... and for law enforcement throughout the Gulf South:
See a looter, shoot on sight, shoot to kill.
This should be pretty simple.
Shoot to kill. Or, if you don't want that on your conscience, shoot to hurt, and let whatever's in the floodwaters do the rest.
Fuckwads.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Watch out, NOLA, and stay safe
Back on Thursday, I was leading system training a group of newsroom users up in Illinois. We were having a good time using the new editorial and page-building system to make fake pages, trying to wind "Katrina," "Waves" and "Sunshine State" into one headline. ... and don't it feel GOOD! (There, now the song is stuck in your head, too.)
Now, it doesn't seem so funny.
In 1998, I was a graphic artist at the Medium-Sized Newspaper in Florida. Hurricane Georges was bearing down on the Gulf Coast, and as the only member of the Sunday night staff, I was assigned to assemble a graphic on what would happen to New Orleans if the Big One ever came across Lake Pontchartrain. The scenario I drew was basically really, really awful; levees breached, pumps overwhelmed, devastating damage and loss of life in one of America's great cities. I called the newsroom of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans to verify a couple of facts I had found in my research. "Hang on," the very nice young editor on the other end of the phone said, "we just lost power again." I apologized for taking her away from her work on what was certainly a very busy evening. "That's OK," she said. "We can't really do anything anyway. We're just waiting."
Georges veered off and took down a couple of Motel 6s in Mississippi. New Orleans was spared that time.
I found myself walking around in the French Quarter a year later, taking a break as I drove from Florida to Texas to take the job at the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper. I went down to where the river starts to meet the Gulf, and looked at the system of levees and dikes and pumps that I had drawn, sight unseen except for photographs. And I thought, Yeah, if that storm had hit, that would have been really bad. I can't say I fell in love with the city; even on a Saturday afternoon, the smell of debauchery hung in the air. And that's not a pretty smell. I ran into a lot of people from the fringes of society as I walked around and looked at the great architecture and the restaurants and the nightclub with the sign that read, "Come in and see if YOU can guess what gender they are!" But as a party town, I could certainly see the appeal.
I hope all the doomsayers are wrong on this one, but it doesn't look very good for the City of New Orleans. My thoughts are especially with all those people at the Times-Picayune building with their families and sleeping bags and snack foods, wondering what hell they're about to witness and then have to write about and photograph. I won't be calling this time, but if I was, I'd be sending prayers and best wishes.
Now, it doesn't seem so funny.
In 1998, I was a graphic artist at the Medium-Sized Newspaper in Florida. Hurricane Georges was bearing down on the Gulf Coast, and as the only member of the Sunday night staff, I was assigned to assemble a graphic on what would happen to New Orleans if the Big One ever came across Lake Pontchartrain. The scenario I drew was basically really, really awful; levees breached, pumps overwhelmed, devastating damage and loss of life in one of America's great cities. I called the newsroom of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans to verify a couple of facts I had found in my research. "Hang on," the very nice young editor on the other end of the phone said, "we just lost power again." I apologized for taking her away from her work on what was certainly a very busy evening. "That's OK," she said. "We can't really do anything anyway. We're just waiting."
Georges veered off and took down a couple of Motel 6s in Mississippi. New Orleans was spared that time.
I found myself walking around in the French Quarter a year later, taking a break as I drove from Florida to Texas to take the job at the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper. I went down to where the river starts to meet the Gulf, and looked at the system of levees and dikes and pumps that I had drawn, sight unseen except for photographs. And I thought, Yeah, if that storm had hit, that would have been really bad. I can't say I fell in love with the city; even on a Saturday afternoon, the smell of debauchery hung in the air. And that's not a pretty smell. I ran into a lot of people from the fringes of society as I walked around and looked at the great architecture and the restaurants and the nightclub with the sign that read, "Come in and see if YOU can guess what gender they are!" But as a party town, I could certainly see the appeal.
I hope all the doomsayers are wrong on this one, but it doesn't look very good for the City of New Orleans. My thoughts are especially with all those people at the Times-Picayune building with their families and sleeping bags and snack foods, wondering what hell they're about to witness and then have to write about and photograph. I won't be calling this time, but if I was, I'd be sending prayers and best wishes.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Why bother?
