There’s flame coming out, it’s breathing and wheezing and whining, you realize the vehicle’s alive. It’s just hanging out there full of 3 1/2 million gallons of rocket fuel, ready to take flight.
—STS-135 commander Chris Ferguson on arriving at the pad on launch morning.

It starts out as this teeny tiny point of light. As you get closer and closer, it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Even if you’ve seen it before, you keep wondering how much bigger is it going to get?  This thing is huge! Oh my gosh. It’s a building, and it’s running around our planet in orbit every ninety minutes.
—Mission specialist Sandra Magnus on approaching the International Space Station.

Yep. The crew signed my NASA Tweetup badge.

I was invited to cover today’s meet-and-greet with the STS-135 crew held at Stennis Space Center (SSC). Shuttle commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Dr. Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim came to personally thank the employees at Stennis for the role they’ve played in fulfilling the shuttle program’s mission. If you’re not familiar with the Stennis Space Center, it’s the facility in southern Mississippi built for static testing of the Apollo program rocket engines, and has since tested all of the shuttle’s main engines to ensure they were flight-worthy.

Stennis director Patrick Scheuermann explained that unlike the Michoud Assembly Facility a few miles away in New Orleans, SSC has a relatively bright future even with the shuttle program coming to an end. Michoud built the non-reusable main fuel tanks for the shuttle and has wound down operations for the most part. Stennis, on the other hand, has been testing the next generation of engines for NASA and has been hired to test engines built by commercial ventures as well. Sheuermann expects that not only will Stennis not lose any employees, it may gain some in the near future.

Chris Ferguson presents SSC Director Patrick Scheuermann with mission photos and a flag that was brought into orbit on STS-135.

Signs on the interstate as you approach Bay St. Louis state you’re entering Stennis’ buffer zone. Use of the 125,000 acres surrounding the facility is limited due to the noise generated by testing the big-ass rocket engines. I can personally vouch for that. On occasion when I was living in Slidell, about 20 miles away from Stennis, I would here what sounded like thunder, although it was more like a low roar that went on for a time, like a plane passing overhead. The first time I heard it, I asked my neighbor, “What the hell was that?” He replied with one word: “Stennis.”

Despite the curiosity that raised, I’ve never visited Stennis before today. I was one of the many people who, as Scheuermann pointed out, zip by the big green sign on I-10 without a thought. A new visitor’s center is under construction now right at Exit 2, where visitors now must park and be bussed in for tours of the present visitor’s center on site in the test area. It is worth the trip, though, with a surprise attraction: the re-entry scarred command module from Apollo 4 (an unmanned test mission).

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." STS-135 crew members Ferguson, Hurley, Magnus and Walheim at Stennis Space Center.

After a video presentation of the mission, the astronauts gave their personal observations and fielded questions from the audience. Ferguson talked at length about the mission and shuttle program in general. He said this of the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME):

They are one of the true success stories of the program…

Someone likened the SSME to a 7000-pound Swiss watch. If you look at it from the operating temperatures and pressures at which it runs, it is an incredible piece of machinery and it’s one thing I brag about everywhere I go. The amount of horsepower you can generate from a 400-pound LOX or hydrogen turbopump is just incredible.

When you start talking numbers like that to young men who are interested in Camaros and tell them, ‘I can give you an engine that puts out 85,000 horsepower as opposed to your 400 horsepower,’ they’re going to be suitably impressed. And they are.

Hurley told the Stennis crowd that in 135 flights, there were no SSME malfunctions, “A flawless, flawless, 135 flights and everyone in here should be very proud of those engines and what they’ve done.” He also went through the launch from a pilot’s perspective. After going through ignition, lift-off and throttle down, he said:

Throttle-up is just like a catapult shot for us Navy/Marine Corps guys who got to do that. You get kicked right in your bottom side and get headed towards the space station at that point. As we go towards MECO [main engine cut-off],the engines start throttling as the orbiter builds G’s. That really does feel like someone sitting on your chest. And then, boom! Cutoff, and you’re floating in your straps instantaneously.

Ferguson went on to talk about the last shuttle launch, STS-135, which I witnessed in person, thanks to the NASA Tweetup program, in particular what happened when the countdown stopped at 31 seconds:

The age-old question of, what happens to the astronauts when the clock stops at 31 seconds? The image probably is, we’re very professional, we know exactly what to do, we have checklists, we have switches to throw…in reality, we all looked at each other and said, “Huh?”

