Gas Prices

As a kid I never really thought about how much gas was. I really didn't start thinking about it until I started driving and got my own car. I can remember when gas was just about to get to $2 per gallon and everyone couldn't believe that it was so high. Look at us now, we think that gas is cheap if it gets down to $2.5o. It bugs me so much how the gas prices go up and down so randomly like it does sometimes. The main time every year that it gets to be really high is in the summer but after this past summer it had went down a good bit. Than all of a sudden it started rising again out of no where. I recently herd of a plan that I think might help to bring the gas prices back down and stop the oil companies from having so much power over the price. The plan is to get EVERYONE to stop buying gas from one or two companies completely. This will force those companies to lower their prices to try and save their business. Which in turn will force all the other companies to do the same just so that they can compete. If this plan can be put into effect and carried out by enough people than I believe that we can get gas prices back to a reasonable price range.

Stars

The sky in the city is nothing compared to what it looks like out in the country. Being someone that was raised in a big city I never really thought of the stars all that much. See all the light that is produced from big city's makes it nearly impossible to see any stars at night. So I always thought that there really wasn't that many stars up there and it didn't really impress me all that much. Than one day my dad moved out to the country and I got to start visiting him. It was than that I saw my first REAL starry sky. It was one of the most incredible things in the world that I had ever seen. There is just something so peaceful about being out there; no noise from cars, light from street lamps, or even the interruption of random people passing. Its just you and your thoughts. It's always good to go and do this every once in a while. You know just get away from EVERYTHING and clear your mind.

Puppies

Raising a puppy seems like a great idea and a lot of fun. No one ever thinks of what goes into raising a puppy. All they ever think about is how cute and fun they are. So you go and get a puppy randomly one day and bring it home. Everything seems to going good and everyone else that meets this new puppy loves it so much. Than you get to that first night with it. You end up only getting maybe 3 hours of sleep due to getting up every hour or so to bring the puppy out. Than you realize that you need to go buy food, so you go get that. Than comes the VET. You end up having to bring the puppy back every 3 weeks to get more shots for the first 4 months. So you also realize that if you want your new friend to listen to you later on and do what you want them too that you need to start training them. So as you can see getting a puppy is something that needs to be thought about a lot more than just thinking that you just want to get one.

One Final Down

I just took my final exam for my architechture class. You know the test I was just previously stressing out about. This is how it went. I walked to class and when I got there the room was locked and all my classmates were sitting in the hall studying. So I decided to do the same thing but when I started to look over my flash cards I began to realize that I knew it all and was just wasting my time by looking over the information. After sitting there for a few minutes our teacher walked up and told us that we had to take the exam in another room because she had locked herself out of our normal class room. So we all get up and follow her into the other class room. I set down and she told us to hold on for a second while she went to put a note on the other class room door to let people who got there late know where we had moved to. So when she got back she told us when our sketchbooks were due and she handed out the test. As I looked over the test I begain to realize that the test looked a lot like the study guid had looked. So I started answering the quietions and before I knew it 15 minutes later I was done. It ended up being one of the easyest exams I have ever taken. I am still glad that I studyed though.

Finishing A Class

I have been studying for this final that I am about to take in an hour and at first when I saw how much information I needed to know I was freaking out. I didn't think that I was going to be able to learn it all by today. It was starting to stress me out which I have been doing a lot lately. But the more I looked over all the information, the more I found out that I already knew a lot more of it than I thought I did. This is why I am in a good mood about this final I am about to take. The only thing left for that class is that I need to have 100 sketch's done by Thursday at 2:30 or I will pretty much fail the class. This is one of those many things I have been putting off all semester. I have gotten most of them done so far. I am up to about 72 now, so that means only 28 more to go. The only thing is that the more I draw the less I have to draw. I start to run out of ideas of things that I can draw. So as I get to the end of them it starts to take me longer and longer to do them. But I know I will get them done. I've been in tougher situations before.

Saints

The New Orleans Saints! After the impressive season from the New Orleans Saints last year their has been a lot more Saints fans around. This seemed to be a little odd but I just took it in good stride and let it go. Than this years football season started and the Saints lost their first 3 games. All those SO CALLED fans that claimed they loved the Saints so much started to hate the Saints once again just because they started to lose once again. If you are a true fan of ANY team than you know to support them all the time; even if this mean staying by their sides when they do bad. This just goes to show TRUE fans that these new fans are the kind of fans that just support any team that is doing well at the time. For example the kind of people that starts liking the winner of the supper bowl from the previous year just because they won the supper bowl most recently.

