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Back in Mandeville

I’ve left New Orleans, and just finished catching up on blog posts and email here in my parents’ house in Mandeville.

New Orleans was fun, and it felt good to be back there for a while. I’m looking forward to returning soon.  I was going to leave first thing in the morning for St.Louis tomorrow, but I’m pretty tired and I’d like to do some laundry and stuff before going back, so I’m going to leave Sunday morning instead.  That brings me back in time to start work Monday.  I’m also going to do some work here tomorrow.

Some of you may recall the little fiasco I had with my FedEx package a few weeks ago. After calling the manager of the regional distribution center, I finally got an answer. It had been delievered to the Quadrangle Housing office.  Noone from Quadrangle had called me, and I had no way of knowing that “COME PICK UP” as written on the door tag referred to that office.  There were a few failures of communication there, but at least the package was safe, and I finally received it.

There’s a whole new situation brewing with Amazon.com and some things I ordered, but I’m going to wait until the shit hits the fan before I try to sort that mess out. I’ve already called Amazon.com only to be told conflicting things by people with various heavy accents over their english, and I anticipate it will be a bit easier once they get some red flags internally saying that they’ve screwed up.

I don’t have stats for you today. I’m going to estimate that stuff tomorrow. Lack of internet and structure in New Orleans have derailed my logging a bit.

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My time back in New Orleans

I’m currently at Z’otz uptown in New Orleans, drinking my daily quota of green tea and blogging, doing some work, sorting and sending email, etc.

To everyone who’s worried that New Orleans is a ghost town, that it won’t recover, that people aren’t coming back, I say don’t worry too much for now.  The place is hopping. It’s far different from the way I last saw it two months ago.

There are people everywhere, and by 11 AM traffic is awful in places, and at least dense in others.  Many traffic lights are still broken uptown, but I’d estimate that an equal number are fine. The city appears to be moving to new traffic lights bolted to metal poles rather than lights on wires.  This will probably be helpful should we encounter another hurricane.

Everywhere stores and restaurants are opening daily. Hours are limited, and the Trolley Stop is still closed, but Lebanon’s is open, so I’m all set.

The city will probably be smaller. There will be less industry. Lakeview is apparently going to be a ghost town for some time. However, don’t worry. The French Quarter is still here. Uptown is still here. The atmosphere is the same if not better (as we’re low on tourists at the moment).

I’m leaving tomorrow to return to St.Louis, but I’m looking forward to coming back at the end of the month, and I hope to see you here.

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More on Science and Belief

  • Good And Bad Reasons For Believing : Richard Dawkins   – Dawkins provides some elegant words about why people believe the things that they do. Here’s an excerpt:

    Dear Juliet,

    Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is importantto me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How dowe know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks inthe sky, are really huge balls of fire like the sun and are very far away?And how do we know that Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of thosestars, the sun?

    The answer to these questions is “evidence.” Sometimes evidence means actuallyseeing ( or hearing, feeling, smelling….. ) that something is true. Astronautshave travelled far enough from earth to see with their own eyes that it isround. Sometimes our eyes need help. The “evening star” looks like a brighttwinkle in the sky, but with a telescope, you can see that it is a beautifulball – the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing( or hearing or feeling….. ) is called an observation.

  • BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Science faces ‘dangerous times’ – Highlights from one of my links yesterday from the head of the Royal Society on why some people believe things that are unsubstantiated, and how this can be a problem.

Personal and Blog Stats for the End of November 2005

This is the end of the first month for which I have logged my personal stats, those lovely updates you see almost daily at the bottom of my blog.  Here’s a plot of everything I recorded (except work hours).

Flickr Photo
You’ll probably want to view a larger version. The last day (the 30th) is of course not complete. Maybe I should do this on the first day of the following month from now on.  This has been really good for me. It helps me to keep track of when I’m doing too much of some things, and when I’m doing too little of others.  Furthermore, after I get more consistent in my data recording, I plan on running regressions of each parameter compared with hours of productive, lab-related work.  That’s where the motivation for this originated. I want to see what makes me more productive, and what hinders my productivity. I also want to see if beginning and ends of months, seasons, weather, national disasters and so on have any interesting effects.  I doubt that these pursuits will initially be statistically sound. However, if I manage to perservere in my recording, I may eventually apply some more rigorous controls and analyses.

Here’s some info I’ve gleaned from another type of statistics — Google Analytics.  Using Flock’s blog editor, I’ve recently started adding Technorati tags to my entries. You may have seen them at the bottom of the posts.  Within a few days, Technorati has become a major referrer for my site. Check it out:
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Technorati is the second-largest, yellow-orange wedge if you don’t want to zoom in. That’s incredible!  This has convinced me to continue using Technorati tags for now.

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Tech News for the End of November 2005

Some good and bad news today in the tech sector:

  • There are a lot of exciting things in store for Google Talk in the coming months and we thought the best way to tell you about them was to create a blog. We’ll keep you posted on new features, happenings in the community, and progress towards our goal of enabling customer choice in Internet communications through open standards and interoperability.

    Google Talkabout

  • Firefox 1.5 Final Now Available – you’re not using it… why?
  • Microsoft Open Document Standard Not So Open – Is anyone surprised about this? Comments, Mr.Scoble?

  • I’m working on a mobile (wap or xhtml-mp) theme, so please step by in a couple months, I hope I’ll have something ready by then.

    Virtually Shocking » Blog Archive » Back to Bloglines

    I was extremely impressed to find a comment from the author of Gregarius regarding my recent complaints.  As I said, I think it has a lot of potential, and I’m going to check back in a few months to see where things have gone. It’s not currently ready to handle my style(s) of feed-perusal.

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