The Haversian Canal

Palmeiro busted for steroids. Am I dissappointed in Raphael Palmeiro? No, I've come to expect this from major league sports. Actually, compared to the violent criminals in sports, he's not that bad. However, I dislike the fact that my kids will grow up hearing about creeps like this and be forced to make the same concession: that a doper isn't as bad as a rapist. Of course, it's true, but sport isn't supposed to be about doping.

I got my books today and checked in, for the second time, at the office. I think the only thing left to do is show up on Friday for orientation. What's doctorly apparel?

If I needed a carpal tunnel surgery in the next few weeks, Satya Agarwala is the surgeon I would want.

but our new friends, Mike and Sarah, kept us out late, like 9:15! Now it's late and I'm tired and I have to get up early.

Back in the day, barbers used to compete with doctors. The candy-stripe pole represents blood being let under their razors. My wife and I are now competing with the barbers. It's part of the cost savings plan for med school: my wife is going to cut my hair. Coming from the Navy, haircuts are fairly standard and simple because the barbers on the ships aren't exactly certified by civilian standards. They go to a one week school, whereas real barber licenses take upwards of six months to earn. Luckily my last tour was at the Naval Academy, which has licensed barbers, and the ones I go to, Chuck and Mel, have been cutting hair for a combined 80 years. So I explained my plan to Mel in May and he told me exactly what to buy and what my wife should do. $170 for Wahl Senior clippers, a complete set of guards, a decent pair of thinning shears, oil for the clippers, a handheld mirror and one styling cape. I qualified for a Sally Beauty Supply discount card!

We went out back and my mother-in-law took pictures as I demonstrated my faith in my wife's manual dexterity. A #2 guard from the bottom to two finger widths above the ear, a #4 from there up another finger and a half, and then a 1" guard all over the top. The Senior has a variable upper blade: full in makes a nice clean cut, like you want for the short stuff on the sides, and full out makes an uneven cut that helps blend the long stuff on top. Go back with the #2 and #4 to fade, trim the edges with no guard, clean up the back, and then thin the top (only close the thinning shears half-way!). Viola! One Navy haircut, tapered all around. If you went to a barber and asked for this you'd just say "Taper the back and sides, leave an inch on top and thin it." Make sure to oil the blades before and after or they'll chew out streaks and holes.

The clippers get hot because electric motors aren't 100% efficient. Probably not the right clipper for a professional (that's the $200 fan-cooled Oster), but a heck of a clipper for home use. Overall, my wife made the best first haircut I've ever seen. Now we have do this every two weeks for the next six and a half months to pay for the investment. Medical school being four years, that shouldn't be to hard. Add my son into the mix and this thing should pay for itself 12 to 16 times over in the next four years, may $2000, or $500 a year.

I hear you can get leeches online...

Orientation starts Friday at 0830. Maybe I'll bring my computer and blog there. I've heard people do that at conferences. Parties every day until class starts. My mother is coming Friday and my mother-in-law is leaving Saturday. Friday night is going to be cramped. And I have to mow the lawn Saturday morning before going to orientation. I have to be downtown before 0830.

Also, the director of my scholarship progam called me yesterday and my recruiter called me today. Looks like I should be able to establish my benefit start date by the first or second day of class.

is up at Alois, MD.

The president of the 2008 class sent our class an e-mail back in June (or early July) and put all class of 2009 e-mail addresses in the to line. That means everyone got all the e-mail addresses. So I set up a Google group for the class, which has been awfully beneficial. I think people are getting comfortable with each other, and lots of useful information has been passed, which prevents 156 people asking the same question. It also makes for some bizarre conversations, like the day-before crisis about what to wear to orientation. Turns out conflicting word has been given out by different staff members to different students, and now we've got at least one 22 year old male planning to come nude.

As the only admin for the e-mail group, I was a bit amazed at how everyone I met, I mean, everyone, knew me, often without my telling them my name. It's a very nice way to start off, although now I'm feeling pretty guilty about not knowing anyone else's name.