Weather

I wish this weather would make up its mind. I hate how it goes back and forth from being hot and cold. It seems as if it changes every time our bodies are just starting to adapt to the normal temperatures at the time. For example say it had been up in the 80’s for a few weeks and than one day it drops down to 60. When this happens our bodies can’t take it and think it is a lot colder than it really is. Than it continues to say around 60 or maybe even slightly colder for the next week, our bodies start to get use to the temperature and we may no longer need to wear jackets and it just feels really good outside. Than as soon as this happens the weather changes back and goes back up to 78 and it feels as if it is 90 just because our bodies have gotten use to the colder weather. Of course this just counties to happen throughout the fall and winter seasons; going round and round in a horrible cycle which we can’t stop.

Class

I am glad that this part of the semester is finally here. All my classes are coming to an end and I have to do less work. At the same time at times I do get overwhelmed with the pill up of some of the final class work. I am glad to do all this work just by thinking of what is to come after it is all done. After I finish with all this work and studying I will be able to take a nice long break. That is what I really need after a semester of hard work in school and for my job. I think after all this semester is over everyone will need a break.

Chad Foundation

As I previously stated about my friend dieing. Chad's parents after coming to a grasp with the death of their son have created a foundation to raise money for heart scans. This foundation which is named The Chad Barcia Foundation which can be viewed at http://chadbarciafoundation.org/. They have created it to raise money to pay for more in depth fisicals for high school athletes which include a heart scan. The money also goes toward buying better equipment for high school athletes and to raise awareness about the importance of heart scans. There are people walking around right now that are perfectly healthy and don't think there is anything wrong with them but what they might not know is that they have some form of heart problem that they don't know about. I myself was helped by this foundation. They offered to get me a heart scan and I found out that I have a heart problem that I would of otherwise never known about. These sort of problems are undetectable unless you get a heart scan. I compend the Barcia's for being this generous and making the best of the situation. They just don't want anyother parents to have to go through the pain and suffering of lossing there own child.

A Lost Friend

My 8th grade year when I started playing football I met my good friend Chad Barcia. Chad was a 6'3", 315lb. guy, that was very caring. We became great friends throughout our high school career. We were both passionate about football and had lots of similarities such as food and trucks. Every year we grew closer and closer. We would do everything together. We were almost inseparable. Every Sunday after our practice (that we always had the morning after a game) we would go to his grandma's Po-boy shop and eat. Our junior year came and we had a great football season. We made it to the playoffs and we both made the all district team. He also made the all state team. Once football season was over I started to play on the rugby team. This was an awesome sport if you love the fiscal aspect of football. My friends and I tryed to get Chad to come out and play with us just for one game because we knew that he would love it but he couldn't because his parents didn't want him getting hurt and messing up his scholarship chances to a big school. So finally one weekend his patents went out of town on a vacation and we convinced him to come out and play with us. It was already march and we only had 2 more games before the state playoffs. So he came out and played and was loving it. We were beating the other team by 40 points at half time. Once half time came we tryed to get him to just sit down for the rest of the game and relax and let some other people play. This only lasted a few minutes. We finally let him back in and he got the ball and was attempting to run it in for a score. No one wanted to try and tackle him because he was so big a strong. Someone finally tryed but only made him drop the ball. So we started to joke around with him about dropping the ball when all of a sudden he just stoped and got really quiet and collapsed right in front of me. We all tryed to help him as he started to shack and scream uncontrollably. I will never forget those screams, they still haunt my dreams today. We called 911 and they came to bring him to the hospital. We all rushed there to be with him and make sure he was OK. They made us wait for a long time and finally brought the hole team in a room and told us that our friend had just died. No one wanted to believe it until they let us go see him for the last time. It was later found out that he could of died at anytime from a heart problem that he was born with and knew nothing about. We all lost it. It only took 20 minutes before the hole city of New Orleans knew about it. As we walked out side for some fresh air there was 300 people there in the parking lot all for Chad. See he was very loved by everyone. This will probably be one of the hardest times in my life that I every had to go through. The lose of a close friend is something that you can never fully get over. I still get chill's and cry every time I talk about it. Chad Barcia will always be one of my closest friends and I believe that he is and always will be with me. Everyone that knows me, knows that I will never let anyone forget the memory of Chad Barcia. I keep reminders everywhere, such as my bracelet(which says #66 Chad In Our Hearts Forever), a picture of Chad in my room, a licence plate that is on the front of my car, and the one that will never be lost is the tattoo that I got on my back last year which is a cross on my left shoulder which says C.B. 66. I placed it on my left side because he always played on my left side on the football field.

