Far South of I-10

I'm over in New Orleans today, working in a client's office while a well is drilled offshore somewhere. I didn't go into town yet, I stayed out here in the burb's and from this office it looks like every third house has a blue tarp covering the roof. This area just had normal streetflooding that results when the pumps aren't turned on due to the workmen being evacuated, not due to a levee breach. But it does look like a mild war swept through the area. All of metairie seems to be bustling, help wanted signs are everywhere and every other vehicle seems to be full of mexican roofers. On the other hand, tonight I can look out through the darkness outside this office, and through one window I can see the thin ribbon of the causeway bridge stretching out to infinity, through the other window I can see that the center of New Orleans is ominously dark. I can remember christmas' from my childhood, when the soaring towers of downtown left their lights on in the shap

I flew back home from alaska tuesday on one of the suckiest flights where I got upgraded to first class for one leg. I got pulled from a middle seat in a packed coach section where I was speaking with a nice old lady, brought up to first class for what I thought was the whole flight. Drank my 3 bloody mary's (they're free, you gotta drink 'em) and passed out asleep. I got woken up in seatle by someone checking my ticket, she tried to throw me out of 1st because my ticket had my old seat # written on it that they had used to find me in coach. I asked her to check, and she checked her list then said I was good. I resumed passing out. A small child's screeching woke me up as the other people were boarding. "Mommy mommy he's in my seat!", "Yes, dear, there's a man in our seat, but mommy will get him out of there"...a wispered conversation behind my back with a flight attendant... which was quickly followed by the flight attendant telling me

Lawrence Simon is running a dead pool again this year and I thought it might be a good idea to sign up and join something instead of just lurking. Here is a list of the prospective entrants. No hard feelings, (except for the couple that I'm rooting for to win) for any of the entrants, it's a trip we all take, but if you can win me a $10 dominos card while your at it then great. here's my list: Name - Famous for what? - DOB Dick Van Dyke -Actor 12/13/1925 Saddam Hussein - Bad Actor 4/28/1937 Mohammed Ali - Fighter 1/17/1942 Jimmy Carter - Wimp 10/1/1924 Margeret Thatcher - Tough girl 10/13/1925 Earl Cambell - Tough Guy, tailed off with the saints 3/29/1955 Nancy Reagan - ex actress, ex first lady 7/6/1921 David Duke - ex clansman, ex politician, ex human 7/1/1950 Gerald Ford - clumsy guy, lost footing and vietnam 7/14/1913 Keith Richards - famous clean blood recipient 12/18/1943 Nancy Pelosi - representative, bloodless c

I'm back up here in alaska again, and if I thought it was dark last month, wow, now it's uber-dark. Really dark until about 9, then dusky light until 4 pm, then dark. I'm not sure if I'll be here for the Solistice next week, I'm supposed to be in New Olreans next tuesday or so, if I don't leave here by Sunday I'll miss the traditional furlough or conjugal visit that most prisoners get. [one of my favorite movie scenes is the one in Face-Off, where travolta is trudging in circles wearing magnetic boots as exercise, and he turns out to be on an offshore oil platform converted into a prison. I saw the movie offshore, where my main exercise was walking in a circle on the heliport. All I was missing was some magnetic boots.] I just popped awake an hour ago as my alarm clock in Houston went off. It's now 3:30 am, and I'm waiting for a phone call so I can trudge through the snow over to the client's office and start work when the rig up there on the

James Lileks has a column summarizing 2005 . My favorite is his entry on Katrina: Hurricane Katrina strikes precisely at the moment when the dynamite charges, personally installed by Karl Rove, blow up New Orleans’s levees. Teams of the same ninjas the Bushies used to rig the Diebold voting machines have already disabled the buses that could be used in evacuation. Initial media reports indicate that refugees in the Superdome have resorted to murder, cannibalism, voodoo, keno, and possibly jai alai. FOX anchor Shep Smith is consumed on camera by zombies. His last words indicate that he shares their outrage, if not their desire for sweet, sweet brains...

In the comments, CajunRenard says: "I know, I know. You're a Bush fan. Gotta admire your loyalty. However, are you feeling safe now that all the WMDs are wrested away from Saddam? Are you ready to admit that we went to war with fabricated evidence?" To which I replied: "If you look at the post below " I too prefer my ammo dumps insect free " you'll see what I think. If the iraqis had hollow bombs ready to fill poison gas, and hidden bunkers filled with "pesticide" that affected exposed people like nerve agent, then they had wmd. the reason no wmd's were found was the searchers had a political motivation not to find them. Anyway, saddam was the wmd. Once the sanctions had ended he would have done what he wanted to do." One of the main reasons blogging does kind of work for me is I can say refer to my blog for what I think. I don't necessarily have to rehash arguments via email or phone or at parties. I used to enjoy political

I'd like to post more to this blog, sometimes I think I have a lot to say about politics, work, life, etc, but when it comes right down to it, I'm probably too angry about politics to say anything coherent. It's obvious to me that I'm suffering from Bush Derangement, Derangement syndrom. I get so angry watching the slanted news, listening to NPR attack the president, reading what our idiot congressmen are saying that I can only spit. I really don't have any solution except to start carrying cd's in the car again. Listening to the Foo Fighters cd instead of NPR left me much more relaxed on Friday. Weather Channel instead of CNN. The dilbert blog instead of Slate. Oh yea, and I'm going to vote against all the incumbent Senators and representatives. It's 1992 all over again. Democrats scoring political points instead of demanding victory....out. Republicans saying they are working with the democrats, or demanding reports from the president...out too

