I just arrived in Roseburg for a few days with family. We just drove down from Seattle, where the whole family was present for the first day of my newphew’s life on earth. Pretty neat seeing a baby less than one day old. Here I am being cute with him. His name is Keiden William Bagley. He was 20 inches long and weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces. It was fun watching all the adults turn in blubbering idiots while holding Keiden. I was, of course, not immune to his effects. ...

Here’s a couple pictures of Kat, the dog I brought home from Mobile, AL. Her full name is Katrina, but she goes by Kat. She’s perhaps 10 weeks old now, meaning that she was born about the time of Hurricane Katrina. She was abandoned in a hotel room in Mobile. I encountered her while taking a rather random walk in Mobile with Angela. I decided she’d be good company on the drive to Oregon. (She = the dog, but as it turns out, Angela made good company too!) In Oregon, I expected to find her a home by writing an article for the hometown paper. On the drive across, I fell in love with Kat, so she’s found a home a little closer to home than I expected. ...

I am on my way home across country. I’ve picked up a couple of traveling companions, Angela and Kat. Angela is a girl from Alaska with family in Oregon. Kat is a puppy. Yes, it’s a dog named Kat. (See below for more on Kat). We left Saturday, going to Mobile AL to drop off Angela’s car. We spent the night in Rayville, LA with Sharon Dearman (wife of Mac, my boss at Radio Response). The next morning we drove to Dallas, and saw Cliff McCarthy there for a late lunch. After that we tried hard to get out of Texas in a day, but predictably failed: no one escapes Texas in a day. (But I’m happy to report, the puppy did choose to poop on Teaxs, which delighted me.) ...

Another snippet from the other side of the looking glass: If you need to have a car that you own towed from your property, contact your insurance company. If you need to have a car that you don’t own towed from your property, contact a local towing company. If you need to have a house that you don’t own removed from your property, contact the Army Corps of Engineers. Such is the power of 30 feet of salt water driven by a storm 300 miles wide. ...

This afternoon and into the evening I was working on the Waveland water tower. (Yes, on the water tower, 100 feet up.) We put in a long day of debugging in the lab before we went, then working on the tower when we got into the field to install the equipment. So when we got off the tower, I was looking forward to dinner. We’d worked too late for dinner at Waveland Cafe, and Don had already declared tonight Pizza Night. We’d noticed that the pizzaria had won the “first restaurant to reopen” contest, and were looking forward to spending a little money in Hancock County. Turns out, it is a lunch place that closes at 4pm, so we missed dinner there. We came back to the completely remodeled Sonic drive-in (complete with girls on skates!) and had dinner. I ordered a large Coke, which might explain why I’m wired and not asleep right now. ...

We are streaming live music from the New Waveland Cafe over the Radio Response network: Live from the New Waveland Cafe: Wailin’ Wally and the Killa Sharks (The Last Band Standing in Waveland) Tune in! (Until 8 or 9 pm, CST).

I’m nearing the “end” of a long week here. I put “end” in quotes, because despite my best intentions, my “weekends” (one day breaks) seem to be separated by increasingly long “weeks” (my last break was last Monday, so I’m only a day late this time, assuming I manage to get away tomorrow, which seems unlikely). Talking about breaks like this sometimes feels indulgent, but when I got here I could see that the project needed some continuity. Since I was in a position to offer some, I decided to take care of myself so as to be able to provide a lot of energy over a long time. ...

This just in from my friend and coworker in San Pedro la Laguna: Mis queridos amigos, queria mandarles algunas fotos acerca de la tragedia ocurrida con el huracan stan, fue muy duro mas para el pueblo de san pedro la laguna, pero tambien fue un reto para mucha gente de poder ayudar, barrio con todo un canton en santigo Atitlan, el canton panabaj,no me hubiera gustado ir pero la necesidad de ayudar y tomar evidencia de todo fue lo que me empujo a hacer todo eso. En san pedro gracias a Dios todo esta bien, excepto los 6 dias de luz, el telefono que no tuvimos y el agua potable que nos hizo falta, ahora que tenemos luz, todo poco a poco se esta volviendo a la normalidad, Saludos a todos y que Dios les bendiga y gracias por sus preocupaciones. ...

The New York Times wrote about us. I’m in the picture!

The last few days have been the kind of frustrating IT days you can have anywhere. It’s just that here I’m sleeping in a classroom, showering in a portable shower unit, and eating wilderness fireman food in between the continual IT hassles. As has been observed countless times through history, this job would be OK if it weren’t for the customers. They have this expectation that things will work, and when they don’t they come find us and ask us to stop everything and fix our network. Of course, usually we have already noticed that things are broken, and have already stopped everything to work on the broken stuff instead of the new projects we were hoping to get done. ...