Brendan Greeley is in Lake Provdence, once of the poorest regions in America. Relief efforts are not reaching there. So he’s set up a PayPal account for donations. From his blog:

Since Sunday, hundreds of evacuees from New Orleans have arrived in Lake Providence and the surrounding area. They can’t get to Red Cross shelters in Monroe, the nearest city; they are out of gas and money and energy. Providence Church has emerged as a shelter, not because the town planned for it, but because evacuees stopped at the church and stayed.

The most immediate priority is food, water and toiletries, and then to help get some of these evacuees to Red Cross shelters in Monroe, the nearest city or family that can take them in. Some of them will end up staying, though, and will need help getting settled and getting their children into local schools.

I trust Brendan 100%. And I love him the more for doing this. [Technorati tags: katrina]

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The flood continues to be front-page news here in Austria. The stories focus on the suffering, the looting, and the political impact.

The scale of the disaster is horrifying. It’s not that I thought the US was safe in a “Bush to Nature: Bring it On!” sort of way. But I would have thought that we could ameliorate the effects far faster. This is horrifying, scary, humbling, sad beyond words.

My hotel room looks out over the Danube, a river peaceably within its banks, making it even harder to imagine the suffering of my fellow citizens. The Red Cross donation button works even here, but I am still too many removes from the reality of Katrina. My heart and hopes go to the victims and those working on their behalf.

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Yes, it’s a 3D alphabet. Or, perhaps it’s what our alphabet would look like if we lived in a 4D world.

It’s also available as a font. (Thanks to Mark Dionne for the link.) [Technorati tags: fonts alphabet]

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Philipp Lenssen explains why programmers should be lazy and dumb, although of course he doesn’t mean either of those terms in the way we usually do.

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I learned in Guy Hart-Davis’ excellent Word Annoyances (O’Reilly) that Word has a “work menu” that lists the files you designate so you can easily load ones that you use frequently. To install it, go to Tools > Customize > Built-in Menus and drag “Work Menu” onto your tool bar. Nice!

But I couldn’t figure out how to remove an entry from the list. PCPlus has an answer, and, although it’s ridiculously complex, it’s the best one I could find. If you know of an easier way to delete an entry from the Work Menu, let me know. Anyway, PCPlus says to go to Tools > Customize > All Commands and drag ‘”ToolsCustomizeRemoveMenuShortcut” to your toolbar. (Right-click on it and rename it before you close the Customize dialogue box.) Now when you click on it and then click on the Work menu, it lets you click on an entry you want to remove.

Omigod, didn’t anyone at Microsoft use the Work menu before it shipped?

By the way, if the PCPlus technique doesn’t work, this page has a macro that supposedly will do the trick. I haven’t tried it, so take it as is:

Public Sub DeleteWorkMenuItems()
Dim i As Long
Dim nDelete As Long
With WorkMenuItems
For i = .Count To 1 Step -1
nDelete = MsgBox( _
Prompt:=”Delete “”” & .Item(i).Name & “””?”, _
Buttons:=vbYesNoCancel, _
Title:=”Delete Item from menu”)
If nDelete = vbCancel Then Exit For
If nDelete = vbYes Then .Item(i).Delete
Next i
End With
End Sub

It also has a macro you can attach as an item on your work menu. (If you’re not comfortable with Word macros, skip it! I am not responsible, etc.) [Tags: annoyances WordAnnoyances word Microsoft tips]

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AKMA and Margaret’s Si, if I may so term him, is on his way to Marlboro College, a wonderful school that grows genuine community out of an Athenian democracy (except the women get to vote, too). Good luck, Si! [Technorati tags: akma]

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I woke up this morning in my tent in the orchard to the sound of a rooster, and I thought, “Goddamn it! Doesn’t he know it’s a weekend?”

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I just heard about a telephone scam I would have fallen for, so I thought I’d pass it along.

In essence, the caller says they’re with the credit card company’s security department. They read you your card number and tell you some malarkey about refunding you money. They ask for the security code on the back of your card to confirm that you’re in possession of the card.

As soon as they ask you for that code, you know they’re scammers. That’s all they want from you. Give it to them and you’ll find a hefty charge added to your account. Apparently the credit card companies never ask you for that security code.

Of course, the warning I received and am passing on to you might itself be a scam. In fact, maybe I’m hoaxing you right now. Bwahahaha…eh.

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AKMA chimes in on Jeneane’s recent unpleasantness with Holiday Inn. Still arguably better – for what it’s worth – than this, the top result if you google “horrible hotel photos.” Then there’s this person who is so pissed at the Hotel de l’Orchidee in Paris that s/he set up a page just so it would rise high in “Orchidee” search results. Didn’t work. It’s #2 :)

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Last year, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts set aside one summer Saturday as No Tax Day: Whatever you buy for under $2,500 was free of the 5% sales tax.

Some Jews complained because the orthodox can’t touch money on the sabbath.

So, the Commonwealth responded admirably by declaring an entire tax free weekend, today and tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the Commonwealth didn’t consult its religious calendar: Sunday is Tisha B’Av, a fast day remembering the destruction of the Temples. Guess what orthodox Jews can’t do on Tisha B’Av? Yes, they can’t eat, bathe, wear leather, have sex…or touch money. You spend the day in shul studying Torah, so until the mall opens up a Study, Daven ‘n’ Beyond store, there’s not going to be a lot of temptation to shop anyway.

Nice try, Commonwealth! [Tags: massachusetts judaism]

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