Well, I'm heading back home for turkey day. The office here very generously gave me and my coworker ULU knives with our names engraved in them. You can see ulus at ulu.com of course, they are used to shave blubber off of whales apparently, which should come in handy if the buffet line at Ryan's gets too long. I'm flying out in a few hours, trying to get my stuff together in such a way that it doesn't look like I dumped dirty clothes into a bag. If anyone ever sees me fold a shirt correctly I give you permission to shoot me, I've been replaced by an alien. Oh well, dump away. Taking a quick tour of the blogosphere in the few minutes I have left before I have to pay for another 24 hours of internet access. The Domestic Engineer has a funny/quaint/scary story about singing pants and conversations. If we were really in The Holy Grail, he'd shout back, "You're not fooling anybody, you know!" before hitting me over the head with a plank. But we

Here's a photo looking to the west from my hotel. It's 2pm local time, you can see the long shadows of the buildings. The photo was taken with my new m:robe from Olympus, which is a safety award from the company I work for. Thanks! You can see there is a little blurring, that's because you have to tap the center of the LCD display to take a photo. I think it might have been cheaper and better to just put a "button", which is a technical innovation similar to a "laser". Oh well, as they say I shouldn't look a gift camera/music player in the lens. But since I had heard we were getting ipods, I had a friend rip a bunch of my cd's, and apparently he gave the music back to me in a fairly lossless format supported by an ipod but not by an m:robe. doh!

I'm clicking through channels while waiting to go to work and I came across a show on cspan2 interviewing Peter Schweizer " Do as I say not as I do: profiles in liberal hipocracy " This looks like a great book, I tried to take some notes on the question period: questions: School choice? the clintons sent chelsea to a private school, when the public schools she would have gone to were ones the clintons praised before they were elected. Hillary Clinton is pro children's rights, but she was a very strict parent and wouldn't allow Chelsea to get her ears pierced. But Hillary wants the rest of the country to allow teenagers to get abortions without notifying parents. .... Rich people and political affiliation - kennedys, clintons George soros are pro-taxes, but do their best to avoid inheritance and income taxes. The clintons bragged that they always pay the maximum in taxes, the author checked and it is ridiculous. They (liberals) are never called on their stat

Here's a picture from yesterday as the snow fell. It was only about an inch of snow, but as I walked to the clients office yesterday, I felt like it was a blizzard. It might be cold as heck here in achorage, and not very sunny during the day, but they do have some pretty good seafood here. I had King Crab legs last night at a place called Sullivan's. We had to wait about 3 hours for a table so I joined the rest of the people in drinking knockouts, which is just vodka that has been marinating in a big jar with fresh pineapple. Then with dinner I switched to Grey Goose vodka over ice. Needless to say, my head feels like a gypsy family has been sleeping in it. Apparently if I had just stuck with Grey Goose I couldn't possibly get a hangover since it is so refined/expensive. Today the sun is out but the days are getting noticeably shorter about 10 minutes per day. Sunrise at around 8 am, sunset at 4:30 and it pretty much looks like 4 in the afternoon all day long.

Well I'm back up in Anchorage again. When I'm rich (come on Powerball) this will definitely be the location of a summer home. It's beautiful here in the summer, golfing 20 hours a day, good seafood. Etc. Not a winter destination though. I've been here 8 hours this time and I'm already depressed. The guy I'm working with just got a call saying he has to go up to the north slope for the project while I work back here in town. thankfully they didn't ask me to go, since they would have received a creative combination of "fuck" and "no". Or back in reality I would have meekly gone, mumbling darkly under my breath. By the time I don't work here, I'll only be capable of mumbling darkly.

The ever-sensible numberwatch points out that the number of the month is from the only 62 people that have died of the bird flu worldwide. Yet there is a raving hysteria being generated by the press: We can’t get away from bird flu. It has swamped the media. People have actually stopped eating chicken for fear of it. Yet the total number of human deaths so far is 62. That is half an hour’s worth of malaria deaths. One of these days, of course, the scaremongers are going to get it right and flu is a pretty good bet for them, with its remarkable mutability. Numberwatch makes some other great points this month especially about the UK wide smoking ban.

