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April 21 Talking about Summer 2009 Patio Party
Quote Talking about Summer 2009 Patio Party August 14 Trying Live WriterOkay, I've just downloaded Microsoft's Windows Live Writer and am using it to post to my blog on Live Spaces. I like the WYSIWYG aspect, and also the ability to add photos more easily, like this:
Now to see how easy it is to publish. Maybe with this, I'll actually be inspired to blog more often (although I'm not sure it'll address the biggest problem with that, which is finding the time). September 24 Media spins faster than a hurricaneTwo hurricanes in
less than a month have me awfully tired of listening to media hype and spin.
Given the extent of damage to New Orleans that Katrina wrought, I can almost
understand the before-the-fact overreaction to Rita's arrival, although some of
the dire possibilities discussed by news outlets stretched the limits of
possibility. For example, the many speculations that Rita would "do to Galveston
what Katrina did to New Orleans." A category 5 hurricane could certainly do
major damage to the island, but it could NOT do what Katrina did to New Orleans,
for the simple reason that Galveston is not a below-sea-level city sitting in a
bowl. Then there were those reporters who made it sound as if we should be
evacuating Dallas -- which is 300 miles inland.
But most annoying
were the stories that came out AFTER the storm went through. Instead of
celebrating the fact that the death and devastation was so much less than
everyone had feared, they looked for every chance to make it seem that it had
been another catastrophe on the order of Katrina. Even Fox News was doing it:
today's front page headline (for a short time) read, in big block letters,
"RITA'S DAMAGE DEVASTATES TEXAS." Go on to read the story itself, and you
find the following:
"As the sun came up in downtown Beaumont, a port city of 114,000, the few
people who stayed behind emerged to find some blown out windows, damaged roofs,
signs twisted and lying in the street and scattered downed trees. There was some
standing water, but no significant flooding."
"There were no immediate reports of fatalities, or any detailed word on damage to the area's vast oil refinery industry, though rescuers and search teams in many areas had to wait for winds to subside before venturing out." ""So far, Houston is weathering the storm," Mayor Bill White (search) said Saturday. His police department received 28 burglary calls overnight and made 16 arrests — less than a typical Friday night, White said." "In New Orleans, rain drenched parts of the abandoned city early Saturday, straining the levee system already damaged by Katrina. But the forecast of up to three inches throughout the day was less than had been previously predicted. 'Overall, it looks like New Orleans has lucked out,' National Weather Service Meteorologist Phil Grigsby said." There's a bit of disconnect between the headline and the story, don'tcha think? The problem is that many people, maybe even most people, don't dig in for the details, they merely skim headlines. So headlines are important. Headlines shape people's beliefs about what they think are the facts. Headline writers, however, try to make the story sound as important as possible and thus distort those facts to oversensationalize everything. Thus we get headlines like "Global Warming the Cause of Increased Hurricane Activity?" and then read the story to find it's about weather experts saying no, these hurricane patterns are cyclical and this is like the patterns in 1915-1960, then we had several decades of low activity 1960-1995, and now we're entering a high one again. But all those folks who only skim headlines take away from it that global warming caused these hurricanes. Pessimism before the event takes place can serve a purpose: it causes people to be overly cautious and overprepare, which costs time and money but potentially saves lives (although it has a downside, too. That same overcautiousness causes them, for example, to evacuate people in fragile conditions from nursing homes in which they would have been safe if they'd stayed, only to end up dying in a bus explosion). Distorting facts after the event, though, serves no constructive purpose and is a disservice to those that the news media is supposed to serve. -- September 19 Socialism and the door-to-door subscription scamOkay, I admit it:
I'm a sucker for a kid, especially a kid who is taking the initiative to work to
earn money. So when a kid comes to the door, trying to sell me something, I
usually buy. But I may be changing that practice soon.
We moved to a new
home about nine months ago. For years, we lived in a semi-rural area, a small
town where everybody knew everybody. We didn't get many door-to-door solicitors
out there, and when we did it was usually somebody I knew. Soon after school
started in the fall, we'd get the usual scared little girls, with moms watching
over from the car, pushing their candies and candles and Christmas ornaments and
the like. I'd usually buy something, and piled up lots of little items I never
used, but I felt good about helping the kids out.
The new house is in
a more upscale community in a major suburb on the lake. We love the place -- but
weren't prepared for the inundation of doorbell-ringing salespeople that came
with it. Few weeks go by without somebody coming by to try to sell something.
And some of them are annoyingly aggressive. Like the Orkin man who started his
pitch in a breathless voice: "Have you been hearing from the neighbors about
what's going on in the neighborhood?" His dire tone struck a chord in today's
world of worrying about terrorist attacks, hazmat spills and the like. Of course
I wanted to know what was going on. You can imagine how anti-climactic it was
when he went on to tell me about the "spider infestation."
Uh, yeah, I've seen
a few spiders around. It's Texas. It's summer time. Of course there are spiders.
Big deal. The spiders eat other bugs that are way more annoying. Remember, I
came from a semi-rural area. I've peacefully coexisted with spiders for years.
