Saturday, May 14, 2011

Slip sliding away

The New Orleans times picayune has a good article on
the Morganza spillway, with a map showing where the water
will be diverted to lower the risk of flooding in New Orleans.

I didn't know that the Morganza spillway and Atchafalaya spillway
cover almost the same route. I lived for a couple of years
in the atchafalaya spillway in Butte La Rose (french for Rose's
Butt, I don't know who Rose was). It was pretty stupid to live
there, it was a great fishing camp, but I was single and working
offshore. When I got home, there was no food and it was 15 miles
to henderson on a levee road, so I subsisted mostly on what I could
buy at the local bait shop, beer and chips.

When I first moved there I fished almost every day from the dock.
Fishing and drinking is quite respectable, but after a while catching
fish really just got in the way of drinking. Also, since
my water discharge line was right below the dock I never ate anything
I caught, I think I just caught the same 5 fish over and over.

I crushed all my cans and kept them, thinking I would recycle them.
Finally I gave them to an old guy collecting cans on the side of the
road. Two 50 gallon bags of crushed cans, I thought the old guy was
going to kiss me.

Luckily, the owner asked me to move out because someone wanted to buy
the camp, and I moved back to Lafayette, otherwise I'd probably still be living
out there, or working as the assistant of the old guy picking up cans
on the side of the road.

I'm glad it looks like Butte La Rose won't be as flooded as
they were predicting earlier in the week. I really liked it out there,
it's just not a good first home.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

You can never go home again

Coyote blog has a link to a great set of pictures at
"how to be a retronaut", all taken in a video arcade cerca 1982.

Since I spent most of my disposable income one quarter at
a time, that brings back memories. What game was my favorite
depends on the year...Galaxian, then Galaga, Asteroids,
star castle, elevator action, any game where you got to
sit down and pretend to be a pilot for 3 minutes. I was
probably best at Star Wars, but I cheated by working at an
ice cream shop that had that one game. If no one was there
I was playing. (I should have studied instead, the Jedi
never came to ask my help)

Monday, May 09, 2011

Game of thrones

Mexico was a week ahead on Thor, and it's a month behind on
Game of thrones, so I didn't get to see the first one until last
night. Not bad. Everything according to the book, graphics
look good, some decent acting. I detected a slight drift towards
a revenge of the sith filming technique, Darth Vader horribly
burned... check. Direwolf puppies found...check. It was
good enough that I'm looking forward to next Sunday.

Strangely enough, I watched Clash of the Titans right before,
and I liked that movie. Much better than the other version with
the guy from LA Law. (I summon google...shazam...Harry Hamlin)
(Why doesn't google do that, right mouse click, google search my
last sentence. Shazam.)

The next book in the Song of Ice and Fire series comes out in July.
It's something I'll have to buy on the kindle just for safety reasons,
a hard-back 1000 page book can easily smother you if you fall asleep
while reading. Kindle, it's for safety (tm).

Sunday, May 08, 2011

Twitterfied

I signed up for twitter, @joegremlin. I don't know how much
I'll use it, but it seems much more phone-sized then blogger.
By the time I navigate to blogger on my phone and peck out a few
words I've forgotten what I wanted to say. Twitter is already
limited to about how much I have time to say, so it could be a
good fit.

I'm following several financial type people (Cramer, Alltucher, Ritholtz,
and a few celebrities. Best thing I've seen is Marina Orlova @hotforwords.
I didn't know etymology could be so interesting.

We'll see how it goes, I spend so much time traveling that I don't have time
to blog, I should be able to twitter more frequently. Same basic topics,
no work or family, just travel, finance, politics, books and movies.

Monday, May 02, 2011

Hi Ho, the son of a bitch is dead!

I've never been so happy to hear about someone being killed.
I went to bed before they announced it, so I woke up to a chat
message from my wife saying "felicitaciones!"

Off to buy some sweets to bring to work.