Daffyd app Hugh tells the thigh-slappingly funny tale of the iraqi wmd sites that were often found but never seen. It is well known that the staggering extent of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs was only discovered after he lost the Gulf War. Iraqi chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons by the tens of thousands were unearthed (often literally) and destroyed by the coalition. Afterward (we have known this for some time from defectors), Hussein decided that Iraq would take a new tack in its never-ending quest for WMD: from then on, all of Iraq's programs were designed to be "dual use": each would have an ostensibly civilian purpose (pesticides, medical research, nuclear power generation) but could quickly -- in some cases within minutes -- be converted to military use. Therefore, when looking for "stockpiles" of WMD, the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) should have been looking, not for a warehouse full of shells pre-filled with sarin or mustard gas or anthra

Dilbert author Scott Adams is blogging now. I saw the link over at Peeve Farm last week, but I forgot to bookmark it. When I remembered it yesterday, a quick google of Dilbert, blog, brought it to the top of the list. If I can remember my password at blogrolling I'll add it to the list, it looks like a good daily read, for example: Maybe it’s the way I was raised, but I find that I get mad about all the wrong things. For example, when I hear a news report about some serial killer who buried 43 victims in an underground bunker that he constructed beneath his shed, my first reaction is Wow. He built an underground bunker under a shed! I find myself admiring his industriousness and passion in the pursuit of his dreams. That’s clearly wrong. Which is pretty fucking funny if you ask me, not only is it easy to see the source of the very twisted dogbert as the king of the world, but is pretty much the way I watch the news now. Sortof, how'd the guy get 27 bodies under his hou

I'm back from the UK finally. After two weeks of just watching 5 BBC channels, with no internet in the hotel, I'm bathing in information, surfing the web and watching tv while reading the newspaper. BBC is far more slanted than even the big 3 networks here. It seems like every news story ends with a jab at the bush administration: "Scientists expect a the coldest winter in the past 20 years, which will be hard on the poor, this is because the US didn't sign the Kyoto treaty." They will be doing a whole show Monday on "Katrina, America's Shame", and constantly showed those photos of Wilson and Plame with her dressed in dark glasses and a scarf as they did stories about how Bush led us to war based on a lie. (To them ambassador Wilson is still credible). Then when they have a true local story to cover, riots between Pakistanis and blacks in Birmingham, they never say the key word, the elephant in the room is never mentioned. It's easy to infer w

I saw a fantastic band earlier this week, a band called Pesky Alligator, which I really did't expect to see here in Newark. Just two players, a girl who can do a perfect janis joplin, and a guitar player who can play acoustic or base guitar. One of those moments of serendipity, where I thought i was heading back to the hotel, instead I ran into the new student that joined my class this week. He'd just arrived from canada and hadn't eaten, so we went to the Navigator, a pub across the street from this hotel. And this great girl was there in front of me getting a beer. She was in a red miniskirt with knee high black boots. I thought. Wow. And when she walked up to the bandstand and started setting up her drum set, I thought double wow. With just a drum and guitar and vocals, they were the best live act I've seen this year. I knew I was in a really foreign country when they played "in constant sorrow" from "o brother where art thou", it was fantastic

I'm in the UK, and the BBC showed the news that the Simpsons are being translated into Arabic I agree with one of the local arabs they interviewed for the show: "If Homer doesn't eat bacon,donuts and drink beer he isn't homer" The beeb also is screeching about avian flu, you could have copied the stories from the US, just changing "Evil Bush" to "Lapdog Blair". Yeah, we're unprepared but nothing really has changed.

I'm reading a book called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, here's a quick review at blogcritics: (http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/18/223516.php The four agreements are: * Be impeccable with your word * Don't take anything personally * Don't make assumptions * Always do your best I'm just on the first agreement, which if you read a summary you might think is "just keep your word". But instead the author means it literally, be "im- peccable" with your word is "without sin". Words can hurt and cause echoes of pain, guilt and remorse. Don't use them as swords, or gossip or say negative things. Words have power, like black magic they can weave a spell. This is clearly illustrated in the movie dead poets society, which is playing on the TV here. Mean words are easily said to the people we care for most, and they can have the most drastic consequences. Anyway looks like it will be a good book. Thanks Mike.

I spent a few days in ciudad carmen and villahermosa in mexico, before I left there was hurricane that hit nearby. I didn't notice until it began to rain like a cow pissing on a flat rock. No continuous coverage from the weather channel, or even the local news. Ciudad Carmen already was flooded from just the normal afternoon rains, so I'm sure it flooded bigtime. In New Orleans after Katrina, the poor went from the projects, to the superdome, to the astrodome to other projects I don't think the poor in ciudad carmen were so lucky. I 'd hate to see the effects of a really bad storm there. I left mexico and flew through a hurricane for the 2nd time this year, and I learned several important lessons. Mexico city has the worst big airport I've ever seen, along with unhelpful stupid people. I asked one lady which way the American airlines counter was, and she said "derecho", which means straight. When in reality it was the other way. I walked to gate #1

I'm in a hotel in Ciudad del carmen, Mexico, today, tomorrow and maybe next week too. All I've seen of the town is the office and the hotel, but it looks like other tropical south american cities. Just with more street flooding than usual. (photo is of Carmen during landing at the airport) Unfortunately I didn't win the lottery last night so I had to come down here for some presentations that I have to give in spanish, I guess it could be worse I could be required to do the presentation in my underware. (the presentation went ok, I felt so nervous I wanted to projectile vomit onto the conference table, but luckily the feeling passed.) Updated on Sunday: Now I'm in Villa Hermosa, which is nicer. The hotel Camino Real is nice, with a superduper breakfast buffet. Only the Sofitel Santa Clara in Cartagena has a better one. I've got a fairly intractable problem though, I'm supposed to be here on tuesday, also in barbados for the next week, also in Denver on Wednesda