Infestation? Sorry, you'll have to do better to scare me. Nonetheless, I
listened politely to his speil, until he offered me the "special price for today
only." Sorry, I said, trying not to be rude. I'm not going to spend that kind of
money (several hundred dollars, and you had to sign up for ongoing service)
without talking to my husband and he's out of town." That should get rid of him,
right? I'd underestimated his dedication to hard sell. "Oh, I'll wait while you
go call him." Uh, no. You won't. If I'd wanted you to wait while I went to
call him, I'd have asked you to. First, he's undoubtedly in a meeting and
wouldn't appreciate my calling to tell him about the "spider infestation."
Second, I was just trying to be nice, dummy, and avoid having to tell you that I
think you're trying to put one over on me with this "today only" pricing and if
I wanted to get rid of my spiders, I'd be calling an exterminator, not waiting
for one to come to my door. Alas, politeness doesn't work on some people and I
had to finally say "Look, I'm not interested, period," to get him to
leave.
But I'm still a
sucker for the kids. So not once but twice, I bought magazine subscriptions from
teenagers who told me their sad stories about working their ways through school
and coming from "not so nice" neighborhoods and so forth. And over six months
later, I haven't received a single magazine. Does that mean the kids themselves
are scammers? Maybe not. More likely they're working for pennies for some
company that's pocketing all the money. But next time, I'll tell the kid that
I'll be happy to donate twenty bucks to them personally to help them through
school, but I'm not buying any more magazine subscriptions that never result in
magazines.
And it's not just
teens and magazines. I've also signed up for cookies and candles with the little
kids here, and never got any of that stuff, either. Not that I particularly want
the merchandise (I DID want the magazines), but it's the principle of the thing.
If schools want to just send kids around to collect donations for the PTA or
whatever, fine. But don't pretend to be selling something, take my money, and
never deliver. That's called fraud.
A couple of weeks
ago, I bought a subscription that really WAS a subscription -- and I'm beginning
to regret it. This kid, with the usual "working my way through school" story,
sold me a Sunday-only subscription to the local metropolitan newspaper (Dallas
Morning News). I asked if he could promise me the paper would only be delivered
on Sundays, as I have no use for weekday papers and I don't want them piling up
on my lawn when we're out of town during the week and notifying potential
burglars that no one is at home. He assured me it was Sunday only. Of course,
two days later I started getting the paper -- every day. I called the
subscription department and, after navigating several layers of voicemail
and hanging on hold for seven minutes, got through to a real person. She
told me the weekday papers I was getting were "bonus" papers. I told her I
didn't want the bonus, explained why, and asked her to please stop them. She
said she would. All taken care of, right? How naive I was to think so. The daily
papers have continued. I tried to call again today and gave up after nine
minutes on hold. I hunted down the "customer care" email address on the paper's
Web site and send mail. We'll see what happens. Does it take an act of Congress
to get newspaper delivery stopped these days?
Meanwhile, my
husband went out to his truck a few days ago and found the gas cap off and the
tank, which had been full, sitting between 1/2 and 3/4 full. I guess it
shouldn't come as a surprise; with gas prices through the roof, stealing
gasoline was bound to make a comeback. But I'm feeling like we're under seige
because we live in a "nice" neighborhood. I guess everyone figures we can surely
afford to lose a little gas and we'll never notice a few bucks paid for
nonexistent magazine subscriptions, cookies and candles. And I guess we can --
but does that give others the right to take what's ours, what we work hard for?
I suppose the socialists among us would say
yes. September 06 Another Answered PrayerWell, my friend Pete
popped up in my e-mailbox today, and what a welcome sight that was. After
reading all the news stories about what a war zone New Orleans has turned into
and the reports of thousands dead, I hoped for the best but feared the worst. I
should have had more faith (in both God and Pete).
