Jefflog

Frustration, sadness, and despair is what I’m feeling today.

Initial reports from New Orleans implied that the damage from Katrina could have been worse, it’s clear they were wrong. From looking at the aftermath photos, this was The Big One. Reports of 80% of the city flooded, with many places 8 or more feet underwater, and with another levee broken, it could get up to 15 feet deep. The governor is telling everyone to leave. The city is going, and it may soon be gone.

This is too much for me to comprehend. Six years of my life in New Orleans, and many places I frequented may now be gone forever. The only positive spin I can think of is that most people I knew and loved down there left a long time ago.

I think 9/11 impacted many Americans because it happened so quickly while everyone was watching, and that it was carried out by terrorists. This scene is unfolding over a matter of days, and while the human casualties may not be as severe, the human tragedy is just as bad, if not worse. (Humourous aside: I wonder is Pres. Bush is now going to call for a “War on Weather”?) Meanwhile, most of the country only seems to be paying attention with one eye; the devastation only merits a second place mention on the local newspaper’s front page. Granted, I’m paying more attention because I’ve got a personal connection to the place, but I still don’t understand why the rest of the country doesn’t seem to care.

Is it a racial thing? Most of the people wading through the water are black; the white residents were able to evacuate safely. The black residents had little to begin with (Black per capita: $11,332, according to 2000 census), and now they’ve got nothing. I think that’s why images of looters (or “finders”, depending on the color of your skin) don’t bother me much. The things they’re taking are going to be gone in a couple of days anyway.

I stay away from my computer for one weekend, and get hit with the news that a major hurricaine is tearing New Orleans to shreds. A levee has already broken and flooded the 9th Ward, which is the poorest part of town. My heart goes out to the citizens of New Orleans this morning.

The other night, we tried a new variety of Hamburger Helper labeled Cheesy Jambalaya. I was not impressed. Here’s how I would describe it:

Take your standard, delicious, homemade jambalaya. Replace the rice with corkscrew pasta, and the andouille sausage and crawfish with hamburger. Then take out the tomatoes, onions, bell pepper, and cayenne pepper, and add cheese.

Our daughter turned 1 today. It’s been so exciting leading up to this “milestone”. We celebrated by getting her a birthday cake and letting her eat it her own way. We also taught her how to respond when asked the question “How old are you?” (Answer: hold up your finger.) She understands a lot, but alas can only communicate with the words “Da da” and loud shouting.

Maggie can be very loud. Lately, when she wants something, she’ll yell and point several times and it’s very funny. It sounds exactly like a monkey (”Aaah!Aaah!Aaah!AAAH!”). I’ll see if I can’t get some video up over the next couple of days.

My dentist has the hairest nose of anybody I know. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue to me, but he’s my dentist, so of course most of the time I see him I’m laying down on the dentist’s chair and staring straight up his bushy nose. It’s awful!

$50 laptop sale in Richmond turns into stampede.

I don’t know why the county decided to sell them for $50 apiece. Seems they could have gotten a lot more by selling them on eBay.

Speaking of eBay, I bet we’ll see a lot of iBooks being posted from Virginia soon. Lots of supply makes for a great buyers market. I’m thinking about trolling the auctions and seeing if I can’t pick up an iBook for dirt cheap myself.

As I came across an old probability textbook of mine, I was reminded of one particular example from that book that was, to say the least, jolting:

Customers arrive at times of a Poisson process with rate 1. If the server is occupied they leave. (Think of a public telephone or prostitute.)

Boy, that paints a vivid image, doesn’t it?

And here’s the part that really gets me: if he had stopped at “public telephone”, we’d all get the picture. Public telephone explains the situation very well. Then he adds the part about prostitutes, and we forget all about the public telephone example.

New screenshot of Windows Vista. It’s a joke, laugh.

Speaking of Vista, why is Microsoft so schizophrenic when it comes to naming their operating systems? Consider the history of releases.

They start out with the standard version numbering scheme for their “consumer-level” product:

• Windows 1.0
• Windows 2.0
• Windows 3.0
• Windows 3.1

I guess this was either too boring or didn’t indicate to users how old their version was (so they know it’s time to upgrade), so they started naming them by the year:

• Windows 95
• Windows 98

Around the same time, they also release Windows NT (”New Technology”), meant for business and servers. Even though it looks similar to Windows 95, under the hood it’s really quite different. NT also comes with a version number after it, so we’ve got

• Windows NT 3.1
• Windows NT 3.5
• Windows NT 4.0

So far, so good. Next is where things start going crazy.

The next version of Windows NT loses the “NT”, gets the year of release instead of a version number, and is called

• Windows 2000

Meanwhile, the next release of the Windows 95/98 line moves to using a two-letter acronym:

• Windows ME (”Media Edition”)

Meanwhile, the embedded version for handheld computers and the like also gets a two-letter moniker:

• Windows CE (”Consumer Electronics”, or “Compact Edition”)

Now, the “NT” side has gotten sophisticated enough that Microsoft decides to drop the 95/98/ME line altogether and just start shipping a single line under the XP moniker, albeit under different flavors. The successor to Windows ME is

• Windows XP Home

while the successor to Windows 2000 is

• Windows XP Professional

There are also a number of other variants of the XP line, like the XP Tablet PC Edition, XP Starter Edition, XP N (formerly “Reduced Media Edition”), etc.

(Still with me?)

In 2003, Microsoft releases another upgrade to XP for servers. What do you think they called it? “Windows XP Server”? WRONG!

• Windows Server 2003

OK, so they’ve gone back to using the year? No wonder people are confused. Which is why I’m not too surprised that they’ve come up with yet another naming scheme of “Windows Vista” for their next release.

Here are a couple of future operating system names I can come up with:

• Windows Vista Home
• Windows Vista Professional
• Windows Vista Server 2007
• Windows Mango 2010H

I’ve been awfully homesick in the past couple of days. Not homesick in terms of wanting to live with my parents, or even where I grew up, but for Seattle and New Orleans, where I lived before moving to Indiana. I think it started with watching a documentary on Louis Armstrong, which made me remininscent of my days in New Orleans. Then I came across Seattle Unusual Homes, which made me long for the quirky, fun place that Seattle is.

Nevertheless, it’s quite foreseeable that I’ll be stuck here for a while. Forbes Magazine rates Seattle as the country’s most overpriced city, while Money Magazine rates my current hometown of Fishers as the 24th best place to live in the country. I take both ratings with a grain of salt, as the Forbes survey seemed to only take the cost of living and job opportunities into account, with nothing gained for entertainment options, beautiful scenery, and the overall general atmosphere. Meanwhile, Fishers has virtually no atmosphere, but does feature a very low crime rate and home prices that are dirt cheap. All in all, life here is pretty good, but I’d still rather be in Seattle.

Patience is the key, I think. I’m waiting for the day when the country’s housing market goes bust and I those Seattle home prices aren’t so expensive. In the meantime, maybe I just need to load up the family and take a road trip to New Orleans to fix my homesickness.

(For the record, I think New Orleans is a great place to visit and Seattle to be a great place to live. I also think it’s the opposite the other way around: New Orleans is a lousy place to live and Seattle doesn’t have much for the visitor.)

These days, Maggie is walking very confidently around the house. In the last six weeks or so, we’ve always required her to hold our hand while walking on the tile floors, as the floors are very hard and she would hurt herself quite badly if she were to fall, but now we feel comfortable enough to let go off on her own. Naturally, she loves the freedom of being able to get around without her parents.