Not only was Katrina a failure for all levels of government, the media did a poor job all around, undersensationalizing before the storm: (from my blog, when I was live-blogging the news the sunday before the storm) CNN Sucks I'm watching CNN again and in the last 12 hours they've shown the anti-bush screed about bad intelligence 3 times! The approaching disaster in New Orleans could be just about as bad as the Tsunami was, but they've had 36 hours of warning about the story. oversensationalizing what happened in the dome and convention center That the nation's frontline emergency-management officials believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the news media and even some of the city's top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent. The vast majority of reported atr

My answering machine picked up when I called this morning, so we must still have power in Katy. Now I feel a slight amount of pussy-remorse, like maybe I fled too far and too fast ahead of a storm that didn't really do anything. Oh well, I'll get my "Big P" tattoo when I get home. I'll wear it with pride. It looks like southwest louisiana got whacked pretty good, especially the cameron area. This is really unfortunate for the price of natural gas, because as you travel west of grand isle, the offshore production becomes more and more gas heavy, until offshore texas it is all gas. The East and west Cam offshore areas produce a lot of gas. Also Cameron is a large port and support base for offshore operations. Before this month I would have said that the big three are Venice, Fourchon and Cameron, LA. Now two of the three are wiped out, and Fourchon was damaged. This will slow down the return to normal operations and add a big lag factor to the return to pres

Well we made it out of Houston, luckily we flew out of Hobby Airport on Southwest. It was total pandemonium as around 15000 people were there and apparently the TSA were staffed for 25 people. I thought I was being clever, just bringing carryon luggage, we'd dash in and grab an eticket from one of the machines that are partially hidden from novice travellers. We eased our way through the massive checkin line, got to a machine and had our tickets faster than you can say 'knife'. I had a smirk of victory as we kept walking around the curve to the security check-in, and the smirk turned to a frown when I saw the massive security line. We made our way to what we thought was the end of the line, but it was more like we stood in one place for a minute waited for a line to move and merged. (ok, we cut) It took 2 1/2 hours to clear security, but we moved most of that in the last hour when Southwest flew a planeload of agents from dallas, they arrived and manned the non-secur

Steve Gregory over at wunderground's weather blog is awfully impressed with Rita, calling it the perfect storm and pointing out that he's never seen the computer models predict an intensity so strong before. One intensity forcast brings the storm to 180 knots, which is approximately 205 mph. In the 6 hours I just slept, the model guidance has shifted right 30 miles at least, with some of the models moving much more towards Louisiana. Our plans have changed as well, a neighbor that is staying here in Katy will watch the dog, and we're flying to my sister's in New Mexico. This is probably a good idea now, much better than lafayette since several tracks now take the storm to the sabine river while they are leaving the track guidance near to galveston, on the 'west edge' of the model envelope. gah! Good luck to all.

I'm watching the weather channel and trying to figure out which way to run. We live about a mile from I-10 on the far west side of houston so I had been planning on the easy escape, I-10 to San Antonio, then the flight across the desert, west or northwest. Now in order to get out of the power outage area we'll have to go very far west or north. it looks easier to brave the traffic cutting across houston and head back to lafayette. At least the number of friends/family is increasing in that direction, but if the storm changes it's mind and goes to SW LA then we'll have to keep running. Into an area without gas or much infrastructure. hmmm. 'tis a puzzlement, but I'm being helped by my public declaration of never again after the last storm, so the question is not whether, but where.

I just made a trip to Kroger on the way home from the office to see if I could top up our hurricane supplies. the place was fuller than normal, like a satuday morning, but not packed. When I passed the water aisle there was nothing...just bare shelves where my cool refreshing bottled water should be, no evian, perrier...nothing. I grabbed a couple 12 packs of coke and sprite, and a case of beer, then I saw her. She was a slender blond, about 40, very nice, and she wouldn't meet my eyes, and her cart was full of water! I pushed my cart a little faster in the direction she came from and I struck gold, a crowd of about 20 people standing around a guy unloading a pallet of water. I pushed into the crowd, "how many?" he asked me breathlessly. I hesitated then said "3", since I already had some water at home. He loaded up my cart and I walked away, with my cart full of water, beer, poptarts and granola bars. When a young woman tried to catch my eye as she oggle

Yesterday was talk like a pirate day (september 19th) so in honor of this, here is my previous post translated by the pirate translator at mediocre minds Storm T'ssed Seas I spent the day today flyin' from Barbados t' Houston and on the Miami leg we flew through the outer edges o' Rita I took a picture from the cabin window where I could see the whitecaps t'ssin' on the surface. (Aaaarrrhhh!!!) T' see whitecaps from 25000 feet, it must have been bonnie rough down thar. (I can't find the usb cable for the camera, doh!) The airport in Miami was packed as south florida drained of tourists, 'n the TSA people thar didn't even pretend to speak english Was Cuba evacuatin' too? On the radio here in Houston they be talkin' 'bout evacuatin' from galveston as the over-reaction t' Katrina sets in People will evacuate, the storm will go t' mexico, then next time they won't evacuate t