We had an opportunity to ask a panel of T-2s questions. I asked when the AMSA book sale would be. I didn't ask for my sake, since HPSP will be buying my books, I thought the class would like to know, especially since it's coming up very quickly and hasn't gotten any mention elsewhere. Well, as the AMSA rep (who happened to be part of the panel) started to speak, the moderator stepped on us and said to take specific questions to the booths afterward. Rude, rude, rude! I'll bet there were about 160 of 160 first year students who wanted to know! Certainly people were coming up to me and mentioning his rudeness later. Anyway, if you ever moderate for a group question and answer, remember that you don't know what the group is interested in, because you're not in the group. So I missed the few remaining questions as I was steaming in my seat!

That one tidbit aside, it was great. Lots of help available, I signed up for the surgical club, and I'll be looking into SARBA and the rest of the opportunities, though I suspect free time is going to be limited. BTW, getting up a 5:15 is horrid!

Class picnic and the AMSA book sale today. I stopped by the AMSA sale and was pleased to see it was quite busy. Just down the hall from the auditorium where they were holding the book sale is the locker room. That was where I met a second-year student, who's a fellow military health professions scholarship student. Even though HPSP students get all our books paid for he had collected a bunch of old books and gave them to me, to be redistributed to my classmates who may need them.

I took the books back to the car where my wife, kids, and mom, were waiting with the hazards blinking, parked in a no parking zone on Tulane Avenue. I don't think anyone really cared on Sunday though. From there we went to the picnic. Actually, we got lost, then went to the picninc. It wasn't a big lost, just a little one: the enterance I took into City Park doesn't seem to offer a ready way to the portion of the park where the picnic was held.

We met a couple new people, mainly other married couples with kids; our daughter made friends with complete strangers on the playground and wouldn't play with the other kids of my fellow students. Oh well, my wife's happy to have some fellow moms to relate to. Interestingly, she's actually got all the married couples to tap into, because the female students who are moms seem to relate just as well as the spouses who are moms. I also met a professor from the Naval Academy. Weird. I've spent six and a half years there now and never met him. He graduated in '72, his daughter is in my class (about my age and also HPSP), and his son is a SEAL and '02 Naval Academy grad. Between that family and the '98 West Pointer we ate with, it was definitely the military table at the picnic.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, New Orleans is all about who you know. Your contacts shape your experiences: they open doors, there are doors you never realize are there to be opened, and credentials seem to be almost meaningless.

We had our whitecoat ceremony today, which was the same as the Induction Day ceremony at the Naval Academy, yet completely different. The sameness was due to the omnipresence of the alumni association, the speeches, and a whole lot a waiting around for the thirty seconds that actually matter. At the Naval Academy 1200 18-year olds get sworn in en masse. The brief ceremony is the culmination of a long day and serves as a clear demarcation of the youth's entry into the military. It is followed by the upperclass detailers ushering the new plebes into Bancroft Hall, the dormatory from hell, and screaming at the plebes until they become horse or the plebes collapse from the calesthinic overexertion. The white coat ceremony is a very long ceremony which comprises the entirity of a very short day, starting comfortably at 10 am in a five-star hotel within walking distance of the medical school. Oodles of people working on their speaking skills parade in front of the microphone and finally we all got to get up and put on unpressed, stiff, short, white lab coats. Dean Kahn introduced this segment of the ceremony by directing the students to stand, receive their coat from Dr Levy, walk up to another distinguished alum whose name I forgot, present the coat to her, let her help us into them(mom dressing the kids?) and then come to the microphone and tell the distinguished audience of parents, faculty, and sundry others, our names, where we're from, and what brought us here. At the moment those words reached the 312 ears of 156 students, 156 heads immediately swiveled left and right as 312 eyes became as big as saucers. "Whad he say??? I'm not ready to do that. I didn't prepare. I don't even know the answer to that question!" After a few moments to compose ourselves we pressed on and did manage to make it through. It was an interesting study in how well we've already learned the literature. Our cited influences were, in order:
1) Parents and spouses
2) Grace of God (aka random chance)
3) Personal attributes
4) Singular traumatic events
5) Quipy remarks
"It was this or drive a cab." (spoken by a Pakistani, I believe)
Responding to the specific wording "what brought you here": "A Nissan Sentra."
"My dad's wallet."
"The complete lack of anything else to do in [small town] Nevada."
6) Father Don Owens (at orientation one of the second-year students asked us, as a group, who'd been interviewed by Father Owens; about half of us raised our hands.)

