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.