I spent the day today flying from Barbados to Houston and on the Miami leg we flew through the outer edges of Rita. I took a picture from the cabin window where I could see the whitecaps tossing on the surface. To see whitecaps from 25000 feet, it must have been pretty rough down there. (I can't find the usb cable for the camera, doh!) The airport in Miami was packed as south florida drained of tourists, and the TSA people there didn't even pretend to speak english. Was Cuba evacuating too? On the radio here in Houston they are talking about evacuating from galveston as the over-reaction to Katrina sets in. People will evacuate, the storm will go to mexico, then next time they won't evacuate thus completing the storm cycle: Fear-overreaction -apathy-death. Our house seems well built, and we're on pretty high ground (for coastal texas) but we're still going to haul ass. Just not until the cone of uncertainty is less than 1000 miles. My cycle is more like: watch

Oh well, I thought I would be free to be at home and enjoy my home and family for another week, but plans changed and I had to zip (if an 11 hour trip is zipping) back down to barbados for the next project. I had a pretty good week at home though. My parents have power again after only 10 days in the dark. I thought I'd have to make a trip over to Picayune to pick them up, but it was going to be tricky because there is still little to no gas to be had south of Jackson, MS. Luckily I wasn't needed and I won't have to strap a 50 gallon drum on top of my camry. The downside is I won't get my entry in the redneck olympics, my past events have included transporting a matress on the roof of my car while holding it with one hand. Sharon over at domestic engineer has another operation upcoming, so my hopes are with her, and if any readers are practicing christians you can add her to your prayers. I doubt my lapsed catholic prayers do much good. Or just go read her site, sh

Winds of Change has the best links to 9/11 stories and it's aftermath, including the story of Rick Rescorla. Lyrics of Men of Harlech from Porphyrogenitus: Men of Harlech stop your dreaming Can't you see their spear points gleaming See their warrior's pennants streaming To this battle field Men of Harlech stand ye steady It cannot be ever said ye For the battle were not ready Stand and never yield Form the hills rebounding Let this war cry sounding Summon all at Cambria's call The mighty force surrounding Men of Harlech onto glory This shall ever be your story Keep these fighting words before ye Cambria (Welshmen never) will not yield

Instapundit linked to a poll that says that 54% of the people in the US don't think that the New Orleans area should be rebuilt as it was. That the flooded houses should be relocated elsewhere. I don't agree. New Orleans with just the central business district and the french quarter will be just an adult disneyworld, and it will quickly lose the character that made it New Orleans. South Louisiana does have something that the rest of the country needs and wants: Oil and Gas production and refineries. The era of cheap gas produced by polluting Louisiana while the enviro-nuts in california get a free ride is over. Embargo. Who runs Barter-town? We do. New Orleans should be rebuilt, houses can be raised or rebuilt above MSL. The land can be raised above MSL as was done for Galveston after the 1900 hurricane , if they could do this in 1900, we should be able to do a better job now. Rebuilding New Orleans should be part of a comprehensive plan to restore the surrounding bar

Thibideaux said "Hey Boudreaux, if I slept with your wife and got her pregnant, and she had a baby, would that make us relatives? or what would that make us?" "Even" said Boudreaux

There is no way todiscuss apportioning blame for the outcome of the Katrina disaster, because we as americans have become so divided into tribes of differing beliefs, with different a priori assumptions and effective communication is no longer possible between different tribes. Political discussions could be as between Sioux and Mohawk, with a few common words such as "Tatonka" and "Watahe", but almost all other words are charged with different meanings to different tribes, and this quickly leads to wars of words and arrows, and almost no topic is safe but baseball. I'm listening to CNN playing in the other room, and it sounds like Nancy Pelosi is shrieking about how bush is at fault, it seems to me he is at fault whenever a sparrow falls or a flower fails to bloom according to Pelosi. But if he were to extend his hand and try use the power necessary to protect all sparrows and flowers, then she would call him hitler and a nazi. Senator Pelosi is from the tribe

Junkyardblog has these pictures of the future monument to futility known as the Ray Nagin memorial park. Junkyardblog has other posts that show more bus parking lots under water in New Orleans. If all these buses (he counts over 500 in this picture and another picture) had been used around 20000 people could have been bussed out in one trip before the storm. In the end there is plenty of blame to spread around for this disaster though: The adult population that was stuck in New Orleans is mostly to blame for their own plight. Everyone knew what would happen. Hurricane Betsy gave a demo of what might happen when she flooded the Ninth ward and St. Bernard Parish. If you lived in New Orleans as an adult and had no thought of a plan except "the government will save me" then you pretty much got what you deserved. Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco are grossly incompetant and if they were honorable would resign their positions. They had total authority to evacuate the people, to d

I'm back at the hotel after spending the night at the rig and I'm aghast at what daylight reveals of new orleans. Kenner where I grew up is flooded, downtown and the french quarter are flooding. Slidell and Chalmette are probably total losses. Fox just pointed out something that I've been thinking: No one has even heard from Placquemines Parish, and apparently the river has 'reclaimed' the lower portions of the delta. The national news people have no idea of the geography of the area, and they only show a few scenes where their cameras are, at the corner of bourbon and canal, and from up on the GNO bridge. But it looks unbelievable what we can see, who knows when or if this will all be rebuilt.

