There’s a town in Southern Utah named Hurricane. No, it’s not pronounced like that. It’s pronounced Hurr-i-kin. This post isn’t about Hurr-i-kin. It’s about a couple named Harvey and Irma. I’m not sure they’ve ever met, but they are both making me watch the scoreboard from Utah.
First, let me say that hurricanes are brutal. I understand that. And I have the utmost sympathy for those caught in the destructive path of either of these storms. May God watch over you and keep you safe.
So, how can hurricanes wrecking destruction thousands of miles away have an impact on me? You might be tempted to think that as a huge BYU football fan, I was inconvenienced at least a little bit by the fact that the BYU/LSU game had to move out of Houston. No. The trouncing that BYU received at the hands of LSU had nothing to do with moving or with the hurricane. If you plan to run the ball and you manage -5 yards rushing on 14 attempts. . .you don’t have anything to blame but yourself.
But, the hurricanes have had an effect. First, of course, is I have friends in Texas and Florida. My friends in Texas survived in pretty good shape. My friends in Florida have to wait and see.
But, from a purely selfish point of view, the storms caused problems for me. I am in the middle of a huge project at work. We are about 9 months into an 18 month project and I’m the leader. There are lots of moving parts in a big project. Many of my moving parts involve computers and network servers. I found out that some of them are in transit. And that transit runs right through Houston. I’m even hesitant to check on the status of my hardware. Who wants to appear that heartless?
Yeah, I know y’all are still mucking mud out of your houses, but you don’t by chance have an update on my computer parts, do you?
I can’t send a truck to get them, assuming they were retrievable via truck.
Oh, you sent a truck to Houston? That’s great. How many supplies did you bring in?
No, we’ll just sit quietly and wait for the important cleanup to take place and at the right time, we’ll find out out our computers. In the mean time, that portion of the project plan just gets bigger. Some things are more important that sticking to the project plan.
I was kind of surprised that Hurricane Harvey’s assault on Houston affected me. But, I was less surprised at Irma, about to chew up Florida. See, a part of my project involves bring up a new call center in Port St Lucie. . .Florida. We had a visit planned for next week.
Nope. Not going to fly INTO a hurricane zone.
We also pulled our construction crews off our project. There’s plenty for construction guys to do to prepare for a hurricane. My project manager wants to know when we will reschedule the site visit and resume construction. I tried to explain that it’s really up to Irma. If she misses our site and most of Florida, the delay will be minor. If worst case, she comes ashore at Port St Lucie (about 80 miles north of Miami) it could be months.
I’ll be watching the weather channel with a little bit more interest than usual this weekend. I understand my motivations are selfish. I admit it. But, my motivation line up perfectly with sparing Florida from devastation. So, I figure I can be slightly selfish in hoping that Irma spares Florida.
If you are in Irma’s path, or drying out from Harvey, may God’s blessings be on you.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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