Cary Pagett

I am a victim of hurricane Katrina. My senior year was cut short by this horrible storm. I lucked out with only receiving minor damage to my house but didn't get so lucky with my senior football season. See football was my main sport I played in high school. I played all five years I was there. I was looking forward for playing my senior season and trying to help bring my team to the playoffs once again. But after hurricane Katrina hit we were only given 3 games. I never even got to have a senior game which is were all the senior players are honored. So I went from having 10 games with a possible playoff shot to only have 3 games. I will never forget that horrible year of my life that was torn to shreds by the horrible Hurricane Katrina.

Cary Pagett

As a student coming from a high school that was very easy for me, I find myself overwhelmed sometimes with the work that I sometimes have to do in college. Back when I was in high school I made averge grades my 8th through my 11th grade years, with a C average. Than when I got to my senior year Hurricane Katrina hit and I had to leave for 2 months. When I returned I ended up with streight A's for the hole year. See my high school was not very chalenging at all. So when I got to college I was still in that "SCHOOL IS SO EASY" mind set and didn't really try to hard. I ended up getting lucky and ended the year with a 2.5 gpa. This is why this year I have started to do everything I can to bring my gpa back up and get back on track with school.

Cary Pagett

As the Christmas season comes closer and closer, I am forced to start thinking about what I will get people. This is always a hard time for me just because I can never think of ideas for presents. Also I start to think about do I have the money to pay for all these presents. This is why every year my sister and I always go in half and half on all the presents we have to buy for our family. We started this tradition back when our father got re-married to my step mom which her self has two kids. So we do this present shopping so that we can save money since we are both in college right now and have to budget our spending money. To me this is easyer because my sister normal comes up with most of the ideas and so I end up only having to pay her back for what she bought. This way we both only end up having to spend half as much as we would have had to normally.

Cary Pagett

I see now that what I stated before is more true than ever. Sitting here in the library I see that there is a sea of people (more so than normal). Walking around just looking for a computer to use reminds me of trying to find a parking spot on this campus. You go around in circles for long periods of time sometimes even 30 mins. and never find a spot. It gets to be agravating to the point of which you just want to give up and leave. Just not bother with trying to get your previous goal done.

Cary Pagett

I can't wait till Christmas break. I really need to just be able to just relax and not worry about school or anything. I have been trying to do so much lately to try and make more money and do better in school. I just think that I have been stressing myself out about too much stuff and streching myself to thin. I just over do myself sometimes and don't relize it until it is too late. I just need to learn to not over do myself to much and spread out some of my work.

Cary Pagett

As the end of the semester gets closer and closer; everyone starts to rlise how much work they really do still have. No one thinks of how much they are putting off and how they will not want to deal with doing that much work all at once. Everyone seems to do this. You think that by now people would of figured out that it is much easyer to just keep up with the work by doing it a little at a time throughout the semester. So when this time does finaly come that everyone seems to keep thinking that they still have a lot of time left, they get stressed out. Than they try to crame everything into one or two nights and over work themselves.

Forgot to put Questions

What should I take out of the paper?

How can I elaborate on my topic of fixing the problem with the Corps of Engineers?

