When Katrina struck New Orleans, I was …
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
Living above the water line (Score:5, Insightful)
When you build below the water line bad things happen
Re:Living above the water line (Score:5, Funny)
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Whooooosh
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But aren't all of us IT workers like little dutch boys sticking our fingers in holes in dikes?
(my lesbian co-worker really cracked up the last time I used that analogy around her)
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My cat wishes to inform you that she is not interested in felines without dicks.
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Um, no place in Europe is near Australia, Australia being on the other side of the world.
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Re: Living above the water line (Score:1)
Woosh!
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No Kangaroos (Score:2)
The Swiss Navy keeps landing waves of kangaroos in Austria, but the Austrians saw Gallipoli [imdb.com], and they know what to do.
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Is a landing wave like a standing wave? I'm picturing a bridge, twisting and buckling in the wind, made entirely of linked kangaroos ...
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Tell that to the Netherlands.
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remember it well (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember all the people evacuating Houston for no good reason. The freeway right by my house was completely backed up total parking lot. Look, if you live 100 miles from the coast just hunker down!! Nevertheless, a few of us drove to the service road and brought water to people who were stranded on the highway. Too damn hot.
One of my first tasks at my new job was to go to our parent company's location after Rita (a month or so later) and help them clean up. There were so many people still displaced from Katrina it was hard to find a place to stay. But we found an old trailer that wasn't being used (except by a couple of rats) and stayed there during the cleanup effort. The whole plant had been under 8 feet of water. There were shrimp growing in the equipment, and a nice layer of slime at the high water mark. Had to rinse and clean hundreds of contactors, switches, controllers, bake some motor windings, etc. Luckily we weren't there when the aluminum dust collector was underwater. That was scary (aluminum dust plus water equals boom). At least we had running water.
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Another question is why anyone would live in Houston anyway.
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Why have a place designed to cope with snow instead of a overhanging roof and a bit of well ventilated shade under the house instead of a stuffy basement or no gap at all.
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Fire ants, crazy ants, cockroaches the size of kittens, mosquitos that carry SLE and potentially yellow fever and/or malaria.
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Impossible to live there without driving. No planning and zoning, crime, one party theocratic rule to name just a few things.
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Impossible to live there without driving. No planning and zoning, crime, one party theocratic rule to name just a few things.
Well, yeah. ...mostly. You are absolutely right on the no planning or zoning, the crime, and yeah Houston has more than it's share of evangelical fascists, but with an out lesbian mayor, it's pretty tough to call that "one party theocratic".
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The bitch declared war on the local churches, if you remember. She was taking them to court, to force them to stop preaching Christianity. She subpoenaed their sermons, FFS. Yes, one-party theocratic rule. The bitch thinks she's a god, and has no use for the constitution.
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Bullshit. Ministers are permitted to voice their opinions, even when those opinions are political in nature. And, those opinions should never affect the "tax free status". Churches don't pay government. Government may not curtail a minister's freedom of speech.
The bitch was out to undermine the constitution of the United States.
Coerce people? How, exactly, do you coerce people into attending a church? This is 2015, not 1215. No inquisitors come in the middle of the night to drag you off to the dungeo
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Impossible to live there without driving.
Not true anymore. In fact there are rent a bike's all over downtown. You just need a car if you want to go from one neighborhood to another.
No planning and zoning,
The only people who seem to have an issue with it are people who make a living off of zone planning. It aint perfect but areas of the city that were dead have seen renaissance because somebody saw potential for the area it hadn't previously entertained. Much of the run down inner city has been completely renewed in the last fifteen years.
crime
No more than anyplace else and l
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what's not to like?
Other than the air, the water, and the people that live there?
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a few of us drove to the service road and sold water to people who were stranded on the highway.
that's more like it.
Re: Should be another entry... (Score:1)
I have to say for the record...Katrina DID NOT hit New Orleans, it hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I know because I was there. New Orleans flooded after the storm because they refused to work with the army corp of engineers on building up the levee system.
