Linkstew

So here's what will hopefully be the final update on my sister, this time directly from her (though I added paragraph breaks to make it easier to read):

We are fine. [Saturday] morning we tried, once again, to cross the bridge on foot, and were told we could do so by an Army Sergent, but were, once again, turned away by the officers on the bridge. Beth and Jim were able to get a ride into Algiers where her father lives. There wasn't room for four, so I, very tearfully (for first time, real tears pouring rather than moist being held back) gave her Gwen.

We ended up at the Convention Center at about 8:30am. Neal and I got in what seemed like it should have been a line but mobbed the further along it went toward the military copters flying people out. Just as we were at the begining of the line, many buses rolled in and we were directed to them (this was at about noon).

We were told we were going to Baton Rouge, but it turned out we were in for more than a ten hour drive to Fort Smith, AR. I cried about being separated from Gwen for about an hour; regarding getting our lives back to gether, I've never been too worried because we're smart, willing to work, and have the best network of family and friends anyone could ask for.

We stopped once at about 10:30pm; I managed to get to the pay phone to call my mom collect to let her know what was going on, as nobody had been at the apartment we had been at since early that morning.

Our bus driver tried to let us off just outside of Baton Rouge since we had money and people who could come get us, but the State Trooper very assertively stopped that plan in its tracks. After we got to the Army base at Fort Smith (3:15am), we were told to stay on the buses so we could be processed. After about five more hours, the drivers ignored that and let us off to stretch our legs, have a smoke (Neal was very appreciative of that), &c.

Eventually, maybe at about 10am, food was made available, but the lines were too long; our driver had some MRE packs, so Neal and I split a Thai Chicken meal. ! I talked with a police officer on the base about our situation and capability of taking care of ourselves because we had funds and friends able to help us; he quietly said we would not be stopped from leaving the base. Neal and I verified it with an MP, then let our bus driver and a family we had been helping since early that morning know we were leaving.

Some MPs gave us a lift to the front gate, a lady from town was going to take us to the bus station, but first took us to her apartment so we could shower and have coffee (Neal got his first cup since Sunday morning at the base).

I called my mother, she got me in touch with her friend, Eva, who lives in Tulsa, OK. Barbara, the kind AR lady drove us most of the way, Eva and her husband picked us up, took us to Wal- Mart to buy some clothes (our suitcase is in Texas, Austin (with Karn's sister, I think). Eva talked with Beth, who is on her way to Dallas; Gwen is fine. We will try to get her to meet us half way so I can have my kitty back. I'm hoping our next stop will be Las Vegas to see Trish, Chris, and Siggy, and then to Bakersfield.

The latest update on my sister (Kristi) is that they weren't able to leave today. Here are some details from the last person to talk to her:

I just got off the phone with Kristi. They tried to leave on foot today and were turned back by the National Guard. They are not letting any pedestrians out, even though the NO mayor said they would.

Kristi wanted me to assure you that they have plenty of food (fruit, bagels, bread and other stuff) drinking water and other non-alcoholic beverages. They're in a security building with secured entrances, they have access to all the apartments in the building, (they broke in a stole the super's master keys, those clever kids!) and they feel safe where they are.

People are aware of where they are holed up and that they're trying to get out, including some of the National Guard and the Sheriff's department. It seems they are now on a waiting list. The land line they can be reached at is (504) xyz. They can receive some calls in, but can't call out from what I understand, and I'm sure they're hoping for calls telling them it's okay to evacuate.

Kristi seemed in good spirits and says they're safe as they can be right now, except there are 2 people there with them who have medication needs. She mentioned trying to get to Houstin, and then possibly taking a bus or train from there if someone can arrange for the tickets/money when it's time. Alternately, Chris and I will drive to Texas and pick them up. Either way, they won't be stuck if they can just out of NOLA.

More as I know more.

update: So apparently one of the cars wouldn't start and half the band was left behind, so that's when my sister and her husband (and maybe others? that was unclear...) tried to decide to walk out and the national guard turned them back.

