I can only offer words, even though words can only do so much to soothe your pain. You have doubts and you feel low but I share with you this:

“I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.”

Michel De Montaigne

Your self-worth is intrinsically yours to decide; you are more deserving of the good things than you think.

Throw away the baggage of old and treat whatever comes next as a blank canvas. Step back and realise that this is nothing in the bigger scheme of things - life inevitably moves on and you still have ppl by your side who truly loves you.

NBC News

Hurricane Rita has claimed her first casualties, albeit indirectly. A bus carrying elderly evacuees has exploded into flames and left as many as 24 ppl dead. It is believed that overheated brakes caused the bus to catch on fire which then caused oxygen tanks carried by some of the elderly to explode.

Bus carrying elderly evacuees burns; 24 dead - Hurricanes’ Wrath - MSNBC.com

As Rita closes in the number of ppl leaving increases, adding to the traffic crawl out of the affected areas. Some reports note that cars travelled only 6 miles in 3 hours causing frustrations - some drivers had even opted to drive *back* to their homes. There have also been reports of cars running out of petrol whilst stuck on the highways, and fights breaking out among ppl clamouring for scarce fuel, at petrol stations that line the exit route .

To view this in a positive light, this situation is only caused by more ppl choosing to leave than not and that is a good thing.

Paul Sancya - AP

Rick Bowmer - AP

Nature and human nature - both conspire to create a potentially nightmarish scenario but so far everything still looks better than before Katrina hit.

Rita changes course, may spare Houston area - Hurricanes’ Wrath - MSNBC.com

Reuters

Dude, I admire where you were going with it and what you had in mind but … it just doesn’t work. Get it redone and don’t go back to the same hairstylist. Blonde stripes (Tiger mah!) would have worked better than patches - from far it looks like your hair has fallen out in clumps.

But but but, when you have a hot Swedish woman as your wife who are we to give you styling advice?

FOX SPORTS | Golf | Tiger shows off new mane (September 23, 2005)

Just a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of south-eastern USA, Hurrican Rita is now bearing down towards Texas. It is estimated that when it makes landfall early Saturday, it could be a Category 5 Hurricane (Katrina was a Cat-4 when it hit land). Approx. 1.3 million ppl have been evacuated from the Houston-Galveston-Corpus Christi area.

The good thing that may have come out from Katrina is that US officials are now more prepared and ready to handle Rita. Also, the general population are now more willing to evacuate.

Buses were made available, and hospitals and nursing homes were evacuated by compulsion where neccesary. Teams of rescue and medical specialists have been assembled, and food and medical supplies have been stockpiled by the government. And the Texas National Guard has been recalled home from Louisiana where they have been performing relief work.

The painful lessons learnt from Katrina will now save countless ppl.

James Nielsen - AFP

Rick Wilking - Reuters

Tim Johnson - Reuters

Follow the news at CNN and MSNBC.

So I saw a banana peel in the toilet bin today. I was disturbed. Who among my colleagues would be deviant enough to eat in the toilets? Though I guess this was not as freaky as seeing a *used* pad (as in the female hygiene kind) in plain view in a men’s toilet at a club once. I quite likely would have barfed but I don’t remember - every other memory of that night was overwritten by that one encounter.

As part of my daily work, I trawl through sites that outline new Internet security threats and software vulnerabilities. Most of the time it’s a pretty dull and humourless affair. But today, the geek whose turn it was to “man the watch tower” so to speak for this particular site decides to be funny. And it turned out he was.

The first part of the security analysis is a recount of him being chastised by a coffee shop waitress for using their wireless without buying anything. The second part is the actual analysis: read only if you are a masochist or if you are slightly interested in what keeps system administrators up at night. Some snippets from it:

“Buy something or get out. You can’t just come in here and sit at our tables and use the free wireless all afternoon. You have to buy something.”

…

“Ok. Fine. I’ll order something. What’s the cheapest thing you sell?”

Both the way she rolls her eyes, and her long, drawn-out sigh scream “I want you.” She can barely contain herself as she takes my order for a kid-sized fruit punch. I sense a shiver of ecstasy run through her body when, as she is walking back to the counter, I add “Shaken, not stirred.”

…

“You know… the stuff about e-gold and owning a bunch of laptops. Why did you say that? Are you trying to impress me or something? Do you think that you can walk your bland chubby middle-aged self in here, order the cheapest thing on the menu so you can use our wireless, and then toss out some bull about owning gold and laptops and impress me?”

“I was only trying to make conversation…” I explain.

“Well don’t,” she says, looking suddenly like some evil arch-villain. “I don’t expect you to talk, Mr. Bland… I expect you to buy.”

SANS - Internet Storm Center - Cooperative Cyber Threat Monitor And Alert System - Current Infosec News and Analysis