Yay running water

Our fears of several days without running water turned out, thankfully, not to be realized.  As it turns out, we managed to get hold of our landlady last night, and she managed to get hold of her emergency plumber.  About an hour and a half later, she and the plumber were here, and about an hour or so after that, we had a new relief valve on the water heater, plus new valves -- ball valves this time, not stopcocks -- on both the inlet and outlet to the water heater, so that should it malf again, we can totally isolate it from the house water system and shouldn't have to shut off all the water to the house again.  Turns out, unsurprisingly, the reason the relief valve didn't close is it was clogged almost solid with calcium deposits.

Next week, he'll be coming back to install an expansion tank to prevent it from blowing off the relief again, and then we can turn the water temperature back up so as to make best use of a rather small heater.  (It's basically a one-shower-capacity water heater.)

The blind leading the blind

From docwebster:

DENVER - Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

"If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses — because that goes straight to the bottom line — then I hope I can help the country in some way," Brown told the Rocky Mountain News for its Thursday editions.

Well, I suppose as long as his list of clients is made public, so that anyone in any kind of disaster-relief position of authority who goes to him for advice can immediately be fired .... if for no other reason, then because seeking advice on disaster relief from the architect of the biggest and most publicized disaster-relief screwup in recent US history displays excruciatingly poor judgement.