The Usual Susspects

This week the Charlotte Department of Transportation released compelling video of three collisions that occurred within one month’s time at one particular intersection in Uptown Charlotte. They claim that there were zero collisions at this intersection the previous eight months, during which time there were red-light cameras in operation. CDOT goes on to claim that this is strong evidence that the red-light cameras were effective in deterring collisions at these intersections, suggesting we need to reinstate the red-light camera program for our own safely. I’ve watched the video of these three crashes over and over again (sorry I don’t have a link) and in each case I’ve noticed two things. One is that the violator didn’t even slow down in any of the crashes. And two, that the traffic light was already red before any of the clips even begin. In the image above you’ll notice at least three cars totally stopped for the red light, and at least one car that had already made it across the in...

My family out of town still hasn’t seen our new dog Hobo yet and I wanted to test out Google Video so I I killed two birds with one stone. Here’s a short 18 second video clip of Hobo playing with Boomer that I shot with my digital photo camera.

A few months after dropping my business card in a contest bowl, I was sent an email coupon from Jersey Mike's.  I like Jersey Mike’s subs so I printed out the coupon and tried to use it. They told me that they do accept that coupon  but not if it’s a print out . What!? They sent me the coupon in an email. How in the world am I supposed to use it if I can’t print it out? Am I supposed to bring my entire computer down to the restaurant, plug it in, and show them the coupon on the monitor? I know it was just a little coupon but that’s ridiculous.

I’m a big fan of Google. (Now may be the time to mention that I’m a technology geek.) They do things right. Of course there’s the search engine, Google Maps, and Gmail that everybody knows and loves. Then there’s useful desktop applications like Google Earth, Picasa, and Sketchup, all of which I use. Well they’ve done it yet again with Google Spreadsheets . Think of it as being able to have a  free  spreadsheet application,  online  so you can collaborate with others. If you already have Excel and never collaborate with others you may not care but this is awesome when you need several people to work on the same spreadsheet. By the way, it imports and exports .xls files. This is just another component in Google’s plans to provide a complete suite of free, thin-client (online through a web browser) office applications. Gmail  is the email part along with Google Calendar  (Outlook), this is the spreadsheet application (Excel), they’ve already bought Writely...

My sister Amy just landed in Australia on a three week trip around the continent. I don’t have much else to report so I’ll just post this list of places Amy has been to and say “four down, two to go”. North America South America Europe Africa Asia Australia

You feel pretty dumb when you and you’re entire family is tricked by a children’s brainteaser on the side of a Wendy’s kids meal bag. Try this one out and since I’m telling you it’s tricky, don’t over-think it: "Kate’s parents are taking their four children to Six Flags for the day. One girl is named April, one girl is named May and another girl is named June. What is the fourth child’s name?"

While Patty was on a business trip in Charleston, Maegan and I went hiking. We’ve gone hiking several times before, but never this long before. We went to  McDowell Park , which we’ve hiked several times before, but this time we took parts of at least three different trails which took us two full hours of walking time.  

“So you recently started blogging?”  Nope. I actually started blogging a long time ago, long before anybody ever heard the word blog and certainly before it became popular. My blogger profile   says I started in January of 2001 so I’ve been doing this for five and a half years already. To put this in perspective, I was blogger number 129,287. Over 26 million bloggers have signed up after me, putting me in the top 0.4% of the earliest bloggers in the world. Can you say trailblazer? The reason nobody knew I had any blogs (yes plural) is because I haven’t been using them in the conventional manner. The Maegan Says section of this website is actually a blog, and I have other blogs which aren’t even listed. I’ve had a News section on my homepage for several years where I occasionally post about things that are going on with Patty, Maegan, or myself. Rather than upgrading that script, I simply decided to replace it with this blog instead. Now in addition to the occasional news updat...

Patty came home with a new puppy, a pug she named Hobo. He’s also known as gremlin and the monster because he’s a tiny four pound terror who chews everything and everyone. Hopefully he grows out of it. It took Boomer a few days to get used to him. He likes other dogs so he was immediately excited, but after a few days he’s realizing that this dog ain’t leaving. Now he’s jealous for attention. Boomer does enjoy rough-housing with Hobo but we need to keep an eye on him because he’s so much bigger.