[UPDATE: Unfortuantely, the photo journal referenced here has been taken down either by the author or by kodakgallery.com. It is a truly touching look a city and the real people who live there attempting to survive a major catastrophic event. Media hype has been eliminated. I am leaving this post in place to remind me to try to find it if it has been reposted elsewhere. I will update the link if I find it has become available again.]
In this photo journal slideshow, you will see and read the rather amazing story of a young man who was a resident of the French Quarter in New Orleans and an employee of the Chateau Sonesta Hotel. He stayed through the storm, working at the hotel to make those guests who chose to stay behind or who were forced to stay because they were unable to get a flight or vehicle to leave the city as comfortable as possible.
Photos here make it a bit more evident why some might have stayed and give the impressions of a resident who has nothing to gain by over sensationalizing. Media revels in the ratings gained by over dramatizing. This man does not.
The tale which unfolds in his photos and comments is chilling none the less. It is a story of fear before the storm, elation when it appeared the worst had missed the Grand Dame city of the South, and then… the hell of water and a spirit of greed and desperation.
A hearty thank you to this gentleman for posting his amazing experiences in the City of New Orleans.
We of the Cathouse send a prayer in the direction of the City that Was and her good residents.
As many users of Firefox are sadly aware, one of the most popular extensions, Adblock, is not functioning properly in builds later than 1.0.4.
This issue came to my attention immediately after a reformat of my system. I happily grabbed the latest stable version of Firefox and proceeded to begin re-adding my favorite extensions. Adblock was at the top of the list with WebDeveloper Toolbar, EditCSS, IEView and several tabbed browsing options. Alas, no AdBlock surfaced for me.
Heading over to the Mozilla/Firefox forums, I found much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the lack of functionality in 1.0.6. “Please bring it back!” was ringing in the hallways.
A workaround/hack was suggested in the lists of moans. Along with it were warnings about attempting to use Adblock *as is* in the current browser. Some seemed to be having problems with it, others swore all was well on their ends.
Warnings be damned. I was trying that fix. I have become an Adblock addict and have no intention of repenting my evil ways.
After proceeding with the suggestions, I closed Firefox, reopened and poof! Adblock was up and running. Yippee! Right? Wrong!
With no other changes to my system, I started to experience odd issues almost immediately. Since this issue arose nearly three weeks ago and I did not take notes at the time, I am unable to document the list of little things that went wrong at the time, but uninstalling the extension repaired them immediately. I sadly resigned myself to wait for a properly updated version.
Until this morning…
Continue reading "Adblock in Firefox 1.0.6 and Infringement Issues"As of late yesterday afternoon and last night, aftermath photos were starting to surface online.
[Note: External links to current information may not be permanent on these third party sites. Apologies in advance if links go dead at some future date.]
Dauphin Island rolled through with minimal damage since it was to the west of the eye wall. The photos at the bottom of the following page were taken around 5:00 PM on the day of the storm:
From Bruce of Boardwalk Realty:
http://king-o-coals.com/dennis.htm
My guess is that more photos of houses and the area will surface on the Boardwalk Realty site later today or in the very near future.
But the areas around Navarre and Pensacola Florida were not so lucky.
From Pensacola News Journal:
http://photos.pensacolanewsjournal.com/index.shtml
There are other galleries floating around on major news sources. I have yet to see many from Gulf Shores. When and if I run across them, I will post them here.
Guess they are too busy being relieved and celebrating to snap. That is not a bad thing!
Beware though. The season is very, very young and NOAA issued notice of the number five forming as a tropical depression at 11:00 PM [EDT] last night. It appears to be a bit less organized in the 11:00 AM report from this morning. Let us all hope it fizzles to nothingness quickly.
Farron
Looks like Dennis petered out before landfall. Horrah!
Rumor has it that most parts of Gulf Shores never lost power and Hwy. 59 was reopened late this afternoon.
Navarre & Santa Rosa Island, FL may not have faired as well, but damage seems to be minimal in all spots that are being shown on television or online.
Good news for one and all!
Conditions are going downhill fast in Gulf Shores. Even the police who, as of last night, was planning to stay on the "Island," are evacuating.
Dennis is back up to Category 4 (currently reporting 145MPH winds).
If you are watching, hurricanetrack.com is setting up their tower now in an attempt to get some footage of the storm at the beach again this year. They had been scheduled to stay at the Gulf Shores Police Department to ride out the storm. Conditions have changed that plan. It is an interesting site to watch for updates and recent video of the area.
