I attended a conference in New Orleans last week and was pleased to find the city recovering. The French Quarter was alive, but the lower neighborhoods still had evidence of hardship and trauma. Most striking were water lines on the houses and a visible black ‘X’ on a wall indicating the number of dead found inside. While chilling, it was good to see the tourism and restaurant industries picking up.

I stayed in an apartment in the French Quarter right next to Jackson Square. The location was incredible, and I must thank Michael Weems for his hospitality.

Michael had a Frisbee, and after the conference activities one day we went to Jackson Square to throw the disc. We found an open area next to the sidewalk and we were about thirty yards apart.

We were passed by many walkers while we threw, but one family stands out in my mind. Ten minutes into our session a father with his son on his shoulders walked past. The mother followed four feet behind, and a young daughter, maybe four, followed another four feet behind her mother.

The daughter was very upset. She was crying, stomping her feet, and generally acting like something was terribly wrong. The family walked past without the mother or father paying any mind to their daughter.

Fifteen minutes later the same family came walking the other way. Absolutely nothing had changed in their appearance, with the father in front with his son on his shoulders, the mother following and the daughter in back. The daughter was still crying and carrying on in the same manner as before. In my estimation she had been in that state for over thirty minutes.

When they got about twenty yards from me, I threw the Frisbee. I would describe it as a poor throw. The Frisbee started curving toward the family, went between two pillars and hit the little girl right on the head. She stopped in her tracks and looked up at the sky in disbelief. She also stopped crying.

I’ve never felt such deep and immediate remorse and regret. I certainly didn’t want to hit anyone, let alone a distraught four year old.

My wife and I had the opportunity last week to play the golf courses at Pebble Beach, California. I’m a beginner when it comes to golf, but had an amazing time on these historic courses. The weather was unbelievable; it was warm and sunny for the whole week. I guess normally it is foggy and rainy.

I am very happy with how I played, shooting almost exactly what I typically score. I consider this to be a big positive considering how challenging these courses were.

Too bad the caddy on my last day put my six iron in the wrong bag.

Last night I found a compelling article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone magazine. It’s rather lengthy, but it holds some inexplicable statistics regarding exit polling in battleground states in the presidential election of 2004.

Take a look here: link

It’s a little late for all this, but I think this should peak the interest of the larger media outlets. If we are interested in maintaining our democracy, all election officials should be held accountable for irregularities and outright criminal behavior.

The sky is falling! Ok maybe it’s not quite that bad but it has felt that way lately in the foreign markets.

I invest regularly in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) in emerging markets. Typically I’ll buy whatever has been hot for about three months. In the course of a year, I split my investments pretty equally between domestic and foreign securities.

Over the past year, the emerging market ETFs have taken off. Brazil (EWZ) and South American (ILF) have performed exceptionally well. Big gains mean these shares are volatile, and could swing in the other direction.

Last two weeks have been brutal to emerging markets. Brazil surrendered over 30% of its value. South America had a similar drop. I’ve had to do some soul searching and re-evaluate my strategy. I’ll stay the course but a word to those interested in diversifying overseas: Make sure you don’t have problems with heartburn.

I’m a huge DVR fan.

DVR is an acronym for Digital Video Recorder. Most people have heard of Tivo, which is a DVR. The convenience of watching the shows and movies I want whenever I want is enormous. It is hard to imagine going back to regular TV now that I have that constant ability to pause live TV and fast forward through commercials.

My DVR of choice is Tivo. I’ve been using a directv flavored version of Tivo for over two years and have always been impressed with its interface and reliability.

This weekend I visited a friend in Seattle who works for Microsoft. Having drank the cool-aid, he had the Microsoft DVR called Windows Media Center set up in his apartment. For the most part the features were the same, but the biggest difference between the two systems is performance.

Maybe his setup wasn’t optimal. Maybe he should have been using wired Ethernet instead of a wireless network. Maybe he didn’t have enough RAM or processor power for the streaming and encoding tasks needed. In any case, the result was a poor experience.

For now, I’ll stick with Tivo.