Here at the Home Office we love to laugh at the weathermen, but once in a while they get it right.  They predicted we’d get pounded with rain this week, and boy did we!  I’ve lived in this house for 15 years, and with the exception of the particularly nasty storms we got back in ‘98, this was the worst I’ve seen.

Looking at the trust rain gauge – otherwise known as a Homer Bucket, we can see that 5 1/2 inches of rain has fallen here since Monday morning.  Most of it came in four fast-moving storms that were each followed by eerie calm, although today was a more traditional soaker.  In any case, it’s more rain than we’ve gotten in many full seasons, and a welcome gift.

The truly amazing thing about these storms is the relatively minor impact they’ve had on the hillsides that surround Los Angeles, particularly the ones where last fall’s wildfires left them particularly vulnerable.  Nearly 1000 homes were preemptively evacuated, fearing the rivers of mud that all this rain would doubtless cause.  So far, though, the hillsides are holding.

This weekend is supposed to be clear, but there’s a possibility of another storm next week.  It’ll be nothing like what we saw this week, though – and I suspect it’s going to be quite a few years before we do again!

If you’ll excuse a small indulgence, I’m going to be a Boeing homer for a moment. One of the big stories that went down late in the year was the potential first flight of our new 787 Dreamliner, an oft-delayed event that some felt might never come. Welll, I’m happy to report that it came indeed – twice!

On December 15th, thousands of Boeing employees and family members braved chilly Seattle weather to watch as the first Dreamliner lifted off the ground at Payne Field in Everett, WA. Several hours later, it landed safely – in a rainstorm, no less – at Boeing Field in Seattle. I, unfortunately, was unable to be there, but was able to watch the historic moment via webcast – and even got a screenshot of the liftoff! A week later, on the 22nd, Dreamliner #2 made the same flight, the second of the six 787s destined to perform in the flight test program.

Most of the headlines recently about the 787 have been negative, so it’s good to have some positive news to report for a change. Now all we have to do is start rollin’ ‘em out!

With our government spending money like drunken sailors for everything under the sun in the name of economic stimulus, I’m happy to find an example of “make-work”‘ spending that I can actually get behind. A group in Washington will receive stimulus money to remove old fishing nets from Puget Sound – nets that continue to kill long after they were lost. I don’t know if this project qualifies as technically “shovel-ready” – it’s underwater!

Divers swim close to 100 feet down to an environment that is anything but friendly. Instead of using scuba equipment, they breathe through air hoses running from the boat above. When the divers find the fields of nets, they begin the labor of cutting them free piece by piece and all by hand. Removing one net can take days.

The nets are then pulled to the boat waiting on the surface. In just a few hours on the water, the divers can pull free about 1,000 pounds of nets. Inside are the bones of countless fish and birds, along with several species of protected sharks and crabs. Anything still alive is cut free and thrown back in the water. Then, biologist Jeff June notes what they have brought up. So far, he says, the group has identified 112 distinct species trapped in the nets.

One of the complaints against many forms of commercial fishing is the lack of foresight given to the methods, and this is a classic example. The nets were deployed, were lost, and were written off as a cost of doing business. But while the nets might have been forgotten, they continued to hunt and kill long after the fishermen had replaced them. This is one time when at least a small part of that damage can be ended.

Lemme tell ya – it ain’t easy being a visionary.

They laughed when we described the potential issue with people running around with their bluetooth earpieces stapled to the side of their heads like some kind of jewelry long after the call had ended. They snickered when we provided not only a term for the device – “asshat” – but the dork wearing it – “Asshat.” They shook their heads sadly at the thought that they themselves might actually be one of those “asshats squared” wandering around in public like some kind of Uhura without her post.

We took the heat, even though we knew we were right, because we knew that the day would come when we would be proven right.

And that day is today.

In their August 2009 issue, no less an authority on all things tech and cool – and tech cool – than WIRED Magazine has made it clear what they think of Asshats with asshats:

Admit it: You sometimes leave your Jawbone headset on after hanging up the phone. Perhaps spending your formative years watching The Six Million Dollar Man and RoboCop gave you the mistaken impression that upgrading your body with electronics is the height of cool. Let’s be clear: Walking around with a Bluetooth device in your ear is pure douchebaggery. There is no excuse for it.

In an article dedicated to the many fashion faux paus brought on by our newly technological lifestyles, they even committed the cover of the issue to the asshat dilemma.  Referring to their cover image of movie heartthrob Batt Pitt – playing the role of the Asshat with asshat – WIRED states:

Rule No. 52: Ditch the headset. He can barely pull it off — and you are not him,” a blurb on the magazine front says.

Smell that?  It smells like … victory!

WIRED even came up with a name for the thing that is just as cool as ours, and a little more socially acceptable – ear mullets. Asshat … ear mullet … they do roll off the tongue in a similar fashion, and both conjure up equally silly visual images. Being the benevolent kind of guy I am, I’ll accept the term “ear mullet” as the new description of the bluetooth device – but I’m keeping Asshat for anyone caught wearing it when not on a call …