more Katrina resources (and help needed)

I've made some updates to the resource page for refugees. As I'm sure most people expected, there are gazillions of sites coordinating housing, checkin listings, missing-persons reports, and so on, all uncoordinated with each other. If you can offer programming help for consolidated searches of these sites, go here.

Help maintaining this list is also needed. (Once the holiday weekend is over I'll be busy again.) siderea is going to come up with a way for people to submit changes; right now we're hand-editing HTML but that's just temporary.

Of course, this information is only useful if it can be gotten into the hands of the folks holed up in hotels, stadia, etc. Some people are working on getting local help for that, but there's always room for more. The page contains the text of all URLs so it can be printed and faxed and still be useful.

I've been told that ham-radio operators are working to relay messages, but what I don't know is how J. Random Refugee cgoes about finding a ham operator. Is there a directory?

random bits

The good news is that our DVD player now works. The bad news is that the repair guy says he didn't do anything to it. All I did was to disconnect it, drive it to the repair place, wait several days, and pick it up. (Prior to that, of course, I had disconnected the cable, tested it, cleaned it, reconnected it, and still gotten no sound.) I had forgotten that repair folks have an uncanny knack of looking at a device and causing it to work. I wonder how long the effect lasts.

He also pointed out a test to eliminate the TV: run the signal through a VCR. Yeah, it degrades the signal and that's not a permanent solution, but it's good enough for a test. Running a DVD signal to a VCR never occurred to me -- but then, bootlegging DVDs onto tape never occurred to me, either.

At Shabbat services we had both rabbis, for the first time in at least a month. We also had a large turnout, including some prospective new members. I guess that's one way to tell that summer is ending. :-)

This week, my rabbi said, pretty much all of the congregations in town (not just Jewish, everyone) started organizing efforts to relocate storm refugees to Pittsburgh. (Those that want to come here, that is. No one's insisting, but we do have space.) Apparently we've got hundreds of spots already and buses ready to go, just as soon as FEMA will let us talk to the refugees and drive those buses in to get the ones who want to come.

This map shows some of the bigger disaster risks in the US (funny). I forget who provided the link.

There have been lots of posts on some SCA lists trying to organize replacement SCA stuff for the folks hit by the hurricane -- new garb, scrolls, etc. Their hearts are in the right places, but most of this seems months premature to me. Let those people get housing before you start saddling them with stuff!

Why do so many people on mailing lists believe that a major event trumps the topic of the list? These people seem to think that somehow you won't find out about national news if you don't read it on the SCA kingdom list -- as if that was each subscriber's only source of information. Sheesh. The people on the lists I frequent are being better about this than they were for 9/11, but still... I've been deleting a lot of stuff from the moderation queue for one list.