We hear quite about about how, over two years on, New Orleans is still a mess, with much of the city being left to rot . Some call it racism, as these areas are mostly black. But I’m not so sure about that. For example, take a look at this:

Close to 10,000 families lost their homes. Irrespective of the family size, each family was given a one-room shelter measuring about 150 to 200 sq feet. These shelters are made up of tin sheets.  They get monthly rations, but no cash handouts. They complain of official apathy. They were promised they would only be homeless for a maximum of 18 months [yet are still living in temporary shelters].

Sounds pretty crappy, right? This thing is, this quote is in reference to the 2004 tsunami victims, and was written today.

As New Orleans has re-opened their French Quarter, the Andaman and Nicobar islands have rebuilt their military bases. But the poor farmers? They are still living in temporary tin shacks, and face the fact that half of the land mass of the islands was wiped off the face of the earth.

Now I realize that some things take time, but year after year these places make little progress. Heck, what was your life like three years ago compared to now? Probably quite different, no matter how “boring” you are. If there isn’t a theory on this already, I’ll create it and call it Ron’s Rule: The amount of effective change possible is inversely proportional to the number of people involved. The more people involved, the less likely you’ll see change.

Last evening and today have been especially windy in Chicago. Lovely 19 degree temperatures with 30 MPH winds. The wind kept us awake for most of last night–it sounded like a tornado was coming through. Probably the worst winds I’ve seen in a long time.

Just came back from a nice dinner from Anna’s house, which included some nice warming Puerto Rican food. Now we’re home and warming up after our “delightful” walk from the car to the apartment. Just a block or so and we’re frozen to the bone. Another reminder of why we’re not in this town anymore.

Update: In the “only in Chicago” category. We were watching the channel 7 news last night when a minivan decided to drive into their (street level) studio. There was a big on-camera crash and the poor anchor guy was startled and said “what the fuck?” (though they were able to mute him, through the delay). The weather man looked like he crapped his pants (rightly so, since he sits close to that window).

Evelyn and I were very lucky on our timing in getting to Chicago. Earlier in the week there was the big ice storm in the midwest (mainly Oklahoma and Missouri, which we don’t go through [much]), and then a good snow storm in Chicago the day after we arrived. Lucky for us, we slipped in during the one good day for travel. Though, it was quite a “treat” to deal with 6-8 inches of snow.

Last Sunday we were at Arianna’s baptism, which was very nice. All of the kids were well behaved, and it was a very nice service. (The minister was the same man who married Mike and Erika.) I’m a godfather now, which means I only wear expensive suits and grant people “favors”.

And what a wacky godfather I am: I’m the only Nelson child who is a confirmed Lutheran. Plus, I’m A-Okay as far as the Roman Catholic church is concerned (Evelyn and I were married in a Roman Catholic Church, and you must be a confirmed Christian to do that). And yet, I’m a Secular Humanist at heart (of the non asshole variety: I’m not big on dismissing others beliefs).

After the baptism, we headed over for a buffet breakfast and lunch, which was quite nice. My nephew Glenn was a little annoyed at first, but after being given a window seat, he amused himself quite nicely. It’s amazing to see how much he as changed from the last time we saw him (August). He has really turned into a little boy, and he’s not at all afraid of Evelyn or I, even though he infrequently sees us.

Over the last week, I went into work two days, which was just enough. No matter what the office, I’d rather be working at home. On my “days off” I was able to spend time with Arianna. She’s a wonderful little girl, who really loves grandma and grandpa. (My parents babysit her during the week, now that Erika has returned to work.) She really knows how to amuse herself and loves rattles (including banging herself with them).

This past Friday (the 21st) we headed to the northside to visit with Evelyn’s sister and her mom. Her mom came up for Christmas from Puerto Rico; this is the first time we’ve seen her in a year and a half. We’ll be up here through Christmas Eve, visiting friends and family in the area. Then it’s back to the southside for a while, then north again, and finally south before we head back to Austin.

