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September 3, 2005
My day
I spent the afternoon at the Red Cross warehouse in South Austin, setting up communications gear which will be shipped to field teams in the hurricane region. About half my time was spent packing radios and accessories into heavy-duty shipping containers and filling out inventory forms. The other half we spent unpacking pallets of brand new Thinkpads donated by IBM and stacking them up so the techies could reimage them with the standard Red Cross configuration.
The radio stuff at first was intimidating. You're so afraid you're gonna fuck up and leave some rescue worker stranded in the bayou with the wrong kind of coax connector or a missing antenna or something, but as is typical with volunteer work, unskilled people quickly rise to the level of expert. By the time I left, I was teaching other people how to fill out the inventory forms and how to pack hardware bags..."two big clamps, two little clamps, two M-F coax connectors, 1 F-M connector, 2 green 30A fuses"...I could do that shit in my sleep now.
The laptop work was fabulously mindless. Exactly what I needed after the stress this week of shipping a software release while my mind was in New Orleans. I left the Red Cross center with my mind a blank and my lower back aching slightly. Feeling like I'd done something useful, finally. It was perfect.
The kids, meanwhile, sold lemonade and cookies and brownies to UT fans to raise money for the Red Cross:
$45 in a little over an hour, and most people just gave money and didn't take any food. Meaning that we've got this problem now of what to do with all these brownies. *burp*
The other great news is that Mark and Anne have brought their family to Austin for a couple of days. If you've been reading here since the beginning of Katrina, you know about their evacuation and about the scare we had with Anne's family. We took them out for dinner and margaritas at Trudy's, and then we took the boys home with us for a sleepover with Liam. They destroyed the upstairs. Made tons of noise. I loved it.
Mark and Anne:
Mark Jr, Liam, Haley, Chris, and Cass:
Everybody. We probably annoyed the fuck out of nearby tables. This one time, I don't care.
Tomorrow I'm back at the Red Cross, plus we're hitting the benefit at Shoal Creek Saloon and will be taking the visitors to the pool, so hopefully another day of happiness and productivity and not so much damn TV and computer.
Posted by ray at September 3, 2005 11:29 PM | Permalink
Categories: [austin | family | katrina | metairie | new orleans ]
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