Here (reprinted
with his permission) is his first hand account of the last week, which
is absolutely amazing:
It was a dark and stormy night. No. Actually, the night and half the morning were okay, till five-thirty. Then all hell broke loose. It was like God or the devil really went and did it this time, pissed somebody off real good, found their match. Something finally got between them and not a goddamn thing they could do about it... Half the roof blew off, shook our building hard. Later, when the dark left, we'd find its pieces in the parking lot and seven cars pretty beat up, each with at least three windows blown out or two-by-fours stuck through them. The water had covered our tires. A friend on the street behind us was not so lucky. His car was almost completely submerged. Meanwhile, as the wind and rain continued - after the roof blew off - I heard water in the front room. I was on the second floor. The rain had gone through the third floor and into my ceiling. The ceiling light was gushing water. I switched it off and put a trash bucket under it. Then another drip started. For about half an hour I emptied buckets into the bathtub. Then it got too fast and part of the ceiling came down so I gave up bailing and turned my attention to the other room, and Della. I cut huge contractor's trash bags and covered her with three layers of the stuff. So far that room was not leaking. Then the rest of the ceiling came down in the front room. The phone went dead, then the lights, then the water (they'd apparently shut down the pumps). Now the whole area was black and the wind was screaming. The next-yard tree came down on our fence and into our yard. All we could do now was wait and wonder what was happening. Daylight came through about nine o'clock. That's when we could see the parking lot destruction. The first floor apartments were thigh deep in water. A lot of trees were down, roofs of month-old homes torn off. About two p.m. we got brave enough to wade to the levee and walk down it. The storm seemed to have passed. We lived on what is called the 17th Street Canal, the border between Orleans Parish and Jefferson Parish, supported by levees and higher concrete sea-walls on either side, sheets of iron inside the concrete. We were the first building on the Jefferson side in that block. The tops of the sea-walls are about 30 feet above street level, surely high enough the canal could never overflow no matter how much Lake Ponchartrain rose, no matter how much it rained. We walked down the levee. Lake Ponchartrain is a little less than a mile from us. As we approached, we saw the Orleans sea-wall shudder and a section give way, letting the canal water (which is Lake Ponchertrain) into Orleans Parish. Then another section fell, and another, and suddenly about 500 feet of the seawall fell and Lake Ponchertrain blew itself - (downhill) - like a tsunami into Orleans and ripped up 200 year old Oaks and covered fine old homes in minutes. I mean COVERED them! Three story homes - poof- disappeared. Orleans had become a basin and was now becoming part of Lake Ponchartrain. Nobody in those homes had a chance. They never knew it was coming. A wide stream of fire shot up from the water about 50 feet high. Apparently from a gas main under a street now probably 20 feet below the waterline. It was still burning hours later. We were very lucky the break did not happen on our side. We thought about that for a very long time that day. I know we all did. ########### No electricity, no water, no phone, no cellphone chargers that work from car batteries (Incidently, my car survived only a few dents in the roof and a spidered windshield. Fortunately, I'd just gotten a new inspection sticker the day before. I'd been again lucky). First thing I did was hook a hose up to one of the water heaters and call for big pots. We filled a couple crawfish pots and some smaller ones and had water good enough to drink if it got serious but certainly plenty of water for rinsing stuff off, including ourselves. We had 18 water heaters. The guy behind us with the sunken car was a good scrounger. He knew a lot of neighbors and gathered a few gallons of water and a bucketful of soft drinks, then a huge brand new never used gas outdoor cooker with side burners, and then, from another source, a couple tanks of butane. I'd just bought about 30 pounds of chicken thighs from Sam's Club and it needed to be pulled from the freezer and cooked. I'd also gotten broccoli and baby carrots and romaine lettuce and strawberries and grapes. So we hauled the cooker to the second floor and cooked and cooked and cooked and ate and ate and ate. That was Monday. The water in the parking lot was still tire deep. It was not going down. Somebody had a portable radio. We found out that the guys who run the pumping stations were told to evacuate with the others. Bright idea. Only in Louisiana, the lowest education in the nation, next to Mississippi. The water did not move all day. None of us knew if our car engines and/or their computers were okay. Daybreak Tuesday I was up and gauging the water level. It was going down now about four inches an hour. I sat in my car and listened to the radio. No way I could get to Belle-Chase - my new job - anytime soon and now obviously no good place to get to my job FROM. When the water was low enough I checked my oil and transmission fluid for yucky stuff that shouldn't be there and started her up. Beautiful sound. It was then I decided to get out of Dodge as soon as possible. That would probably be Wednesday. The news was anybody that could get to I-10 could head west. That was me. Go west young man. Wednesday morning I gathered up Della and dungarees and t-shirts and socks and underwear (Hanes boxer-briefs, if anybody's curious), my huge Sam's Club box of Tide, four pillows, 2 quilts for sleeping on, and a telephone for Della and headed for Baton Rouge. I got there at nine. First stop, Regions Bank. Pull $1000 from a credit card to checking account. Two rolls of quarters. Second stop, get a newspaper. Payphone local calls there are fifty cents. Some of the calls needed