Thursday, September 18, 2003

Modernation

Is it possible to see how both Thomas Friedman and Gore Vidal are right?

I believe so.

The Making of a Siege State, cont'd.

Why does this make me feel even less secure? Thanks to the Lemur for the link.

Clue: screw your customers, go to jail

Remember the e-commerce site that sued its customers? JY points to a story (in French, so he translates) that says "the court asked for 4 years of jail for the CEO (there were 1200 complaints from customers who had been robbed)." Also that the CEO wasn't in the audience. Ruling and final sentence are scheluled for November.

Blogger's Digest

Since I know some of ya'll (me, too often, included) don't read long digressive posts, you can skip all of the below and go straight to Meryl Yourish's Axis of Isabel for a comprehensive list of links to blogs covering the hurricane. Also good: North State Blogs.

Bonus link: Storm Surge Maps, courtesy of Craig Newmark.

Blurricane coverage

Bobbing out here on the Pacific, listening on the headphones to regional Hurricane Isabel coverage over WAMU/88.5 from Washington, D.C. (Winds from the NE at 32, gusting to 45, they say. Here's the NOAA page on Isabel.) WAMU is the only FM station I used to listen to regularly from both New Jersey (far north, up in Sussex County) and North Carolina (just north of Chapel Hill). I used to tune in the bluegrass show, which in those days (early-mid '70s) was live on Saturday mornings.

I can't get WUNC. But I can get WNCU, which isn't carrying news right now. WAMU just said there isn't much power running through the grid in the Trangle Area (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) right now.

So I'm checking out some bloggers here, here and here.

Ed Cone has a nice list in his blogroll. One is Ryan Irelan, whose last post said Bring it on. Another is Mark Pilgrim who offers a descriptive picture. Eric Muller has several posts, including a radar picture.

Still listening to WAMU actualities over NPR. Five states declaring emergencies. The federal government closed. And good actualities from The Field on NPR. Love all those old-home North Carolina accents:

..gawt in summa thet seed cawrn... We gawt a lawta rain, but nawt much fluddin. Nawt rot nayo. Earl hooked up a generaturr... But it jus' gawt too rough.

Miss 'em too.

The connection here is starting to have trouble staying up, now that we're back on the high seas. The cruise ship is pitching a good two degrees in each direction. The seas are "moderate," we're told. Winds of 30 knots across the bow.

But it's a lot worse back on the Home Coast.

Tobacco Road Fogey says his power is out. WRAL-TV says a million people are out of juice.

Russ at TacJammer says the power is still up in Apex (6:49pm EDST).

Jonathan at Remove All Doubt has remarks about how life goes on in the law business.

Lying in Ponds in Raleigh has an older report, but is ready with a digital camera. Plus pointage to Axis of Isabel, which is clearly THE place to look for a large pile of links to hurricane watchers. I knew I'd run across something like this eventually. Courtesy of Chris Muir's Yourish. Chris just south of Richmond. Okay, driving through Isabel mightnot have been such a good idea, Chris says.

Next: Tobacco bread

I always wondered why, if tobacco tasted so good to so many people, there weren't more tobacco-flavored goods. Tobacco ice cream, for example. Or soda. Or even liquer.

Well, somebody has thought about the matter a bit. The result, says Wired Mesh is The Nicotini.

Compare and contrast

Ketchikan, Alaska, is one of the rainiest towns on Earth. So we were lucky the last time I was here on a Geek Cruise. It was warm and sunny. Except for the occasional rough seas (only between ports of call), this cruise has been a lucky one for weather, too. Until today, that is.

It's raining hard and steady in Ketchikan. So I'm staying on the boat to get some work done. Pretty soon you should be able to read the first of my reports, in Linux Journal. Hope I can get some pix loaded too, finally. Bandwidth is a little bit better today.

Semi-off-topic, to Halley: Wish you were here too, but not at the "lovely hotel" in Juneau, which was looking kinda long in the tooth. We had a drink there anyway, for Mom. The bartender told us that when she stayed there, in 1939, was the hotel's first year of existence.