Turns out the last guy got accepted on Friday afternoon. He got a phone call while driving.

Apparently they used my application picture: which was a head-and-shoulders shot of me in service khakis. I set up that picture specifically to make sure my military insignia would be visible. Apparently it stuck in a number of minds, as I got some questions about it afterward.

That was my friend Wayne's advise on the anatomy class. He said if I study really hard, I might pass (low B). I got up at 0530 and it's now 2230. The second year students are clearly still up because they're sending us a ton of e-mail right now. Learning Adobe InDesign and the Wacom drawing tablet on the fly as I take notes. I'm just making one thousand page documents for each class. I haven't figured out how I'm going to demark chapters and such. Ian, who sits next to me, is using a tablet PC. Several others are also using laptops. The power outlets are scarce and I killed both batteries today. It's coming, the leaves have curled up and the fish are jumping. The colors on the prairie are saturated as the horizon darkens and the air falls still. The storm is coming.

Ever wonder where you got that ability to find your way around? Torkel Hafting and his colleagues at the Centre for the Biology of Memory, Norwegian University of Science and Technology have some very interesting observations in their study just published in Nature (subscription required). Basically, they stuck wires into the brains of rats, at a very specific spot called the entorhinal cortex, and then recorded the firing of brain cells as the rats ran around various enclosures, observing where the rats were when these particular cells fired their electrical impulses. What did they find? Regardless of the size or shape of the enclosure, the cells fired when the rat crossed through the vertices of equilateral triangles!

Wow! Who cares! Well, what about people with severe balance problems, people with vertigo, people that can't seem to orient themselves in space? Maybe they have damage to this area of the brain. Maybe we can train other cells to take over this function. We could paint dots on the floor in triangular patterns and have them walk from dot to dot. Stuff like that.

Even more interestingly, this worked even in complete darkness! That means this was hard-wired into the rats' brains. Talk about a priori knowledge! It's like having a cartesian grid, like on a map, ready to go, just waiting for geography to lay under it. This could easily represent an innate construct we're all born with that we use to fit our entire spatial experience into.

Imagine all the experiments to pursue: do male and females have larger or smaller regions? Does that correlate with great or lessor accuracy? Does the neuron fire ahead of time allowing us to predict where the rat is going? or are the neurons firing to reward arrival at the vertex? Are there other grids with different shapes already programmed in? What with three? Incidentally (or not?) the eye is sensitive to three colors: red, green, and blue. Are there other threes?

I just realized, in my gut, how much I have to read and understand tomorrow and felt the urge to throw up. What have I gotten myself into?

So, if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a dork. I mean really, I'm about to launch into a review of software for taking notes in medical school. How dork can one be?

I decided to take notes electronically because in my last job I had to make reports of certain meetings and my wife, an occupational therapist, will agree that I write very slowly. But I type at a reasonable speed. Not 200 words a minute, but I get by. So I learned to take notes with a Palm keyboard. I didn't even try in my classes because I needed to draw, Palm pilots aren't really big enough for that, and I wasn't about to invest in a laptop. Well, for a while things were looking grim and I thought I'd be falling back on some other skills I've developed in analytic design (the marriage of graphic design and statistics). In fact, I picked up a consulting gig that paid well enough for me to get a super-wham-a-dyme Dell 9300 laptop (big and packed to the gills) and Adobe's Creative Suite, and a Wacom Intous 3 drawing tablet. Of course, I got into medical school, and decided I'd give electronic note-taking a go using something in the Creative Suite. I've settled on the combination of InDesign and Illustrator.