We really don’t practice things like this, but I was absolutely amazed at how quickly the launch team was able to identify the problem. From the time you realize has started ticking again from 31 seconds, it takes about ten seconds to realize that, “Whoa! Maybe we’re not going to be here in ten minutes, we’re really going to be in space.” The engines start at 6 seconds so that leaves you with 15 seconds to come to terms with the fact that you’re leaving. Considering that just a few short seconds earlier you had an abort/recycle procedure open and you were ready to start shutting the vehicle down, it happens really quick, 3,2,1…boom! You’re on your way. I think I launched with the abort procedures in front of me.

Sandra Magnus answered a question from a young lady (about 10 years old, I’d guess) about being the only woman on the mission by saying the guys had become like brothers to her, and, like the young lady would know, “Sometimes you have to keep your brothers in line.” She also fielded a question about the effects of zero-g living on the body and provided her insight:

Bone loss starts after about 2 weeks. Exercise is the key. For longer missions, you must exercise. We exercise 2 hours a day. We do a cardiovascular-type exercise on a bicycle or a treadmill; you strap yourself into a treadmill, and get some cardio and it loads your bones somewhat, too. We have a resistive exercise device on station that really loads your bones and your muscles. If you do that religiously, faithfully, 2 hours a day the way you’re supposed to, you can come back and be strong.

The other thing you have to deal with when you come back from spaceflight, whether it’s a long stay or a short stay, is neurovestibular effects. The fluid in your inner ear uses gravity to figure out your orientation. When you get into orbit, that gets completely messed up.
…

The minute you get a 10th of a G or 2 10ths of a G when re-entering, you feel it. You feel heavy. It’s amazing what gravity’s doing to you just this minute; it’s pressing you into your seats. You don’t realize it because you’re used to it. But, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, this is just horrible.”

I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t get enough of these space travel anecdotes. I’m going to stay tuned for future NASA Tweetups, and Ferguson said that hopefully there will be U.S. manned spacecraft launches starting in 2016. Meanwhile, missions to the International Space Station will continue, although we’ll have to rely on the Russians to get us up there until the next gen of U.S. rockets (tested at Stennis, of course) are in service.

Note: for more coverage of today’s event, see NOLA.com’s write-up and photos.

Koerner has been around over 100 years, with the third and fourth generations of the Koerner family now operating the business that was started in 1906. Ann said she first worked with the Koerner company when it was basically a bakery supply firm. After Katrina, the company regrouped and expanded its offerings to include the cutting-edge equipment and ingredients used in creating the types of dishes and drinks one thinks of when you hear the term “molecular gastronomy.”

Tim Koerner explained that the techniques perfected by chefs like Ferran Adrià at Spain’s El Bulli restaurant (which is closing, I’m seeing on internets) presented flavors of classic ingredients and dishes in new formats. Ingredients—pine nuts, asparagus, fruits or beans, for example—could be transformed into foams, gels, spherical “caviar” or instantly frozen into ices that retain the ingredient’s original flavor. Koerner sells all of the obscure equipment and food chemicals any would-be Ferran Addrià could ever want.

The supplies and ingredients to make “caviar,” Tim said, agar-agar and calcium chloride, are known as spherification agents. Mixing a flavored liquid with agar and then dropping the mixture in the calcium chloride bath instantly creates a gel skin on the droplet which burst when put in the mouth, like fish eggs, thus it’s called “caviar.” Here’s a NYT story on Cointreau’s attempts to get bartenders to spherify their orange liqueur and include the resultant eggs into fancy cocktails.

One other way to molecular bliss is through making foams and ices out of concentrated flavors. Koerner sells all the equipment; the insulated bowls and buckets and so forth, needed to handle it. Tim noted that working with liquid nitrogen is preferred to dry ice as it freezes whatever foodstuffs you’re working with much faster, preventing cell walls from bursting and causing freezer burns dry ice can cause.

Purity Vodka held a brunch at the Bombay Club on Friday where they presented their own spin on molecular mixology. It was a great brunch, by the way, and a typically great Tales event, where free booze and food combine with great networking opportunities. I met up with some old friends and made some new ones as well, Jonas from San Francisco and DrinkofTheWeek.com and Emily from NYC and MouthOfTheBorder.com. The Bombay Club put on a great spread with chicken and waffles, eggs Benedict, gumbo, shrimp creole, creme brulee and more.  But I digress from the molecular thingy.

