Earthquake!

[wagyl]

That is what he means. You are busy creating new relatives.

[Coligny]

Just gotten ourself a short burst 4,
5.1 at the origin few nautical miles south at sea...

My turn for cleaning cat turds duty... yay...

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

My turn for cleaning cat turds duty... yay...

You mean you make your wife do that at times, too?

[Coligny]

No but establishing a fake notion of "turn" for house chores cheers me up... even if it's in fact always my turn... (she didn't even do diapers back in the days...)

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The yellow dots are from me pissing my pants... according to some rule34 fanfic wabsite...

[Yokohammer]

Sun. 04 August. 12:29.

5+ in Ishinomaki, Miyagi prefecture.
4 down here in the southern part of the prefecture.

No tsunami.

Funsies (not).

[yanpa]

M6.0 indeed. Felt a slow, languorous rolling here in Tokyo which is a sure sign of something bigger far away.

[matsuki]

Here comes another big one....

[Coligny]

We don't want to know what happens in your waterbed...
Plus, it's not the size, it's how... You stuff the condom with styrene pebbles to compensate...
(Keeping the beans fart joke for later, might be a busy week).

Weird, nuthing on yahoo quake yet... Maybe not the good evening for a rerun of china syndrome though...

[yanpa]

Weird, nuthing on yahoo quake yet...

Choko's local police blotter is where you'll have to look for that kind of information

[Coligny]

40 minutes, still nothing anywhere...
Choko, can you check outside your balcony ? You might have a train there where it should not be. (They are easy to spot, it's like a big phallic metal snake with people screaming inside and a bit outside too)
This summer they have a weird but steady tendency to revolt against their masters...

[yanpa]

it's like a big phallic metal snake with people screaming inside and a bit outside too)
This summer they have a weird but steady tendency to revolt against their masters...

Never were truer words spoken

[matsuki]

We don't want to know what happens in your waterbed...

Waterbed? I'm all about memory foam....and since my latest Coleman air mattress (that was under it) has developed some bulges, that's about all I got between me and the fake wood flooring.

I meant another big one as in the faults are starting to move again and I foresee more seismic chaos soon

[yanpa]

Well, I thought for a moment around 5pm it was curtains for western Japan...

[Yokohammer]

Well, I thought for a moment around 5pm it was curtains for western Japan...

I felt sorry for those poor guys having to bow and apologize like that.

I mean, if the goal is "better safe than sorry" then they've done their job admirably. Some spurious noise triggered a false alarm. So? Now they can go back and try to reduce the chance of that happening next time. I know some trains were delayed and all that, but fer cryin' out loud, do the people want to be warned or not? Do they actually expect the technology to work flawlessly from the git-go?

Give 'em a break. Sheesh.

[Coligny]

Remind me that tsunami alert where they had to bow because the wave was not as powerfull as expected. (still doing some damage, just not flatteming the country).

Seems that in Japan too... it's hard to be the smart people in a country full of idiots...

[yanpa]

Wow, I just found out I can test the alert sound on my mobile

Now I have to live with the temptation to do that in an elevator...

[yanpa]

Anyway, I'm OK with the odd false alarm if they can learn from it.

For the record, the last alert I received was in February for a genuine M6.2 in Ibaraki.

[GomiGirl]

Sure that was pretty freaky this afternoon but I would much rather a false alarm than to be taken by surprise with a big one.

Did the guys have to apologise? I think they should be applauded!!

[yanpa]

Let's hope they don't expand the system to include child abduction alerts.

[Coligny]

Tee hee...

Personally I use the NHK quake alert as my ringtone...

But I'm a bit of an asshole at times...

[matsuki]

Well the alert works when they send it out, a functioning system that has a hiccup every once in awhile is certainly better than

Let's hope they don't expand the system to include child abduction alerts.

That doesn't sound like a bad idea if they can truly tune it to only people in the area. If you're the dude on the run, you'll panic when you get the alert yourself and suddenly everyone is eyeing you with their phones up to their ears. Would be even better as an app that allowed people to add "sightings" to live (would save tons of time filtering through all the calls for immediate location info)

But....TIJ, the "We Japanese" programming divides by zero when you try to introduce the concept of abduction by a parent...unless that parent is an "abusive" foreigner.

[Coligny]

2:25, 5.8 in fukushima...

Hope Hammerman's denture didn't fell too far from his nightstand...

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[Yokohammer]

2:25, 5.8 in fukushima...

Hope Hammerman's denture didn't fell too far from his nightstand...

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It was only a 3 where we are, but that goddamn screeching keitai "woop woop" alarm went off on the bedside table right next to my ear, and I think I might have jumped high enough to dent the ceiling. The alarm was much worse than the quake in this instance.

But the quake ... a direct hit near Iwaki, which isn't too far from the nuke plant. A little bigger and a little further north and we could have had a problem.

[yanpa]

"Ibaraki-ken hokubu, M5.4" was my guess. Close enough.

[BigInJapan]

It was only a 3 where we are, but that goddamn screeching keitai "woop woop" alarm went off on the bedside table right next to my ear, and I think I might have jumped high enough to dent the ceiling. The alarm was much worse than the quake in this instance.

I don't know if the warning alarm is the same for all phones, but mine whooped for the first time last week (it was just a drill by the local city hall around 9 am warning of an imaginary tidal wave, and advising people to evacuate to a local jr. high school).
It was at full volume (I found out the default setting is 100% which is a good thing, I guess), and it displayed a text message on the formerly black screen.
Good to know that it works, but if they could put the word "Drill" at the top in English too, that would be swell. I can read Japanese, but I didn't notice 【訓練】 until I had read the entire message. And from what I can see in the 100% Japanese settings (Sony Experia Z on AU), there is no option for English content whatsoever (not much help for FGs that cannot read much Japanese).

[wagyl]

Good to know that it works, but if they could put the word "Drill" at the top in English too, that would be swell. I can read Japanese, but I didn't notice 【訓練】 until I had read the entire message. And from what I can see in the 100% Japanese settings (Sony Experia Z on AU), there is no option for English content whatsoever (not much help for FGs that cannot read much Japanese).

The messages aren't hardwired into the phones -- and they can never be if you think about it -- but are sent as text messages. I do not foresee them including English at any time, since the presence of English text will panic many more people than will be helped by it.

[yanpa]

I found out recently I can test the alarm sound on my phone, kind of tempting to try it out in quite-but-crowded place

Meanwhile my caring employer signed me up to some sort of alert system which very helpfully informs me about dramatic weather events, which would be a useful service if I spent a lot of time in a soundproof cellar below a leaky storm drain, but otherwise is somewhat less helpful than looking out of the window or up at the sky.

[wuchan]

good morning!

[yanpa]

On my personal scale that was a "place a hand on the monitor and watch the shelves wobble" event.

M6.8 out to sea.

[Samurai_Jerk]

That one was fucking long.