After hanging out for a couple of days in New Orleans, my sister and her band are on their way out of there this morning. Here's the message I got this morning from whoever has been closest in touch with my sister:

Well they're off. There are 9 humans and 3 cats, in two cars. The bridge is open and they are heading to Beth's father's on the West Bank. He has running water, he has electricity. Once there, they'll figure out who is going where and get an estimate of how long that may take. Only unknown is how long it will take to get to the West Bank. Since the bridge is now open to all evacuees... could be awhile. (They should've left at first light to beat this rush!)  Anyway... I imagine we'll all get calls once they get to civilization.

So that's more or less that.

For those of you who asked about my sister's reaction to the hurricane, here's the correction to my "I assume she evacuated but I haven't heard back yet." This is what I know as of 10 pm last night:

Instead of evacuating, she was going to stay at the hotel she worked at, but apparently the hotel corp decided to shut it down completely and kicked everyone out, so they went home. She says this of their situation:

We decided to do a vertical move and are on the 4th floor of a cement apartment building; the apartment belongs to friends of ours and there are a couple other friends in the building who have also decided not to leave New Orleans either.

Said apartment is located here.

As far as I can tell, most of the flooding so far is in the north and east parts of the city (up by the lake) coming from a break in the levee apparently somewhere along that little canal directly NE of my sister's near where I-10 crosses it.

Google Earth even suggests that she's +3 feet of elevation, which is pretty good for new orleans.

But uh, she's also near the superdome, and one report I read suggested there were 3 feet of water outside of the superdome at that point.

I'll have an update once we hear from her again, but in the meantime, there's not really much else to say.

Oh, No: It's a Girl! - Do daughters cause divorce?

A fluff piece about what sounds like a neat study on family dynamics. Worth a quick read.

Damn generation gap. I made the same joke she did and didn't even realize it.

Mom: Also, how come you were up to early this morning? I was really surprised when you messaged me back so quick.

Me: Roofers.

Mom: Very funny. Caffeine I'd believe.

Me: I said roofers, not RUFFIES. You know, roofers, like the fuckers who come and bang hammers on the roof at god awful hours of the morning? Not the date rape drug.

My mom and I had a conversation about my post about The Monkees the other day. The first thing she brought up was that back in the day, bands had "fan magazines" so that folks could keep up on what the band was doing. And once I was reminded of that, I remembered that even TMBG did something like that up through the mid-90s.

But her more interesting remark was that "People want more information these days." This struck me as a profound observation, but I think there's still a question of causality. Is an increasing demand for information being met by an increasing supply? Or is more information being made available because people will consume it?

And that raises another question: Are people being given the information they want, or are they just consuming the information the information they're given? Is it demand driven or supply driven? That is, is the mainstream media covering what people actually want to know, or are they covering what will get ratings?

Unfortunately, for now all I have are the questions without any good answers. But I do have a funny quote from my mom: "I know more about Paul McCartney's life now than I did back then." Hopefully that distracted you.

In all that time that my sister was totally into The Monkees when I was a kid, I never really knew when The Monkees were from. I mean, I knew that the TV show wasn't current, because even my young eyes could tell that the shows were old, but it never even occurred to me to ask how old they were.

And for that matter, in all the years since, I never bothered to really find out much about them. But all of that changed tonight, when, while going through my CDs, I ended up reading the booklet in my copy of The Monkees Anthology.

And once I found out that the group started in 1966 and had a big 20th anniversary thing in 1986, a lot of things clicked for me all at once. The timing of my sister liking The Monkees made much more sense. All of the things my sister said about "Michael not being part of the group" (That's how I remember what she told me. It's probably not what she actually told me. Hell if I remember. I was six.) as though it were current news now makes sense, because michael not touring with the others for 20th anniversary was current news.

