Evacuation

After a bit more packing and preparation this morning, Mom, Dad and I left New Orleans shortly after 7:30 this morning. The night before we intended to be on the road a couple hours earlier but that turned out not to be necessary for us. We took the I-10 to the contraflow lanes headed for Baton Rouge. The normal westbound lanes were directed to Hammond where traffic was very congested and at a standstill in places. I felt pretty fortunate being able to zoom past those poor people, but Dad was planning on riding out the storm in Baton Rouge which all forecasts say is a bad place to be.It was about 9:30 this morning when we arrived at Jeff’s ‘new’ apartment in Baton Rouge. Jeff, Andrew, Jeff’s roommate and her parents were already here. His apartment lacks furniture so most of the day was spend sitting on the floor watching TV and browsing the Internet. I also watched the movie Rope. Jeff and his roommate left with a friend to spend the night elsewhere.Over the course of the evening, the news looked less grim for New Orleans with the storm track trending westward a bit. In addition to the increased chance of returning to an intact house, staying here in Baton Rouge should be a bit safer.

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Aug312008

"Waiting on Gustav"

Unlike just about every other Saturday ever, I woke up at about 8 this morning… just because I was awake. Mom had me to mow the back lawn this morning, which seemed like rearranging the deck chair on the Titanic. I spend the rest of the morning and afternoon packing clothes and some other belongings and watching TV. I also helped get certain things off the ground which may or may not save some things depending on the possibility of mold intrusion.At one point this afternoon I went with Dad to a U-Haul storage facility to move some belongings out of the house. Dad’s space is on the third floor of what looks like a pretty sturdy building so the stuff kept there should be safer than what’s left at home.This evening we packed both cars almost completely so we will have only a minimum of work to do before we evacuate early tomorrow morning. I’m taking a lot of my portable electronics, some hard drives, five days of clothing, photographs, my scrapbook and a painting. I own very few things that are irreplaceable so packing things has not been any ordeal for me.

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Aug292008

Start Packing

Dad and I went to the office this morning but we had no doctor as we usually do on Friday’s due to the impending hurricane. I didn’t have much work to get done and we closed the office early at 2 PM. After getting home this afternoon I divided my time between gathering the material things that will be leaving the house and watching the news on TV. Aside from electronic things I’m taking with me, I have one box of stuff set to go to a “secure” third floor storage space and one box to go with us. Since we were a bit busy this afternoon we just ordered pizza for dinner. Jeff came to town today for no apparent reason and left with Andrew when he went back to Baton Rouge late this evening.

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Aug282008

Online Journalism

Before heading to work this afternoon I got a haircut. Work was no terribly eventful but I did get some reports out. This evening’s class was Online Journalism with Paul Greenberg. There was no lecture this evening as attendance was less than stellar. From what I did gather, I think I’m going to like this class as the professor is obviously intelligent and engaging.After class I went to the LBC for a short while and ran into an old co worker in the food court. Later this evening I watched the democrat convention in Denver and Obama’s big speech. My attention was also turned to tropical storm Gustav which in threatening to make landfall on the gulf coast early next week.

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Aug272008

Introduction to Finance

Dad and I got to work before 11 this morning. There was not a great deal going on at the office today, at least not as long as I was there. I left at 4:30 to catch a shuttle to Tulane this afternoon for my first class of the fall 2008 semester. This evening’s class was Introduction to Finance with Ronald Dyer. There were about 20 other students present in the Boggs building classroom. This evening, the professor went over the syllabus in painful detail and also talked about a running project students will complete over the course of the semester which involves tracking three stocks.Mr. Dyer also held the first regular lecture, more or less, covering the first chapter which covered several topics related to the history of finance. Overall I get the feeling this class will be tolerable, but not particularly interesting. The material does interest me however, so I am hoping for improvement.Class was dismissed at 7:30 and I waited a half hour in the LBC for Dad to pick me up. He was working late at the office.Later this evening, I watched an episode of Architecture School with Mom. The show features students from Tulane University here in New Orleans. Later watched some of the democrat convention. I caught most of Joe Biden’s speech but I had a headache and ended up going to sleep early.

