Current Affairs

I’m in NYC at the Search Engine Strategies show seeing my ClickZ peeps and keeping my finger on the pulse of the ever-changing search marketing beast. It’s my first time away from the baby since he was born, which has been a little traumatic. But it’s also been great to be able to focus 100% on conference-related stuff, which I wouldn’t get to do at home. It’s been nice, too, to be back in New York, even if I’ve only stepped out of the hotel a couple of times. This trip, it feels like coming home again, in some ways, though with the kid in tow (like in December) it’s a completely different experience.

Meanwhile, got word that my ex-co-worker Susan Kuchinskas, a great writer and very smart person, has launched her latest project, The 360 Tech Blog. In only a handful of entries she’s covered an event in San Francisco and also posted on the AAAAs conference in Orlando. She’s off to an auspicious start. (Yes, she still needs to update the “about” page. Gotta give her a hard time about that.)

May I just take this moment to say… Hook ‘Em Horns! I’m not even a football fan, really, but am often amazed — as in this case — by the power of sports to bring people together. Even my Aggie brother was excited. (I graduated from UT Austin in ’89 with a bachelors in Radio-TV-Film.)

Who knew the State Department had Podcasts and RSS feeds? Impressive.

As Rita makes her inexorable journey toward the Texas coast, a number of members of my Houston-based family are fleeing. They’re headed North, to the homes of other family members, some of whom are still close enough to have laid in supplies — water, gasoline (for the generator), charcoal, etc. — just in case the power is out for an extended period.

I’ve just learned my brother and his wife have arrived at my Dad’s with their newborn baby boy (born just a couple of weeks after Callum), two young girls, and my sister-in-law’s mother. They left last night and it took more than 6 hours to make a trip that usually takes 2. I’m a little worried about my Dad, who needs electricity to run his oxygen machinery. They’ve got a generator, thankfully, and are out getting gasoline (and more back-up oxygen) as I type. I hope supplies are readily available.

I got a text message from my aunt earlier, saying they were on the road. When I last spoke to her, last night, she and my uncle were prepared to hunker down and ride it out. I don’t know what changed between then and this morning, but I must say I’m relieved to know they are headed out. I’ve got a big family, though, and I don’t know what others have decided to do.

Growing up along the Gulf Coast in Houston, the threat of a hurricane always looms. (Don’t even get me started about the hurricane-related information drilled into us when I worked at KTRH Radio, where we expected to be the sole source of information when power went down and people depended on their radios.) People are now thinking back to Alicia in 1983, remembering where the flooding occurred and wondering what fate awaits the city over the next few days. Rita appears to be a wholly different animal than Alicia, though. People seem to be frightened in a way I haven’t seen before. Of course, much of the emotion is due to the aftermath of Katrina, but there’s also the fact that this is just a big storm. Very big.

UPDATE: The Rita blog at Chron.com talks traffic.

UPDATE2: My aunt and uncle ended up turning back, like many others, because of the horrendous traffic. Imagine driving in gridlocked traffic for hours (it took 6 hours to go away from the city and only 30 minutes for them to get back home) in temperatures in the upper 90s. People turned off their air conditioners not only to save precious fuel, but also to keep their cars from overheating. At one point, my aunt reports, it was 111 degrees inside their car. When the storm’s track appeared to be changing, and it was downgraded to a category 4, they gave up their attempts to escape and headed home.

UPDATE3: Rita has an RSS feed.

In the eerily timed department…. the city of San Francisco has launched an ad campaign preaching personal disaster preparedness around the theme “72 hours” — that being the amount of time people would have to fend for themselves after a major disaster. After that time, the federal goverment would presumably rush in.

Anyway, as we know from Katrina it could take longer than 72 hours. The storm has certainly heightened my awareness of the need for personal perparedness, should there be, say… an earthquake.

The city has put together a pretty comprehensive Web site to disseminate information at 72hours.org.

My buddy Chervokas (who I still haven’t forgiven for coming to my ‘hood and not calling me) says so well what’s been on my mind.