Hey everybody!
Today is a scorcher. I debated on whether to keep my house closed up rather than let the heat in. The difference is only a few degrees though, so maybe it's moot.
I made my run for relief supplies this morning. The folks there are so nice. Now they have national guard troops manning the operation and they're all decked out in full combat gear, packs and M16s slung over their shoulders. They're helping lug ice, water and MREs into peoples cars while they're fully loaded with gear. One of the soldiers jokes about how he was jealous of the other volunteers wearing t-shirts. They're all in good spirits though and it's impossible to not have tremendous respect for these guys doing what they're doing under these conditions.
One of the most frustrating aspects of all this is not knowing exactly how to help. I'm doing my part helping local residents, but I wish I could provide some assistance to the assistants. The problem is you don't want to get in these peoples' way. At least with the city evacuated, it's not crowded and most of us who are here are very diligent in going where we need to go and avoiding any tangles with federal groups.
Some have asked why I'm still here (mainly my mom, who keeps insisting I need to go to Tallahassee) but there is work to do around here with the business. While we've managed to successfully migrate most of our clients' services to servers in Dallas and San Diego, it's a tedious process making sure, when you build a bank of servers from scratch virtually, that things don't break down. It seems every time I fix one problem, three more show up. But as the days go on, things are getting smoother. Our POP downtown in the CBD is still cranking along, and as soon as I'm finished extracting data from the servers in Metairie, I'm going to move a few boxes downtown to the Amoco building. Right now, it's very efficient having physical access to the network here. I do not want to lug these computers all over the place in my car, so staying put, and powering the network up is the best way to restore and migrate services. The bottom line is that I'm not leaving until I'm sure all my clients systems are working... it may be moot as I don't know how many of them will be in business, much less when we can get paid from them, but since I do have the ability to control this aspect among the chaos, it keeps me busy, it seems to be the right thing to do, and if ICorp has any chance of coming out of this solvent, it needs to be done.
As to how I'm getting around in the city, generally I'm staying away from Orleans Parish. When runs need to be made into the city, it's not difficult to talk some people into providing access. My friend the other day flagged down some national guard troops doing a patrol in his neighborhood and got them to organize a convoy downtown to pick up some servers. There seems to be a lot of locals now concerned about the Parish "lock out" rule. Some have been here since the hurricane and have cash and want to run into LaPlace to get supplies, but are afraid they won't be let back in. Their argument is, they don't have to take the relief supplies if they can be allowed to come and go. I'm not taking any chances and have a stockpile of supplies to make sure we can tough it out if we need to in light of the lockdown. But if fuel becomes more scarce, I'll be quite upset, especially when things are getting better every day. They have some traffic lights up now on 18th street near Lakeside. I keep expecting to see the Morning Call open.. I'm not sure if it has ever been closed before now.
Earlier in the week, I was all over the place trying to get some sort of "official" [sic] pass to come and go in various areas of the city. It's simply a nightmare trying to figure out who's in charge and who can do what, much less find anyone to communicate with who really has any authority. My sister company, with whom we share the downtown NOC has credentials from the Public Utilities Commission that can authorize us, but the documents are not where we need them and after talking with my associates, we found the best way to approach legitimacy in the area was to just "look official". So Earlier in the week I went to Kinko's in Baton Rouge and printed up some signs that had the company names and "Disaster Recovery", laminated them and taped them to the doors of my vehicle. This did the trick. Others seem to have the same idea... I saw an SUV the other day that had "TV" in masking tape outlined on all sides. Ironically, the press seem to have the best access. But my clients in the local media don't seem to be as organized, so we're just taking matters into our own hands and doing what needs to be done. The bottom line is that if you look official, and you're not interfering with anybody else, you don't get hassled.
More random notes:
Drago's restaurant is serving people free food in Fat City. The other night I had a dream I was eating a sandwich... fresh bread is something I can't even remember how it tastes anymore. So when I heard Dragos was open, I went by. Oh boy! Red Beans & Rice, Chicken Pasta.... so good! It's wonderful to see more in the community helping everybody out. Apparently the folks at the Butcher Block gave Dragos their meat products and they're cooking it all up.
There are spots around the city now giving out Tetanus, Hep A and B shots. There is no charge; they merely need to see an ID.
West bank of Jefferson Parish has had its boil water order lifted. On the east bank where I am, residents are still instructed to boil water before use.
If you've seen sat images of the area, you probably know all of West End is just GONE. Wiped off the map, including the Dock and Brunings. We wish our good friends at Brunings the best of luck -- they say they will try to rebuild. The last big storm wiped out their 100+ year old restaurant and they never fully-recovered from that and had been in a battle with the insurance company. Now everything is gone, including their two homes that were on the other side of the 17th street canal (They owned the house at the end of the land between West End and the Coast Guard station -- now if you want to see what it looked like, rent the movie, "The Big Easy" which had a Fais Do Do scene filmed on the property.)
Neat flood map:
http://mapper.cctechnol.com/floodmap.php
click on the area of the map to find out how high the water was and what the current water depth is
I'll probably write more tonite. I'm working on setting up a live internet camera at this location, but am not sure how interesting it would be. We'll see. In the meantime, work continues...