No one program in the Creative Suite allows you to do what you really want to, which is treat the whole thing like paper. This turns out to be not so bad if you have a lot of screen real estate. If you're limited in screen real estate, you're up a creek. With the 17" screen of my Dell 9300, I have the real estate, but I've also ripped the shoulder strap clean off my brief case. It's heavy. Add the Wacom tablet and the usual half-inch of sundry papers, an extra battery, pens, charger, random things in the front pocket, and I've got a 20 to 25 lb briefcase. Basically, InDesign supports vector graphics and text, while Illustrator has more robust vector graphics tools. So I divide the screen between them. I layout my InDesign sheets as 8.5x11 landscape, divided into two 5.75x8.5 pages. This makes for denser use of the same space. I set a two pica margin (1/3 inch) all around and make the text boxes fit that then reduce it slightly be moving the right edge of the text box about three pica (by eyeball) in from the margin. This additional space to the right edge is where I put graphics that I've drawn in Illustrator. I recommend a sans serif font; I personally use Gill Sans. Illustrator gets the other half of the screen, the right half, and I use almost the entire space to draw the graphics which I then shrink down, move to a growing pile at the top, and then move a second copy onto the InDesign page. This allows me to cram a tremendous amount of detail into my drawing before reducing them.

The Wacom tablet has worked out better than I expected. It's fairly unobtrusive in my lap. You don't look at a Wacom tablet because what you're drawing is on the screen in front of you. It took a few hours, but my brain has figured out how to map the position of the pen in my hand to the mouse's focus on the screen. A major plus compared to the tablet PC users is that I have the keyboard and a horizontal drawing surface available at the same time.

I downloaded OneNote the first night after class because I was in a panic, still deep in the Creative Suite's learning curve, including learning the Wacom tablet. OneNote would be the compromise if you don't have a lot of screen real estate on a tablet PC. Tablet PCs . . . here's the thing about tablet PCs: in tablet position, you can't type, you're forming your letters by hand; in laptop position you don't have comfortable, horizontal drawing surface. OneNote is also limited in what you can do with a line once you've drawn it. Don't like the endpoint? Try again. Don't like the slope or curve of a line? Try again. Adobe's vector paths allow you to change everything. That means you can fix anything, which is a major affordance of electronic notes.

To be sure all these methods have their affordances and limitations.

- Using a laptop without Tablet PC or a Wacom tablet, using either Creative Suite or OneNote: useless.
- Widescreen laptop with Creative Suite and a Wacom tablet: ability to edit type and drawings, typing speed, combining type with drawing, electronic distribution via PDF, and, an unexpected bonus, you don't have to be doing the look-up-look-down head-bob of note-taking. Also, one thing that's really nice about Adobe: their hypenation rules are much better than Microsoft Office. It's heavy and takes a few minutes to set up and break down.
- OneNote with a laptop and Wacom tablet: useless. Wacom swears you can get a tablet to work with OneNote, but their directions didn't help me.
- OneNote with a tablet PC: you can combine type with drawing, but you only have access to one horizontal surface at a time (the drawing screen or the keyboard), PDF is less accessible (only available if you also bought Adobe Acrobat, and if you're in school, plunk down another $250 and get the Creative Suite), and your native format isn't perfectly accessible to non-OneNote users, even if they have other Office products.
- Paper: less transmittable, more difficult to manipulate organization after the fact, more difficult to edit after the fact. Exquisite resolution and texture, with a profound range of implements (sissors, charcoal, paint), foldability, intuitive combination of hand-drawn lettering and graphics. You're also stuck with whatever grid or ruling they put on the page, and, after a while, it get's awefully heavy. If they turn down the lights in the lecture hall to accomodate slides or PowerPoint, good luck seeing what you're writing.

Remember that Lance Armstrong commercial where he says "It never gets easier, you just go faster."? Tomorrow will start the first full week of class. We had the nice easy half week with introductions and our choices of two different free lunches every day. Anatomy will be going strong tomorrow morning and I have to take the kids to daycare for the first time, and there's a lunch meeting (yes, lunch is free, but I have to go, and I have to cogitate while I'm there). Tuesday my mom goes home so I'll be picking the kids up from daycare for the first time, and there will be, for the first time, no one here to help. Wednesday I have to skip class to go take my oath of office. I've gotta get that changed...