I spoke with my parents up in Picayune, everybody is fine, my sisters also spent the storm at my parent's house so they are ok too. Apparently all the trees are down around their houses, and one hit my sister's garage blocking in two cars, and they lost most of the shingles on the roof, but everyone is ok, which is most important. Who knows what happened to my sister's house in slidell. I checked on the web yesterday as the storm made landfall, and the eye was centered on slidell, so it doesn't look good. I'm glad she decided to spend the storm at my parents' place.

One of my coworkers just clued me in that we do have fox news, I have to reprogram the tv channels to get it though. Their news readers seem to have more of a clue, at least they have some idea of the geography of SE LA. Also they have good taste in Hotels, they are staying at the "W". One lady on CNN kept saying "the french quarters" which made me wince every time. On the other hand the fox guys just said "those old buildings in the french quarter are more suseptible to strong winds, unlike newer buildings". When the answer is just the opposite. Those buildings in the french quarter have stood the test of time, they've gone through other hurricanes through the 18th and 19th centuries when there was little or no levee system. At least I hope that is true, my dad just used the same argument to say they are staying in their house since it survived camile.

Over at Eye of the Storm , Charles points out that Kat is (may be) an Annular hurricane, instead of a normal spiral storm that can't maintain cat 5 for more than a few hours, annular storms (like Ivan) can remain cat 5 for 30 hours or more. So enough of the theory, what does this mean practically? It means that the situation has gotten even worse. If Katrina is indeed annular, then the chances of her retreating down to say category three status are nil. If we make the somewhat unlikely presumption that she has reached her maximum strength (and again if she is annular), then the averages of such hurricanes suggest that she would only weaken to 145 mph at landfall. That would be a storm with Charley-like intensity, but on a much larger scale as Charley was puny compared to the present size of Katrina. Steve Gregory over at wunderblogs says: This central pressure is very close to that recorded in Camille in 1969 - the most powerful land falling hurricane in U.S. history, with a storm

Mary Landrieu just tore the CNN announcer a new asshole. The CNN people are so stupid, they tried to make a flippant/funny comment "what a funny place to build a city, between a lake and a river, why would they do that?" Senator Landrieu turned it around with the comment that without New Orleans in that location we wouldn't have had a United States, New Orleans is a center of commerce, and Louisiana is a producer of the nation's energy. "we aren't down here sunning ourselves on the beach". [The main reason New Orleans is where it is, it is a deepwater port that is mostly sheltered from storms, and compared to the land in the rest of SE LA has some fairly high spots. The french quarter and mid-city are above MSL] The announcer responded with "thanks for the historical perspective". Senator Landrieu made several other good points, that much of the coastal erosion has been caused by the energy industry, while almost all of the royalties have gone

I'm watching CNN again and in the last 12 hours they've shown the anti-bush screed about bad intelligence 3 times! The approaching disaster in New Orleans could be just about as bad as the Tsunami was, but they've had 36 hours of warning about the story. Hopefully Governor Blanco's prayers are just as effective as Governor Foster's were for Hurricane Lily, because it looks like it's gonna be bad. It would be nice to see some urgency from the 24 hour news channel.

I'm watching CNN here in Barbados, and I'm amazed that Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard is giving detailed driving instructions to an international audience. He was mayor of Kenner when I was growing up, now he's a bejowled power broker telling an international audience not to take the Huey P. Long bridge; but he didn't say which way to go. Whew, I'm glad I'm not a resident of the west bank of Jefferson Parish...they've got to take a drive on Highway 90 to lafayette, which is a 2 1/2 hour drive over swampy causeways with no traffic, add 200,000 people and it will be a 6 hour bataan death- drive just to Lafayette. (or risk a one-lane merge from I-310 to I-10...bleh) Once you're in lafayette I'd definitely keep going to Houston. I already suggested to my wife that she call our friends in Lafayette to invite them over tonight. The projected path has been steadily marching west since yesterday, if it moves any further west I'd leave lafa

This week four years ago my wife and I just got back from a trip to Washington and New York. When we went to the world trade center, it was rainy so we couldn't go on the roof, I thought, oh well we'll see that next time we come to New York. Or maybe we won't. I'm watching Inside 9-11 on National Geographic and I'm furious all over again. I can almost understand the policy of not showing these scenes over and over again. We'd be demanding real war, war to the knife. "The following segment contains footage of people jumping from the twin towere, viewer discretion is advised." (The coverage on american television never did show people jumping to their deaths, I only saw it on Telemundo in spanish, where they can show things with a third person detachment as things happen to the Norte Americanos.) I thought I'd try and live blog this show, but without my DVR I can't keep track of the heros who left safety to return to rescue more people, or f

Peggy Noonan has a column in the opinion journal that says we shouldn't be so quick to shut down so many military bases: The federal government is doing something right now that is exactly the opposite of what it should be doing. It is forgetting to think dark. It is forgetting to imagine the unimaginable. Governments deal in data. People in government see a collection of data as something to be used, manipulated or ignored, but whatever they do with it, it's real. It's numbers on a page. You can point to them. To think dark, on the other hand, takes imagination--and something more. ....... But they're wrong. What they ought to do, and what the commission reviewing the Pentagon's plan ought to do, is sit down and think dark. In the rough future our country faces, bad things will happen. We all know this. It's hard to imagine some of those things on a beautiful day with the sun shining and the markets full, but let's imagine anyway.

