Category Archives: Katrina

Katrina

Free Textbooks for your Perusal

Since most of my expensive undergraduate engineering and science textbooks, which were valuable reference materials, were destroyed when Hurricane Katrina flooded my apartment, I’m looking for replacements.

Specifically, I’m looking for freely available replacements on the Internet(s). Having found a free Linear Algebra book previously, I surmised that more must be available. I was correct. Here is what I’ve found so far:

Time for a coffee break. Apparently 7 hours and 50 minutes was not enough sleep.

Trouble with Wikis

I’m having some trouble with the ‘open’ wikis that I established for the Tulane b-school in the wake of Katrina. They’ve been discovered by spammers and trolls. It’s kind of depressing that anywhere that someone can cause trouble or direct-market on the internet, they will. I’ve added a few hurdles to modifying the wikis and alterted the legitimate users, but I think at some point I may just have to password-protect the whole thing. I am Jack’s exasperation.

Working in the Rudy Lab

Hello from the lab of Dr.Yoram Rudy at Wash U. I’m using a spare desk they had available here. It’s nice to have a stationary, quasi-permanent place to work once more. I’ve been taking care of home GTD (Getting Things Done, for the uninitiated) stuff after breakfast and then heading in once I’m done with all of that. This usually has me here by 09:30 or 10:30 so far. I expect now that I’m on this routine I should get a bit better about that and typically be here by 09:00.

They’ve let me use this desktop machine that was at the desk, but it’s running (blech) Windows XP. Luckily, I was able to set up a VNC desktop on my server (brocktice.com) and I just switch it to fullscreen. I’m really glad I just upgraded the server a few weeks ago. This would have been painful the way it ran before.

The updates have been somewhat infrequent of late, so I’m renewing my focus on keeping you all posted about the fantastically interesting saga that is my life.

Alan is looking better

While he still hasn’t got his color back, Alan (that’s my lab fish, for those of you not following along) is looking better this morning. He’s acting more like his normal self, though I’m concerned because he still seems to be having trouble eating. Will he be restored to his former splendor? Only time will tell.