So I missed a couple of days... this blog is doing fine... no worries! I did get hit with the freight train of confusion, figuring out what I'm supposed to read before which class, which classes I really need to read for, and which classes I just need to cogetate on. Turns out reading is not one of the major jobs of a medical school student. If you're just reading pages you're wasting time. You have to be actively challenging yourself and solving problems. Drawing helps and I'm getting better with Illustrator, which helps. I think I may solicit some summer work as an illustrator. We'll see.

There was also the rapid winnowing of resources from the massive number of initially required books down to the books we actually need to understand the material. I know the profs have got their heads around the concept of free information on the web, so I'm a bit lost on why they still recommend we buy all these books. I mean, I'm fine with it, since the military will be filling my bill and I'll want all the books I can get when I'm the only doctor in the Navy clinic in Guam and the locals are asking me why grandma's leg doesn't work anymore, but the other students seem pretty distraught about the number of books.

Googling for my name (Niels Olson) now puts my own pages as the first four entries! See if you can do that, John Smithes and George Joneses of the world!

Here's the eyewitness account from my brother in Mito-shi, about halfway between the epicenter and Tokyo.

It was more like 250 miles north of Tokyo, it was far north Honshu, in Miyagi Prefecture, about 200 kilometers north of us. I was just about to walk out of my apartment when it started. I had stuck on my headphones and was thinking, what the hell is with this music? Then the shaking got heavier and I started thinking "oh shit." It was probably the biggest one I've been in so far. There was another one this spring that was smaller but closer to us so that was somewhat the same amount in this area. Probably the craziest thing was how long it went on. Next most crazy- watching the hanging ceiling light swing so much that it was almost hitting the ceiling. Overall it really didn't do much though, the biggest thing was that a swimming pool ceiling fell down on a bunch of people.

This is totally gross; totally illustrative of gross anatomy. My wife cooked a chicken over the weekend and pre-staged lunches for us through out the week. I've eaten chicken and pasta twice for lunch, both times with dark meat, both times after lab, which runs from 8 to 12. In lab your skin absorbs the formaldehyde so you can't just wash it off, no matter how many times you wash your hands. It has to diffuse out of your skin. Think about: they choose formaldehyde because human tissue can absorb it. Whenever I take a bite of chicken and get a whiff of the chemicals in my hands, the thought springs involuntarily into my mind that the chicken in my mouth must have the same texture as the cadaveric muscles. EEEEEEWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Grand Rounds is up at Circadiana.

Wow, nobody ever voted me for anything before. The Owl Club is sort of the student's union. We work with the faculty to represent the students, and we put together pretest lab practicals for the other students, a dinner for the best faculty in the spring, that sort of thing. After my thirty-second campaign speech somebody sitting next to me said I should have run for student government instead. I've heard that can be overload. With the work as a Basic Life Support instructor and class, and family, I'd have to see some pretty convincing arguments to take on something else. I can't help but think I may have won simply by being the most recognizable person in the group if only for having been the person that set up the class Google group back in July before classes started. The hawaiian shirt may have done it too. Well, now I've got to make good on the obligations, but it's certainly motivating to have been selected from among such an august group of all-star students.

People keep asking me where I'm from. They asked me when I got out of the military, they asked me when I applied for medical school, they asked me when I started medical school, they asked me when I applied for a new driver's license, when I applied for the military's medical school scholarship. My classmates ask me. I don't know. I've spent about equal amounts of my life in Kansas City, Omaha, and Annapolis. At this point I consider none of those to be what most people think of as a hometown, that is, somewhere they expect to return to at some point, or someplace where a significant number of relatives live. I'm not even sure where I live now. I presumably live in a particular house, which is where my wife and kids live, but I spend more time at school than at home. I keep all my study books in my locker, but I rarely use any except three or four. I could probably live out of my briefcase if I had to, and I feel like it at least once a day. It's not a complaint, but an observation. I didn't ask to be a wanderer, but it appears that's what I've become. I've heard of journalists that can't even force themselves to stay put for more than a year at a time. I haven't gotten that far yet, but I have a hard time staying put for two years in a row. In the last 11 years I've only managed to stay moved into one place for over two years once, that was at my last duty station at the Naval Academy, where we spent two years, seven months. Medical school will be four years, but I'll spend the second two in clerkships around the country.