I had a bad day at work today; the kind of bad day that makes you want to re-think your entire existence, your career, your way of life. Basically, I'm creating failure, and I'm surrounded by failure. Without going into specifics, I can guarantee we have no happy customers today, and no happy employees.
Bad days always end, however, and they often end at home. There I have three kids and wife who I love more than anything int he world and who, on most days, think I'm OK.
Bad days never really end, however, because at the end of a bad day, there's the wallowing and the what-if and the what-now, all the kinds of things you think at the end of a bad day.
We all talked about our days at the kitchen table. My entry: "My day was bad." The Young Daughter, 4, starts singing, "Bad day, bad day, go away, my day was BAD!" Flourish, big smile, mouth open wide enough to land a 757. That's her way of saying she cares.
I tucked the Young Daughter in tonight. I sighed deeply. The Young Daughter said, in reply, "What?" I said, "I had a long day."
She replied, "Yeah, I had a long day too in the hospital."
--------
Normally I'd mark that down as a perspective builder. But hers is one more situation about which I can do nothing. Meanwhile, I have a Vice President of Sales, an office fulll of co-workers and 12 customers who don't give a flying fuck that my kid has a tumor in her head, even if they knew, which they don't.
I have to deal with all that, too. The one and only thing I can do for the Young Daughter and the rest of the house is to generate income and maintain a vaild health insurance policy. Walking out in a huff is not going to be the answer, no matter what.
----
But I'm at my end. I just can't do anything to fix anything. Working harder isn't the answer; in 12 hours of work today, which started with a phone call to Europe at 5:30 a.m. my time, I accomplished about an hour's worth of actual accomplishment. This time last year, I was the new guy who didn't know what I was doing. This time this year, I have the word "Senior" in my title; I don't know a lot more about what I'm doing, but I'm expected to impart that knowledge to the three new people we just hired, boom-boom-boom, as well as manage the four projects I have to manage, as well as trying to write documentation.
Meanwhile, The Wife spent a good chunk of today on the phone with doctors. The Young Daughter has a team of specialists doing battle against the dread disease. They're all very good doctors, individually. Until today, they had been concentrating on their own little areas, in isolation. The Wife finally demanded today that ONE of them take charge of the situation. ONE of them has to know a little bit about everything. As I put it, "Somebody needs to be the project manager." I think she made some progress. She's taken charge of the situation the best way she knows how, which is to say, she has taken charge of the situation, grabbed the situation by the neck and is leading it in the right direction. She's not a neurologist. She's more important. She's a mom. My admiration for her keeps growing by the minute, even as I know she's nearing the end of her rope, too.
So what it comes down to is this: My problems mean really nothing. My bad day means really nothing. Which, at this very moment, just makes me ask the question above.
Bad days always end, however, and they often end at home. There I have three kids and wife who I love more than anything int he world and who, on most days, think I'm OK.
Bad days never really end, however, because at the end of a bad day, there's the wallowing and the what-if and the what-now, all the kinds of things you think at the end of a bad day.
We all talked about our days at the kitchen table. My entry: "My day was bad." The Young Daughter, 4, starts singing, "Bad day, bad day, go away, my day was BAD!" Flourish, big smile, mouth open wide enough to land a 757. That's her way of saying she cares.
I tucked the Young Daughter in tonight. I sighed deeply. The Young Daughter said, in reply, "What?" I said, "I had a long day."
She replied, "Yeah, I had a long day too in the hospital."
--------
Normally I'd mark that down as a perspective builder. But hers is one more situation about which I can do nothing. Meanwhile, I have a Vice President of Sales, an office fulll of co-workers and 12 customers who don't give a flying fuck that my kid has a tumor in her head, even if they knew, which they don't.
I have to deal with all that, too. The one and only thing I can do for the Young Daughter and the rest of the house is to generate income and maintain a vaild health insurance policy. Walking out in a huff is not going to be the answer, no matter what.