a dollar. No vacancies. Already rented. No, we cannot change our one year lease and deposit policy for evacuees. No monthly rentals. No vacancies. Already rented. Decided to try refugee evacuee for a while. That didn't work either. I'd wasted my time and almost two rolls of quarters pissin' up a frozen rope. At 4 p.m. I headed west again. Head west, young man. Next stop, Lafayette. The traffic in Baton Rouge - cars and people - had been unbelievable. Some gas stations already dry of gas. I suspect the town will experience a gigantic boom and in a few years be like living in a nightmare. I'm already glad I didn't hang around. By the time I got to Lafayette I'd decided to gas up both tanks and keep going. I found a simplex nail in my front tire, pulled it out, heard the hissing, stuck it back in and headed for a repair station. I'd been very lucky again. It was almost dark when I got to "Lake Charles - next seven exits". Every exit looked like the worst neighborhoods in New Orleans. Getting on and off the interstate so much I somehow wound up in a place called Westlake, obviously west of Lake Charles, the lake and city both, and decided to find a place to sleep. A guy told me to check the Recreation Center. Not hard to find. The town's about a mile and a tenth long with one main drag, one supermarket, three gas stations and little else of any great importance. Driving in I saw a lot of industrial plants of some kind. Anyway, the folks at the Recreation Center were great. Showers, swimming pool, handball courts, workout gym, game room, etc. Free towels, soap, food, etc. I opted for what to me at the time was their best offer: Drag a mattress anyplace in the basketball gym I wanted. The air conditioning felt full blast. I loved it. I totally crashed. Thursday morning. Newspaper. Street map for Westlake and surrounding areas. Another bunch of quarters. For some reason I decided I wanted to be in Westlake, not Lake Charles. I don't know why. The lady at the Rec. Center counter copied the exchange locations from the phone book and I concentrated only on them. Couple hours later I found an apartment about two blocks away. The maintenance man was there now and he'd show me the place but I need to go to Sulphur to apply for it. I checked it out. Great apartment. Better than the one without a roof and 2/3 the price. Omigawd! Central air. Never had central air in my life. A dishwasher, even. And no dishes. Maybe I'll wash my socks in it. Month to month rent. I headed to Sulphur. West again. Head west, young man. At Dredd Properties Inc. in Sulphur, on September 1, 2005, at about 11:00 a.m. I fell in love with Michelle. It is now 8:20 p.m., Thursday night. Della is purring. She likes it here and keeps asking about her phone line. I keep telling her the #$%&@ Bell South phone company apparently cannot handle the load and that I keep dropping quarters into the box a mile away and it keeps telling me to try again later. She pouts. I tell her I will try again in a couple hours and will keep trying every two hours until I get connected. She coos at that. I know how to handle women. ########## 1:00 a.m. Friday. Well, I'm not going to tell Della this, but Bell South has 9 to 5 regular business hours like every other business, half day Saturday, closed on Sunday. I surely expected, since they're as essential as electric and water to so many people, they'd be accessible 24 hours a day. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hurricane...oh. Wrong folks. I'll try again in about 8 hours. I expect the phone message will again be "all circuits busy, try again later". 9:00 a.m. Friday. Sure enough, same message. Somebody here suggested that the 1-888 Bell South number for residential service, though national, needs to be routed through New Orleans. I doubt that. Rather, I doubt they'd not have bypassed that system this long after the hurricane, especially knowing there are evacuees that need service transferred to a new higher and drier location. If they're relying on the old system I'll not have service till New Orleans does. Possibly months. Jeesh. This morning I bought an ash tray and toilet paper at the Dollar General. Gave my name and order at the Rec. Center for free prescription refills donated by Walgreens. I should have padded that order. Drugs. I NEED DRUGS! Reconned Sulphur this morning. Much bigger than Westlake and more businesses. HUGE Walmart's. I suspect Sulphur is where everybody from Westlake comes to shop. Word is, people will be allowed back into Orleans and Jefferson on Monday and Tuesday to check on their stuff. I might go back to pick up more stuff and anybody who wants to get out. Need a real tune-up and two front tires before I go. I don't see the tune-up happening here and tires are likely to cost big time. Mull mull mull. 1:00 p.m. Found a guy off the beaten path who looks well-equipped to do a good tune-up but is too busy today, doesn't work weekends and wants labor day off. Suddenly my luck doesn't seem to be holding. Might have to trust Ophelia can make it with the tires and spark she has. I'm wondering if anybody outside SE Louisiana would have any luck contacting Bell South to get my service connected. Still the same national number though. Dunno. I'll mull that over. Might be worth another half-roll of quarters to find out. Can't seem to get much forward motion going today. Guess I'll drive to Lafayette, see if I can see luck. 6:00 p.m. 150 miles later Ophelia seems to be grinning about her brand new front tires. Scratch another hundred-fifty bucks. The peace of mind is worth it. On the way back Ophelia kept trying to tell me the speed limit is 70 and I kept trying to show her we're both too old for that. I'm a 55-60 mph guy with a now 70 mph babe. I told her I'd spark her up, get her wired up real good soon as possible. She seemed to consent and obeyed my right foot after that. I know how to handle women. ####################### Lafayette seems to be a big town with everything a big town ought to have. Shame I couldn't have gotten a place there. But Westlake is fine. If it wasn't such a small town I'd probably not