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Aug262008

The End of Summer (Vacation)

Things have been reasonably quiet as summer vacation draws to a close. Work has been quite uneventful for my duties but we are still seeing plenty of patients. Although I “completed” my website last week, I have continued to work on it. Only this past weekend did I finally come up with a satisfactory color scheme.My brother Jeff was in town this weekend. He flew in from Chicago where he spent the summer as an intern with a construction firm. For reasons I cannot fathom, he is transferring from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor to LSU. He was here to pack and move to an apartment he’ll be living at in Baton Rouge. Mom and Dad went up there with him on Sunday so the house was rather quiet.On Monday, I was at home answering the work phone rather than at the office. Dad bought Jeff a vehicle today and had to go get it taken care of. He bought Jeff a ’97 Mitsubishi Montero. He got a great deal on it and the SUV runs well. The main drawback is that it’s one owner, a relative, is a smoker and the car smells and has stains all over the place.I did go to the office on Tuesday. On the way to work Dad and I stopped at Office Depot to pick up a financial calculator, an HP 12c Platinum, which I will likely make good use of in an upcoming introductory finance course I’m taking in the fall semester. I spent some time at work today learning about how it works as I’ve never used such a calculator before.

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Aug172008

V8

Another ten days gone by since the last entry. I’ve spent enough time in front of the computer but most of it was devoted to creating my next website. I’ve already commented on it in the site news. The gist of my remarks was that the new website is more practical and simple as far as the code goes, but the appearance still leaves a lot of be desired. As the site Is simpler in structure, it was not especially difficult to make or to make the gallery template.Other than the website, not a great deal has been going on lately. This past weekend, my parents took a weekend vacation in Florida so I had the house to myself. That Sunday evening, Patrick and David came by the house to watch some movies on the plasma TV.I haven’t had a great deal to do at work lately, although I did meet the doctor Dad hired recently. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be working out so well. One day this week, Tuesday I think, Dad and I stopped at the AT&T store and Best Buy on the way home from work. Dad had to replace his phone that took water damage during his vacation. He replaced the RAZR with a BlackBerry Pearl 8120. Earlier that day, I tried his SIM card in my phone that somehow prevented it from booting again. The warrantee expired on my phone two weeks ago but luckily, I was able to reflash my phone and get it working again. Best Buy had a Sony TZ series subnotebook for sale which he bought. I believe it was my first time seeing one of these in person, it’s a beautiful machine.

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Aug072008

A Week or Two

Although I’ve been neglecting the log for the last two weeks, my website has been very much on the brain of late. Last week I completed another significant update to the VAIO wallpaper page. Over the past five days, I’ve been working on the next version of Mr. B’s Domain. It will be the first redesign of my personal website in five years. I didn’t do it sooner in large part because I didn’t have any better ideas. Although the new site probably won’t be visually superior, there are some other goals I have in mind. It will be bigger to accommodate larger monitors and I’ll be moving from XHTML 1.0 Transitional to Strict. I will also be removing some old stuff and making some small additions.Work over the last few weeks has not been exciting, with a new water cooler at the mid city office being one of the highlights. Dad did hire an additional doctor this week but I haven’t met him yet. Last week, I think, I went out with Andrey, Patrick and David. We went to the Hookah Cafe for a while and later walked to the Blue Nile nearby to hear Vivaz!, a local Latin band that I’ve spoken highly of in this log before. After leaving there to make the Rally’s run, we got pulled over after some right-of-way confusion but nothing came of it. I got a cab home that night from Andrey’s house.Other than that, there just hasn’t been much of circumstance going on. Things are especially quiet at home as my brother Andrew is out of town visiting relatives in Atlanta.

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August 2008

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