Category: Rants

Prince William County is in the Top Five!

Rants

Top five what you ask? According to this article in the Potomac News, my county of Prince William in Virginia has the fifth worst commute in the whole United States! Woo-Hoo! According to a study conducted by U.S. News & World Report, the average commute for a resident of my county is 40.5 minutes, and each of the top four worst commutes are all New York counties.

I guess I’m a little surprised… worse that any in LA? Worse than anywhere but NYC? Wow. But I know I’m spoiled for two reasons. First, I’m very fortunate to work for a company that allows me to telecommute for a few days of each week. And second, last summer I discovered the local commuter bus, OmniRide, which literally picks me up and drops me off within sight of my own front door. And for these reasons it’s now a very rare day where I drive myself into DC and I can tell you that’s fine with me.

I hope we don’t climb any higher on this list, as I don’t need my bus getting stuck in traffic any worse than it has to. But if it does, it’s just a little more reading time on the way in, and a little more nap time on the way out 🙂

County has fifth-worst commute in nation
The Potomac News, 5/8/07

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Don’t Move The Awakening

Diversions, Rants

Media_httpcaseycomblo_gehax

Washington, DC is a city of memorials and sculptures, most of which commemorate individuals and events in our American history. Combined with DC’s many wonderful museums and other attractions, they provide many a fine place to pause, reflect and appreciate. But far from the National Mall and well off of the beaten track, is one (or several) sculptures that serve an entirely different purpose. It is called The Awakening, and it is actually a few different pieces that together give the appearance of a buried giant that is angrily (or painfully) emerging from under the ground. I’ve always tried to make The Awakening a stop on our standard DC tour when we have guests from out of town. It’s best when they have young children, and you can set it up on the drive out to Hains Point with a tall tale about the buried giant.

Well, apparently The Awakening is about to get up and move completely. The sculpture’s owner has plans on moving it to the shopping complex he’s developing. That would be a shame. Leave the giant be.

The Hains Point Hand: Stealing Away A Public Treasure
Mark Fisher, The Washington Post, 4/25/07

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699 Days

Politics, Rants

Media_httpfarm1static_refmbA Monday holiday is always nice, and earlier this week I wanted to write something about President’s Day. But given our current President, who will certainly be remembered by history as among the Worst Ever, President’s Day just left me with a low-feeling for how much longer he’ll hold the office.

But today, I noticed on the Bush Countdown Calendar widget on my Mac’s Dashboard that a milestone has been passed. At the moment it shows 699 Days and just under three hours remaining in Bush’s time in office. I think I need to get myself the keychain version of this countdown until 1/20/09, a day that approaches slowly, but can’t come soon enough.

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Protecting Our Rights from Ourselves

Guide to Life, Rants

In 2007, resolve to pay attention, get involved, and speak out. Do not underestimate how much more harm George Bush is capable of inflicting on our country and our Constitution in his remaining two-years in office. And never forget the damage already done.

The 2006 Bill of Wrongs
The Washington Post, Opinion Page, 12/31/06

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Yes Virginia, there are gays and muslims…

Politics, Rants

Our state’s tourism motto is ‘Virginia is for Lovers‘.

Recent headlines might make you think otherwise. In just the last week, a number of Virginia Epispicol parishes have split from the U.S. Epispicol Church over their tolerant treatment of gays, and a member of Virginia’s Congressional Delegation wrote a letter to constituents warning that if we didn’t change our immigration policies, we will be subject to more muslims in America.

I think our motto may need a qualifying asterisk to add some fine print…

* only applies to heterosexuals and lovers of a christian god

Shameful.

A Bigot in Congress
The Washington Post, 12/22/06

Lawmaker won’t apologize for ‘Islamophobic’ letter
CNN.com, 12/20/06

Episcopalians Against Equality
Washington Post, 12/20/06

with thanks to Waldo, AmericaBlog and Think Progress for the story

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Dear Washington DC BMW,

Rants

It’s 6:10 am on the Tuesday before Christmas. Why the hell am I writing to you? Because I’ve already seen, no… heard, your commercial that begins with the screams of a young boy and girl on Christmas morning twice, and you’ve impacted my day in a bad way.

Who there thought it was a good idea to build a commercial around the sustained and obnoxious screaming of some kid? Will that sell cars? To me your commercial is a startling and painful jolt. Whatever is happening at the time it airs, I stop and search for the source of the screams… is someone hurt? Has one of my own kids had an accident? No, it’s that damn BMW commercial on the TV.

You haven’t lost a customer, because there weren’t any BMW’s on my shopping list. But you’ve joined the many reasons that I have to look forward to Christmas, as I hope and pray that it will be the end of your awful screaming commercial. Wise up. BMW buyers may be nostalgic for images of their kids on Christmas morning. The screams, I’m sure they’d be glad to forget.

UPDATE: Apparently I’m not alone in hating this commercial. Scroll down to the comment by Columbia, MD about the BMW ad in this online chat from washingtonpost.com.

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Learning to Swim While Drowning in Spam

Rants, Technology
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I already knew I got a lot of spam, probably more than many since I have multiple email accounts, manage domains that default to my email, and have recklessly shared my own email address online for many years. But back in October, I decided to check just how much. So for a week, I saved my spam and counted it. During the week of October 2-8, I received 3,129 spam email messages, an average of 447 each day. Among the top subject lines were:Re: HI, Need medicine? All here!, We cure any disease!, Full of health? Then don’t click!, and Our store is your cureall!

And it could have ended there, a sad peek into the ugly wasteland that email has become. But no, it got worse, I could just tell. And so later the same month I repeated the same spam counting experiment. And during the week of October 23 – 29 I received 5009 spam emails for an average of 715 a day. Please, can I get a sympathetic WTF here??!!

At the end of my rope, I finally took steps that I had long resisted in order to stem the flow by signing up with Spam Arrest, a spam filtering service. I had heard good reviews from a few people, but was still hesitant to put anything between me and my email. Now I only regret having waited so long.

Sometimes a simple technology change can be a real lifestyle change. Caller ID, and Tivo are a couple of examples. Add Spam Arrest to that list. For the first time, I feel like I’m fighting back and maybe even have the upper hand in the fight against spam. Ninety-one percent of my email is spam! It’s sad that so much time and effort has to be wasted because of these lowlife email hucksters. It’s sadder still that there must be more than enough suckers in the world who respond to their crap that spam is a viable business at all.

It’s a big problem, and getting worse. Thank you Spam Arrest for giving me a way to fight back.

For further reading…

What’s with all this spam?
Network World, 11/8/06

‘Pump-and-Dump’ Spam Surge Linked to Russian Bot Herders
eWeek, 11/16/06

‘9 out of 10 e-mails now spam’
CNN.com, 11/27/06

Spam Doubles, Finding New Ways to Deliver Itself
The New York Times, 12/6/06

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The ‘Back-to-School’ Cold

Rants

With three kids in school and a teacher wife, there’s one thing about the ‘Back-to-School’ season that I can count on, and that’s the ‘Back-to-School’ cold. Just thinking of the swirl of friendly new germs being brought home each day in the last week from Jenny’s students and the kids’ classmates is enough to make me reach for a kleenex. It hit Jenny first, and then moved to me. It really only slowed her down for a day, she soldiers on, but mine has moved from my throat to my head which now feels about ready to explode. The only question is, can I ride the cold out, or will it take root and grow into the dreaded sinus infection! I hope not.

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