have gotten so lucky so fast. Saw a huge convoy of semis w/flatbeds loaded with gigantic lighting equipment and generators headed for Orleans. Not a government truck in the bunch. The big question on all the radio stations today is why, five days later, the armed services and domestic services still have not responded properly. We can airlift anything to anybody anywhere in the world and can airlift thousands and thousands of people out of any place in the world yet there are still thousands of hungry people - including newborns - stranded and dying in Orleans. Probably a moot question that'll never properly be answered. Just heard Haliburton will be handling the cleanup and electric problems. Hmmm. Mull mull mull. Bell South is closed for the holiday weekend despite the problems in this part of the nation. When I got back I topped off the tanks. Scratch another fifty bucks. Seems like only a couple months ago we hit two bucks a gallon. Now it's two-sixtynine for regular. Why, after spending billions and billions of dollars saving Kuwait and Iraq and Saudi Arabia, etc. from themselves, are gas prices going up and up? I doubt that one as well will ever be properly answered. People make the world happen but sure don't get much help with the chore. Saw a Bell South truck on Sampson Street today (the main drag). Next time I see one I'll have Ophelia herd it like a Border Collie. ########### Saturday 09/03/05 5:00 a.m. Forward motion might be stalled for the weekend. Don't know what else I can do except think about the ride back to Orleans Monday, get gallons of water to freeze. I'm sure they're okay with canned and dry foods down there. Maybe get a couple cartons of cigarettes. Sure hope somebody's got some bucks in their pockets. Need help with this project. Mail down there will also be backed up for weeks. They need sorters. That means electricity. And gas for their trucks. Really need to get &*%^! Bell South waking up, get my internet, e-mail my boss, try to get my last work check sent here. Hope they didn't mail it pre-Katrina. Argghhh. Was hoping to get internet access by now, do my online payments. Four bills need attention before the 9th. Three banks and Allstate car insurance. Allstate office in Sulphur. Bank One here in Westlake. Handle them Tuesday. Get the other two to the post office today and hope they make it. Wonder if Bank One can take those payments and forward them electronically? Worth trying. Mail won't move till Tuesday anyway. 5:45 a.m. Already getting bored and antsy, unable to help forward motion. Decision making in Orleans, as usual, is yo-yo-ing. Just heard nobody will be allowed in on Monday at 6:00 a.m. to check their homes and/or get people out, a complete reversal. That decision bounced back and forth three times yesterday. Nobody there should be able to run for elected office unless fully educated elsewhere and can do a comprehensive book report on See Spot Run. 7:00 a.m. Found the post office. It's on my street. Very handy. 9:00 a.m. Now it's okay to get into Orleans at 6:00 a.m. Monday. I'm sure traffic at the border will be crawling. I'll probably leave here at 2. 12:00 noon. Managed to get my bills handled. Broke again. Zilch in checking. The money blew up pretty fast. Shame about my job. Took me a long time to find something I was sure would be steady and secure. I'd've had all credit cards paid off within a year. Oh well. That's why God invented credit cards. 2:30 p.m. I have discovered the Library, also on Mulberry Street between me and the post office. Very convenient. Free access to the internet twice a day. Closed now. Will reopen Tuesday. Maybe I can do BellSouth.com to get my phone hooked up. Definitely check in with Storytalk. Wish I had Snow's e-mail address.The main industries here are the oil refineries and casinos. Reconned Westlake a bit. Discovered the Calcasieu River. Haven't fished much since I left the Oklahoma woods thirty years ago, but if I lived here I'd sure get a rod and reel, relax by the water. Sunday 12:30 p.m. Went to Sulphur, got candles and cigarettes for my mission to Orleans tomorrow morning. I'm now on a personal boycott of Circle K. While all major companies have their regular gas set at 2.69 a gallon, All Circle K's in both towns have their regular set at 3.09. I never use their tiger pee but now I won't even use their stores. Anxious about my mission tomorrow. Hate not doing anything. I'll need to force myself to sleep a bit between now and then, otherwise I won't sleep at all, just lie awake wishing it was 2 o'clock. The idea of eventually moving here permanently has started creeping into my head. I'm not paying it much attention yet. There's plenty of time. A lot can be said for cheaper rent, nicer apartment, slower town, river half mile away. The other side is there's going to be carpentry work galore down there. All things pass. I've lived with that idea most of my adult life. It's kept me whole. 2:00 p.m. 12 hours to go. I keep watching the clock. If I still drank beer I could maybe go to a local bar, get somebody to knock me out. Beer sure was an expensive lifestyle. Glad I'm over it. (6 months). The only "drugs" I do now are Ashwagandha, Gingko Biloba, Cordyceps, Kava, Eleuthero, and St. John's Wort. And age. I like where I am, mentally. I do not want to go through youth's anxieties again. As you can see, dear diary, I'm already so bored I'm talking about myself instead of reporting facts as seen by this Katrina refugee. Need to stop that. 2:30 p.m. Started to clean eight-year-old dirt off my once creme colored printer and speakers. Seems unproductive but I'm doing it anyway. Monday 1:00 a.m. See you in about 400 miles, dear diary. ######### Monday 2:30 p.m. Mission accomplished. Boy that wore me out. Worth it, though, if only to make sure my mail will be collected and my stuff will be safe for a while. Brought all my kitchen stuff here. The trip was mostly uneventful. Night driving scares me a bit - the glare and the nitwits behind me who constantly travel with their high-beams on - but I did 50-55 mph all the way and the wave passing me was always only 5 or 6 cars