NOAA and the NHC seem to have the potential direct hit area narrowed to the area between Mobile Bay and Ft. Walton Beach, FL. The models seem to be converging there. Not a good day for Gulf Shores.
May the angels bless them one and all!
Farron
I can't stand it! I swore last winter I was not touching this blog again until I redid and moved it off MT to Expression Enigine this summer.
I have been picking at it and snooping the new Expression Engine 1.3 release in the last week. I swear!
As of this moment, the blog still sits and here come the hummingbirds and hurricanes.
Hurricane Dennis is tracking toward my favorite part of the world, Gulf Shores, AL. The strongest hurricane on record for July in the Gulf. Scary stuff.
Right now, it has dropped to a Category 1 after being overland for ten hours. Dennis is expected to strengthen back to a Cat 3 before it makes landfall somewhere on the northern Gulf coast. It appears the best guesses range from Mobile to Panama City Beach. That is the exact path we drove last Christmas to see how things were going three months after Ivan. They were still devastated, but the spirit of the people was evident in Christmas lights and decorations amid the rubble. We cheered and cried at the same time.
There's my Hero of the Hurricane Season, "Indiana Weather". Dennis is back up to a Cat 2 as it pulls away from Key West.
Some light poking around the forum for Gulf Shores, AL on al.com seems has a much more tense and nervous feel than it did prior to Ivan last year. They seem to be trying to remain hopeful, but they are still rebuilding and have seen first hand what a major storm can do.
A forum that appears popular with Dauphin Island residents shows that some of the few full time residents are planning to batten down hatches and ride out the storm on the Island. Brave storm troopers or fools? Depends on your point of view. I have a funny feeling that if my home were there, I'd be with them right now. More power to them and bless them all!
I am probably only talking to myself due to my long absence from blogging, but I am going to go ahead and add a list of links to hurricane tracking sites other than the well trafficked weather.com. Mostly so I can find them easily in the future. There seems to be a good possibility of a long and rough hurricane season.
A quick Google search will bring up many more. All eyes seem to be on the northern Gulf coast right now. May they all ride out this storm in safety.
Now on to a brighter note. Hummingbirds!:
We did see the usual advance scout hummers in the early spring, one or two, but they normally move on. The flowers are not blooming yet. Even though they seem to love the sweet nectar of the feeders, the lantana and peavine flowers seem to be the staples they love for natural and buggy treats. Eat those bugs birdies, please!
This morning, over coffee on the patio, two females paid visits to the feeder in rapid succession. Turf wars have begun!
I declare Saturday, July 9th the official day to add the second feeder this season. Time to run cook some more nectar for the visiting ladies and their little ones.
Farron
[& Snoozing, Could Care Less _^..^_ ]
A few of you might have noticed that *THE* Cat & I have been absent from blogging, and much of cyberspace for the last couple of months. The hectic state of holiday preparation, beach runs to escape the hectic holidays previously mentioned and general life and laziness have kept me away. I seem to have temporarily lost my taste for it.
Unfortunately, during that time the tacky comment spammers have not rested. Renames of mt-comments and other assorted measures have not stopped them. The blacklist helps by notifying me of gamblers, ripoff artists and general smut dealers who try to post links here, but quite by chance today, I noticed that I had not received notification on several of the offending posts. I doubt it was an issue with comment notification, more likely an issue of my mass deleting of junk that surfaced over the holidays while I was enjoying a quite, winter beach.
So, effective immediately, all comments are closed and all IP's are banned from posting via a quick fix suggestion from the forums to simply add a blank entry to the IP Banning section.
I do not anticipate reopening them until I finally get off my overly cushy tail and complete the redesign of this site and the move to Expression Engine. My buddies and well wishers know where to find me and you cheap sleaze bags out there can find someone else to pester.
Meeeeeooooowww & Good Riddance to Comment Spammers!
Farron & _^..^_
You knew I'd have to go back to see which famous leader...
Quiz link is on the same page:
http://similarminds.com/othertests.html
Eat your hearts out! I am brilliant. hahaha
Farron
[aka Einstein]
I happened upon this time waster on another blog and just had to take the test to find out which classic movie I might be.
Apocalypse Now!?!?!?! ahhhahahaha
Quiz is here:
http://similarminds.com/othertests.html
Try it and report in here if you are so inclined to waste a few minutes of your time. I might also have to see which famous leader I might be before shutting down that window.
Have fun! [I know you'll do it.]
Farron
Press release from Mozilla:
Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Released - MozillaZine
It's here! Read their release.
Nuff said by me.
Farron
