Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I had a broken Clié. Now, thanks to eBay and a large dose of luck, I have two broken ones. Let's see whether a digitizer transplant is as easy as the instructions I found make it look ... and whether the instructions for an S300 apply to an SJ30. Wish me luck. Fortunately I have a backup plan in case I botch this.

And yes, this means I did find a busted PDA (labelled "AS IS FOR PARTS") where the screen and digitizer were not what was broken!

"Being narrowmindedly a victim is no better than being narrowmindedly an oppressor, and the politics of separatism come no more beautifully from the victim's mouth than the oppressor's." -- mathilde, 2005-07-20

An extra quote today, because I wanted to put it out there while it's topical and don't feel like reordering my QotD queue again so soon after the last three times I tweaked it.

"It's not unfair to pronounce Katrina "our tsunami." The only reason she didn't kill thousands was that we had fair warning." -- zoethe, 2005-08-30

Anyhow, assorted randomness that's been dripping out of my brain:

Gas prices have, unsurprisingly, gotten scary. I'm looking at nearly seven dollars to attend band rehearsal for either group (more when HCB rehearsal is in Gaithersburg). Given my income, that adds up. But since all of my income that isn't utility-bill bailouts from Mom comes from performing, and I do need to rehearse (and a group needs to rehearse as a group), it's not like I can just casually say, "Oh, I can't afford to go to rehearsals." OTOH, it means that it doesn't take many weeks of rehearsals between gigs to cancel out a good chunk of the money I get from playing a gig.

I need guitar students. Ideally, ones who come to my house for their lessons. And I need to win the lottery so I can buy a car that gets 50+ miles per gallon. (I'd thought about carrying a guitar on a motorcycle before, but I'm pretty sure that won't be practical with a double bass.) Of course, since I don't play the lottery ...

I was reading wicked_wish's socioeconomic analysis of the folks who stayed in New Orleans, and the comments thereto, and realized that on purely economic gounds, I would have been one of the people who couldn't afford to evacuate. Without financial support from my mother, I wouldn't have a car, and in any case I wouldn't have the resources to stay anywhere else or to really prepare for evacuation. But what I do have is a lot of friends who are better off, and a non-geographically-based community of friendly acquaintences and helpful strangers who would help. So with a car and a tank of gas, I could get out of town and find a couch to crash on in some other city, where I'd quickly start feeling guilty for imposing, but I'd be alive. Without the car, things would be a lot less certain, but there'd still be a chance that a local friend with a car could squeeze me in (though I'd have to leave a lot more behind). If my only community were my traditional local community -- my neighbours -- if I didn't have kin able to lend support from a distance, if all of my friends were in the same economic class as myself, then I'd be as thoroughly screwed in the face of a huge disaster aimed at my city as the poor people stuck in New Orleans.

What does this say about me? It says that despite all the things I have to legitimately complain about (and, of course, the things I merely whine about), in very important respects I am extremely lucky.

Can Pastafarians who are computer programmers use their religion as an excuse to write "spaghetti code"? I hope not ...

One other Katrina-related thought: I've been hearing a lot about the lack of an evacuation plan that took any account of the thousands of folks without cars.

I know that when Pennsic hit 10,000 attendees, that triggered a legal requirement that they have an emergency evacuation plan prepared (which, if I recall my history correctly, they'd actually already prepared years before then). I don't know whether the Pennsic evacuation plan involves anything more than the vehicles folks bring with them -- and really, unless the disaster takes out the parking area before anyone thinks to issue an evacuation order, leaving things behind will free up space for folks who arrived via shuttle from the airport or returned rented vehicles they came in to U-Haul, so there an "everybody drive someplace else" plan might make sense ...

But it seems obvious to me that any permanent city a hundred or so times as large should have a better evacuation plan than that -- one that takes into account the poor, the disabled, hospital patients, tourists. Right?

Then again, I know absolutely nothing about Baltimore's emergency evacuation plan -- I assume the city has one, but I've never heard anything about it, and I have no idea whether it consists of anything more than directing traffic while everyone with a car drives themselves out. I do know that Washington has a plan, but the only parts of it I've heard about -- it doesn't get mentioned much -- have been autmobile traffic-management details.

Now I wonder: how common is it for major cities to have an emergency evacuation plan that's any better than the New Orleans one? Was NO any worse than everywhere else? Is any city better prepared?

I wonder whom at City Hall I'd have to ask for a copy of the evacuation plan, and whether they'd let me see it or declare it a security interest.