"NEW ORLEANS - At first it just seemed that the Wal-Mart in New Orleans’ Lower Garden District was doing a very brisk post-hurricane business yesterday: The parking lot was full; people were leaving with brimming baskets; and city police and firefighters were there as if to oversee it all."

CNN has edited the article to remove the quote, but the interesting thing here is that you have the President of the United States and Max Mayfield having to call and urge/ask LA to start evacuation. Relevant quote: Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said that President Bush had called and urged the state to order the evacuation.

Indeed, the most dramatic account of the study's findings on why (in the Foundation's words) NOPD is "bleeding police officers" is found in the summary that top Foundation executives authored with help from a local public relations firm. "New Orleans is facing a crisis: our police force is shrinking at the same time that our city has recaptured the distinguished title of 'murder capital' of the United States among major cities," the Foundation stated. "We now have only about 1500 officers act...

"Efforts to drain New Orleans hit another snag Friday as the Army Corps of Engineers discovered that it could not buy new pumps to replace those damaged by the flooding. Massive pumps capable of draining the city like those that have been keeping New Orleans dry for decades are no longer made and would have to be specially ordered, a process that would take too long, said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the senior corps official in New Orleans."

"The Army Corps of Engineers believed the New Orleans levee system would protect the city for 200 or 300 years, but it was not designed to guard against a storm as powerful as Hurricane Katrina that thoroughly overwhelmed it, the head of the agency said on Friday."

The criticisms of Nagin came from above as well. Numerous officials urged him to evacuate the city, but he worried about the legality of ordering people out when New Orleans has few safe hurricane shelters. Also, National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield in Miami called Nagin at home Saturday night and told him: Get people out of New Orleans. ''I could never sleep if I felt like I didn't do everything that I could to impress upon people the gravity of the situation,'' Mayfield said...

I needed something to replace the MP3 player I had hooked up through the cassette desk. I listen to Books on CD while driving and 1 MP3 player is SO much nicer that 20-30 audio CDs. Well, the MP3 player is going through batteries left and right, so I was looking around for a different solution. I picked up the VRFM7 at Wl-Mart for $29.99 + tax and here's what I think: The unit is exactly as pictured. You slide your USB memory stick (up to 512MB supported) into the USB slot (v1.1 supp...

Does the ATI MMC crash when you start up the TV (notDTV) app? For me, I had the CC captions set to show up in an external window. Well, it turns out that when MMC couldn't recognize the CC in the external window, it crashes. To fix it, I had to edit the reistry to turn off the external window for CCs. More details later.... Can't run after the install? Uninstall _everything_ ATI related and then install the latest drivers.

OTA - Over The Air - The HDTV signals that are broadcast for you to pick up with _just_ an antenna. No cable service is required. QAM - No clue, but this is how HDTV is sent to you through a cable system. No antenna needed. 2 flavors of QAM though, you have encrypted and unencrypted QAM. SD - Standard Definition - This is the 'old' style or regular TV ED - Enhanced Definition - A little bit better than SD, but not HDTV

Over the weekend, I installed a ATI Technologies HD-TV All-in-Wonder after reading some good reviews of it. I'll write up what I've gone through to get it working, it was (as is with computers) not a quick or painless event, but in the end it might have been worth it. Luckily for me, I already had the ATI Technologies Radeon 9800 Pro video card. This card or another one that supports DirectX9 is required for installation. Purchased at retail, this card came with adirectional antenna an...

I made a trip to Kissimmee to avoid Charley and was relieved for a short while, when I heard that the path changed. The path changing is one of those mixed blessings; it isn't going to hit you, but you know it's going to hit someone. While checking into the hotel next to Orlando International Airport shortly before 3, Kissimmee got it's first squall line, which was unnerving since i had just received a call that the storm was coming towards Orlando. In the first squall line, the sky wen...