New Student Travel Magazine

Ok, the news is out: I'm starting a new student travel magazine called Going Magazine that will be circulated nationally to college campuses. I'm pretty excited about it, and you can make your way over to www.goingmagazine.com and get more information.

Right now, we're looking for writers and photographers who love to travel, and have some good ideas. Soon, we'll be putting together a pilot issue used to sell ads, and our first real issue will come out in April.

I'll be starting a blog over there to write about starting a new magazine, but I haven't had time to set it up yet.

An all green pie!

During the mess of the hurricane, I decided it would be smart to invest some extra money I had (thanks Prez). Today was the first day that they all gained more than 1%, creating a green pie on the Ameritrade homepage. I've had the account for almost three weeks, and I've already more than topped what it would have earned in a high-yield internet savings account (like ING Direct). I was just going to get a mutual fund, but decided against it after learning about Exchange Traded Funds or ETFs. About 2/3 are foreign ETFs because they're more aggressive, and the rest are in the US. I bought Google and eBay shares because they looked like they were low, and they've been the best performers by far. My all green pie is below...
Let me know if you wanna sign up for an Ameritrade account, because I can get some commission free trades if you enter in my account number.

Here's a picture of the bridge I was standing on to take the previous picture of the castle. I took this picture from out of a window of the castle.

I just finished putting all my Europe pictures from this summer into two huge albums, and I'm ready to go back... This is the Neuschwanstein Castle taken from the Marienbruecke.

Many people parked their cars on the neutral ground (median), but they were flooded anyway by the high water.

This house was searched when the water was still high, since the spray paint marker is on the roof.

These are a series of pictures from New Orleans that were taken yesterday (October 26, 2005). This is a street in the Lake Vista neighborhood. We haven't had any rain since Hurricane Rita came through about a month ago, and everything's really dry and dusty.

This is a picture of roof shingles still hanging from telephone wires, taken yesterday in the upper 9th ward of New Orleans.

This house was searched twice--once on 9/11 before the water had gone down, and then on 9/21 as indicated by the spray paint above and below the water line.

1 dog was taken out of this house in New Orleans.

Here's another good picture of Simba.

This is a seed pod of a Canna Lilly with a 60mm macro lens attached, taken by Jason.

Jason took this picture of a garden gnome that survived the storm at his grandmother's house on the Gulf Coast.

This is a wide anlge shot of the house in its current state.

And here's both of them together...

And this is my dog Gingerale with the new camera

I got a new camera the other day (a Canon Digital Rebel XT)! This is my cat Simba.

The restaurant where I work after the storm.

The Snelling's yard after the storm.

The neighbor's (Snelling's) yard after the storm.

My street after the storm.

My street after the storm.

My street after the storm.

The tree in my house.

My house after the storm where a tree came through the roof.

The Tammany Trace bicycle path after the storm with my mom, brother, and the neighbor's.

The neighbor's (Snelling's) house after the storm.

My street after the storm with my dad walking over the fallen trees.

My street after the storm.

My street after the storm.

My street after the storm.

My street after the storm.

My house after the storm.

My house after the storm.

The back of my house before the storm.

The back of my house before the storm.

My house before the storm.

My street before the storm.

My street before the storm.

My street before the storm.

My street before the storm.

The Restaurant where I work before the storm.

In Napoli

I'm down in Napoli/Naples because everything was booked solid in Roma and it was way too crowded. Last Friday was some kind of national holiday. Napoli is crazy and great, and some American's staying at the hostel here said it was worse than Mexico or Morocco. There are no traffic laws, and the few traffic lights they have are usually not working. Lines are sometimes painted on the old streets that look like they are hundreds of years old, but no one pays much attention to them. If you want to cross the street at rush hour, you just step out anywhere and hope they stop. Oh, and there aren't usually street signs... and where there are signs they are up on a building and usually covered with something.

Click here to see a picture

An Awesome Host

James, Elise, and I had a great time in Wuertzburg, especially since we had a great host who woke up and went to the bakery for us. I really want to go back and spend more time, but we'll see.

In Deutschland

I just flew into Frankfurt yesterday and already it feels like I've moved in. It's a great feeling. The key board is a little bit funny as the Y and the Z are switched. Last night James, Elise, and I all slept on one pretty comfortable futon at Johanna's house in Würtzburg. Elise was a very loud snorer because she's still kinda sick. Tomorrow or tonight I may be going to Italy or Amsterdam. I'll post some pictures in a little while once I remember to bring my camera cable down to the internet cafe.

After that, I was ready to jump in my pretty car under the live oak tree and go.

I didn't notice the graveyard until I walked through some thick camillas, and almost tripped on this tombstone.

Here's one of the posts that holds the electrical fence used to keep deer out. They put it up every night and take it down every morning.

I didn't notice this old water tower until I was standing almost underneath it. Creepy!

Over grown camilla and boxwood hedges were the main focus of the garden.

The statues stare down at anyone who walks by.

A trip to St. Francisville

I woke up Sunday morning after a night of not partying too hard. Mr. Lee Cox had a two day party last weekend and his band, the Terror of the Sea, was supposed to play on Saturday night 'cept the po-pos showed up around 10 pm and gave him a friendly court summons for violating the noise ordinance. They were only doing a sound check, and everyone at the party was in a depressed mood when I arrived around 11.

But I'm digressing. So I woke up around noon to hear the melodic sound of some guy getting knocked out on this boxing game my 'mates friends brought over. I walked into the living room aggravated, looking at the mess of the two guys who slept here all weekend. I stumbled over to the kitchen and opened the cabinet hoping to grab cup for some chocolate milk. Would you believe that not only were there no clean cups, but there was nothing clean that you could drink out of besides a wine glass! And not a clean spoon in sight either. So that's when I began my journey to St. Francisville. A little town only about 30 minutes away from Baton Rouge, I was hoping it would give me some relief of life with everyone in Baton Rouge.

And it sure did. My first contact in St. Francisville was with this very friendly black guy pulling a wagon down the middle of a highway of stopped traffic selling Frito Lays and some cold ones to anyone with a buck or two. He told me I was waiting in line to get on the ferry to cross the Mississippi--something I didn't want to do. So out of nowhere he steps in front of the oncoming traffic getting off the ferry and tells me to turn around right in the road waving me goodbye with, "God bless you and your kin".

My second stop was trying to get to Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge. Twenty minutes of driving down a fun one lane road with signs telling me the next bridge was washed out (none were), and then finally making it to the refuge only to discover that it was flooded this time of year. That's what a guy and his son told me. They drive their Jeep as far down the road as they can each weekend and fish. I forgot to ask if they ever caught anything, but I'm not much of a fisherman.

My next stop was Apton Villa Gardens. The villa doesn't exist any more (it burned down in 1964 if I remember right), but the gardens are still there. The place was pretty eerie and not that well maintained. I had to write a $5 check that had been in my wallet for several months because I didn't have any cash. As I was leaving at the 4:30 pm closing time, there were several people running an electrical fence around the property. They told me they do it every night and take it down every morning so the deer don't get into the garden. I left right then, afraid that I might somehow get caught in the fence.

When you don't have any cash or checks, haven't eaten since you got up, are way out in the middle of nowhere, and the sun is low in the sky, it's time to go home. And that's what I did.

I did use the Straighten tool on this picture, hence the warped bottom and top. It's an interesting tool because it actually distorts the image instead of rotating and cropping it down.

Here's another one of the same series, but a little more clear. It's a little bit crooked but I was too lazy to open up photoshop, and Picasa made the picture blurry when I tried to use their tool.