Picture My World

There’s a new blog post describing day 3 of the Mt. Rainier climb below. I dated it back to July to keep it with the other 2 posts.

I gave a presentation to about 30 people on remote usability testing at the monthly [VanUE](http://vanue.com) meeting tonight. Here is [my name in lights](http://www.vanue.com/2005/09/04/remote-usability-testing/#comments). Judging by the amount of discussion that followed (cut short due to losing the room), I think it went well. I need to improve my public speaking if I want to do this more often, but at least I wasn’t that nervous and I think I only became incomprehensible once during the talk. Perhaps someone from the audience can give me some honest feedback (you did [Google me](http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Jay+Zipursky&btnG=Google+Search&meta=), didn’t you?).

The rather cryptic presentation slides will be up on the VanUE site soon.

The news out of the south is very disturbing. Today I read that [the Houston Astrodome is full](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050902/ap_on_re_us/katrina_refugees_hk4) after accepting about half of the expected refugees. Officials are scrambling to find shelter for the remaining thousands that are arriving by the busload.

Why haven’t I read any stories about families in unaffected areas offering to take in those displaced by the storm? [Instapundit](http://instapundit.com) points out that there are posts on [Craigslist](http://neworleans.craigslist.org/hhh/) offering shelter. Nice but I wonder how the people who need it are supposed to read them. Is this an example of individual efforts getting lost in the scope of the disaster? There should be an agency of some sort coordinating these types of efforts, but I doubt anyone is at this point, which is why they are using huge shelters that can accommodate thousands of people.

What we are seeing is that anyone struck by a disaster is really at the mercy of the existing emergency plans and organizations for the first week. After that, things will get better.

Watching this disaster unfold has motivated me to finally put together an emergency supply kit.

**Update:** Instapundit is now linking to [MoveOn.org's Hurricane Housing site](http://www.hurricanehousing.org/) listing over 110,000 beds. That’s great and I just hope someone is funneling people to those homes.