Of course, that news currency question was another question that I didn't ask then, but which only occurred to me years later. In fact, one evening while letting my mind wander about the Internet and the impact it's had on how quickly information is disseminated these days (and in particular, I was thinking about news about the music business and how easy it is for me to check up on TMBG at any given moment), I got to wondering how my sister got current information about her favorite bands when she was a kid. And my mom before her, for that matter. I jokingly wondered to myself (not knowing then about The Monkees' 20th anniversary shindig) if my sister had been reading my mom's magazines from when she had been a teenager and passing the content off to the unsuspecting six year old as news.

(And now that I've typed that, I somewhat sheepishly realize that my sister had early MTV to feed her news, while my mom before that had the radio. For some reason neither of those options really occurred to me in my thinking about the internet that night, and I instead only thought about the internet of today versus magazines back then. Probably because they're both text based mediums with a rich dose of color for good measure. Meh, I stand by the joke as written.)

So apparently my mom got her own camera, which means that she sent me a lot of new pictures of her dog. If you're so inclined, check out these pictures of the cute little shit.

Anyway, these pictures actually reminded me that I really need to get my dad set up with iPhoto, since he's still doing all of his organization by hand.

And on the subject of iPhoto, I found this Better Html Export iPhoto plugin the other day, and because of it I found a feature of iPhoto I'd never noticed before.

The main reason I haven't played much with iPhoto is because as far as I could tell, its HTML capabilities only interfaced with mac.com (via the Share/Homepage button). I never noticed the option under Share/Export for Export Web Page to export an album to be uploaded wherever.

And with Better Html Export, I'm not considering switching from my current train wreck of a photo album to an iPhoto based album. There'd be more manual work involved on my part, but at the same time, I'd get clean URLs and more customization options for my albums. Of course, it's nothing I'm going to worry about right now, or even until I start taking more pictures again. I haven't been taking very many pictures just because my damn camera is so huge that it's just impossible to carry around regularly. I want a smaller camera.

Yes, I'm really stretching to find things to pre-blog about at this point. I'm sure I'm enjoying Canada, if it makes you feel any better. ;-)

And oh yeah, it was also my dad's Birthday today! Of course, I called him earlier this evening (well, I was calling him all day, but he had left his phone at home this morning), but I thought I'd say Happy Birthday here, too. Happy Birthday dad!

Ah well, I should have quoted this sooner, but better late than never:

"How did you find out there was no santa claus?" my mom asked me.

"Um, dunno..." I said as I trailed off in thought.

"He looked it up on the web," my Uncle Ron interjected.

Well, I had these grand plans for the weekend, and I had some successes and some failures. First the games, then dad's computer:

• Rogue Leader was finished and done on Thursday Night.
• Luigi's Mansion was started Saturday night, and was finished and done by Sunday Morning (5 am ish).
• I never actually took Metal Gear Solid out of its case.
• I forgot Zelda Oracle of Seasons, so,
• Instead, I played 6 more missions of Advance Wars.
• And I've played 5 hours of Golden Sun so far.

As for my dad's computer? It's working pretty well. The first thing that didn't go according to plan was I didn't copy his previous system folder onto my iPod, because I (incorrectly) assumed there was nothing there he needed. Um, fonts? Bookmarks? Duh?

OS X 10.1.1 (with 9.2.1 on the assist) runs pretty dang well on his Yosemite 350 with 1 gig of RAM, and any speed he loses is more than made up for by the time he doesn't spend rebooting after a crash.

CorelDraw 10 seems much better behaved than CorelDraw 8, but it does have some issues with a few fonts that consistently make it crash. Work around? Delete the troublesome fonts. And even when it crashes, it's still a big win because it doesn't force a reboot.

What does cause problems is the internal modem, which seems to like to freeze up the interface to the point of zero-responsiveness, which forces a reboot. =( It's a shame, but he had problems dialing up in 8.6, too, so I'm hesitant to blame OS X.

His digital camera worked dandy via USB and OS X's image capture application, and his printer works fine from Classic and OS X.

He seemed happy enough with things, so I left him with OS X for now. Hopefully things work out, and hopefully I didn't overlook too much, and hopefully he's actually more productive now that things won't crash so often.