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.

Sledding is Painful

Yesterday and the day before that I went sledding.  I couldn’t find an actual sled, so i bought these car-floor-mat-sized peices of vinyl.  It turns out that there is this bitching hill for sledding in park behind my house.  In two days of sledding, I have established the following list of pointers:

 1) Get an actual sled.  I know this is self-explanatory, but I cannot stress enough the feeling of security one gets, knowing that they are not going to spin around and end up going down a hill at 45mph while looking the other way.  This is especially true when there is a tree centered in the middle of your hill that will likely kill you if you hit it.  I assume the spinning while sledding phenomenon has been addressed and solved by those who make actual sleds. 

 2) Drink first.  This helps on 3 fronts:  Pain mangement, Cold Tolerance, and Courage.  

      Pain – Sledding hurts not only your butt, but your arm, if you accidentally slam it against a chain link fence. 

     Cold – Your butt gets so cold.  

     Courage – Thanks to my friend scotch, I was able to talk myself into going down headfirst. Which was stupid. 

 3)  Be aware that smartass indestructable kids build ramps on the hills that you cannot see, because you sled at 10pm.  When you hit those ramps you will go flying off your makeshift sled and proceed to slide down the rest of the hill on your back.  Which is fun, but leads to more butt pain, and butt coldness. 

4) Try to double-up on the “sled”.  This takes all the earlier issues, and makes them twice as bad, because you are going much faster, and your partner is you fiance, meaning one false move will kill you both and cancel your wedding.  Which means you don’t have to worry about planning the food for the wedding anymore.

Happy Sledding!

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

Happy News.

Beth’s and my cousin, Eileen, has been accepted at Loyola and Tulane (Loyola gave her a fantastic scholarship and we’re waiting to hear from Tulane).  Eileen and her mom, our Aunt Chris, are heading over to New Orleans from Ormond Beach, Florida at the end of March to see the city and tour the schools.  Congratulations to Eileen!!!