Paper 3

Cary Pagett
Mr. Davidson
English 102
15 November 2007
Bad Dictions Making
As a Construction Engineering Technology major I hope to one day be able to build homes and buildings that everyone can use and enjoy. Safety would be my first and foremost concern. This almost comes to seem to be the opposite for the United States Army Corps of Engineers when they were put in charge of building and maintaining the storm protection system of New Orleans. They have failed in making the levees strong enough to protect us from a hurricane that put my city under water and killed millions. It is time to take action on these problems.
Being a New Orleans citizen I was born and raised here just as every New Orleans citizen has been. This is why I was out raged to hear about how the United States Army Corps of Engineers were warned about the protection system’s not being able to hold up to certain storms and than doing nothing to fix these problems. As said in the article Army Builders Accept Blame Over Flooding, “the corps had failed to take into account the tendency of the local soil over time, leaving some sections of the levee lower than they should have been. The corps did not re-examine the heights of levees even after it had been warned about the degree of subsidence.” They should learn to listen to warnings brought to them by others. Even though it might not have been possible to fix the system completely; actions could have been taken toward trying to fix the problems as much as possible. The United States Corps of Engineers are in the wrong for what happened and it’s good that they admitted it. According to the article Army Builders Accept Blame Over Flooding, “the Army Corps of Engineers concludes that the levees it built in the city were an incomplete patchwork of protection, containing flaws in design and construction and not built to handle a storm anywhere near the strength of Hurricane Katrina.” No one could have predicted the amount of damage Katrina brought upon New Orleans. But that still does not mean that the flood protection system was fine not being kept up and made stronger.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers has claimed that they are doing everything they can to get the levees back to what they were and better than what they were before. According to the article One Billion Dollars Later, a City Still at Risk:
After two years and more than a billion dollars spent by the Army Corps of Engineers…The entire flood system still provides much less protection than New Orleans needs, and the pre-Katrina patchwork of levees, floodwalls and gates that a Corps of Engineers investigation called “a system in name only” is still just that. The corps has strengthened miles of floodwalls, but not always in places where people live.
The United States Corps of Engineers are being careless and irresponsible with the type of work they are doing. They make it seem as if they do not care about any of the problems their systems have made. According to the article Army Builders Accept Blame Over Flooding, “Lt. Gen. A. Strock,… “we missed something in the design,” particularly in the construction of the drainage canal floodwalls that caused so much of the flooding.”
The rebuilding of the levees are being done sloppy and inaccurately to the point where they are just wasting their time with what they have done so far. They rush into replacing and repairing systems without double checking the quality of work that they are doing in their jobs. The United States Army Corps of Engineers ARE rebuilding the levees but they are NOT doing it in the right way or with the right materials. According to the article Reconstruction, “…contractors are fixing breaches and scoured areas with materials contaminated by organic matter and lacking adequate clay content to resist erosion. “The kind of materials they are working with to repair the levees are the same materials that breached’.” They are trying to rebuild the levees to fast and doing it anyway possible even if that means building something that will fail once again. This should not be acceptable for the last line of defense against “Mother Nature”. If they are allowed to keep rebuilding parts of our levees this way our city will never be able to survive. The levees will continue to break under the pressure of storms and never be safe, unless we do something about this careless kind of work they are doing for us.
The city of New Orleans is even holding the United States Army Corps of Engineers liable for the damage done to the city resulting from hurricane Katrina. Our government organizations have all the responsibility of keeping everything running smoothly. They are put in those roles of power for a reason. This is a huge deal that the corps could not do there job in protecting us from this type of storm but they seem to take it so lightly. This is why penalizing them seems to be the only way to get through to them and make them listen. So they can once again realize the importance of them taking their jobs seriously. According to the article New Orleans Files Claim Against Corps For Billions:
The City of New Orleans filed a $77 billion damage claim against the federal government…Normally, federal law does not allow suits for damages resulting from the failures of flood-control projects. But on Feb. 2, Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. of Federal District Court in New Orleans ruled that at least one flooding source, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, might be considered a navigation channel and not a flood-control project. Critics of the corps faulted the outlet, known as Mr. Go, for much of the flooding in eastern New Orleans.
One of the man made channels made by the United States Army Corps of Engineers was one of the big causes of flooding in New Orleans. This just goes to show the level of intelligence the corps is showing toward trying to protect this city. They build levees to keep water out of the city yet one of their own channels that they dug brought most of the water in.
This city is having such a hard time getting people to come back and rebuild because of when the corps says it can have the levees ready. According to the article One Billion Dollars Later, a City still at Risk:
The corps has said that proposals from contractors for doing so are on their way, but that work, too, may not be complete before 2011. Without a strong rampart of protection against storms, New Orleans will have a hard time persuading its far-flung residents and businesses to return and rebuild. Matt McBride, an engineer who became an anti-corps gadfly on flood-protection issues, left the city along with his wife after deciding he simply did not trust the new system.
Who could blame Mr. McBride and his wife for not trusting the new flood-protection system and wanting to leave the city to live somewhere else. Until they can get the flood-protection system to protect us against any storm; this city is going to have a hard time convincing people in flood prone areas to move back. In the long run this will hurt this city’s economy.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers seems to be trying to hide certain details or saying some things are done when they appear not to be. According to the article One Billion Dollars Later, a City Still at Risk, “But community activists say they suspect that the corps has not yet fully fixed the problems.” They are talking about how the pumps may still not be working at full capacity as they should be. This seems to be the way a lot of the projects that the Army Corps of Engineers have been working on for the past few years are turning out. The corps seems to be completing certain projects only to a certain degree just to make people think that they are getting things done. So they can get the city of New Orleans off their back about finishing projects.
The Corps was in such a rush to get projects done before the hurricane season that it messed some parts of the plan up. They did not think about getting jobs done the right way, yet instead they just wanted to get every thing done and get it done in a hurry. I realize that everyone wants the work done A.S.A.P. but this does not excuse the corps from doing work the right way. According to the article One Billion Dollars Later, a City Still at Risk:
Then there are the new pumps at the mouths of the city’s main drainage canals, which will be turned on if the huge new floodgates have to be closed to keep out lake water in a storm. Two reports said that the pumps, ordered in a rush of planning before the 2006 storm season, were a troubled operation from the start, and that if a storm had hit in the first year after Hurricane Katrina, severe flooding could have occurred.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers do not seem to know what they are doing. They make careless mistakes when they are trying to rush to get everything done in a hurry. According to the article Flood Control:
In its rush to restore New Orleans’ hurricane protection system to pre-Katrina levels by the 2006 hurricane season and then rapidly increase pump capacity at the city’s outfall canals by the 2007 season, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to follow adequate business management, technical review and procurement processes.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers can not seem to get anything right, right now. For the amount of responsibility they have in their hands they do not seem to be doing a very good job regulating the quality of work their workers do. The corps ignored warnings that the levees needed to be repaired because of the sinking soil and the eroding materials they used to build them. They even admitted to knowing that the flood-protection system had flaws in the design and construction of it. Along with admitting to knowing that the storm protection system would not stand up to a storm anywhere near to the strength of Hurricane Katrina. They have been working on the system for over two years now and still are not even up to the pre-Katrina standards. The corps has strengthened much of the levees but in places where there are no homes. Parts of the levees they have repaired are being repaired to the point where they will just break once again because of careless construction and the use of the wrong materials. A law suit was filed against the Corps of Engineers for building a canal (“Mr. Go”) that was said to have funneled water into the city instead of helping to get it out. They say that the flood-protection system will not be strong enough to protect against category five storms until 2011. The corps has tried to claim that some projects are done completely when they are obviously not and could put the city in danger. There were some projects that were rushed so much that they were done incorrectly and put the whole city in danger. The United States Army Corps of Engineers has a long way to come before they will be able to gain the trust of the citizens of New Orleans once again.
I believe that as a citizen of New Orleans that everyone should chip in to help out with trying to fix these problems. I believe that the Army Corps of Engineers need to do their job better. They need to do more in making shore that the work they do and the materials they use are being done to proper standards.