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Regarding the flooding: the levees were designed to withstand storm surge from a cat 3 storm. People who think they should have made it withstand a category 5 need to understand that there is no upper limit to category 5, so there is no way to design to that criteria. In some places, the water was springing up from the ground without even breaching the levee.
Katrina was a category 3 storm at landfall.
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Superstorm Katrina even as a CAT-3 was more powerful than your typical CAT-5. Katrina had an Eye wall over 60 miles in diameter, thus breaking all storm surge records. Even for the area that was hit by Cat-5 Hurricane Camile (1969, 11-12 miles) or Andrew (1992, 8 miles).
2005 spawned two more Cat-5 Superstorms, Rita, and Wilma.. Wilma later took aim at South Florida, even as weakened Cat-3 it did a lot of damage.
My area got hit by both Katrina(as a Cat-1), and by CAT-3 Wilma's eastern and southern eye
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Yet you seem perfectly willing to ignore the suffering of those who lived where the storm actually came on shore, as well as those other than New Orleans residents who lived in areas affected by the storm but not directly in its path. That encompasses a far, far larger area than New Orleans, but you shrug it off as nothing.
Uh. No. I specifically acknowledged the loss of the original poster. That is the opposite of shrugging it off. My point is that saying New Orleans wasn't hit is factually incorrect. It suffered hurricane force winds, storm surge, and other negative consequences of the storm.
Yes, New Orleans was heavily affected by Katrina. A great deal of that was their own fault. It also doesn't change the fact than when people talk of a hurricane "hitting" a place, they generally are referring to where the eye makes landfall; Katrina did not come ashore at New Orleans.
I have family members in Mobile who suffered property damage in the storm. But I guess they weren't "hit" by the storm. Hell, there were two fatalities in Ohio. I think that qualifies as being hit, but clearly that's my mistake since the
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Fact is (Score:2)
The Army Corps of Engineers did in fact plead and whine and cry for years to be permitted to upgrade the flood system. And, the Sierra Club was instrumental in blocking the Corps' plans.
BTW - the canal that caused most of the flooding? Blame that on the New Orleans public works department. Some years prior to Katrina, they REMOVED some of those steel panels in the canal, to install some pumps or something. When finished, they put the very same panels, into the very same disturbed soil, without re-stabil
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I was far away when Katrina struck, but had visited the month before. Now I have the greatest set of Before pictures of all time.
10 years later, I'm annoyed at the news (Score:1)
All week just about every news outlet that I tune into (including international outlets) have been "looking back" at Katrina.
Only a couple of them have actually taken a hard look at the state of New Orleans today. Sure, I saw a guy with a microphone walking down Bourbon Street marvelling at how the city had come back but the real story is how the demographics have changed, how some poorer neighborhoods have still not recovered, how medical services have changed, what the Army Corps of Engineers has done t
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I saw some news about people that did move back - and they regretted it. They realized that it was actually better if they had stayed where they had been evacuated.
In any case - I was (and currently am as well) stuck on the other side of the Atlantic so it was more like a cursory interest in the events.
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I was (and currently am as well) stuck on the other side of the Atlantic so it was more like a cursory interest in the events.
Africa? Brazil?
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Better check your Caxton's, Brazil is on the same side.
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ive been ti brazil before, and its not on the same side as anything!
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see here: map [google.co.uk]. Brazil is that big fucking thing in the middle of the image. Above it is the Caribbean, the Gulf states and the rest of North America. See? On the same side of the Atlantic. Off to the RIGHT (or EAST on the map) is AFRICA. On the OTHER SIDE OF THE BIG BLOODY POND.
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Your notion of 'sides' seems to include left/right sides but not top/bottom sides. Funny notion, that?
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when referring to top/bottom as opposed to left/right, they're more often than not referred to directly as THE TOP or THE BOTTOM, you pedantic fucking prick.