Somebody broke into my car today in the parking garage! I came out after class and didn't realize it until I was in the car and saw the naked wires on the steering column. They failed because there's a chip in my ignition that disables the car if the steering column is tampered with. So I had to get a tow. The first tow truck couldn't fit in the garage (although I gave AAA the clearance height of the garage). The second truck fit and the driver, Tim, said he had the only truck in New Orleans that would fit in this particular garage. Of course, Tim had to remount the tow in a different position once we were out of the garage and while he was leaning over his glasses broke and fell off. Yeah, the lens retaining wire broke, and then the lens fell out. Dumb luck there. So he couldn't drive, but my car was out so he called another truck. Now, you know once you call a tow truck it's going to be an hour before it gets there and I was on my third truck. That truck arrived about 5:30 and we got rolling about 5:45. By the time we got across the Mississippi all the shops had closed, so we had to tow it back to the house and I've got to get it towed, again, tomorrow, to the shop that our friend, a third generation New Orleans native, recommended. Meanwhile we're all getting up wicked early to get everyone to work, school, and daycare on time tomorrow.

Medically, I couldn't help but ask the first driver about his collagen disorder. It was really sad. His skin looked like a horrible sunburn, his hips were clearly splayed out causing him to walk like a pregnant woman, and his lower eyelids had fallen, exposing the red membranes of the interior eyelid. He was quite open about the whole thing, which I appreciate. The third driver, once he found out I was a medical school student, wanted me to cure his kidney stones! I surprised myself by actually knowing most of the things to do, and verified them on my handheld's Griffith's 5-Minute Consult. And I said I wasn't a doctor and he should talk to his. So he told me all about his doctors, who he seems to really like. In addition to the kidney stones he also has asthma, which he said only flares up during the summer. That seemed a smidge odd to me, as asthma tends to flare up in dry air, particularly, dry, cold air. And his internist has had him on prednisone for two years but this guy is cut like a brick shithouse. People on systemic steroids tend to gain weight. Interestingly, his kidney doctor (in the lingo, a nephrologist) hadn't asked him about his diet, or, at least the driver hadn't told his nephrologist that he ate three chicken hamburgers a day (high protein diets can cause uric acid kidney stones) and had a history of using bodybuilding supplements (ceasing muscle-building tends to precede the body attempting to shed the extra muscle, which tends to be rich in calcium, the other common material of kidney stones). Hmmmmm......

is up at Straight from the Doc. Also, here's a superb article by the brilliant Steven Weinberg.

Our instructor, a very motivated, intelligent, and caring doctor, today was talking about the process of the medical interview, when she said interviewing is not a talent. She used it as a rhetorical ploy to gain buy-in from the audience, that is, she wanted everyone to feel they could be a good interviewer with training. While this is true, I think it is very important to recognize that interviewing, like most things, can be practiced by someone with real talent, and failing to include that in one's teaching creates a situation where the talented interviewer may do wrong. I can't offer a precise example in interviewing, but I can think of many in leadership. There are natural leaders. I have found we characterize those we like as charismatic, and those we don't as feeling they act with a sense of entitlement. I'm sure you can imagine someone you'd characterize as one or the other of those. The problem in leadership is that if you have someone with natural leadership ability who leads people down the wrong road, toward, say, binge drinking, then you've got a problem limited only be the scope of the natural leader's influence. In interviewing, I can see where a doctor might be able to create an incredible rapport with the patient and quickly elicit devastating information. But if that same doctor makes the wrong diagnosis, can't adequately convey the information to the rest of the team, or otherwise abuses the patient, then that's something that needs to be identified and trained TO.

it's not working out. You know I love Mother Nature, but I'm having a hard time dealing with your stormy attitude and unpredictability. You're great, you really are, but I have to leave. Don't try to call, all the networks are busy, thanks to you. I'm taking the kids and going to stay with my parents. I expect you'll be eyeing my neighborhood Monday afternoon. Noaa summed it up best: you run in circles at 150 miles an hour, but you only move seven miles an hour. Try to put yourself in my shoes, trying to be around you when you're like that. We're leaving tonight so the kids can sleep while we drive. Please, please don't come to the house either, you'd just make things worse.