Works Cited
Bergeron, Angelle. "Internal Corps Report Cites Procurement Flaws." ENR: Engineering News-Record 258.22 (18 June 2007): 13-13. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 20 October 2007. .
Schwartz, John. "One Billion Dollars Later, a City Still at Risk. (Cover story)." New York Times 156.54039 (17 Aug. 2007): A1-A16. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 20 October 2007. .
Eaton, Leslie. "New Orleans Files Claim Against Corps For Billions." New York Times 156.53872 (03 Mar. 2007): A12-A12. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 20 October 2007. .
Schwartz, John. "Army Builders Accept Blame Over Flooding." New York Times 155.53598 (02 June 2006): A1-A19. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 20 October 2007. .
Sawyer, Tom. "Investigators Question Levee Repair Work, Corps Defends It." ENR: Engineering News-Record 256.8 (27 Feb. 2006): 14-14. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 20 October 2007. .

Cary Pagett

I am starting to get fed up with work. I work at Subway here in Hattiesburg in Wesley Hospital. It has been almost a year since I started working there. When I was hired they promised me that they would give me a raise once the store got up and running. I have still yet see that raise and everytime someone asked about getting a raise, they either say we do not deserve it or they say they will work on it then never do anything about it. Then the other day, I noticed that they do not pay us for the full time that we work each week. They take the amount of hours we work and round it to the nerest quarter hour. Then they want to come down on us if everything isn't done completely right. This makes me so mad that they don't want to pay us right and then expect us to work as hard as would can.

Cary Pagett

My name is Cary Pagett. I have just created this blog to keep in touch with everyone. I hope I have done everything I needed to do to set this up but if I haven't will someone please let me know.