Fantasy Football

I never thought I would be one to do anything like this, but for the first time in my life I'm involved in a Fantasy Football league. It's great fun - actually it's much more fun than I thought it would be. I named my team after one of the best units in the Revolutionary War. In 1776 they gave the British a very hard time at Boston.

If you go to our league homepage and look at the power rankings, you'll notice that I'm on top. This victory may be short-lived, but at least I'm doing well!

Just go here.

Heck yeah!

It probably won't last long. I think it's called beginner's luck.

iPod Nano & the iTunes Phone

I had heard that Apple was announcing something today.
I got back from lunch and went to the apple.com store. It said to come back within the hour - they were updating.
I came back to find:

The 2gb version is $199. The 4gb version is $249.

This all started when my dad, who was looking at a mobile phone, inspired me to go to the Cingular website. Went I go there, I saw they had the new iTunes compatible phone:

For only 250 bucks it can be yours.

Mars & why it matters

I read that we've lost 1.5 million barrels a day of Gulf production. [link]

The huge Mars Platform is owned 71.5% by Shell and 28.5% by BP. It brings in approximately 147,000 barrles each day of oil and 157 million cubic feet of gas per day. [link] That's nearly 10% of the current Gulf of Mexico oil production shortage!

Pre-Katrina Mars Platform:

Doesn't it look impressive!

Post-Katrina Mars Platform:

Isn't that depressing.

Energy News Sources

The impact of Katrina has been insane. Some are estimating an overall impact on insurance companies and the economy to be $100 Billion. That's huge. This is going to nock our GDP down quite a bit, and it has the potential, if handled improperly, to throw us into a recession. (How I hate the "R" word - usually by the time people are using it, we're coming out of a recession.)

The sites below get more technical as they progress, but here's some good stuff I found:

• If you're a WSJ Online subscriber, be sure to check out Status of Key Energy Facilities. It's an excellent article.
• Be sure to check out rigzone. It's an oil & gas industry website that my friend Justin showed me. They've got a Hurricane Katrina Damage Assessment article that's pretty good. Not written for the layman, but it's good info.
• Topix Oil & Gas News has some good articles, but there is a lot to wade through to find them.

Crazy Times

If the New Orleans people didn't eat yesterday, Mayor Nagan would have done something drastic. Even more drastic than his tirade this morning.

Mayor Nagan has faced a situation (in my opinion) more trying than Rudy Gulianni on September 11. And he did it with no phones and disrupted radio communications. He claims to have needed buses to get people out. Nobody gave him any "damn buses." Check this out:

When all this started I thought that it would be interesting to read Mayor Nagan's book. Now I would rather read General Honore's book.