hurricane update:

Well I just heard from my mom. They are all safe. In her words:
"It is unreal here. Just trying to keep body and soul together is a daily chore."

It looks like it could be up to 2 months until all electrical service is restored on the North Shore. Cleco (the electric company) is going to have more hard and fast timelines publish tomorrow morning. It looks like my parents will be heading up to North Carolina if they can get enough gas to get out of there. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place because they have to do a bit of repair on their home and rental home before they can leave, but while there they have to use their gas to run a small generator to be able to pump water and keep food cool. I don't see them getting out of there anytime soon.

More later...

hurricane update....

Well, the only family we have heard from is Leslie's brother Max. He lives in Baton Rouge, which weathered the storm quite well. Besides him we have no clue as to the well being of everyone else.

We feel pretty certain that everyone in St. Tammany parish is okay. Though, we have not been able to get any word to know for certain. Since St. Tammany was one of the hardest hit areas they are not allowing any one to return. The official word is from the state is:
IF YOU HAVE EVACUATED ST. TAMMANY PARISH, DO NOT RETURN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. THE PARISH IS CLOSED.

That being the case, it looks like we will have family visiting for at least several more days. It's nice to have Heather up here as well. She and colt are trying to get some site seeing in while they are her in Chattanooga. Now that it is not raining they should be able to see some of the outside places they have not been able to go and see.

Last night was great. Karen brought a gallon of oysters up with her so I fried up a few dozen and we made a huge gumbo with smoke turkey and about 50 oysters. It was a great meal. John David and Elliot have been enjoying having Nicholas to play with. I have not gotten any pictures yet but probably will tonight.

The national coverage of the hurricane has been crap, but if you have a good internet connection you can get really good coverage through here. It is from one of the news stations in New Orleans. They have a live video news feed. They are doing a great job of flying over the city so all the refuges can get some idea as to the condition of their homes.

We still have not heard from Leslie's grandmother. I would expect that we would hear something from her in the next several days. It looks like they are evacuating the city, so I would expect Leslie's mom would get a phone call at some point.

One way or the other if you are so inclined to pray then do it.

Hurricane refugees...

Just a quick update, if you don't know already about 90% of our families live in and around New Orleans. In total that is about 30 family members. Well, five of them woke us up this morning by throwing sticks at our windows. We had invited them to come up earlier in the day but after boarding up their windows they thought they would ride out the storm. At around 4:30 yesterday afternoon they realized it was a good opportunity for them to get out of harms way and to pay us a visit, so they headed our way.

The thing was Leslie's ringer was off and we never got the message. So, this morning early I started hearing what I thought was rocks hitting the window. Being that we have no family or anyone hear that would feel comfortable throwing rocks at our windows, it kind of freaked me out for a minute. We are glad to have them here and safe. It took them 12 hours to do the normal 7 hour trip. The traffic was so bad that they were going 10 mph for about 5 hours, and that was with both sides of interstate traffic headed north all the way from Slidell to about 60 north of Hattiesburg MS.

We have not heard anything for family members that are down there. We have been trying to get in touch but all land lines and cell towers are down. It could be quite some time until they could get through. I am sure they are okay. We are most worried about Leslie's grandmother because she refused to leave New Orleans. She is a very strong and hard headed woman that is in her 80's, but we are sure she is fine. I hope I don't step on any toes with that last sentence.

Well, I need to get going we have a full house.

Robertson vs. Chaves

On the 700 club on Monday (08/22/05) Ole Pat Robertson said we should assassinate Hugo Chaves.

I just don't know what to think of ole Pat these days. I have not watched his show in a couple of years but the last time I watched it I remember being uncomfortable with it. Somewhere between the nepotism and his political rants that take place right before they pray leave me feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Hugo Chavez

Don't get me wrong I do believe my relationship with Christ should affect my politics. But, there is something about Pat's version of the mix that I just don't have a reference point for.

I don't know.....

On that note: I remember my Dad sporting a Pat Robertson for President bumper sticker back in 88.

three movies

Something I'm going to start doing on my blog is making a list of movies I've seen. I have an extremely short memory and I forget what movies I've seen and what they were about, so this should help me when I need a quick reference.

For some reason I unintentional picked up three subtitled movies. Here they are:

• Maria Full of Grace
• Broken Wings (Knafayim Shvurot)
• To Be and to Have (Être et avoir)

Maria Full of Grace

Maria Full of Grace

If anyone else has seen this movie I would love to hear your comments it. I don't want to make the movie out to be more than it was but it was a very good movie. I did not expect it being that it was an HBO movie. I even started the movie a little ticked at the blatant HBO movie trailers at the beginning. I always get a little aggravated when I am forced to watch the trailers at the beginning of a DVD, and this movie had one of those beginnings. Besides all that this movie totally sucked me in and disarmed me. It was not until a day or two later that I even thought about my previous feelings on illegal immigration and the like.

I don't want to give too much of the movie away but the movie was about a girl who through a series of events ends up being hired on as a mule. For those who don't know a mule is a person who smuggles drugs into a country by swallowing large grape size packages of the drug. I have known what a mule was for several years but never thought about what was involved in being a mule. The movie was rather graphic but very eye-opening.

My only regret with this movie was that I did not get to watch the director's interview at the end. Leslie and Ben both saw it and said it was very good. Like I said if you get a chance to watch Maria Full of Grace I would love to hear your comments on it.