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I will ignore the attack and give you the benefit of the doubt that you did not intend to invoke Sherbinger's Law that the first party to lob an ad hominem has already lost.
Setting that aside, I agree with you that usage differs just as people in Brazil speak a different language than people in Africa. Facts don't change facts, though. What is top is on the other side from what is bottom.
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My favorite /. comment regarding the Gulf of Mexico disasters:
We're just unlucky with the timing. Obama would have found a way to save those black people. Bush would have found a way to save that oil.
In total denial... (Score:3, Funny)
I really have no recollection that all the news announced for two days prior to landfall that the lowest areas in the city were likely to get major flooding. It was only a Cat5 hurricane at the time (dumb "climate" people can't forecat, it was a Cat3 at landfall), so I told my inexperienced FEMA director that the one of the poorest states in the nation will be the first responder. I don't believe in government getting involved in domestic affairs.
- W -
When Katrina struck New Orleans, I was ... (Score:1)
Enjoying slashdot the way it was intended. No videos, no lame polls on the front page, no "beta", no idea that Bennett Hazelton existed...
Just news for nerds...
I was at Burning Man (Score:2)
Everybody heard about it through the grapevine, but since few people had a quick way to get news without leaving the playa, we only heard about it from people who were coming in, and the news progressively got worse.
Far from the storm, close enough to assist (Score:2)
We were living in Lubbock at the time and the apartment complex we lived in offered a few rooms to victims of the storms. From what I understood, it was rent-free for at least a year as well as some monthly benefit expenses and such to help them get on their feet either in town or for them to go back to New Orleans. By the time the families arrived fully we were already moving out of state, so I never had the chance to speak to any of the displaced families. I thought it was quite a nice deal for them given
missed 'confused why there were people still there (Score:1)
Moderators on drugs? (Score:1)
Really? A post claiming the US military knocked holes in the levees is moderated upwards? This site has always been illogically liberal, but this is the worst example I've seen.
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You've never heard of "+1, Matches my conspiracy theory?"
Hurricane! (Score:2)
I survived Hurricane Iniki, so I take notice of other hurricanes.
I have never seen a Hurricane in real life (Score:5, Funny)
But I have seen a Spitfire
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I've been about a hundred fifty feet below the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight as it went overhead, following the Great Central Railway from Loughborough to Ruddington before it peeled off for an airshow over Merseyside. I'll never forget the sound (or skin sensation) of SIX Rolls Royce V12 Merlins at cruise. That's right up there with freefalling from 14,000 feet, skin diving with dolphins, feeding penguins or abseiling off an aqueduct.
I didn't pay attention, but I had a good reason. (Score:3)
We weren't hit NEARLY as bad as New Orleans, but it still sucked. Plenty of trees knocked over and homes damaged. I will say that after all the insurance checks got cut, though, the neighborhood I was living in looked better than it probably had in years. The residents finally had money to fix up their homes and get a new coat of paint.
I was... (Score:2)
...at the very first Red Hat conference, in New Orleans, with my (very) young children, just a few weeks before Katrina hit. We flew in there from another city, so I can't imagine how we would have evacuated, if it had hit while we were there.
It changed me. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've lived in the NO area my entire life. I was in college at Tulane University when the storm hit. It changed my life. In a big way. I was living in an apartment in the city at the time. The night before we all realize that this was no normal storm coming, this one was different. My family and I quickly got a plan together to get ourselves to Texas, we had family to stay with in Corpus Christi. Got there, storm comes, we watch the city and area around it crumble before our eyes*. Within two days me and a few others in my family (mainly healthy men, elderly/children/sick stayed back) made it back to where most of them lived a bit north of NO. The city itself was still shut off from the outside world so we still didn't know really what things were like there. Where we were was no better though, the country outlying the area where my family lived was also cut off in it's own way. We had no cell service, no power, no water, no access to 911 or the fire department. There were no gas stations open and not even an FM or AM radio station still broadcasting. It was weird. There was no one willing to travel on public roads without a 4-wheeler, a chainsaw, and a shotgun. Too many trees in the road everywhere and too many looters trying to steal everything in the area, even far from the city...