Making Bloody Marys the molecular way with Purity Vodka.

Rather than mix up a batch of Bloody Marys using tomato juice and other ingredients, participants were invited to place ingredients (cubed tomatoes rather than juice, pickled vegetables, other traditional garnishes and even sausage and shrimp) into a whipped cream vessel that was then charged by a canister of nitrous oxide gas. Under pressure, the alcohol and gas would extract all of the ingredients’ flavors into the vodka and after a 30-second shake, the gas is released, the cap unscrewed, and the mixture strained into a waiting glass chilled with a perfectly clear ball of ice.

That seems to be a lot of trouble to go through, but it really worked. A lot of what was presented at Tales of the Cocktail this year were ideas and products (like bitters) that would serve to give an edge to one product or bartender’s offerings over another. Purity Vodka was a good example, going all out with its promotion and showing consumers how to do something different with their product, which, by the way, is a damn fine vodka that I enjoyed cut with just a little water in the vermouth-less martini they also served. And that’s not just the brunch talking. Really good stuff.

This is where Koerner comes back in. Manufacturer iSi (pronounced “ee-see,” I learned, not “eye-ess-eye”) makes the cream-whippers, soda siphons and gas chargers (N2O and CO2) needed to make the Purity-style Bloody Marys and the Ferran Addrià foams and gels. Koerner, of course, sells iSi products. For you cutting edge chefs out there, you Blackened-Out and Appetites wish-they-could-eat-at-El Bulli-and-never-will-because-now-it’s-closed-forever-types, Koerner also carries the equipment needed to sous-vide, smoke-inject and foam your little hearts out.

You can order for delivery from their very extensive website, or if you’re in town, call to order and pick up items at their headquarters, 4820 Jefferson Hwy. Keep in mind they’re geared to commercial supply and while they do sell to the general public, it’s not a retail store and they’re only open Mon-Fri until 4pm, and closed noon-1pm for lunch.

Lift-off Atlantis STS-135!

It was over way to quickly.

One thing I noticed the first time I went to see the ponies at the Fairgrounds was, when I turned the corner coming into the grandstand and saw the pack running on the track, the horses looked to be going MUCH faster than I would have ever thought watching horse racing on TV.

Multiply that by at least ten for the shuttle launch. What looks like a huge, lumbering machine taking off slowly while the TV camera tracks its every move is a lie. It happens just about as fast as that bottle rocket taking off on New Year’s but on the grandest scale imaginable. And there are people riding on it.

We were at the NASA press site. I was situated to the right of the countdown clock with a clear view and could hear the countdown audio coming through the speakers in the tent behind me. When they said “main engine start” I saw the instantaneous blast of exhaust billow out of either side of the launch pad. Lot’s of whooping and clapping from the crowd and then the big boosters kicked in and it was off

Atlantis STS-135 going, going...

They warned us not to watch our first launch through a viewfinder. I kept that in mind, but didn’t realize how right they were. As I kept mashing the camera button as fast as I could, Atlantis was well up in the air in seconds and I decided to put the camera aside just as the sound hit full-force. I perceived it like a breeze, an instantaneous cooling on my bare arms and face, and with an imperceptible lag right after, the thunder hit, cracking in my chest.

The next thing that registered was that it was really bright. That was it. “Wow. That’s really bright.”  Then  Atlantis broke through the cloud cover and it was over.

Poof. Or maybe BOOM. Like that. Over.

The cloud deck kept us from watching it head down range, something I was afraid would happen. But the weather was safe for it to launch, so launch it did. Consolation prize: the shadow cast on the cloud cover perpendicular to the smoke trail below it.

Buh-bye Atlantis!

The aftermath in the crowd alongside the lagoon was one of amazement. One of my fellow Tweetup attendees, a guy well over six feet tall and built like a linebacker, was bawling like a baby and reached out to hug another one of our fellows. Whether bawling from the shear magnitude of the launch or at the realization that this was the last launch ever or from a similar lack of sleep or overwhelming sense of camaraderie or the totality of it all I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter. This launch meant a lot to a lot of people, not just the Tweetup attendees but thousands and thousands more whose lives and livelihoods revolved around the shuttle program. The vast emptiness I felt in the huge Vehicle Assembly Building behind us we toured on Thursday (yes, it was so empty I could feel it) spoke literal volumes (129,428,000 cubic feet, to be exact) on the finality of the launch.

