I haven’t thought about that in years. My uncle was working there at the time; my aunt too, or maybe she was just visiting him. I vaguely remember them describing the experience. In any case, the “44th anniversary” part is what shocked me — I’ve been reminded that it happened nearly a half-century ago.

  Time flies like an arrow.
  Fruit flies like a banana.

I think I first saw that in a old Scientific American article about the difficulties in machine parsing of natural language. Lost in translation. A geek pun to me, since translation also refers to coordinate transformations: translation, rotation, scaling, skewing, … preserving topological equivalents across gross distortions, no tearing allowed. Ants. Moebius Strip II.

I sometimes envy those who have a sense of continuous, unbroken time. I imagine that for them events are like beads on a string, pages in a book, frames in a strip of film. Mention to them some event and they can provide context, cause and effect, sliding their finger along the curve and saying “see, this happened before, and this happened after”. The people who can always quickly answer those “where were you when such-and-such happened” questions that I hate. Steel Beach.

Like the “one, two, three, many” number concept attributed to some primitive tribes, time to me is only “today, yesterday, a while back, and a long time ago”. Time lies like pieces of a shattered mirror beneath my feet, glints and reflections, partial images fractured along random edges. Memory is a kaleidoscope filled with broken events, ever changing in random juxtaposition, tumbling in disconnected chaos. Mona Lisa Overdrive.

I’ve posted a few pictures on Flickr.

Before we decry the timeliness of Jackson’s response to a few leaks, just image this 20 million gallon a day leak in NYC’s water supply that has been known about for 20 years.

At the moment (a little after 11pm), I still have only a trickle of water — enough, with patience, to make coffee and keep the water tanks filled, but not strong enough for a shower.

h/t: @WJTV : Map Of The Water Main Breaks For Jackson & Hinds County

Update 01/14: increased break count; as mayor said today (Thu) at 11am, additional breaks will be discovered and increasing pressure will lead to new breaks in already fragile pipes

Some neighborhoods (mine, for example) have no water, while others have barely a trickle. Boil-water alerts aren’t useful when there’s no water to boil.

I’m not upset about this (at least not yet) — it’s what you can expect when you have aged infrastructure, some of it over a hundred years old, in shifting Yazoo clay exposed to an unusually extended freeze.

It does reemphasize the universal pay-me-now-or-pay-me-later law. I say universal because it doen’t just apply to infrastructure, but to all human endeavors, whether water mains, software systems and networks, or legislation.

It’s human nature to be be excited and willing to spend right-now for something new, shiny, and needed. Unfortunately it’s also human nature to overlook the ongoing cost of maintenance; to believe that future resources will be magically provided for; or to simply foist it off on future staff or next generation, making it someone else’s problem.
That last is particularly apt in the case of public services.

If you don’t plan for the cost of ongoing maintenance from the beginning, you (or your successors) will pay, with with a high penalty factor, when it breaks.

Update: as the city slowly grinds to a halt … “The Day the Pipes Stood Still“. [h/t: @JxnFreePress -- "Tee, hee. RT @AndiAgnew: Love it! @knolaust RT The Day the Pipes Stood Still (Mock Movie Poster by Knol) http://bit.ly/8b2iG8"]

“Mississippi residents have until Oct. 16 to submit claims under the state’s settlement of a lawsuit with Microsoft.” –WJTV, “Mississippi-Microsoft Deadline”

h/t: WJTV (Twitter)

Why is she being “beat up on”? You can read the full C&D (linked in the quote), but the part that has pissed off a bunch of bloggers is this:

Further, please let us have your prompt written assurance that you and any affiliated companies or individuals will promptly discontinue and refrain from the use of the term “FRUGALISTA” in any form or derivation in any online blogs or journals. Please note that we will require documentation evidencing any changes or the cessation of use of any name or mark identical or similar to the Mark. –Cease and Desist Letter to JacksonFrugalista

Does the fact that both she and I live in Jackson, but are otherwise completely unknown to each other, make me an “affiliated individual”?

She posted her “Response to Cease and Desist Letter“.

I don’t know about you, but for years I’ve seen/heard words of the form whatever-ista. Michael at SoapBoxRants says

Being barred from using a WORD? It’s not even a word the trademark holder created. We’re not talking about Kleenex or Xerox here. We talking about someone [the Florida blogger] that decided to use a word that is pretty generic and existed before she got into blogging and then trying to prevent the world from using it. –I Don’t Own Words Like Frugalista

This has attracted national attention. For example, a U.S.News article, “Frugalista Debate: One Blogger Stakes Claim”“, opens with “The term ‘frugalista,’ which is so widely used that even the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, has now been trademarked …” and goes on to mention several blogs that have been hit with C&D’s. It also discusses that “[the trademark's] legitimacy is not entirely clear”.

Unless she changes her mind, Jackson Frugalista will be renaming her blog at the end of the month, so the links to her site may be dead by the time you read this. I’ll try to remember to update the links if they change.

Michael says that he will end each of his posts with “I Am Not A Hypocritical Frugalista That Hates Freedom Of Speech.” until the trademark is revoked.

I suggest that users of *fnord* temporarily replace it with *frugalista*.

Update, 2009-10-03: the new sites are:

• Frugal Mississippi
• Really Dumb Trademarks

It’s one thing to confiscate a phone until the end of the day, but to take it, search it, and turn it over to the police? The article doesn’t mention any extenuating circumstances that would have prompted a search. I suppose it was a “do it just because we can” situation. As for the explusion … “gang signs” (read the article).

Southaven Middle School in Southaven, Mississippi has a policy against cell phone use during school hours, as many schools do nowadays. In August of 2008, 12-year-old Richard Wade was discovered to be in violation of that policy after he received a text message from his father (who was traveling out of state) during “football class.” That’s when his cell phone was confiscated by his football coaches and then searched by the principal, as well as the Southaven Police Department. –Jacqui Cheng, Expelled student sues over “unreasonable” cell phone search, Ars Technica

I guess it was a good thing he didn’t also have any Dangerous Pencil Sharpeners.

While you contemplate that, ask yourself, in a spin of the credit card commercial, “What’s in your phone?”.

I’d like to add a few more hints. Please feel free to add more in the comments.

First, consider additional smaller kits tailored for you office and car. If you’re caught at work or on the road, these kits can tide you over until you make it home.

For your car in particular, include jumper cables, a substantial (ie, not a “toy”) battery-powered air pump and simple tire patch kit (your chances of having a flat dramatically increase when there’s debris everywhere), and a portable booster kit (an enclosed battery to jump start your car; remember to recharge it every few months) — I know from experience that all of these are great to have.

Second, check with your employer to see what their emergency plans are, alternate communication schemes, and provision for stranded employees.

Third, if you have your home computers hooked up to a UPS, shut down and turn off your equipment as soon as you can after a power failure. Then turn off the UPS. During Hurricane Katrina, I used mine to charge my cell phone several times. You can also use it to power small radios and TVs.

image: NASA, Hurricane Katrina August 28 2005 NASA.jpg, Wikipedia

1. which I can’t reproduce here — “Distributed by Internet Broadcasting. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.”