New Orleans Douglas Brinkley: Reckless Abandonment.

I think New Orleans is a loss. I cannot imagine any levee system withstanding a Category 5 storm. In my opinion, Katrina was a much needed wakeup call to anyone living below sea level in the greater New Orleans area.

New Orleans is evidently close to Mr. Brinkley's heart, as it is to many New Orleans natives and people throughout the Deep South. However, safety should be of utmost concern. I don't think any dollar figure can produce a engineering feat that would protect the citizens of New Orleans from future catastrophic hurricanes.

Hard Drive Deal $120, Free Shipping - Western Digital 500 GB External Hard Drive

I-35W Bridge Collapse Michael Miller offers some interesting details. (via Garrett)

Vista SP1 Details Ed Bott has them. The beta version will be released soon. The real deal will come in early 2008 and the filesize is large. UPDATE: BetaNews has more.

Photo of the Day Via Flickr.


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Lauren Caitlin I would like to go on record as feeling sorry for Ms. Teen South Carolina. These pageants are beauty contests, plain and simple. Asking the contestants political/current events/geography/science questions is stupid. Enough already.

"The Device" All-In-One Beer-Making Machine - There is nothing, nothing - like the taste of fresh beer. This may bring us one step closer.

5 HDTVs with Great SD Picture If you already own an HDTV then this will not come as a big surprise. For those of you, like me, who are waiting for prices to drop, here is another added benefit of not buying expensive, infantile technology: Standard Definition television (the type you've been watching for decades) looks real crappy on many, if not most, HDTVs. This article goes into the reasons, and then reviews some new HDTVs that display "regular" SD television quite well.

Photo of the Day I don't post enough photos on my blog. I would like to change that. There are too many great photos at Flickr, Picasa and various blogs, not to post a few every now and then.

Via Flickr, and apropos of nothing, here are some chickens. "If that isn't nice, what is?"


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Tera-Disc Yes, ladies and gentlemen, new hype about a 1 TB disc. This would be enough storage for over 200 DVD-quality movies.

Google Phone Rumors I'm not sure if these Google Phone rumors are true. What's not to like? Linux-powered, GPS-riffic and cheap!

2008 Model I would have preferred to share this news with each of you, in person. This is impossible. I have had an opportunity to make many phone calls and send out quite a few personal emails.

Courtney and I are happy to announce that we are expecting our second child in March. We're very excited about it and we'd like to share the news with you. We're confident that Olivia will be a great 'big sister'. Stay tuned.

Hurricane Update This sounds encouraging: "Dean's path was a stroke of luck for Mexico: It made landfall in a sparsely populated coastline that had mostly been evacuated and skirted most of the major tourist resorts. It weakened within hours to a Category 2 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph."

History Channel Debunks 9/11 Fiction Tivo alert! Please tell all of the 9/11 Conspiracy Nutjobs that you know: The History Channel: 9/11 Conspiracies, Episode: Fact or Fiction

From the site, the program "Examines the various conspiracy theories espoused on the Internet, in articles and in public forums that attempt to explain the 9/11 attacks. It includes theories that the World Trade Center was brought down by a controlled demolition; that a missile, not a commercial airliner, hit the Pentagon; and that members of the U.S. government orchestrated the attacks in hopes of creating a war in the Middle East. Each conspiracy argument is countered by a variety of experts in the fields of engineering, intelligence and the military. The program also delves into the anatomy of such conspiracies and how they grow on the Internet."

Hurricane Dean
Last Update: Monday, August 20, 8:30 AM CDT

According to the current predictions, MS will not be affected by Hurricane Dean. I still think it's too early to call Texas and Louisiana safe.

More Info: National Hurricane Center

Projected Path: Computer Models

Yikes. This is a big storm, and nobody really knows exactly what it will do next week. I'm keeping a tank full of gas, just in case. If it takes Katrina's path, I'm heading to Memphis.



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Give Me Vinyl Let's face it, most MP3's sound like crap. This article provides a few more details.

Here is a nice quote, "But the music contained in these computer files represents less than 10 percent of the original music on the CDs. In its journey from CD to MP3 player, the music has been compressed by eliminating data that computer analysis deems redundant, squeezed down until it fits through the Internet pipeline. When even the full files on the CDs contain less than half the information stored to studio hard drives during recording, these compressed MP3s represent a minuscule fraction of the actual recording. For purists, it's the Dark Ages of recorded sound."

I would like to add that the quality of your speakes/headphones will affect what your ears actually hear. Cheap transducers will not accurately reproduce the recorded sound.

DRM Sucks (Again) You get your money back, but what a hassle!

Vista SP1 Analyzed Vista SP1 has been leaked, and APC Magazine offers an in-depth analysis of it.

This part of the review sounds promising: "First up, I can say that there is a very noticeable performance increase. It is obvious that since Microsoft released Vista to manufacturing, it has been optimising the code ever since. (I suspect this revelation will fuel the fires of the people who say Vista was released before it was ready for prime-time.) There’s far less hard drive thrashing and in general the system seems much smoother and more responsive."

Bring it on!

Dilbert Today's Dilbert comic strip made me laugh out loud. I'm sharing it with you. Happy Monday.

Baseball First topic, Barry Bonds. Go here to read what Ted Leitner has to say about Bonds. He doesn't want to be the broadcaster that has to call number 755 or number 756 for Bonds. Quite passionate on the subject, Ted says "this is a bastardization of history". Sounds about right, to me.

Next, how about those Yankees? After stinking it up all season, they are now pulling within a few games of Boston. Giddy-Up!

House Panel Approves Legal Shield for Bloggers ZDNet reports, "A congressional panel on Wednesday voted, against the Bush administration's wishes, to shield journalists including advertising-supported bloggers from having to reveal their confidential sources in many situations."

What percentage of the American public knows what a blog is? How many of them think blogs are synonymous with MySpace? It's amazing how blogs have gone from being (mostly) geeky little individual enterprises to being a rather common online offering of many companies and organizaitons.

e-Greeting Viruses/Trojans PC Tip: If you receive an e-greeting (e-card, etc) from ANYONE, please delete it. In recent weeks, these emails have become cesspools of viruses and trojans. If your friends really care, they can send a Hallmark card via snail mail. Wouldn't you just love to get a little snail mail love, every once in a while?