An empty sign in an empty building means it's all over...for now.

But it’s not that there isn’t a future to the country’s space program, it’s just that it’s not super clear, and that there will be a period of inactivity before the next big thing and a lot of people are going to lose jobs in that period. A little bit of the future was on display at the Tweetup site as Lockheed Martin and Boeing both had mockups of their contributions to the Orion program on display. While not as roomy looking as the shuttle, the capsule did look like it had a lot more room to work in than the proverbial FEMA trailer, not bad for something that’s got to spend time in the vacuum of space (and go to the moon, and asteroids and possibly Mars, actual missions in mind when designing it).

Local-area space facilities, the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East and the Stennis Space Center just across the Pearl River in Miss. will remain in business. Michoud was where the Saturn V first-stage booster module for the moon launches was constructed in ’60s and ’70s and where the shuttle’s main fuel tank has been built. It will be involved with the Orion capsule manufacture and testing along with some of the systems for the Ares cargo rocket systems. I was told, though, that the work was not as extensive as in the past and the workforce needed would be in the hundreds rather than the thousands. Stennis will continue its role in as an engine testing center, testing the newer and bigger rocket engines Ares will require. Here’s some pics of the Orion mock-ups:

Lockheed's Orion testing model.

The experience was overwhelming. I’m writing this after getting the first sleep I’ve had after 40-plus hours of no sleep and non-stop activity. I want to thank Dvora, Alex and Oscar who were my passengers to and from NASA and Orlando on launch day. I greatly appreciated their company and navigational help as we re-routed around a traffic jam on the way back to Orlando. From Mexico City (by way of Philly and New Jersey), San Francisco and Los Angeles (by way of Puerto Rico), respectively, I loved hearing their stories and hope they didn’t mind my rantings as we had a short tour of off-the-beaten path American rural south. We saw giant alligators (fake), orange groves and what I’m assuming was a sandhill crane. The big bird (looks kind of like the herons we see all the time but at least twice as tall) aren’t as rare as I thought (I told my passengers they would be able tell their grandchildren they saw one) but it was still a neat sight.

"Swampy" on Hwy. 50 outside of Titusville.

I came back to the hotel after a shower and a trip to the get some dinner and could hear the post-launch gathering of  some of the group who were staying at the same La Quinta as me. Too tired and grumpy to be good enough company to join in, I did hear, though, over and over, one common theme floating out of the lobby: “THE most amazing experience of my life!” As we say in NOLA: Yeah you rite!

And it was. Overwhelming and unbelievable and two straight days of “Wow!”

Launch is set for Friday, July 8 at about 11:30 a.m. Eastern time. I’m leaving New Orleans tomorrow for Destin, where I’ll help celebrate my cousin’s 50th birthday, then head to check in at the hotel in Orlando and hopefully have enough time to pick up my credentials before 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

Thursday is Tweetup activity day. I just got the email for the itinerary. Highlights for the day include a bus trip to the launch pad to view one of the pre-launch procedures, retraction of the Rotating Service Structure, followed by “a tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, including visits to the Apollo Saturn V Center and the Vehicle Assembly Building and a drive by the Launch Control Center, Mobile Launch Platform and Orbiter Processing Facility” to quote the email.

Launch day starts at 5 a.m. NASA Tweetup pro @ageekmom gave us a heads-up to this Florida Today article about how they’re expecting 1 million spectators in and around the space center for the launch. They are also predicting the three roads leading back to Orlando probably are going to be choked with traffic for at least five hours after the launch. So I plan on leaving Orlando early. Like 3 or 4 a.m., then camping out at the press site for as long as they let us after the launch.  If there’s a delay, there are launch windows for Saturday and Sunday mornings, and I’ve got the room booked until Sunday just in case. But there will be no delays!

Anyone who wants to catch the action can check the following:

Beginning at 10:30 a.m. on July 7, NASA will broadcast the Tweetup program on http://www.ustream.tv/nasatelevision. Other portions of the Tweetup may be broadcast on NASA Television, online at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv. Photos will be posted online during and/or after the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto.