----
But I'm at my end. I just can't do anything to fix anything. Working harder isn't the answer; in 12 hours of work today, which started with a phone call to Europe at 5:30 a.m. my time, I accomplished about an hour's worth of actual accomplishment. This time last year, I was the new guy who didn't know what I was doing. This time this year, I have the word "Senior" in my title; I don't know a lot more about what I'm doing, but I'm expected to impart that knowledge to the three new people we just hired, boom-boom-boom, as well as manage the four projects I have to manage, as well as trying to write documentation.
Meanwhile, The Wife spent a good chunk of today on the phone with doctors. The Young Daughter has a team of specialists doing battle against the dread disease. They're all very good doctors, individually. Until today, they had been concentrating on their own little areas, in isolation. The Wife finally demanded today that ONE of them take charge of the situation. ONE of them has to know a little bit about everything. As I put it, "Somebody needs to be the project manager." I think she made some progress. She's taken charge of the situation the best way she knows how, which is to say, she has taken charge of the situation, grabbed the situation by the neck and is leading it in the right direction. She's not a neurologist. She's more important. She's a mom. My admiration for her keeps growing by the minute, even as I know she's nearing the end of her rope, too.
So what it comes down to is this: My problems mean really nothing. My bad day means really nothing. Which, at this very moment, just makes me ask the question above.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Barrier to the abyss
I'm back from Canada. I still have $50 Canadian in my pocket ($41 US, roughly) and a few more words in my French vocabulary. Montreal was wonderful; saw Andy Roddick get eliminated in the first round of a U.S. Open tuneup, heard lots of French, saw lots of fantastic architecture. I'll be back in mid-September. The chill of fall will likely already be in the air.
Returned Friday for an appointment with my daughter's pediatric neuro-oncologist. The fact that my daughter even has a pediatric neuro-oncologist is bad enough. We were making prepartions for the Young Daughter to begin chemotherapy to combat these tumors in her head. Made the appointment for the surgery, read the literature, began getting ourselves mentally prepared.
Then: Well, not yet. No growth in the tumor. No chemo yet.
This is good news. Sort of. The tumors are still there. She'll have to do it eventually, probably sooner rather than later. But not yet.
This is good. And bad. We wait.
Returned Friday for an appointment with my daughter's pediatric neuro-oncologist. The fact that my daughter even has a pediatric neuro-oncologist is bad enough. We were making prepartions for the Young Daughter to begin chemotherapy to combat these tumors in her head. Made the appointment for the surgery, read the literature, began getting ourselves mentally prepared.
Then: Well, not yet. No growth in the tumor. No chemo yet.
This is good news. Sort of. The tumors are still there. She'll have to do it eventually, probably sooner rather than later. But not yet.
This is good. And bad. We wait.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Thursday, August 04, 2005
First day of school
The Old Daughter came home from her first day of middle school today. She announced that she was no longer going by her first name and wanted to go by her middle name.
Her first name is pretty cool. Her middle name is a family name, not one that most 11-year-old girls would want to carry.
Why? "I wanted a change."
Well, you don't change stuff on the first day of middle school, not when you're riding a bus for the first time and not when we might need to find you by the name we know. She was taken aback by that, and reacted accordingly, and somewhat emotionally. Well, that was not the way we wanted to start middle school.
We compromised: Academically, she must be known by her first name, or if she wants to use all three of her names, fine. Her friends can call her anything she wants.
I wonder if we handled that the right way. Thoughts?
Her first name is pretty cool. Her middle name is a family name, not one that most 11-year-old girls would want to carry.
Why? "I wanted a change."
Well, you don't change stuff on the first day of middle school, not when you're riding a bus for the first time and not when we might need to find you by the name we know. She was taken aback by that, and reacted accordingly, and somewhat emotionally. Well, that was not the way we wanted to start middle school.
We compromised: Academically, she must be known by her first name, or if she wants to use all three of her names, fine. Her friends can call her anything she wants.
I wonder if we handled that the right way. Thoughts?
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
A simple "thank you" would have sufficed
By all accounts, the crew of Air France 538 deserves to be lauded for its quick response after Tuesday's crash in Toronto -- which happened less than an hour before I took off for Detroit. The crew emptied an Airbus A340 in 90 seconds. An Airbus A340 is a big damn plane. Two aisles, 2-4-2 seating in the main cabin. A total of 309 people survived the crash, breakup of the plane and subsequent explosion.
