help clear dead wildlife from roads in the area.
Slurry bombers are coming in repeatedly over where I work in Broomfield trying to slow the fire – which has yet to be contained along any of it’s boundaries.

For some more perspective on high huge this fire is, check out some satellite imagery here. The smoke plume is reaching well into Kansas and Nebraska. In Erie, it was unsettlingly apocalyptic.

We hope to learn more soon, particularly about Anna’s grandparent’s place. Thoughts are with all those affected, and with those fighting…

+1

mike — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:43:02 +0000

I used to have a little sidebar thing that said I was a father-to-be that I’ve since misplaced in the shuffle to this new layout for motogobi. Well, part of the time spent mucking around with the redesign (which I like a whole ton, ackshually) was done while sitting on the couch watching my son sleep. Everett was born Monday July 26th to a very overjoyed Mom and Dad who’ve been nothing less than totally in love with him since the moment we first set eyes on him…

VCP goodness.

mike — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:00:45 +0000

I’ll have to wait for the paperwork to come through in a bit, but I nailed my VCP410 exam this morning. Ah, the load off my chest at the moment…

– mike

UPDATE: Moved hosting providers and issues are clearing up.

mike — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:53:20 +0000

Oh hey – the site was down for a good portion of today due to some hosting provider issues. Please contact me if you experience any problems ’round these parts.

UPDATE: the site is loading very very slowly with random 404 and 500 errors. I’m working with xxxxxx’s technical support to figure out the issue. Hopefully this will be resolved quickly or you’re gonna see another “Moved hosting providers” post shortly. Grr

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: I’ll be moving hosting providers again shortly. Thanks for your patience. This downtime came at a really inopportune time as I really, really needed the image hosting while I try to sell one of our vehicles.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATED UPDATE: Settled in with BlueHost quite nicely, ackshually (thanks for the tip, Paul!) I sincerely hope you don’t see any further issues for quite some time…

- mike

Happy 2010

mike — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 01:09:44 +0000

Just a nice walk with Thatcher to start the year.

It’s cold.

mike — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:06:12 +0000

New York City 2009 Pictures!

mike — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:07:15 +0000

Yeah, got off my butt and posted these up on my Picasa Web account for all to see…

Obligatory “lack of updates” update

mike — Sun, 17 May 2009 14:07:25 +0000

I’ve found that two things get in the way of updating this site: skiing and starting a new job. I mean, being married and having a very active dog and wife and it being prime motorbike weather doesn’t usually put as much of a crimp on at least posting some new pics of the most recent ski season, but with this new position I’ve most definitely stepped into the major leagues. I’ve been working on an ESX deployment that takes virtualization to an entirely new level that I’ve never experienced before – DRS, HA, NetApp NFS storage with snapshotting, and much much higher uptime expectations from my customers. It’s exciting, if terrifying at the same time.

New layout for motogobi

mike — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:03:54 +0000

Yeah, Anna’s going to kick me for changing it (again) but I was a little disappointed with the layout of the previous motogobi theme. This is a little more clean, a little more readable, and those annoying blue borders around linked images are gone in IE. Plus, this is what I do – I mess with things…

Our dog, chicken bone ninja.

mike — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:54:18 +0000

The large piece Anna removed by force and by the passing light a car’s headlights last night standing by the side of the road. The smaller piece Thatcher gave up after a tasty tasty hydrogen peroxide cocktail.

Hooray for the Bantz Canine Surgery Avoidance Response Team of Mike and Anna.