Just when I thought we were doing okay…

We go and trade Wayne Gandy (OT) for Byron Scott (SS) from the Falcons.
Gandy is pretty crappy.  So is Scott.  I don’t really remember him from any Falcons game.  But that’s not important.  What’s important is that now we have gotten rid of three guys on the offensive line this offseason.  Which seems to me that we are going to take D’Brickshaw Ferguson over a defensive player like AJ Hawk in the draft.

I’d love to see the Saints go back to the days where we put our faith in our defense, rather than our offense.

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!

Top 10 Things Brent Hopes to Fix in 2006

10) This paper shredder that I bought at Goodwill and only works in reverse. It seems like I should be able to fix it, but I have no patience. Failing that, I will nail all the furniture to the ceiling and start living upside down.

9) The fence that the faux-tornado blew over last Thursday. Me and my brother digging holes. Sweaty. Shirts Off. Flab Everywhere.

8) My relationship with Yancey Clayton. I want to stay with him this summer in Chicago. Yancey…call me.

7) My slip n’ slide. We really screwed it up last year, because grown ups aren’t meant to slip or slide. Enhancements will include making it longer and softer, and possible splash poll ending.

6) My bed. I have a huge divot in the middle. My fix will be to pile up the perfect amount bedding under my mattress. I currently have too much bedding, which means my divot has become a hump.

5) That hole my butt made in the wall at Peter’s old apartment

4) My face. I want to be pretty.

3) That “Deuce is Loose” t-shirt I tried to make Kent in 2003. I pulled it out the other day, and it currently reads “D uc i oose,” which is actaully a pretty good looking T-Shirt. But I still have the letters, and I’m going to make it happen. Then I’m going to start making “NASA=Bad” t-shirts.

2) Our porch swing. It’s only for looking at right now. My brother and I broke it last year, which was humiliating. Especially since we not only pulled it out of the ceiling, but also broke the swing with our butts. All while falling on our asses. This year things will be different.

1) A key lime pie from scratch

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?

Off to experience the magic soon….

In 2 week’s time, we shall be at Disneyland Paris!

I’ll say hello to Mickey for you all.

Haven’t stayed in France for quite a few years – travelled through it a lot, but not stayed in about 15 years I guess. Going to have to dust off my very bad French accent. Still, my limited knowledge of French nouns is enough to impress Chloe 🙂

Six year olds are great. They think their Dad is the cleverest person in the world and can’t be dissuaded from this. I’m enjoying it while it lasts.

We had an interesting Sunday night last weekend.

Internet connection has been up and (mostly) down all week. So, I finally get to relate this on Friday!

We had a huge heath fire down here on Sunday, and if it wasn’t for the skill of the firemen and a bit of luck with the wind, a lot of houses (possibly including ours) would have been toast. We were lucky in our cul-de-sac in the end – the fire was brought under control about 15 metres (15 or so yards) from the fence at the end of the road, which is I guess about 100 feet from our house. The next road down from us got it worse – their fences were scorched; the fire reached the edge of their properties.

100 or so people evacuated – we were probably the last ones left in our little cul-de-sac. Had the car loaded up with kids, cat, fish and insurance documents and were ready to go when the fire was brought under control.

Pictures here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4823640.stm

Buzz, if you remember back to when you were here, if you look at from the front of our house to the end of the road, that’s where I’m talking about. It’s all burnt out over that fence now. Picture 5 on that series above was taken from basically outside our house, it shows what I mean. In fact if you’re eagle-eyed, you can see Sarah in the picture. That was taken after the firemen had started to get it under control – half an hour before that, the flames were huge and sweeping down that hill towards us.

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.