Author: Kent

It’s not broken

It’s CSS Naked Day.  (You probably don’t want to read that link, its all web design speak.)

CSS is the part of a website’s design that controls the style or presentation of a site.  Without CSS, a website is just content.

“Good” web design mandates that style be separate from content.  My design here doesn’t quite do that.  The header (the logo and navigation above) use HTML tables to control their layout.  They shouldn’t, but I’m lazy.

I’m working on another webdesign that will get rid of all the tables once and for all.  It will be a long time coming, though.

Monkey Hill

Colleen sent me this in an email via her sister:

http://www.inhabitat.com/entry_1351.php

Since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast last fall, well-meaning architects, designers and planners the world over have been scrambling to submit proposals for rebuilding New Orleans. Surprisingly, however, the discussion has mainly been concentrated around what to rebuild – sidestepping the deeper issues of how and why rebuild in a floodplain at all. It is common knowledge that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen, simply because of the physical geological situation of the area. The city sits below sea-level in an area of former wetlands, surrounded by water in every direction – sandwiched between a giant lake, the Mississippi river and the ocean. Anyone in their right mind will realize that the only acceptable proposals for rebuilding New Orleans are ones that propose a solution to deal with the almost certain likelihood of being flooded again in the near future.

Sometimes it takes an outsider with a fresh pair of eyes to realize the obvious. In this case, it was the syncronicity between a New Orleans schoolgirl named Courtney S. and Dutch architectural firm MVRDV which led to a great idea for rebuilding New Orleans: build hills! The idea is so simple, so sensible, so obvious, and yet strangely no-one had seriously proposed it. Until now…. Dutch architecture firm MVRDV explains:

It’s brilliant! A giant astroturf hill right on Baronne Street!

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain?

Warning: Excessive ranting follows.

I’ve been sick since before Mardi Gras. Since the last week in February. It got really bad when I got home on March 1 and I went to the doctor. I couldn’t see my regular doctor, so I saw some old guy in the same office instead.

At my first mention that I went home to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, he quit being friendly with me and gave me the “Well that’s what you get for going to participate in that sort of thing” treatment. I’ve gotten this a few times before, most notably my old boss at a contracting company which formerly employed me. This doctor prescribed some antibiotics and some cough medicine and sent me home. Not once did he ask if I was exposed to any mold, fungus, or who-knows-what-else while I was in New Orleans. Not once did he ask about my family, even after I told him my parents lived in New Orleans.

I chaulked up the shoddy service to this guy being an asshole and took the antibiotics.

The cough never went away.

So I went back to the doctor, a month later. This time I was able to get an appointment to see my regular doctor. Calling her my regular doctor is funny, since I have only seen her once before, one year ago. Since then I have seen two other doctors at the same office, but never the doctor listed on my insurance card as my primary care physician.

I walked in and went to the check-in desk. Here’s how the conversation went:

Me: Hi, I’m hear to see Dr. X.

Recptionist: Hi, I see you were hear at the beginning of the month to see Dr. Y.

Me: Yes, I haven’t gotten any better since then.

Receptionist: So what are you in for today?

Me: (louder) I just said I haven’t gotten any better since the last time I came in.

At this point, she got offended. I really didn’t care. She wasn’t listening to me anyway.

Continue reading On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain?

BellSouth Trying to Shutdown New Orleans’ WiFi

One of the few things the city government officials did right was setting up a free, public wireless Internet connection in the Quarter. Now, BellSouth wants to shut it down.

Wi-Fi Fight Brews in Big Easy

City CIO says he’d rather go to jail than shut down the city’s free wireless network.
March 22, 2006

Another hurricane season starts in June, but this year it’s a political storm that is threatening to shut down New Orleans’ jury-rigged Wi-Fi service.

After Katrina ravaged the Big Easy six months ago, Greg Meffert, the city’s chief information officer, got downtown businesses back online by opening the city’s wireless mesh network–originally deployed to link surveillance cameras–to anyone who needed it. For free.

“Now it is the lifeblood for so many businesses,” Mr. Meffert told Red Herring. With Internet service still down in more than half the city, he estimates more than 15,000 people use the city’s 512 kbps (kilobits per second) network.

…

Now telecommunication lobbyists are trying to shut down the network, and Mr. Meffert says it looks like the state legislature will agree. State law prohibits cities from providing more than a relatively sluggish 128-kbps network, but New Orleans offered its faster network as an emergency relief effort.

Wow, what a crappy thing to do.   I really hope the state legislature has enough compassion/foresight/balls to change that law.  What a way to further cripple businesses already struggling to get by.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

In honor of the secular celebration for the saint, the Archbishop of Atlanta has lifted the Lenten restriction of meat on Fridays.

Frequently the rectories and the Chancery receive calls concerning the issue of abstaining from meat on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, especially when it falls on a Friday of Lent. In virtue of canon 1245 of the Code of Canon Law, a priest who possesses diocesan faculties granted by the Diocesan Bishop may dispense in individual cases for a just reason from the observance of both fast and abstinence, or commute these obligations to some other pious activity. This year, however, Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory is granting the dispensation to all members of the diocese with the recommendation that Catholics should do some penance in place of their being allowed to eat meat on this Lenten Friday.

Is it just me, or is it odd to celebrate a saint’s feast day by skimping on a Catholic rite? He does say to some other penance in its place, though, to his credit. I don’t ever recall this happening in New Orleans though.

Hope everyone is wearing their green and will down at least one Guinness today.

st.patrick