I’m in New Orleans. At this point, not a whole lot is going on. Will and I went upstairs to the roof and everything was really calm.  We had a band of weather come through around 7pm that brought a lot of rain and wind.  It lasted for only 10 minutes, but we lost power briefly twice.  Definitely a harbinger for tomorrow.  It’ll be nice if we get a full night’s sleep before things get crazy.

I’m not worried about the storm.  I’m not looking forward to losing power, but at least Entergy is camped out at the zoo parking lot.  Perhaps that will give us some priority.  Anyway, good luck to everyone!

The city is obsessed with Gustav.  Or at least the people I’m around.  My office wants me to work from home to ‘practice’.  Being me, I’m not.  This isn’t to say that I’m not paying attention to the Gulf.  I know what’s happening, but it’s too early.  I’m just not concerned yet.  I think Friday afternoon is the first time that we’ll actually know something.  Perhaps I’m just still happy from last night.

I know that I’m kind of grouchy right now.  All I can say is that the last few weeks have taken their toll on me.  I released the big project that I’ve been working on for the last 18 months.  That felt good, especially since it didn’t have any real bugs in it.  Instead of having some much needed downtime, I was thrown immediately into a new project that also had to be released this week.

Let’s just say that I really hate Siggraph.  Every year we have some kind of new feature that needs to be ready for it which practically kills dev.  Then marketing and business development get to go play at the convention and parties, showing off our work.

Anyway, I’m hoping to really separate myself from work and New Orleans this weekend. I know that I haven’t even been that nice to my parents this week.  My weekend might be hectic, but in such a different way.  I’m excited!

My friend made this video. Hopefully it shows what good things our city is currently accomplishing. Everyone should do what they can to make sure that this doesn’t fail. This doesn’t just affect New Orleans, as the city is becoming one of the most important case studies for charter schools.

I’m starting to think that I’m getting dumb at math.  Sometimes I just don’t compute in my head like I used to.  I completely forgot how subtraction fits into the order of operations in a piece of code the other day.  I even questioned how much money I should receive back at the convenience store (only to stupidly look at it again and realize that I can’t count).

This is perhaps why I welcomed a math test so openly.  It was at Rendezvous on Friday when a large group of people, celebrating a friends birthday, handed out an elementary school multiplication quiz for us all to take.  It seems that the birthday belonged to a math teacher.  It was odd and random, but also a lot of fun.

It’s been a lot of fun running at the fly for the past few months. Every time I ran past the river, the level was a little higher than the last time. I don’t remember it ever being as high as it is now, which is probably why the Corps has decided to open the spillway tomorrow. Unfortunately, this will mess up the lake’s algae levels, but I guess it’s important that the river doesn’t overflow, the levees don’t break, and the port doesn’t close.

This week is pretty exciting. It’s not every day that I put myself into massive debt.

Amazing, right after my “I might quit” rant, I have something that I do want to immediately share.  I went to the lower 9th ward yesterday to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity‘s musicians village. I went there with my Newcomb Nursery School teacher, Pat Boothby.  It was really rewarding for me.  I know that it really helps my city just by living here, but this was truly giving back to the city. I even learned a lot about homebuilding – mainly in installing and finishing doors.  It also felt good to use saws and nail guns, which I haven’t used since we lost the Mississippi house.  It would be a lot of fun to go back again with my brothers, friends, or coworkers.  So, if you want to go with me, I’ll probably say yes.

Why do I have a blog?  Why do I have a website?  I have lots of things to say and there are so many things happening to me, yet I don’t ever feel that I can write them here.  It’s sad because some things just don’t get told because I know certain people will be angry if I don’t tell them directly.  I shouldn’t care — and actually I don’t — but I also don’t like it when people are angry.  More than ever, my website is rather useless.  I’m putting things on it to have stuff there instead of because I want it there.  Maybe it’s time for a break.

The last few weeks have been furious.  Not that things are going slow, especially today.  I feel like I’ve experienced every emotion.  While I’ve done so much, it’s the things that I’m looking forward to in the next couple of days that has me most excited, nervous, happy, angry, etc.  I know that I’ll say more in the future, and I don’t even think that anyone will read this before I do… but I just wanted to say something.  Because deep down, I guess I’m really excited.