WAH and OOF (or is it WFH?)

We're home today - a national holiday for me, but a forced 'work at home' day for Mark because our valley is once again flooded and we can't get out. The 'over the river' part of his drive to work would be more like 'through the river' at this point - an impractical idea considering how deep are the floodwaters.

We live in a small, rural community that historically was an agricultural-based, red-neck sort of place but which has been transformed, by economics, into a bedroom community for Microsoft. So a whole lot of engineering-type geeks are stranded, as we are, unable to get to work, and not too happy about it. Of course they have banded together via the internet into a 'news group' and are sharing war stories, opinions and questions online about our common isolation problem. It could be noted that this 'conversation' seems to be absorbing a lot more of Microsoft's resources than, say, project data sharing, reporting writing, phone-in meetings and PowerPoint presenting. But I shouldn't note that. Suffice it to say that whether WAH (work at home,) OOF (out of office,) or WFH (work from home) there is very little actual work in evidence.

Being the geeks that they are though - even if a bit off-message - they seem to be focused on 'data' and the conversation has been informative about them as a group. One guy lives on a hill above town and is periodically posting digital pictures taken from his front window focusing on a little 'island' high spot in the flooded valley that is getting smaller and smaller with each posting. Lest you think that mere observation is a little too 'analog' for this group, let me tell you we have accompanying data about distance, time, aperture, equipment limitations and links to charts about historical flood levels. Someone else posted links to the traffic cameras and another person posted links to the water flow rates and distances from various measurement positions. We have data about rainfall around the region, data about relative elevations in the valley, flood progression, ground saturation, satellite weather reports, and the impact of flooding to fisheries (numbers and charts) from a wide range of contributors.

And yet another person asked about getting out of town via another route. Now maybe it's just me, but if you live here, shouldn't you know where the road goes? It's a small town, there is one road through it - north and south - and two connecting roads to the west, both of which have to go through the valley. You can't go east because of the mountains. You can't go north and south - or west for that matter - because those roads all sit, at some point, on the valley floor, now under water. It would only take you 10 minutes of exploration to discover this.

If you could get your nose out of your internet connection long enough to take that time.

Who ARE these guys?

We're WAH.