and 5 minutes apart. They'd closed I-55 East to only vehicles helping with the hurricane recovery and we detoured to Hwy 61 south which became Airline Drive about 10 miles later and came to a complete halt. It was 4:30 a.m. and about 30 miles from where I needed to be: Lake Ponchartrain at the 17th Street Canal. We sat for 2 1/2 hours. The Jefferson Parish border was about 14 miles away, so I guess that's how long the line stretched in front of me. They didn't open till 7 a.m., instead of 6 as planned. Once the line got rolling it was smooth sailing. Soon as I got to the parish border I turned left toward Metairie. It was a ghost town. I saw one other truck besides mine. Apparently all others in front of me in line were heading to other parishes. Armed national guard (boys, actually) at every major intersection . No traffic lights. Trees and poles and the bigger signs were down. Roofs gone. I didn't need to stop at all until I'd reached my apartment building. Two had already left. The others still wanted to stay. I dropped off their frozen drinking water and candles and cases of soft drinks, collected my kitchen stuff and headed back. I didn't stop all the way West, just did my 55-60 mph mode and liked the daylight. The waves passing me were now about 20 cars and semis each but about ten minutes apart. Tractor-trailers sure can buffet that van. Ophelia amazed me. We'd never done a highway trip together. She did the whole trip on a tank of gas. A 1991 Ford Clubwagon loaded with tools (compressor, table saw, etc., etc.) She did about 25 mpg. I never would have expected that. Grand old gal. ##################### Tuesday 09/06/05 10:30 a.m. Well, my "Katrina-week Report" comes to its end now, my adventure resting on a somewhat ungraceful and anti-climactic picture: me - still broke and still happy to be above ground and whole - in my boxer-briefs, staring at a lot of kitchen stuff to clean. See ya. P.S. I washed dishes and stuff for 45 minutes before remembering I now have a dishwasher. -- September 04 No, you can't "borrow" my softwareWell, it happened
again. My friends and relatives all know that I'm in IT, that I contract for
Microsoft and other software companies, and a few of them regularly put me on
the spot by asking "Oh, do you have a copy of Office (or some other expensive
software package)?" Well, of course I do. But that's not the real
question. So if I try to avoid the issue by simply saying "yes," the next
question is "Can I borrow it?"
Well, no. I'm
running out of nice ways to say it. Especially to the ones to whom I've tried to
say it nicely several times before. One of them is a nurse and one is a
teacher. What if I asked "Oh, does the hospital where you work have
any medications stashed in the safe?" or "Does the school where you work have
any computers?" and upon hearing the inevitable "yes" I then continued, "Do you
think maybe you could borrow some for me to use?" After all, drugs and hardware
are expensive and why should I have to pay for them when I have a friend or
family member who could so easily steal them for me?
I'm sure such a
presumption would leave them absolutely appalled. Why, that's illegal.
And they would be risking their jobs. How dare I ask them to do
such a thing?
Indeed.
Then why is it okay
for them to ask me to "loan" my software illegally and risk my own career for
them?
DEBRA LITTLEJOHN SHINDER, MCSE,
MVP
Author: Scene of the Cybercrime
(Syngress Publishing)
Weapons of choice: a sweet smile, a
sharp wit and an HK P7
-- August 31 Aftermath of the StormEveryone and his dog
is writing about Hurricane Katrina, and I have no illusions that I have anything
original to say. I've been to New Orleans; I've been to Biloxi; I liked both
towns and it's hard to imagine that they have been changed beyond recognition.
The first trip that
my husband and I ever took together was to New Orleans, and a couple of weeks
later -- coincidentally or not -- he proposed. Years later, we met with our book
publisher in the Big Easy and finalized the deal for one of our best selling
books. We've attended several conferences there, and the first time we ventured
out of the state after 9/11 was to New Orleans, for a tech conference that fell
between the Superbowl and Mardi Gras -- both of which media talking heads
speculated might be targets of another terrorist attack.
I knew nothing about
Biloxi until my daughter, who's in the Navy, was sent there for a training stint
at Kessler Air Force Base soon after she completed boot camp. My son and I drove
down to visit her while she was there, and we were fascinated by the casinos
built out over the water. Now most of those casinos have been destroyed, some of
them completely washed ashore by the storm, one of them deposited on top of a
Holiday Inn.
Selfishly, I'm glad
my daughter's now stationed safely far away from the coast, up at the Great
Lakes Naval Training Center on nice, placid Lake Michigan. I'm glad no one in my
family got caught in the storm. But this wonderful technology we call the
Internet has resulted in my having friends all over the world whom I've never
"met" but who I care about very much. One of them, a fellow writer with whom
I've shared stories both true and fictional for almost ten years, is a resident
of New Orleans. Sunday, before the storm hit and with the city being evacuated,
I e-mailed to urge him to get to someplace safe. His reply, having ridden out
many storms, was that he was on the second floor of a brick building and would
be fine. Monday morning, Katrina threw her not-so-little tantrum all over the
Gulf coast, N.O. lost power and phones, and I haven't heard from my friend
since.
Pete, if you're out
there, please know that there are a bunch of folks praying for you. If anybody
is sassy and hard headed enough to stand up to the likes of Katrina, it's
you. August 29 Texas Takes Tax Photos Off the WebIn response to a law
passed by the most recent session of the Texas legislature, property tax
appraisal districts have to remove the photos of private residences from their
Web sites. While it doesn't go far enough, this is a step in the right
direction.