As usual, however, you can't please everyone, even if you save his or her life. From msnbc.com:
Ungrateful bitch. Shut up and be happy you remember how "unprepared" they seemed.
As usual, however, you can't please everyone, even if you save his or her life. From msnbc.com:
Gwen Dunlop, a Toronto resident who was on the flight returning from vacation in France, said when the plane first touched down the passengers believed they had landed safely and clapped with relief.
"Only seconds later, it started really moving and obviously it wasn't OK," said Dunlop. "At some point the wing was off. The oxygen masks never came down; the plane was filling up with smoke."
"One of the hostesses said, 'You can calm down, it?s OK,' and yet the plane was on fire and smoke was pouring in," Dunlop told The AP. "I don't like to criticize, but the staff did not seem helpful or prepared."
Ungrateful bitch. Shut up and be happy you remember how "unprepared" they seemed.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Summer of bleah
Yeah, geez, I lost TWO WHOLE MONTHS there. I'd like to be able to blame some sort of computer crash or sunspots or something, but the bottom line is, well ... I just haven't felt very inspired to post.
Two whole months. During those months, I've eaten lunch on Chicago's Magnificient Mile, stepped out onto the rocks in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine, turned 37, and taken my family to Washington, D.C., on vacation.
I became the proud owner of a 1989 Honda Pacific Coast 800, putting me back in the saddle after a 10-year hiatus.
That was the cool stuff.
I also worked my ass off, slept very little, ate too much and walked through the time basically uninspired.
Alas, that wasn't the worst.
The Young Daughter's dread disease has begun to manifest itself in ways that are a lot less benign than the little spots on her skin.
She's 4. She's grown a half-inch in the last 18 months. She's begun to have mild seizures. She walked around last weekend with an ambulatory EEG device, a mass of wires glued to her head to try to discern what's going on in there.
As The Wife put it: "You know, it doesn't get any better from here. It only gets worse."
That's probably the case. In the best-case scenario, we listen to medical professionals tell us to "check back in 6 months" while they wait to see if anything changes. We buy medicine, we schedule doctor appointments -- four last month alone -- and we wait.
So, that was our summer. School starts Thursday. Life continues to move forward, and it'll move forward at the pace at which it always has. The Young Daughter doesn't cope. She just lives, with a smile on her face and a 100-decibel sentence at her lips.
Her favorite song is Travis Tritt's "It's a Great Day to Be Alive." She discovered the repeat button on her little CD player and sets it at night to play, over and over and over, all night.
There's a message in there.
Two whole months. During those months, I've eaten lunch on Chicago's Magnificient Mile, stepped out onto the rocks in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine, turned 37, and taken my family to Washington, D.C., on vacation.
I became the proud owner of a 1989 Honda Pacific Coast 800, putting me back in the saddle after a 10-year hiatus.
That was the cool stuff.
I also worked my ass off, slept very little, ate too much and walked through the time basically uninspired.
Alas, that wasn't the worst.
The Young Daughter's dread disease has begun to manifest itself in ways that are a lot less benign than the little spots on her skin.
She's 4. She's grown a half-inch in the last 18 months. She's begun to have mild seizures. She walked around last weekend with an ambulatory EEG device, a mass of wires glued to her head to try to discern what's going on in there.
As The Wife put it: "You know, it doesn't get any better from here. It only gets worse."
That's probably the case. In the best-case scenario, we listen to medical professionals tell us to "check back in 6 months" while they wait to see if anything changes. We buy medicine, we schedule doctor appointments -- four last month alone -- and we wait.
So, that was our summer. School starts Thursday. Life continues to move forward, and it'll move forward at the pace at which it always has. The Young Daughter doesn't cope. She just lives, with a smile on her face and a 100-decibel sentence at her lips.
Her favorite song is Travis Tritt's "It's a Great Day to Be Alive." She discovered the repeat button on her little CD player and sets it at night to play, over and over and over, all night.
There's a message in there.