After dealing with the immediate things we could deal with we went back to Texas and as a group stayed there for a couple weeks. I didn't leave. Tulane was still shut down so I went to A&M for a semester. Also weird. I walk into admissions and enrollment with no records of anything. No high school records (high school also in NO and shut down completely at this point) no college records. No way to even access a bank account at this point. So, they just told me to take what I thought I needed to take regardless of the pre-reqs, and gave me full tuition and books and room and board (I will forever be grateful for the people there at TAMUCC for making that part of the experience very pleasant). After all that and things have setlled down I return back to Tulane, in the middle of the first semester back (a week after the next tuition is due of course) they announce 'whoops, not enough funding left after reconstruction efforts, we are going to cancel all engineering curriculums'. This understandably pissed off a lot of people. (seriously, who gets rid of civil engineering right when the city probably needs them more than ever before in history). What this all meant to me was that now I had been to two different schools, about to have to jump to a third. None of these schools would accept all the credits and each wanted their own little courses here and there; thus took me 6 years with summers to get a B.S. Electrical Engineering degree without ever having failed a single class.
tl;dr: Katrina fucked up my life.
*I had tears starting when I wrote that, this experience will forever be exceedingly emotional to me to recall.
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so, post nuclear war without the radioactive fallout. Got it.
Huh? Why is this on Slashdot? (Score:2)
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I don't get it. "News for Nerds" is polling to find out where we were during Katrina? Huh?? Every natural disaster has an impact on infrasctructure, and I'm sure lots of data centers got hammered or destroyed, and that would be a much more interesting discussion.
This is on Slashdot today because, at the time, a big story on Slashdot was a revolutionary live blog from a data center in downtown NO. There were photos and accounts of the flooding and destruction that weren't found anywhere else, and the travails of a few hardy fellows trying to keep a data center up and running in the middle of a disaster were interesting to those of us who worked in the field.
I believe this was the story/source: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Huh? Why is this on Slashdot? (Score:2)
Halfway between ... (Score:2)
Far away, not paying attention and far away, glued to the news.
I was watching some coverage. But keeping in mind that due to logistics, the news wasn't going to be worth a damn for a few weeks until everyone got into the area and did some decent fact finding.
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Having fun on a ski (Score:1)
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Like watching a slow train wreck in progress (Score:2)
The aftermath played out exactly like one of those disaster movies where the hero has to strive against an evil bunch of fools - right down to the idiocy of people being upset at money being spent on housing people that wer
My Katrina experience (Score:1)
I was stationed on the USS Harry S Truman, in Reactor Department, and after the news of the levee breaking we got word of a reactor start up check list being performed I knew we were sailing for the gulf. We spend a coupe weeks outside Orleans fueling helicopters and delivering supplies. It was hot.
When Katrina struck (Score:2)
I was too busy worrying about high school. Seriously, I was 15. Yes, that makes me 25 today.
Although, I've been reading Slashdot that long. Hell, this account dates back to a few months before Katrina.
Dead, or recovering.. from gynocentric hell. (Score:1)
I died for a while sometime 10 years ago and woke in hospital as the effects of hitting land-fall was being reported in news.
(I'm not allowed to die until I'm done with what God & I have planned for me.)
.
I'm feeling a little better now, in many ways.