The Dallas County
Appraisal District has a great Web site. It's easy to search for a property by
address or owner's name. You can search by name and find out where someone lives
(if he/she owns the home) or you can search by address and find out who owns the
property (and perhaps lives there). You can find out how much the property is
worth (according to DCAD), how old the home is, how many square feet it has, how
many bedrooms and bathrooms, whether it has a swimming pool, spa, fireplaces,
sprinkler systems, wet bars and other amentities. You can find out how much the
owner pays in property taxes and even who owned the home previously. You can
find out if the owner lives there (by the homestead exemption) and whether
he/she is disabled or over 65. You can see a footprint of the shape of the
building(s) on the lot and -- at the moment -- a color photo of the home from
the street.
I've had great fun
surfing the site, looking up the homes of folks I know or homes I've seen to
find out how much they're worth. Much as I like the convenience of having this
resource, I don't think any of it should be on the Web.
As a former police
officer, I don't particularly want everybody I ever arrested to be able to find
out where I live so easily. That's why I have an unlisted phone number and use a
P.O. Box for mail. I don't particularly want everyone in the world to know
how much my house is worth, or how many bathrooms I have. But my situation isn't
nearly as dire as that of, for example, victims of domestic violence whose exes
are looking for them to beat them up or kill them. They'd best not buy a home in
Dallas County, especially if they have an uncommon name.
The worst part is
that many people don't even know all this information is out there for any and
everyone to look up. It's part of the same problem I've ranted about before:
government agencies tell us to protect our personal information and then they
are the ones who disseminate it freely.
August 28 Rebuilding the EmpireWell, I've been
"gone" for a few days. The primary hard disk (the one holding the boot and
system partitions) on my main desktop computer bit the dust unexpectedly,
leaving me to try to get my work done from the bedroom computer, which has only
one monitor, basic applications, and just doesn't feel like "home."
Tom trekked down to
Fry's and got me a new disk (Seagate 300 GB) and I've spent the last couple of
days rebuilding the empire. The good thing about doing a total rebuild is that
you get rid of all the old junk that was cluttering up the OS and things are
nice and snappy (for a few months, until you start installing more junk).
:)
Yesterday I
installed XP Pro, got all the hardware peripherals working, got it configured
the way I like it (changed the theme back to Windows Classic, customized the
wallpaper, arranged the desktop(s), created my toolbars, changed the file view,
etc. etc., and installed the utilities: anti-virus, anti-spyware, PowerDesk, and
so on. Today I finished up installing the most-used applications: MS Office,
FrontPage, Visio, OneNote, Corel PhotoPaint, Adobe Acrobat, PaperPort, Streets
and Trips, Virtual PC and VMWare.
I'm back "home"
again with my desktop spread across three monitors and everything in its place.
And a cleaner, faster system. I used to always brag that I reformatted at least
once a year, whether I needed to or not. Of course, I usually needed to;
previous operating systems slowed down or gunked up so as to be almost unusable
by then. I'd been running this installation of XP for almost two years (often
going for months without a reboot) and I got lazy. Being forced to start over
reminded me of the benefits of tearing it down and rebuilding every now and
then. August 23 Spam of the DaySpam: we all get it. We all hate it. But not
all spam is created equal. One trend I've noticed lately helps to sort the spam from the good stuff: what I call the "spam of the day" syndrome. Messages with innocuous subject lines that I might otherwise be tempted to open -- except that there are half a dozen of them, with different sender names, all with the exact same subject line. Yesterday the subject line of the day was "Please get back to me." The day before, it was "Important update." There might be one person sending me a legit message with that subject line, but not six. The redundancy of the subject line lets me select and delete them all with confidence, without having to check them out. I tend to not be bothered much by spam. Dealing with it takes only a few seconds, a few times per day. Our server-based filtering programs catch literally thousands of spams per day; my local junk mail filters get most of the rest. Only a handful each day make it through to my mailbox. I can only imagine the pain that folks without filtering mechanisms must feel when they open their mailboxes. Spam is likely to be with us always, but that doesn't mean we have to like it. Let's just hope spammers keep doing things -- like sending HTML messages, misspelling every other word in the subject, and using the same subject line for multiple spams -- to make it easier for both software filters and humans to recognize their messages as spam and dump them without ever reading them. August 20 Speaking of gender equityThe Supreme Court saga goes on. According to numerous
news reports, Sandra Day O'Connor "praised [John] Roberts' selection as her
successor, but has expressed the one regret that he isn't a
woman. Capital (language) crimesI've blogged before, and probably will again, about the way the English language is being perverted as writers sacrifice grammatical correctness for political correctness. I learned way back in the third grade that "they" is a plural pronoun, but now it's routinely used as a singular to avoid the awful dilemma of specifying a gender -- even in cases where the gender is obvious. For example, no one (except for an obsessive-compulsive language purist here and there) bats an eye anymore at this sentence: "Each man should place their papers on the desk." The grammatical mistake is called a disagreement in number, and it's running rampant throughout today's "professional" writing. Even though "man" has already defined the gender, most folks have been so conditioned to avoid the use of the dreaded "he" that they resort to "their" even when there is absolutely no reason to do so. This trend started as a misguided way to appease those who are offended by the universal "he" as sexist and at the same time sidestep the sometimes awkward "he or she" or "his or her" in situations where the gender isn't clear or is mixed. The traditional wording would be "Each applicant should place his papers on the desk." The more modern and "gender sensitive" (but