Edward Tufte started a new thread on his discussion board, Search engines and personal privacy. The discussion has trended toward the standard topic of cookies.

The security risks of cookies have been well documented for a long time. Here's the User Tracking chapter of Philip Greenspun's Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, and a couple of reports on internet security: Steve Gibson's report on the denial of service attack against his site, and Philip Greenspun's blog comment on the Harvard Business School's admissions debacle.

A personal anecdote: I used to study at a bookstore in Annapolis, Maryland that advertized wireless internet access, where I met a fit 25-year-old man who didn't have a degree in Farenheit, but spent a couple nights every week reading the internet security books while his laptop sniffed packets. He would launch relatively begnign attacks on the other customers for fun (launching Solitaire, that sort of thing). Turns out he learned the basics of network security while under house arrest in New York for larceny. He moved to Annapolis when a friend who worked in IT got him a job at a local college. He advanced his skills rapidly by launching attacks against the internal networks, while increasing his connections in the community until the Office of Naval Research came knocking, and now he provides security for that outfit. Incidently, the same Office of Naval Research is backing EFF's Tor project. I had two big take-aways from conversations with him. First, no network is secure, but some are more secure than others. This is a function of how smart the security people are and the personal relationships they have with others. Additionally, electronic privacy is an illusion propagated by those who have interests in your personal information. The best ways to control your identity are good public relations, diligently remaining aware of what information is in the packets that leave your machines, and realizing that, on your personal machines, you are your last line of network security.

There's virtually no information about Jefferson Parish, except that they can't get in to make an assessment, and a news helicopter overflew and reported minimal flooding, but lots of wind damage. The don't want me come back?! People who try to return to the city will be stopped. We got a generator and we're going to leave our daughter and dog with my parents in Texas. We've got to compile supplies tomorrow:
25 gallons of water to take back immediately, plastic tarps, heavy tape, an ax (??!!), batteries, twine, canned goods. New Orleans is a violent city in the best of times.

Here are a post from WWL's Jefferson Parish chat board:
My cousin stayed back in around Gretna and he just called us. He says theres really not that much damage in teh area except cuople of inches of water on the street. This is around oakdale park in alison/whisper lane. theres really not that much damage there he said...i am soo glad...my other house in buras is longgg gone but i still have my gretna house..

The CBS affiliate in New Orleans has a great forum. It's definitely fast reading through the chaff than listening to the TV anchors repeat themselves 50 times between pieces of new information. I wonder if they are reading their own forums...

tgrgrd00

Parish Pres. Aaron Broussard was on 850 am at apprx. 11:05 CST. Stated (forgive the paraphrasing): "Jefferson Parish will be closed until next Monday (the 5th) at 6am....state police and National Guard will refuse entrance during that time by way of an executive order that is to be issued....personal identification will be required....you will be advised to get the essentials from your homes, but not to stay.

From what I hear from my in-laws (who stayed at thier home), Westwego in general is in the middle. Westwego between 4th street and the Expressway is rather good - no flooding, minimal wind damage. Westwego between the Expressway and Lapalco, on the other hand, is a different story. The levee back by Bayou Segnette was breached, so that side of Westwego was under water - I am not sure how much. There was a curfew in effect so they were not able to see. There is also no water or electricity to most of the city, if not all of it.

As for the 17th street canal breach - there is a hole approximately 2 blocks long that was blown out from what CNN and others report. This is the canal that divides Orleans and Jefferson parish, BUT ONLY the Orleans side of the canal was breached. This is good news for Jefferson parish but horrible news for Orleans parish. Tulane Hospital may have to evacuate by airlift if the water keeps rising. It is currently surrounded by 6 feet of water and is rising at a rate of an inch every 5 minutes.