Here's the view from my hotel during a brief downpour yesterday. It rains every day here someplace on the island, it rains up at the office every day at 2:30 pm, you can almost set your watch by this. Hopefully this will be the only type of rain I'll see on this island, if there is a hurricane the only place to run here is to the room on the next floor up. The hotel I'm staying at isn't exactly a deluxe resort, there's no beach in front of it, I've got to creep on to the beach of the resort next door where they all get free drinks and fresh fruit delivered by waiters. (other guys offshore are saying "cry me a river, bitch") The waves actually crash on a wall just beyond those palm trees, and with the stronger wind blowing this week a frequent crash, crash, crash can be heard all the time. Kind of nice, but I'd rather go home.

I'm watching Schindler's List on TNT right now. I've seen this movie before and I know that it ends with Raph Fiennes' character being hung, and the people doing the hanging kicking the box underneath him to pieces, The horror of the story makes be want to go back in time to help kick the box out from under that fucker. (Amon Goethe) They did just announce during a commercial break that Steven Spielberg didn't take a salary for making this movie, that it would be "blood money". Good for him.

here's a story my brother sent that might bring a tear to your eye: >>>> Here's a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between a >>>> little 5 year old girl and some construction workers that makes you >>>> believe that we CAN make a difference when we give a child the gift of >>>> our time... >>>> >>>> A young family moved into a house, next door to a vacant lot. One day >>>> a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty >>>> lot. >>>> >>>> The young family's 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in >>>> all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day >>>> observing the workers. >>>> >>>> Eventually the construction crew, all of them gems-in-the-rough, more >>>> or less adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with

Well, I just spent the past 5 days working 2o hours a day on a rig in the middle of an island paradise. Now I've got a free day to go and sample the local rum, or maybe I should just sleep. I've got to say that the locals are probably the nicest people I've ever worked for in the oilfield. Problems that would have a Texan company man jumping up and down with anger just make the locals shrug and ask for a better effort. The locals are known as "Bajan", not barbadans. They say y'all like a US southerner, and call loved ones "boo" like people from the south too. When a Bajan walks into a room and it is night time, he'll say 'good night' as he walks in, like in spanish people say buenas noches, but it sounds jarring to my ears, like walking into a room and saying 'goodbye'. Anyway, nice place, nice people but I'd rather be here on vacation. Now, off to drink a cuba libre or maybe a local Banks Beer.

Here's the view at the end of the St. Lawrence gap here in Barbados. I'm still enjoying the Bajan cooking (macaroni pie), and I'm working pretty hard, but it's still better than being offshore.

I've never driven on the left side of the road before, in England I've taken taxis, buses and subways, but I declined to drive a car when it was offered because riding on the left side of the road was scary enough. Here in Barbados, I really have no choice, if I'm going to make it to work I have to drive, and I did so for the first time on Monday. Scared shitless at first, narrow roads with high cane on both sides. When cars approach in the other direction, it is difficult to judge; should I go into the cane or keep going. The wap wap wap of the cane hitting the passenger mirror told me I'm too close to the edge. Pedestrians are everywhere, and the dark skin/dark clothes of the locals fade to invisibility when the sun goes down. My wife was shouting "humano!" when my headlights would light upon someone, and we'd swerve around them. I was glad we made it make to the hotel without dying or killing anyone. Oh well, I should be used to this before I leav

I'll bet most of my readers (Hi Bob!) didn't even know that they drill oil wells in Barbados, but apparently they do, 'cause I'm down here at work blogging about 150' away from the beach at the Bean n Bagle internet cafe. Of course once I'm at work on the rig I could just as well be in west texas on an oil rig, thus proving that wherever you go, there you are. Of course the clients here are probably the nicest in the world, and it's unusual to be in such a nice place at work. Typically I'm in someplace like Oklahome in december, having to take a dump in a portalet when its 25 degrees outside....shivering like a dog passing a peach pit while passing a peach pit. Anyway, pictures soon, beautiful, sunset, water, Banks beer...yada yada.

Jerry Pournelle points to a Fred on Everything column that describes the descent of the US into anarchotyranny. Where easily enforceable rules are enforced (searching granny at the airport because she might be a terrorist), but real killers are set free or not pursued because of fear and political correctness. Here's Fred: “Yahoo News, Fri Apr 29: “CLOVIS, N.M. - A call about a possible weapon at a middle school prompted police to put armed officers on rooftops, close nearby streets and lock down the school. All over a giant burrito. Someone called authorities Thursday after seeing a boy carrying something long and wrapped into Marshall Junior High.” Yeah. The kid, one Michael Morrissey, had made a thirty-inch burrito for some sort of assigned project, presumably of preternatural stupidity and unrelated to the purposes of school. Anyway, jalapeños, tomatoes, things like that. Scary things. Armed officers on rooftops? Snipers? I imagine the

Since I'm bored and offshore, I've been reading the jokes on orsm.net , (not work safe) my favorite one is: This JellyBean walks into a bar and gets talking to a Smartie. After a few beers the Smartie says "Ere, do you fancy going to that new club in town?" JellyBean says "No mate, I'm a soft centre, I always end up getting my head kicked in." So Smartie says "Don't worry about it, I'm a bit of a hard case, I'll look after you." So JellyBean says "Fair enough, as long as you'll look after me." and off they went. After a few more beers in the club, three Vapour Drops walk in. As soon as he sees them, Smartie hides under a table, the Vapour Drops take one look at JellyBean and start kicking him, punching him and generally having a laugh. After a while they get bored and