grammatically correct) wording would be "Each applicant should place his or her papers on the desk." Personally, I have no problem with either of those. As a female, if I'm so stupid that I can't figure out that "Each applicant should place his papers on the desk" includes me if I'm an applicant, or if I'm so insecure as to be offended by it, the problem is with me, not with the language. And the tiny bit of extra time it takes to say or write "or her" does no harm at all. However, there's usually an easy way to avoid the whole controversy. Just make the whole thing plural to begin with: "All applicants should place their papers on the desk." Now you have an agreement in number, it's grammatically correct, and you haven't offended anybody. My new pet peeve, however, doesn't even have the goal of gender equity as a defense. Some publications, including one for which I write (and which otherwise is a great publication to work for) has adopted the policy of not capitalizing Internet and Web. Not only does it look funny, it also creates ambiguity where there was none before. The word "internet" means a "network of networks." You can create your own internet by connecting two or more networks together; your internet can be completely private and not accessible by anyone outside your company or home. The word "Internet" refers to a specific network of networks -- the public global internetwork that allows us to connect to any computer that accesses it through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that has a connection to its "backbone." Similarly, a web is a particular collection of pages and files that can be accessed through browser software using the HTTP protocol. A web can be hosted on a standalone computer, accessible only to that machine. The Web (short for World Wide Web) refers collectively to all of the Web pages on all of the Web servers that are connected to the global Internet. If you fail to capitalize "Internet" and "Web" when they refer to the specific entities by those names, you leave the reader to figure out from context whether you're talking about the global entities or just any old internet or web. Here's the best way I can think of to illustrate the difference. If I say "I went inside the white house," a reader will infer an entirely different meaning from the one he or she (!) infers when I say "I went inside the White House." The former refers to any house that happens to be painted white. The latter is immediately identified as a specific building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. Trivial? Maybe. Maybe not. The point of language is to communicate effectively, and when changes make meanings less clear, they do damage to our ability to communicate. August 18 Sometimes Government Workers Surprise YouA few days ago, I received a notice from the State of Washington that our business owed an excise tax and was being assessed a penalty for not having paid it when we filed our return. Well, according to their own statutes as posted on their Web site, and according to the Washington Department of Revenue employee I'd spoken to previously, the business revenue they were claiming the tax on was not taxable. Having dealt with bureaucrats so many times in the past, I braced myself as I punched in the phone number for the Revenue Department. I expected a long, drawn-out conversation and figured I'd need plenty of documentation to prove my case, and even so probably had a 50/50 chance of getting the "computer generated billing" (as the document identified itself) corrected. I explained to the lady who answered that I'd received a bill for a tax I didn't owe, and why. She asked me to wait a moment while she pulled up the return (and it really WAS only a moment), then said "you reported the income on the wrong line. It should be on line 14 instead of line 13." Well, that employee I'd talked to originally had said to put it on line 13, but what the heck. If all I had to do was move the information down one line to get rid of the bill, no problem. I asked if I needed to send in an amended return. Another pleasant surprise. "Oh, no. I can correct that right here," she said. Then, "Okay, it's done. You can ignore the billing statement." Wow. The phone call lasted five minutes at the most. If only the IRS were that easy to deal with. I still think Washington's business excise tax is horrible (they tax you on gross receipts, not profits. That means a business could conceivably make no profit at all and still owe the state taxes. Even the IRS recognizes that business expenditures should be deducted and don't ask you to pay taxes on money you didn't make). But that's not the fault of the Department of Revenue employees; we can thank the Washington politicians for that. At least one employee of the DoR is outstandingly competent and efficient, and I hope the state appreciates her as much as I do. August 17 Can the French survive without their vacations?CNN reported today that there's a terrible crisis
afoot in France: "... A growing number of French can no longer afford a
traditional August [vacation] getaway. " According to a French tourism
expert, "Holidays have gotten very expensive and more and more employed people
who used to go find that they can't anymore." CNN reports that the expert calls
the trend "very worrisome." But here's the kicker: he goes on to say that "Not
going on vacation can cause people to lose confidence not only in their own
future, but also in French society in general." But then, the European welfare states don't exactly encourage one to work hard and be productive. The high taxes in those countries in fact create an environment that discourages those activities. Why work your behind off to make money if the government is just going to take it away from you and give it to those who don't work? Sadly, there are many in this country who would like nothing better than to emulate that system. Does a seven week vacation sound like a good thing? On the face of it, sure -- especially on those days when I'm slaving over the computer for 16 hours, and have been for the past week, to meet a deadline. Would I trade my working schedule for their high taxes? Not in a million years. I just hope liberal politicians don't end up forcing me to do so. August 16 Accomplices to ID TheftGovernment agencies, credit card companies and
the media warn us on what seems like a daily basis that the crime of identity
theft is running rampant and that we should protect our personal information. It
sounds like good advice -- so why are those same entities continually putting us
in a position to be victims of this increasingly popular offense?
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