But too bad that the now much clearer reality of our socially brain-washed anti-male hell where no men seem to notice that most adult women are more then willing to help hide and destroy any man that notices and discusses the vile gynocentric-justified day-b
I sincerely doubt that I'll ever forget mine... (Score:1)
The news wasn't useful on time (Score:2)
OMG... (Score:2)
I had no idea that Katrina and the Waves was still together.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FKatrina_and_the_Waves [wikipedia.org]
I was a trucker (Score:3)
I was driving OTR for Schneider National when Katrina hit. Ended up hauling a lot of paper goods to a big distribution center in Southern Mississippi. You know the trucking industry got all messed up when Katrina hit. We couldn't get out fuel cards processed, we couldn't get our billing paper work in, and half the time you couldn't even get a decent place to park a truck and get a shower or get repairs on account of how many relief convoys where rolling down there.
It really tells you a lot about how poorly prepared the US as a whole is for serious disasters. While I was driving down in Mississippi my family back in western North Carolina went three weeks without being able to get ANY gasoline because of how badly the fuel delivery infrastructure broke down when the gulf coast refineries went down.
I was a cab driver in New Orleans (Score:3)
We were used to getting brushed by hurricanes. We were used to them turning at the last minute and missing us. I felt completely safe in New Orleans when Katrina was coming ashore. I worked driving the cab even when Katrina started hitting.....got home with a quarter tank of gas. When it started in full force, I sat in my den. I knew we were screwed then, but did not realize how bad it was going to be. I sat, drinking a fifth of rum as Katrina peeled the entire back wall of the house off....one of the den walls, board by board. There was nowhere to run. It was too late. When it ended, I was sitting in the den looking out into my back yard.
The next morning when I left the house, it looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic video game. Wading through the water that came that day left my body covered in sores. I stayed there for 4 days until I was able to get out....and didn't get a full meal until I left. We saw Red Cross trucks drive by, but they never stopped. The same with police and military vehicles. I decided the options were a. starve b. leave.
Now, I live in another state. I was renting in New Orleans. I own a 3 bedroom house now. I lost just about everything in Katrina. That storm has forever divided my life into pre-Katrina and post-Katrina. But, I'm in a much better place now than I was before, simply because I had to start again from scratch and could not rest on my laurels.
Another Katrina? (Score:2)
25 miles east of the eye (Score:1)
NOLA damage was diminished when Katrina swung east just before landfall. Katrina was a twelve hour nightmare with a 28 foot storm surge causing 2 families to move in with me due to loss of their homes. Emergency response was fast except they staged and warehoused commodities for 4.5 days before distributing anything. Electricity was restored within 6 days at the house and a month at the office, The scene within a 1/4 mile of the coast looked like a nuke was detonated.The damage was difficult to process ment
Katrina DID NOT HIT New Orleans (Score:1)
Seriously. Katrina hit Mississippi, absolutely devastating the coastal area. I'm so tired of hearing about New Orleans. If you're going to live below sea level and not pay attention to the weather and elect idiot politicians, you're asking for it.
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An informative (but mysteriously down-modded) post above contains a link to an NOAA graphic that shows hurricane-level winds from Katrina most definitely did hit eastern Louisiana (including New Orleans) [noaa.gov] as well as the coastal areas of Mississippi and Alabama.
If you're upset about Mississippi being ignored in this discussion, then I can understand your beef. But don't make up this fiction that Katrina did not hit New Orleans.
Cowboy Neal (Score:3)
A /. poll without a Cowboy Neal option is like a pencil without a lead (*) ...
* OK, a graphite core and suitably sharpened.
Not there, but impacted (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you!!! (Score:1)
You have my deepest gratitude...
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run your business. (Score:1)
Close (Score:1)
I was living in SW Florida at the time. There were several hurricanes that year. IIRC, Katrina cut across FL before going out into the Gulf and recharging. We dodged several bullets that summer, but places less than an hour away like Arcadia and Punta Gorda were not so lucky.
New Orleans (Score:1)
Gap analysis of the poll versus the levees? (Score:1)
Not glued to the news, but interested. However, apart from the glaring gaps in the options, it would be good to know the point of such a poll. Lead in for the exploitation of the disaster to "upgrade" the city? Removing much of the city's personality and persons in the process, sadly.
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