Broken Wings (Knafayim Shvurot)

Broken Wings (Knafayim Shvurot)

Broken Wings was one of the saddest movies I have seen in a very long time. I'm really not sure if I have ever seen a movie as sad as this one. I would recommend it. There was a bit of language in the movie, which could have been done without but all in all I would recommend it.

It does not take too much for me to get a little watery eyed, but I'm not sure when the last time was that I've teared up watching a movie. About 20 minutes before it was over I just had to stop the movie before the tears started rolling down my face. I looked over to state the obvious to Leslie and to give myself a few second to recoup. When I looked over at Leslie she was silently balling with Elliot in her lap so not to wake him up.

I think this is the first Israeli film I've seen. It was in Hebrew and obviously subtitled. The movie was about a family learning to cope with the loss of their father. As a father I think the importance of our role is something we easily forget. Well, I do at least. It is so easy for me to go through a work a day life and forget that God has placed me as the head of my home to help be an anchor. This movie just struck me anew with the importance of my role as a father, and I hope that I can keep that at the forefront of my mind while rearing my little ones.

To Be and to Have (Être et avoir)

To Be and to Have (Être et avoir)

I picked up (To Be and To Have) Être et avoir after reading the back cover. It said that it was the highest grossing French documentary of all time or something like that, so I figured it had to be good. It was Okay. There was a lot of nice scenery in the movie and the compassion of the teacher was much more evident at the end verse the beginning. Though, I kind of wonder if you need to be French or a Francophile to completely get this movie.

In short the documentary was about Goerges Lopez a teacher in a one room school house somewhere in the French country side and the lives of the handful of students he teaches. His students were kindergarteners through pre middle schoolers and all seemed to be very unique.

I don't think I would go as far as not recommending this movie because the interpersonal relationships were interesting and it was an interesting look into life in a one room schoolhouse.

I would be interested in hearing some bodies else's take on this movie.

is this normal :-)

Life is Good!

I was thinking about Michael's post about almost losing all of his pictures and decided to burn all mine to DVD just in case. While in the process of trying to burn all those images I came across this image. I'm not quite sure how I missed this one the first time around!

xp powertoys

Alt+Tab before

For those of you who live their working life on a Windows XP box then you might want to check out some of the Windows XP power toys that Microsoft has to offer. I guess there are about a dozen of them that you can install. The two that I installed were the Alt-Tab Replacement and the Open Command Window Here Powertoys.

You can see the before and after screen shots of the alt+tab replacement to the right. The pictures are not to scale so the after picture is much more readable in real life. Also, the picture at the top looks really bad because I had to take a picture of it because I could not figure out how to do a alt+prit screen to take snap shot. The only problem I see with the alt tab replacement is that when a window is minimized it does not show as a screen shot of the image. So, pretty much you have to get out of the habit of hitting the windows+d or windows+m keys if you use them

Alt+Tab after

The Open Command Window Here power toy is nice because you can just right click on a folder and select the Open Command Window Here option it will set the command line to that folder. No more cd c:\temp\blah\blah. Very nice.

Parental Rights vs. Public Schools

Here is an extremely disturbing article on how far Ted Kennedy's home state will go to suppress the rights of those parents who feel that public schools should not usurp the their role of teaching personal values to children.

Thanks Eric

Jason this one is for you :-)

Parking Meter Proposal in Coolidge Park

Can you believe it! I just ran into this article on Channel 12's site. I'm really ticked off about the proposal. Like Chattanooga needs another tax. One of the greatest things about Coolidge Park is that it is free, sounds to me like the city is looking for a way to further capitalize on the revitalization of downtown Chattanooga.

You will notice that in the News 12 article that Brian Hahn is paraphrasing Sally Robinson by saying "They believe it's the only way to resolve overcrowding".

Parking meters have always annoyed me. I totally understand that a city might not want cars parked on the street for long periods of time, but the way they are going about it is all wrong. They are using it just as another way to raise money. Note: if a city is raising money and it is not a bake sale then it is a tax.

The way it should be done:
I think Parking Meters are useful, but the way they are used now is as a tax. Why don't they make meters in a way that when you park on a city street with a meter you should have to hit the button on the meter, which will start your time. If the time runs out before you get back to your car then a meter maid should be able to give you a ticket for using city parking for more than you far share.

Okay, okay maybe my idea is not the greatest idea. I see there would be some issue that would have to be gotten over, but there has to be a better solution then adding a parking tax to Coolidge Park.

I think channel 12 does not keep there articals up for long so I've posted it below.

Family Visit: wave 3

Kyle, Logan, John David, Blake

Well, my sister Jeannie and her husband Jay and their three boys, Logan, Kyle, and Blake came in for a visit while on their way up to the CBMC conference in North Carolina. They came in at about midnight and left the next morning at around 11:00. We had a good little visit. I was good to be able to see them and their boys. They have grown so much. John David was quite surprised when he woke up the next morning and found the house full of people. He was excited to have three playmates that were full of energy and ready to go.

After they had eaten some pancakes and were full of energy from the honey I was able to get them to stand still long enough to take a serious picture and a crazy picture.

Jeannie: I have a few more pictures if you want me to send them to you. Let me know.

acting crazy