It should be a nice, quiet, Christmas. This is nice, as 2008 seems to be turning into a very busy year for Evelyn and I. Evelyn will be really digging into her electronics business, and I’ll be doing a bunch of consulting. Who knows what this next year will bring.

We got into Chicago safe-and-sound late last night. It was pretty much a usual trip, except that we got stuck in Texarkana for an hour. (When the trucks put on their parking brakes you know you’re in trouble.) They were putting in a new bridge span (at noon on a Friday, no less) and had to shut down east-bound traffic until they hoisted the parts into position. This screwed up our schedule a bit–left at 6 AM and got in Chicago at 1:15 AM.

So we have a day to relax, and probably put up our parents Christmas tree. Tomorrow is Arianna’s baptism, so it will likely be a busy day.

Not exactly breaking news here, but let me add my name to the list of people who HATE Windows Vista. My new Lenovo X61 laptop came with it (no other choice) and I can safely say it sucks ass. My beast of a HP laptop, now almost two years old, runs MUCH faster on XP than this new notebook. And the X61 is a dual core 2 GHz proc! It boots slow. Comes out of sleep mode awful-slow. Constantly asks me to confirm this and confirm that. Honestly, I just want my god-damn laptop to work. I don’t give a rats ass about fancy UI graphics. I just want to get things done! Wait, wait, wait. I feel like I’m using a 33 MHz Windows 3.1 machine. Utterly horrible.

So bye-bye Vista, hello XP. I’d rather deal with the endless search for drivers than deal with Vista and it’s 3 start bar icons telling me that I’m connected to a WAP. Ugh!

(I can’t go pure-Linux, because a lot of my work in Windows based (SQL Server, for example). However, I do have a bootable USB flash drive, for those moments when I want to do *nix.)

For some reason, my anti-spam software (Bad Behavior) suddenly started acting wonky the other day and blocked me from getting into the admin side of the site. Pretty darn annoying. Anyhow, I’ve gone with a new method called reCAPTCHA which prompts you to enter in two distorted words. This one is a little different from ones you’ve used in the past, since your work is actually doing something useful:

reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.

 E-mail me if you have any problems adding comments. Thanks.

I also whacked the Google Calendar, since it wasn’t rendering properly (on any browsers) and was slowing down the site. I’ll probably create a dedicated Calendar page for those who are interesting in keeping up with us. Hopefully 2008 will be less travel-filled.

Update: I created a dedicated page for the Calendar and put a link to the right. It renders a lot better in a larger format.

Evelyn has posted some of her photos on her blog. I’ll be uploading a whole bunch of them (she took over 5000) and uploading them in a bit. (I’ve been sick, and sick again, this time with the flu, so posting has been slow.)

On a different note, WTF is wrong with USPS these days? They used to be better, and now they have been awful (or maybe it’s just Austin). So far, they have been losing packages, taking forever to deliver, etc.

What’s very odd is that a package shipped on 11/19 is STILL not here, while a package that Evelyn’s mom sent on TUESDAY from PR arrived here TODAY (Thursday). Crazy.

For some reason Evelyn didn’t want me to post this photo. Looks like she just clubbed that seal!

(No seals were clubbed for the making of this photo. It’s just pure coincidence that she has a stick in her hand.)

There is a site that offers free plans for making your own kids cardboard furniture. Sounds like a pretty neat idea; a nice parent-child project that results in a useful piece of furniture. Plus, the kids can color / paint / destroy it and it doesn’t really matter. Put some of these inside some appliance shipping boxes and you have a kick-ass throw-away fort with furniture.

The guides can be downloaded here: FoldSchool

Here’s an example of why I no longer live in Chicago:

On Sunday I was in shorts and considered turning on the A/C. Sure, summer is hot here, but not any worse than the heat & humidity of a Chicago summer. I’ll take that if it means I have to deal with a 70 degree December 4th.

Evelyn and Debbie are safe and sound in Austin. Their flight was on-time (11:40 AM) and they were cleared customs and out at 12:30. Not bad at all. They had a lot of fun, and took thousands of photos, many of which you’ll soon be seeing.