If you’re not familiar with the New Orleans area’s connection with the country’s space program, take a look at this from the Times-Picayune from yesterday. I’m also going to try to meet up with some Slidell folks from the Stennis Space Center, where they test the shuttle engines, and will be interviewing Stennis’ director for the day job the week after the launch.

I’ll be posting later on once I get situated.

Nonetheless, I’ve been selected to attend a NASA Tweetup and if all goes well have the best seat in the house to watch the space shuttle Atlantis launch on July 8, 2011. Tweetups, for those who don’t know, are get-togethers IRL (in real life) organized by people who are on Twitter who normally only communicate to each other on the internet. I’ve been to lots of tweetups. Mostly organized as get-togethers for drinks or lunch in New Orleans. I’ve met a lot of good people through these things.

I was late in the game learning about the NASA tweetups, not really hearing about them until Leigh, one of our local bloggers (Liprap’s Lament) attended Endeavour’s launch last month (her posts are here). A couple of weeks ago, she tweeted that it was the last day to sign up for next NASA tweetup and posted a link. I decided what the hell, signed up, and last Friday got the email that I had been selected.

Now, everyone who’s been chosen has been whooping and hollering and jumping for joy. They’re big fans: engineers, teachers, scientists and students who’ve been waiting for this chance and applying forever.  My reaction was, wow, great. Now what am I going to do?

It’s not that I don’t realize the enormity of the situation. It’s the last space shuttle launch. Ever. I was one of only 150 people out of about 5200 who applied. And now that I’ve got some arrangements made and financing in place, I’m beginning to get to the whooping and hollering stage myself.

I’m not a scientist or teacher, I’m a writer. It’s going to be a great story. And I’m a fan. Here’s my space story so far and I’m ready to write the next chapter.

I vaguely remember (I would have been 4 or 5) watching one of the Gemini missions launch on our black-and-white TV. In first grade, my brother and I built a model Saturn V rocket that was taller than both of us. That was all normal kid stuff back then, but why I’m starting to get psyched for the NASA tweetup is this: I was THIS (tiny pinched fingers) close to watching Apollo 11 launch but wasn’t quite there and I have ALWAYS wanted to see a launch since that disappointment as a 7-year old.

We were living in New Iberia, Louisiana and my dad was great at piling us all into the Country Squire and going on a long vacation every year. The summer of 1969 happened to be a Florida vacation. We were in Fort Walton when Apollo 11 launched and then traveled to Miami, where I fell asleep in front of the TV what must have been just a few minutes (I tried so hard to stay awake) before Neil Armstrong took his one small step and his giant leap all in one breath.

Update: Mom called. She says she woke all of us kids up when Armstrong was first setting foot on the moon. I must not remember it. She also says she made sure my older brother was looking at the TV when Alan Shepard launched (from his crib, he would have only been about 7 months old at the time). Plus, she said, going to the Apollo 11 launch was never in the plans.

I never found out why we didn’t go to Cape Kennedy to watch the launch. Maybe they felt it was too much to handle with all the crowds and three very ill-behaved children. Maybe it was just the timing. I don’t know. I was still a fan, though, and watched all the Apollo launches after that.

In 1981, I was a freshman at college and anticipated the first shuttle launch. I remember dreaming the night before the launch that I was at the launch and that I watched it launch but that it blew up in sky. That wasn’t really a premonition of Challenger; there was a lot of talk about the untried technology and how that was a possibility which must have crept into my dream. Needless to say, I was very happy nothing like that happened.

In 1984 I was working in a camera store in New Orleans doing photo processing. One of our customers worked at Michoud, where the shuttle’s main fuel tank was manufactured.  He had gotten VIP employee access to one of the launches and let me keep a copy of one of his photos. His description of what it was like to feel the launch planted the seed, that one day I would go witness a launch.

I kept up with the shuttle as best as a twenty-something with a lot on his plate could do, but it is Challenger, unfortunately, that is the next thing that sticks in my mind. I remember that day. I was back at LSU. It was cold, I had ridden my bike to class. In class, I wondered if my mom was watching the launch because she was a teacher and this was the one with the teacher in space. I decided I’d go straight home and catch the replay and when I got home and turned on the TV it was the replay, the replay of those two pillars of smoke coming out of those two boosters as they started to fly uncontrollably apart. It took a few seconds and I still hadn’t realized what had happened when Dan Rather’s voice kicked in to tell me. Later I learned that my mom’s class (I think she was teaching kindergarten then) had not been watching the launch.

