Well, it looks like Hurricane Rita is headed towards Texas.

If it hits Houston, it could be really bad.

A friend of mine, Rob Levin, lives with his family in a trailer in Houston. Trailers and hurricanes do not go together well. I just read on his blog that he's planning to evacuate.

Readers of my diary might know him as "lilo" on the FreeNode IRC network (which he runs). I used to work with him at Transvirtual, and I know a lot of people that used to work with him at Linuxcare.

He's already in a bit of a financial tough spot, and it sounds like he's going to have to evacuate. He's a really nice guy who's trying to live a somewhat unconventional lifestyle with a wife and a kid. He's caught some flack in the past for some of his attempts at raising money so he could work on the IRC network, but I know him and it's not like he's living an extravagant lifestyle. "Parenting" an IRC network can make you a lot of enemies. In person, he's really one of the nicest guys I know.

Anyways, I gave him a tiny little donation via PayPal. If anybody else wants to chip in, I'm sure he'd much appreciate it.