Scripting News: Hot water

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Hot water

We had another in a series of earthquakes on Thursday night; a 4.2, quite a bit bigger than the previous two or three. It was centered near Walnut Creek, just a few miles from Berkeley.

In the morning, no hot water. The heater must have a safety feature that turns the pilot light off in the event of a relatively strong quake. Inconvenient to be sure, I like to take a shower every morning, but I can go one day without. I called the repair company whose sticker was on the heater, scheduled an appointment between 2 and 5PM.

They didn't show up by 4:45PM so I called, they had lost my record, after a bunch of negotiating they sent someone out, he didn't get here until almost 10PM, but it was a simple thing for him to relight the pilot, and next time it goes out I'll know how to do it myself.

This morning I appreciate hot water about 100 times more than I have in a long time. I have lived without it before, at a hippie commune in Florida where the water was heated by solar power; on cloudy days you took cold showers. But it had been a long time.

We live at a pinnacle, or is it a house of cards? Someday maybe it'll all come down, maybe for a long time. I know I'll miss hot water. What else?

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:32 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Feb Apr