After that, graduation, work and life happened. The shuttle returned and became, once again, routine.

In 2002, I was reading about an upcoming shuttle launch. I thought, I have some extra time. There’s nothing stopping me from driving down there and watching a launch. And I was ready to do it, too, only to hear about some problems and a very long launch delay that went past my personal window of opportunity. Then the Columbia tragedy the next year, and I pretty much put any thought of going out of my mind.

So that brings me to now. And I’ve been picked to see the last launch and meet the people who have made it all happen and meet the people whose tweets and Facebook postings I’ve now been following. And I’ll get to write about it, too, for my day job. I think I’m starting to get a little tingly. And thanks, Leigh!

The Twitter is all a-twitter; even a reporter from the Chicago Tribune who came down to cover the storm used Twitter to quickly connect with NOLA area sources. He’s written a story (featuring our own NolaNotes) about the use of Twitter by people keeping up with everyone’s preparations; whether they’re staying or evacuating; where they’re going, what they’re taking; and, the status of traffic along the various evacuation routes.

It’s a great topic. I was convinced for a year after I first signed up for Twitter that it was absolutely useless. I’ve seen the light since then, and I’m glad the national media is recognizing how useful the service is in emergency situations. Twitter was put to good use during the recent San Diego wildfires and Los Angeles earthquake, too.

Twitter also lets people vent. Following regular updaters, and their 140-character tweets, since Gustav formed up reveals all the stages of hurricane angst. Tweets have gone from interested concern, while it was south of Haiti, to growing concern as it strengthened past Jamaica, then terror as it exploded to a category four as it approached Cuba.

But along with the concern was a spirit of defiance. We remembered (and tweeted about) a time when approaching storms weren’t that big of a deal. Neighbors and families boarded houses together. There were block parties with cookouts featuring all that meat that was fixing to go bad when the power went out. We made sure each of us had enough candles and flashlights and radios and batteries. But we were not leaving. When the winds passed, we got together and fixed what needed fixing in the neighborhood and kept our collective bravado together.

When Gustav approached, the NOLA bloggers and tweeters talked about not leaving. About getting generators, supplies, making arrangements for friends in flood-prone areas. We wanted to keep up the family/neighborhood traditions. But Category 4 status and forecast models pointing it right to NOLA got the best of us. On Friday, Gov. Jindal gave a very nervous press conference. On Saturday, Nagin did one of his patented freak-outs with his “Mother of all storms” quote. Aaron Broussard, seemingly again on the verge of tears, mandatorily evacuated the west bank; then later the entire east bank of Jefferson Parish.

Everyone was tough on looters. In Jefferson Parish, if you were out after curfew you would be considered a “suspicious person.” In Orleans, where 1500 National Guard troops have doubled the size of the NOPD, Nagin promised looters would “be taken straight to Angola…,”put in general population at the big house.

What happened? Rather than see what the hurricane would actually do, everyone left. By most accounts, getting out of the city wasn’t too bad. But bottlenecks at the I-55, I-12 and I-55 interchanges created parking lots. As of 10pm Sunday, there are reports of slow-moving, jammed-up traffic even as the first squall lines of Gustav’s outer bands approach.

Twitter is full of angry tweets. Angry because people feel forced out on an unplanned road trip, including pets, and forced to do so in many cases without too much spare cash. Now, they are angry because the pets and the kids are squalling because THEY’RE angry they’ve been stuck in a slow-moving car for 10 hours and aren’t any closer to their destination than they were 5 hours ago.

On a positive note, what these angry tweets can add up to are the tweets we never hope to read-the desperate tweets. “I’m on my roof, come get me!” tweets. Or, “I’m in my house, and the water is two feet now and keeps coming!” tweets. Or, “My parents are trapped. Can someone check on them?” tweets. A week after Katrina, I saved the HTML file of the nola.com forums that contained hundreds of such postings. I still have it, and read it when I feel able.

We don’t know what the future is going to hold. Is it, as NolaNotes asks, global warming? Is this going to keep happening every couple of years? Can we handle it if it does? If the city floods again, is it “game over”? Who knows. I just hope we don’t have a future with desperate tweets.

