I want to sit on Trent Lott’s porch and watch Tom DeLay being devoured by a giant squid.

Annotating links added.

Update: the storm’s now tracking northwards. It will still hit Houston hard, but San Antonio and Austin appear won’t take the remnants head-on. But there’s still plenty of people in East Texas who’ll see the wind and rain. Rafe, I hope your family gets to Longview okay.

I’ve spent part of the day checking in with family to make sure they have my number so I can collect and pass along messages when phone and power get flakey.

If you are the storm’s projected path, my thoughts are with you, and if you need a number outside of the storm zone you can use as a message drop, send me a email: bill at whump dot com.

Can you blame them? After all, Robertson linked Katrina to abortion rights.

If you’re from one of the zip codes in their list, ask the manager to use the Red Cross Special Transient Accommodations and Assistance Program.

You’ll need a driver’s license or similar document to prove your residence.

The Red Cross will pay for 14 room nights, and grant 14 day extensions until there’s other options available.

My brother, in Rockwall County outside of Dallas, said all the hotels along the Interstate are full of Katrina evacuees who thought they’d be away for a few days, and now don’t have a safe home to return to. This program will keep them from being turned out on the streets when they max out their credit cards.

And if you’re not reading badgerbag, start now. She spent last week in Houston helping evacuees find missing family and friends. She’s still helping find people.

Update: Liz (badgerbag) reports the Red Cross extended the program indefinitely.

Early Sunday morning she wrote that she, her boyfriend, their cats, and her computer were leaving. They arrived in Madison Sunday night, after driving straight through in the cabs in which she and her partner would normally carry fares.

This got the attention of Doug Moe, the Capital Times’ ‘gossip’ columnist, leading to a photo of them, with one of their cabs, in front of New Oreleans Take Out on Madison’s East Side.

I’m glad Nevenah was able to get out of there. It’s small comfort compared to the thousands who didn’t and either died or went through hell, but I can look at the photo and try to keep from crying.

If you aren’t reading the coverage on Making Light, go over now. Teresa, Patrick, and Jim and company are all over the clusterfsck where I can only sputter in rage.

My brother, who lives outside of Dallas in Rockwall County, says the local relief agency’s swamped with refugees who arrived early in the week, expecting to go back in a couple of days. They need donations of ready to eat food and drink if you’re in the area, money if you’re not.

The Red Cross is handling the main stream of refugees arriving by bus convoy, sending them to Reunion Arena. The Red Cross needs money to help them, even if the Federals are keeping the Red Cross from helping people still stuck in New Orleans.

They have diesel, water, food, and bullets.

Update: unfortunately, it’s no longer funny. Badgerbag’s reading his recent posts.

Really, just scp your customers’ data to new servers and get out of there. A rack full of 1U’s isn’t worth fighting over.

As Warren Ellis has all but threatened Americans who become too maudlin or jingoistic about the London bombings with locking us in a trunk hooked to an iPod playing Candle in the Wind on a loop, I’m editing this post.

Instead, I’ll point to Ken MacLeod insulting the Al Qaeda fanboys who may or may not have been behind the bombings. [ via Avedon Carol ]

Imagine creationist electrical engineers taking up abortion-clinic bombing. That’s the level of people we’re dealing with here. The Sekrit Jihad Organization of Al Qaeda in Europe most likely consists of speccy, spotty nerds whose sole reading is the Koran and computer manuals, whose only chance of getting laid is an arranged marriage, and who don’t even allow themselves a wank to ease their zits. In a better life they would have found science-fiction fandom.

Kevin Marks, who lived in London, calls on The Clash.

I did stay in that hotel in the photo. It sits atop the Russell Square station. I used that station every day during my 2003 trip.

The fundraiser, sponsored by Bay Area Unites, will be held at the HP Pavilion in San Jose on Sunday, February 20th from 2 to 5pm.

The speakers and performers include: Bill Clinton (via video), Deepak Chopra, Lisa Loeb, and Dr. Malini Alles.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and I didn’t play as much Katamari Damacy or World of Warcraft over the holiday break as I wanted. I was working on this end of the year post.

Here’s my stab at a ‘best of the web’ for 2004:

Articles on Web Development

I ended up writing plenty of JavaScript this year, so the blog posts and articles I appreciated reflect that:

Separating Behavior and Structure

Peter-Paul Koch’s article on using late binding with JavaScript changed how I write it. The key: don’t embedd JavaScript in the page. Use the JavaScript DOM API to attach the onclick and other event driven controls after the page loads.

Closures and executing JavaScript on page load

Simon Willison wrote an introduction to closures, showing how and why to use them when implementing Peter-Paul Koch’s late binding techniques.

Zebra Tables

Peter F. Miller’s ALA article on ‘striping’ tables demonstrates Peter-Paul’s technique nicely.

Semantic XHTML

Kevin Marks and Tantek Çelik’s presentation on using XHTML ‘to show what you mean’ changes how I write markup.

Tinderbox Category Factory

One reason I may well just switch this blog to Tinderbox. Doug Miller’s awesome hack from the San Francisco Tinderbox weekend.

Other Web Writing

Ikeaphobia and its discontents

Adam Greenfield’s defense of the popularization of Scandanavian furnishings, and coffee that doesn’t taste of soap.

Namarie Sue

It’s from last December, but I must include Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s guided tour through the wilds of authorial self-insertion.

Adbuster’s Fables of the Reconstruction

Worldchanging’s criticism of fantasies where you destroy civilization in order to save it (after all, it certainly isn’t helping Iraq.)

The Elitism of Despair

Bellatrys’ letter to the Fabians

Superlegitimacy: passion and ecstasy of a Tokyo train driver

Nick Currie on Japan’s superficial resemblence to the West

My own favorite entries

We may be on the verge of nothing important

Bruce Sterling’s Long Now Foundation Talk on The Singularity

Lossless XHTML

My notes on Tantek and Kevin’s talk mentioned above.

Really, Catalogs Matter

My misadventures with XML Catalogs and PHP 4′s DOMXML extension.

The neatest web thing: autocompletion with the XMLHTTPRequest object.

• First seen on Bitflux’s weblog.
• Then Google got in on the act.
• And more implementations pop up.

And here’s some other things I liked:

Media

• Bebel Gilberto
• Franz Ferdinand
• DJ McSleazy’s Mashup of the Beastie Boys and Franz Ferdinand
• Last Exile
• Haibane Renmei
• Shawn of the Dead
• The Incredibles
• The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Funny Stuff

• Katamari Damacy
• Fafblog
• Shrillblog
• PvP
• Megatokyo

My best wishes for a happy and better 2005. I thank you for reading this old weblog.