CNN has been doing good at keeping me updated. I am in Baton Rouge just waiting to see when they will allow us to return to the Westbank.

My uncle is at home in Gretna and drove around there this morning. He reported not much structural damage at my family's properties on Huey Long Avenue and on Newton Street. Also, there are shingles down and roof damage at my grandparents' house on Cranberry Drive, near Stumpf BLVD in Terrytown. No water any places. Hope this helps.

I have family that lives on diplomat in terrytown....they had water up tothe eaves of there house....as of last night it was down to near 5 feet

By ID they mean an ID with the Red Cross, Entergy/Cleco/Demco, Cox, Bellsouth, in other words emergency personnel. Residents can't enter until 6am on the 5th and are encouraged not to stay. If your house is destroyed they will make you leave.

They mean ALL of Jefferson Parish. You can't even get to that part of the city because of flooded interstates, so even if he meant just the damaged parts, you still couldn't get home.

Mayor Nagin was fuming during an interview just now. Two to three months to drain the city, minimum. The National Guard failed to get helicopters on scene to fill the critical breech in the critical levee. Good news is that's the East Bank. I live on the West Bank, which didn't flood. In fact, a friend we met at Perry Circle.... her brother snuck in to check various family properties, and ours, all in Gretna (a small city in Jefferson Parish). He surveyed several properties, but ours and their aunt's are in a slightly different subdivision, and he was turned away by the National Guard at the entry (neighborhoods are generally defined by the canal system and only a few roads cross the canals). As it happens, we're in flood zone X, which means we don't even need flood insurance. I wish we had some right now, in fact, the floater arrived in the mail the day before we left, but we forgot to get it. Anyway, I think, I'm not sure, but I think, the National Guard decided our neighborhood, a fairly large area, was the best place to pitch camp. WWLTV and WDSU are the channels we're monitoring. We're in College Station with my parents. We got the last generator in College Station. Everything has been shipped to Louisiana. I've been studying at the Texas A&M medical library.

We got confirmation that we are definitely not allowed into Jefferson Parish until after the morning of the 6th, at which point we can come back, get necessities, and go away, to not return for at least A MONTH! I think the semester is a wash: the cadaver lab was on the 3rd floor of the medical school, but the water is reported as high as 25 feet in that area (just outside the westernmost corner of the French Quarter). I suppose the recovery plan will involve no vacation and school straight through till graduation. At this point, I think I'm going to approach the Texas A&M administration about the possibility of sitting in on class or something. Either that or I'm going to start looking for jobs. Brooke's already made contact with a headhunter and she's looking for homecare work here in College Station.

The water in the city is contaminated by raw sewage and the first floor of Tulane University Hospital is underwater. Channel 6 just interviewed Karen Caraway, a member of the staff, who said 30 people had been evacuated today and she observed that the staff cars are being looted in the parking garage. These people are dropping off their critically ill relatives and then stealing from the doctors and nurses!

I deleted this comment before publishing an earlier post, but I'm not sure I'm going back in, and I have to go back in, without a sidearm. The fleeing news crews reported that they armed themselves as possible while still in the city. They reported the pictures are horrific, but pale compared to the situation on the ground.

Stats: a 50 inch water main is severed. A 200 yard stretch of the critical 17th Street levee has been breeched. At least 100 dead, but they're not counting, just pushing the bodies out of the way to get to the living. Two people have died in the Superdome.

The extended entry contains the text of Dr Cowen's statements being hosted on the athletic association's site.

Texas A&M is probably going to let me stay for the semester, the deans are looking for a job for my wife, and one interviewer already took her to lunch! I'm also three weeks behind and still need to go into New Orleans on the sixth.

One of the staff members' husband is a professional engineer and he may be flying into Houston tomorrow to meet his society to make a recommendation on how to drain the water. This is in response to a request from the Army Corps of Engineers. The West Bank may not be out of the woods yet because one plan is to dig a trench accross to the west bank.