It was a nice place. Very pleasant. And there was internet. So I broke down, and at Christmas, gathered all my resources and located a nice laptop. I shopped around–a lot. I finally found one, for the geek among us, one with a dual-core AMD Turion64 processor, 15-inch screen, 2 gigs of RAM, a decent, though built-in video card (ATI X1250), a slot-loading dual-layer DVD drive/burner, a built-in camera and to seal the deal, an HDMI output port.

It’s a Gateway, and Best Buy had them advertised on sale. I headed on down, and there was one left, the display model. After some haggling with the geeks, it was mine for $649.00. I was very happy; I was expecting around $900 or so.

I’m telling you all this because I really don’t have a whole lot to write about and haven’t posted in a week. The big news is that I’ve moved again. To Mandeville proper, and only 5 miles from the office. Today Charter came in installed teh internets. I bought a wireless router, a D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme-N Gigabit Edition sucker that’s really cooking.

WEP enabled, no prying eyes or suckers like me (I glommed onto a neighbors connection last night, fool had the admin password still enabled). Think I’ll do some downloading tonight.

The NOLA bloggers have been doing great work covering the 2008 Jazz & Heritage Festival. Chronicling the rising prices, the food, the rain, the influx of tourists Foreigners taking over and most of all the music, NOLA bloggers have written of their experiences for all to read. We therefore bestow the following Lucky Blog awards for excellence in all things Orleanian and Jazz-Festy, First Weekend of Jazz Fest Edition:

Best Overall: Wet Bank Guy at Toulouse Street’s Battling Fortuna at the Track, and his posts that follow.

Most Thorough Coverage: Minor Wisdom’s posts starting with Where I’ll be on Friday (maybe) and continuing for each day of the fest so far.

New Orleans Music’s Best Friend: Bonerama Freak Stacey’s Jazz Fest or Rain Fest?

Best Jazz Fest Newbie Post: Kiss My Gumbo’s My 1st Jazzfest.

Best Jazz Fest Post From Someone Who Didn’t Go; also, Best Atmospheric Post: Tim’s Nameless Blog’s The Sounds of New Orleans.

Best Rant on the Foreigners Taking Over: Mosquito Coast’s Jazz Fest Musings.

Good Solid Posts That Do Not Necessarily Fall Into Any Category: Prytania Water Line’s Jazzfest Story and Drive By Blogger’s advice to the Foreigners at New Orleans Jazz Festival 2008.

So here are your awards to claim, if you so choose.

Full size:

Or bling-sized:

Disclaimer: Read these other blogs at your own risk. We don’t vouch for other peoples’ content in posts and comments we didn’t read. Also, Pete and Nola bestow these awards in appreciation of everyone’s hard work, wit and humor. If we left anyone out, sorry, we tried to gather as many as we could. You’re welcome to point out posts we should have seen in the comments.

One new motherboard, processor and heatsink later, all is well. Here are some shots of the carnage:

Old motherboard on top of new motherboard’s box. For the geek amongst us, here’s the step-by-step.

1. Open case.
2. Disconnect everything from motherboard.
3. Remove old motherboard.
4. Take new processor and mount on new motherboard. Follow directions carefully.
5. Mount heatsink on new processor.
6. Install motherboard into case.
7. Connect all cables.
8. Start up machine. Catch it in post, go to PC health part of BIOS and watch CPU temp for ten minutes to make sure heatsink is working. Mine stabilized at 102, which is ok.
9. Boot up Windows, install new motherboard drivers.
10. Play Far Cry to make sure new processor works through all its paces. Check temp. Up to 108, still ok.
11. Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New motherboard, processor (upgrade from Athlon 64 3000 to 4000) and heatsink/fan (much quieter than old one). With 2 day shipping, $133! Not bad.

Just a celebration of the new MP3 player I bought today. Having a long-standing affection for digital music, one would think that I’d have gotten one of these a long time ago. Wrong. I was hard-headed, stubborn and didn’t think anything was wrong with burning endless CD’s to bring my music home.

I’d been thinking about it for awhile. I knew I was too cheap to get a real iPod, so occasionally I would shop for a non-Apple product. Today, the jackpot appeared by way of a 1 gigabyte Sandisk Sansa player with built in FM tuner for $39.99 at Circuit City. I think it will make me very happy. I can download MP3′s of radio shows I missed and listen at my leisure at home.