To make it easy on my out-of-city readers, here’s a list of things that currently have New Orleanian heads a-buzzing.

1.  Carnival Season: The Krewe du Vieux parade is less than a month away and I have not a shred of my costume ready. Holy. Crap.

2.  New Orleans Sliding Into The Gulf:  Coastal wetlands are not just hurricane speedbumps, they also act as the outer limits of the continental shelf and absorb gravity slumps and growth faults characteristic of a passive continental margin. In other words, when the wetlands go, we’re next. Don’t worry, Houston suffers from this problem, too, but they’re farther inland than we are. Their great-grandkids can worry about it.

3. New Orleans May Not Be Adequately Protected From Flooding Until 2010: Considering 2 above and the hottest year ahead, even sub-standard levees will not be ready for another four years. Oh boy.

4. Allstate Pulls Back from Insuring Coastal Homes: Insurance for those who don’t need it. Don’t you just love government-mandated daylight robbery?

5. Murderers Coloring Outside The Lines More: It’s no longer about teenage Gangster A killing pre-teen Gangster B after which B’s peeps take out A in a gun battle across the neutral zone, leaving the NOPD and DA’s office with paperwork and not much in the way of real policing and crime management. Only here does the thought “How soon before we’re next?” seem absolutely ludicrous and perfectly valid at the same time.

Here’s an idea: Have a great Mardi Gras season.  I like to tell myself that the beauty of life right now is my still being alive.

‘Tis a joyful day of narrowing down and fixing bugs in seismic and blogging software. Isn’t it frightful how lots of things fall apart around the holidays? Since upgrading to WordPress 2.0.x, my blog hasn’t been sending and receiving trackbacks and pingbacks (These are not the same beast. Hooray for semantics.).  Obviously, this blows chunks as you don’t know if I’ve linked to your articles and I have no clue who’s linking to mine, unless I see it on Technorati (when the stars are aligned and their aggregator chooses to work). So much for community blogging.

TestTrack and the WP 2.0.1> trackback/pingback threads on the support forum help only a little; for the most part, they let me know that I’m not the only one with the problem.  Gah!  Anyone out there with similar issues?

Also: HAVE YOU RUN A BACKUP OF YOUR BLOG LATELY?  IF NOT, DO SO NOW.

Update 1: Poldo ran into the same trackback/pingback problems and reportedly got rid of them using Paul Ooi’s script changes.  It’s been 20 minutes since I uploaded the fixes to my server and I’m waiting to see if it “takes.”  On the work-related bug front, my problem has been escalated to the developers.  Ho hum.

Update 2: If it weren’t for the darned security concerns, I would SOOOOO go back to WordPress 1.5.

From the prologue of Simon Winchester’s Krakatoa, The Day The World Exploded: August 27, 1883:

“When Krakatoa exploded it was 1883, and the world was a profoundly different place. Sophisticated human beings were on hand to see this volcano’s convulsions, they were able to investigate the event, and they were able to attempt to understand the processes that had caused such dreadful violence. And yet, as it happens, their observations, painstaking and precise as science demanded, collided head-on with a most discomfiting reaity: that while in 1883 the world was becoming ever more scientifically advanced, it was in part because of these same advances that its people found themselves in a strangely febrile and delicately balanced condition, which an event like Krakatoa did much to unsettle.”

Do I have a sign on me that says “Give Me Responsibility?” Is this why family and friends ask me to play straw boss at their weddings and take care of their kids and pets? I’m good with dogs, cats, plants, and youngsters in that order, but a fish, and a Betta splendens at that? P walked into my office last week and asked, “Will you take care of my fish while I’m gone for the holidays?” I’m only slightly nervous that he may float up … or is it down … to meet his maker, but it’s a new challenge.

Nemo is the closest thing to an office pet, and our team’s little mascot. A little purple, a little blue and all iridescent, he swims in his bowl all day, coming up for pellets during lunch time. He doesn’t sit on your lap or keyboard, need walks, or cry for a diaper change. Piece of cake, right? Right?

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The Big Easy Rollergirls‘ Christmas bout was fun, but with the girls skating slower than usual for some reason. To my red-dressed chagrin, Santa’s Little Sleighers started out well and ended up losing to the evile Tannenbombers by a narrow margin. No worries – all was forgiven at the Old Point Bar afterparty. Ray, Sheik, NOLASlate, Oyster (with Lovely and Clam #2), Editor B, and Xy were there. (Loki & Alexis are forgiven for not attending, as is Schroeder because he’s trying to kill himself … I mean, get into graduate school.)