Today is a scorcher. I debated on whether to keep my house closed up rather than let the heat in. The difference is only a few degrees though, so maybe it's moot.
I made my run for relief supplies this morning. The folks there are so nice. Now they have national guard troops manning the operation and they're all decked out in full combat gear, packs and M16s slung over their shoulders. They're helping lug ice, water and MREs into peoples cars while they're fully loaded with gear. One of the soldiers jokes about how he was jealous of the other volunteers wearing t-shirts. They're all in good spirits though and it's impossible to not have tremendous respect for these guys doing what they're doing under these conditions.
One of the most frustrating aspects of all this is not knowing exactly how to help. I'm doing my part helping local residents, but I wish I could provide some assistance to the assistants. The problem is you don't want to get in these peoples' way. At least with the city evacuated, it's not crowded and most of us who are here are very diligent in going where we need to go and avoiding any tangles with federal groups.
Some have asked why I'm still here (mainly my mom, who keeps insisting I need to go to Tallahassee) but there is work to do around here with the business. While we've managed to successfully migrate most of our clients' services to servers in Dallas and San Diego, it's a tedious process making sure, when you build a bank of servers from scratch virtually, that things don't break down. It seems every time I fix one problem, three more show up. But as the days go on, things are getting smoother. Our POP downtown in the CBD is still cranking along, and as soon as I'm finished extracting data from the servers in Metairie, I'm going to move a few boxes downtown to the Amoco building. Right now, it's very efficient having physical access to the network here. I do not want to lug these computers all over the place in my car, so staying put, and powering the network up is the best way to restore and migrate services. The bottom line is that I'm not leaving until I'm sure all my clients systems are working... it may be moot as I don't know how many of them will be in business, much less when we can get paid from them, but since I do have the ability to control this aspect among the chaos, it keeps me busy, it seems to be the right thing to do, and if ICorp has any chance of coming out of this solvent, it needs to be done.
As to how I'm getting around in the city, generally I'm staying away from Orleans Parish. When runs need to be made into the city, it's not difficult to talk some people into providing access. My friend the other day flagged down some national guard troops doing a patrol in his neighborhood and got them to organize a convoy downtown to pick up some servers. There seems to be a lot of locals now concerned about the Parish "lock out" rule. Some have been here since the hurricane and have cash and want to run into LaPlace to get supplies, but are afraid they won't be let back in. Their argument is, they don't have to take the relief supplies if they can be allowed to come and go. I'm not taking any chances and have a stockpile of supplies to make sure we can tough it out if we need to in light of the lockdown. But if fuel becomes more scarce, I'll be quite upset, especially when things are getting better every day. They have some traffic lights up now on 18th street near Lakeside. I keep expecting to see the Morning Call open.. I'm not sure if it has ever been closed before now.
Earlier in the week, I was all over the place trying to get some sort of "official" [sic] pass to come and go in various areas of the city. It's simply a nightmare trying to figure out who's in charge and who can do what, much less find anyone to communicate with who really has any authority. My sister company, with whom we share the downtown NOC has credentials from the Public Utilities Commission that can authorize us, but the documents are not where we need them and after talking with my associates, we found the best way to approach legitimacy in the area was to just "look official". So Earlier in the week I went to Kinko's in Baton Rouge and printed up some signs that had the company names and "Disaster Recovery", laminated them and taped them to the doors of my vehicle. This did the trick. Others seem to have the same idea... I saw an SUV the other day that had "TV" in masking tape outlined on all sides. Ironically, the press seem to have the best access. But my clients in the local media don't seem to be as organized, so we're just taking matters into our own hands and doing what needs to be done. The bottom line is that if you look official, and you're not interfering with anybody else, you don't get hassled.
More random notes:
Drago's restaurant is serving people free food in Fat City. The other night I had a dream I was eating a sandwich... fresh bread is something I can't even remember how it tastes anymore. So when I heard Dragos was open, I went by. Oh boy! Red Beans & Rice, Chicken Pasta.... so good! It's wonderful to see more in the community helping everybody out. Apparently the folks at the Butcher Block gave Dragos their meat products and they're cooking it all up.
There are spots around the city now giving out Tetanus, Hep A and B shots. There is no charge; they merely need to see an ID.
West bank of Jefferson Parish has had its boil water order lifted. On the east bank where I am, residents are still instructed to boil water before use.
If you've seen sat images of the area, you probably know all of West End is just GONE. Wiped off the map, including the Dock and Brunings. We wish our good friends at Brunings the best of luck -- they say they will try to rebuild. The last big storm wiped out their 100+ year old restaurant and they never fully-recovered from that and had been in a battle with the insurance company. Now everything is gone, including their two homes that were on the other side of the 17th street canal (They owned the house at the end of the land between West End and the Coast Guard station -- now if you want to see what it looked like, rent the movie, "The Big Easy" which had a Fais Do Do scene filmed on the property.)
Neat flood map:
http://mapper.cctechnol.com/floodmap.php
click on the area of the map to find out how high the water was and what the current water depth is
I'll probably write more tonite. I'm working on setting up a live internet camera at this location, but am not sure how interesting it would be. We'll see. In the meantime, work continues...
posted by Wisdom at 8:39 PM
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