I had to zip offshore yesterday at the last minute, changing my tranquil sunday at home to a mad dash to the dock, then a four hour crew boat ride to the rig. Not too bad of a ride, I only reached the nasty salivating feeling before we arrived at the rig, it sucks when the high point of the evening is not puking. I stayed out on the back deck most of the time since I won't get sick if I can see the horizon and not smell that boat smell of lysol/oldpuke/diesel fuel that inhabits the inside of the boat. It was a pretty clear night, and the only lights were the lights of rigs and production platform as we cruised past, so I had a clear view of the big dipper and the north star and I willed those two pointer stars to move faster around and speed up time. Apparently there is a meteor shower for this part of the month, because I saw one fall, but it didn't look real, more like a reflection off of metal into my eyes. The next meteorite was more emphatic, maybe even a fireball, b

Transterrestrial Musings is normally the place that Instapundit links to for space policy, he's also got some pretty biting satire posted . September 8, 1940 "Under Chamberlain," said one Labour backbencher, "we had peace for our time." "Now," he went on, "under this new brutal and dictatorial Tory rule, Churchill, along with his poodle Franklin "Delanodamngood" Roosevelt, has brought this wretched war home to Whitehall itself, and ordinary Londoners." The bombing began around four o'clock yesterday afternoon, with squadrons of German bombers blackening the skies over London, dropping many thousands of pounds of bombs on the city for two hours. A couple hours later, a second wave of bombings commenced, with the bombers' navigators guided by the fires from the first attack, with no cessation until early this morning. The fires still burn, and the total casualties have yet to be properly assessed. Biting in t

I just added Norm Geras' Normblog to the blogroll, he had an essay yesterday that was astoundingly good, that logically destroys anyone who says flying planes into buildings or bombing subways or iraqi children is the fault or moral responsibility of the US. ... It needs to be seen and said clear: there are, amongst us, apologists for what the killers do, and they make more difficult the long fight that is needed to defeat them. (To forestall any possible misunderstanding on this point: I do not say these people are not entitled to the views they express or to their expression of them. They are. Just as I am entitled to criticize their views for the wretched apologia they amount to.) ... The fact is that if causes and explanation are indeed a serious enterprise and not just a convenient partisan game, then it needs to be recognized that causality is one thing and moral responsibility another, and though the two are related, they aren't the same thing. Observe... Me, D

Lileks has a great Bleat today discussing his dog's life, and how unconciously happy his family is right now, but he has a dark undertone in his column, of how a terrorist attack such as Beslan could undo everything and make us wish for the boring past. [Here is a picture of our dog taking a break after working for several hours taking calls and answering email.] Heather Nicole wrote a review and interpretation of John Irving's 'World According to Garp' the other day that reminded me of one the things I remember most strongly from that book. Something that has the same feeling as Lilek's column today was Garp's undertoad, how when life seems most mundane and normal, there is a looming presence below that can snatch away life and happiness in an instant. So, enjoy your mundane life today, kiss your wife, and enjoy watching your dog run with unbound happiness towards the next bush in your route around the block, as if it is a new adventure not the same bush the

Mostly Cajun occasionally posts Boudreaux & Thibodeaux jokes, which are a strictly south louisiana type of humor, and they're really only funny if you tell the jokes with a cajun accent. Think Justin Wilson's accent, not Emeril Lagasse. It's amazing how many B&T jokes there are, I've sat around offshore and swapped jokes for hours while waiting on the rig to start drilling. Here's one of my favorites: Boudreaux is sittin' on his front porch one morning when Thibodeaux stops by in his boat and yells "hey Boudreaux, I got me som' dat duck tape and I'm goin' duck huntin', d'ya wanna go?" Boudreaux yells back "mais no, you ain't gonna catch no ducks wit no duck tape, you crazy." So Thibodeaux left, and stopped by later in the day with a boat full of ducks. The next day Thibodeaux stops by and yells, "Hey Boudreaux, I got me some Nutra-sweet, and I'm goin' nutria huntin', do ya wanna go?"

Over at It comes in Pints the author started a list of all the great things about England to try and show our support after the bombings last week, borrowing the lyrics of the Team America t heme song: Bangers! FUCK YEAH! Mash! FUCK YEAH! Goofy hats! FUCK YEAH! The Queen! FUCK YEAH! Boddingtons! FUCK YEAH! The MI-5! FUCK YEAH! Monty Python! FUCK YEAH! Blood pudding! ER...fuck yeah! Mad Cows! FUCK YEAH! Scotland! FUCK YEAH! The Royal Navy! FUCK YEAH! The Beatles! FUCK YEAH! By the time I got to the list, most of the english things I wanted to celebrate were already there. Here's what I added: john Smiths beer - Fuck Yeah!! the saying "fuck off" - Fuck yeah!! overpriced minicabs after 2 am - Fuck yeah!! Baked beans and eggs for breakfast - Fuck yeah!!